Moe

Late into the evening on Monday I went to check on my girls before bed. I found that Moe had the bald patch that you can see in the picture and some bloodied ears. I freaked out, because I wasn't certain what was going on. Moe seemed less active but otherwise normal.

Then I took her out of the cage. She was limping awkwardly - more just ignoring one of her legs than avoiding using it. This seemed odd but not too horrible.

I put her in a separate cage for the night, and checked on her the next morning.

Her limp was more pronounced and she was more lethargic. She wasn't moving much, just laying in her hammock. I decided to take some video of her limp to see what the great folks over at the Goosemoose Pet Portal Rats Rule forums thought. I had previously had a thread about her baldness.

This is the video.




They urged me to take Moe into the vet as soon as possible. So I called and made an appointment - this morning at 7:00AM. I took Moe over to the Adobe Animal Hospital, and met with the vet there. Moe had worsened greatly from yesterday - now almost completely listless, only wanting to be in the darkest corner of the carrying case, and not using either of her front paws. She was off balance and seems extremely confused.

The vet didn't have anything really comforting to say (the official diagnoses of the two vets who observed Moe was "I don't know") and gave me the standard regime of Baytril and Metacam to give to her.

It's my belief from the symptoms I've observed that Moe has a pituitary tumor and has at most a few months to live, and that only if the medication helps. I'm hoping it does - and I'm also hoping that my diagnosis is wrong and the vets are correct; that Moe is far too young to have a pituitary tumor, that it has to be something else, that PT doesn't cause the skin condition she has, and since the two appeared together they must be related, if it is PT that the medication will help and she'll have some happy time left ... but I'm bracing for the worst.

EDIT: Around Sunday (December 5) she began showing signs of an upper respiratory infection. Then, in the early hours of the morning of 7 December 2010, Moe passed away. Her death was not unexpected, but was extremely tragic, and she will be very missed by her cagemates, and by myself.

Thanks Giving. Thiving.

I decided to go all out on Thursday and make Tene and myself a proper Thanksgiving feast. I think it turned out well!

The meal itself was completely Paleo, sticking with our newish diet. I was really proud of myself for being able to find so many tasty paleo dishes - and for making them all!

We also got to talk to my family over Skype, after some initial connectivity issues (due to my laptop running Linux, Tene had to help me set it up properly so it could use the microphone, and there were some troubles on my mother's end as well, but I'm not actually certain what those were). It was nice to see my grandparents and the step-siblings who were still around, even if it was just through a webcam. My grandmother tried to get me to promise to visit over Christmas - we're still working out what our plans are going to be for then.

But the feast! It was a marvelous feast, and I was quite proud of it (we still have leftovers!)

I started out with an appetizer (told you it was a feast) of spinach stuffed mushrooms - the recipe I used asked for panko bread crumbs, which I substituted out for a little bit of almond meal (which has almost the same consistency). These were gone by that night, 30 of them, eaten by Tene and me! They were really delicious, and are definitely something I want to try again.

Then for the main meal, we had the turkey (of course, what's Thanksgiving without a turkey?) that I roasted myself (first time I have ever tried to do anything like that). My first observation when I started doing stuff with the turkey, though, was a not entirely pleasant realization. Turkey is gross.

I find most raw meat to be unpleasant, but for my first time working with a whole bird ... well, I can't choose anything else except that turkey - as a whole - is nasty. Especially since they store the "giblets" and neck inside the thing for selling. I didn't want anything to do with those. And cleaning the turkey out? Yuck. That's definitely something I'm willing to not do very often.

But the turkey ended up very nice! I used a cheap roasting pan for it, put a couple of pieces of onion (amounting to about a half) and some fresh thyme inside, covered the thing with butter and salt and pepper, and then stuck it in the oven for three hours. It was still moist and was cooked all the way through and was just tasty.

I also made roasted Brussel's sprouts (a standby that I'm glad is a normal part of our eating habits), some baked honey carrots and oranges, asparagus with an interesting bacon vinaigrette, and another of our standbys - sweet potatoes and onions. None used any extra sugar (the carrots had a little bit of honey added, and I put some agave nectar on the sweet potatoes), and all ended up really delicious.

And then I broke Paleo for our desert - a really tasty, very dark chocolate and rich flourless chocolate cake. Because it didn't use flour I'm pretty sure it was gluten free - making our Thanksgiving definitely friendly to those who can't have gluten. The cake had an added cup of sugar in it, plus the slight dusting of powdered sugar on top. Then there was the whipped cream (whipped by Tene) made from sour cream, heavy cream, and some more powdered sugar.

Unfortunately I didn't bake the cake quite long enough. It was still delicious (and we ate the whole thing), but next time I'll need to remember to leave it in the oven a little longer - either that or flourless cakes are just normally a bit thicker, I'm not sure which.

I think I should add an electric mixer to the list of things I want, if only to save Tene's arm from all of that stirring and beating.

After having a lot of fun cooking all of this and feeling proud of myself for a job well done, I started thinking - I think I might want to host a dinner like this once a month, invite people to come and eat some good food and hang out. It would give me a chance to really practice my cooking and baking skills, and it would help Tene and I strengthen our social circle here, both of which are good things, I think. It would also be somewhat of a challenge (for me) to find the recipes I want to make, and then cook them and have them done in time for people to come share with us. The Thanksgiving meal I made was delicious, and I'm glad I did it, but I started late and we didn't actually get around to eating it until seven or eight Thursday night. Time management just isn't one of my strong suits.

The joke in today's title comes from a series called Look Around You, in which it is an ongoing thing. Specifically from the Water module. Bless you, ants. Blants.

Letters Letters Everywhere!

NaNoWriMo is going well. I'm a two days behind, but I'm planning on spending most, if not all, of tomorrow writing up a storm (finally got Pandora and Rdio onto my cellphone, so I don't even need my laptop to be connected to the internet!), and hopefully I'll get back on track. I must write the life of this intriguing mail carrier!

I fell behind because of two things: One, I got tired of my story and plot. So I time warped into the future of my character, added a second character, and stuck them in a Gaslamp Romance. It's turning into a cute love story - and is going to include some themes about what I want from my own life. Second, I'm sick. I picked up a cold somewhere and I've felt more or less terrible. I've also been less than stellar emotionally, and I really should go see a doctor soon for recommendations to ... a lot of things (gyno, sleep therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist, a doctor (or dentist, but a doctor is preferred) specializing in the jaw ... the list never ends).

Speaking of health, I went to the dentist two weeks ago and found out that my life of no cavities ever was over. I had five of the little buggers. One for each of my back-most molars, with one of them having two! Well, I scheduled a visit to have them taken care of (and a deep cleaning). I was scared and nervous about two things - the shot, and the drill.

Before the first appointment to take care of the right side of my mouth I had never been conscious for a shot in my mouth. I've been numbed before, but always under sedation - once when my wisdom teeth were removed (I was 15 or 16 at the time), and nearly two years ago when I had my front gum repaired, both times I was put under sedation before I ever saw the needle come at my mouth. After talking to some friends I was less worried (apparently Novocaine is different then whatever the used to numb my eyelid for that surgery/biopsy, which burned before numbing), but still a little anxious about the thought of a needle piercing my gums. More than that, I was worried I would freak out at the sound of the drill - and of the drill drilling away my teeth.

I did the best I could to explain my fears to the dentist, who ended up prescribing me some Valium, which I took, and which allowed me to get through my appointments with few problems (my iPod helped too). I've decided that Valium is fine and good for serious circumstances that make me feel really anxious, but it's quite overkill. I ended up coming home and sleeping it off afterward.

After the break I'm going to type up some letter to people I've noticed while driving around Palo Alto and Mountain View, otherwise, that's it!

NaNoWriMo 2010 ....

Yep, despite failing the last three years, I'm going to be attempting NaNoWriMo again this year.

So, as usual, starting Monday the first of November, 2010, I'll be attempting to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. That's almost 1700 words a day. I'm nervous, but I know I have plenty of time to do that (7 pages a day? Totally within reason, I think). I'm more nervous that I'm *also* going to be doing some other things: making Christmas presents for people being the Big Thing that I'm thinking about right now. Every year I start on such gifts too late in the season to get people their gifts by Christmas ... or I just give up. This year I've decided I'm going to start working on some of them tomorrow - and my plan is to have them given away or shipped off by 1 December (except in the case of one friend, Zoie, who I'm sending her gift to by 15 November, because she's leaving for Japan in early December).

This year I've decided to do some preparation work. Writing by the seat of my pants has failed me miserably the past three years, so it's time to try something new. I'm planning on having a rough outline, characters, and setting and plot built before November first, so that if/when I get stuck on things I'll have a way out. Less writers block is my intended goal, and I'm really hoping it works out the way I want it to.

Of Cavemen and Cold Monsters

It's been a month or so since I last posted, so I figured I should finally get to it. Overall, our lives have been quiet and uneventful, which has been rather nice. We're still settling in, we're enjoying what we have. It's nice.

The biggest thing going on for us right now is that we've decided to change our diet a bit. We are going onto a Paleo diet for the next month or so, to see if we feel healthier having done so or not.

What this means is that we're cutting out added sugar or sweeteners (with the exception of honey and agave nectar), and all grains and grain products. This means no more pasta, sandwiches, cookies, cakes, ice cream ....

I'm taking it mostly in stride. I've agreed to try this thing out with Tene, with the exception that I'm going to eat mostly Paleo - with sweets sometimes thrown in (I can't just totallly give up my sweets, after all).

The reasons we're trying this out is because we've heard a lot of good things about it from a friend we've made out this way, Frank, and because it seems like a very healthy choice. I haven't been eating enough, at all, lately - so hopefully I'll eat more on this diet and feel better for it. Tene had some blood work done for a physical, and while he's not horrible - he tends to be on the upper side of "normal" for the bad things, and the lower side for the good stuff. So we're also hoping that this will get him (and me - I didn't get any work done, but I would be surprised if my results were very different) to a more balanced place, health wise.

And, if you didn't get it from the name, the idea behind Paleo is that we eat what our bodies have evolved to eat - it's based on things that were available before the agricultural revolution, so things available to our hunter-gatherer or cavemen ancestors. I've been eating a lot of berries and nuts, and I'm enjoying all the fruit and vegetables. I could do without cooking so much meat, though. I hate handling it when it's raw. It's just gross.

We're also exercising more - Dance Dance Revolution, Yoga, I'm thinking of taking up jogging (maaaaaaybe), and maybe CrossFit - which a lot of Paleo-people like to do. I'm sick of how easily I get exhausted.

The only other big thing to happen for us is that we both got horribly sick the last two weeks. It was a basic cold - but it seemed like it laid us out for a good week or so, much longer than I was expecting it to.

Other than that, we're doing well and are enjoying our lives. We've been able to purchase a TV and a PS3, so we've got some more "luxury" items in our home, which has been nice - especially while we were sick. There are still a few things we want that fit into that category, but overall I think we're doing well.