We can laugh our lives away and be free once more

Recent events in the Portland Ring household:

  • As mentioned earlier, our cat Nietzsche had to be put down on Saturday. Possibly more on that later.
  • Tina saw her doctor on Monday and was disappointed to find that her foot fractures have not healed. I’m renewing my efforts to keep her off her feet. She will continue to wear “the boot” until she is healed.
  • Tina’s dad, Leroy, arrived yesterday. He’ll be with us for a week. Tina’s cousin Natians (Buddy’s step-daughter) will be in town for 10 days starting on Saturday.
  • Last night we took Leroy to his first zoo concert. The Charlie Hunter Trio played an incredible show. Hunter is a unique guitarists who simultaneously plays lead and bass guitar parts on his 7-string guitar. Unfortunately, after they returned from their mid-show break, the set became more solo jazz oriented so we left early.
  • Because Natians and Leroy are in town we’ve got a busy week ahead of us: a long weekend at the coast, another zoo concert (featuring the beautiful voice of Richie Furay), Body Worlds 2 at OMSI and the annual CPS golf tournament and company picnic.
  • I’m finishing up a big project at work and will soon be transitioning to a new project. When my product ships, I’ll have a link to the announcement here.

Vital Statistics

Bike odometer: 1595
Weight lost: 48 lbs.
Hours of sleep last night: 9
Hours billed last week: 38.5
Aches & pains: knees (when riding), abrasion on right calf, left achilles, sore legs
Current reading:: 2107 Curious Word Origins, Says & Expressions by Charles Earle Funk, The Book of Totally Useless Information by Don Voorhees, Metal Cowboy by Joe Kurmaskie
Recent listening: Linkin Park, Poet In My Window by Nanci Griffith, Science Friday
Recent viewing: Countdown, Gilmore Girls, World Series of Poker, Masters of Science Fiction, The Colbert Report
Recent playing: Pangea Arcade, Gimme Friction Baby
Recently accomplished: Picked up bike from Bike Gallery, complete garage re-organization (half completed), unloaded desks from van, buried Nietzsche, Providence Bridge Pedal
Imperative To Do: Finish garage, RMA old Tivo drive, sift through inbox, post office, fix Thomas’ computer

Nietzsche can’t poop

The other weekend it was so nice outside that we let our cats, Nietszche and Ming, outside to enjoy the outdoors. They enjoyed themselves, I presume, and dutifully returned to the indoors when we called.

A few days after we noticed that Nietzsche was favoring one of his sides and squawking when you touched him on that side. He’s a bit of a scrapper, so we thought he might have picked a fight when he was outside, but could find no sign of wounds. He’s also old so we thought it just might be his old arthritic hips. We left it at that until today, when he was sitting on my chest and I noticed that his hair by his butt was crusty. He was facing me, so I asked Tina to take a look. She refused to look at his little butthole, so I had to turn him while holding his tail up so I could get a look. He really started to squawk then and tried to get away. But not before I could spot the problem: a little turd was peeking out.

I’d seen the same thing once before with Nietszche – he’s constipated. That time we had to take him to the vet to get a cat enema. Hopefully, the vet will be open tomorrow and we won’t have to pay emergency weekend rates. I briefly considered performing the procedure myself, but this site recommends against it.

Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t have caved when he was begging for some of my string cheese.

In defense of our cats

A loyal reader recently wrote:


Your blog said: Sunday night we got one by the cat food

You mean your cats can’t catch these mice??? Do they try?

Yes, it’s true – our cats have been completely ineffective in keeping our house pest free. However, it’s not really their fault. Ming, who is 14 years old, is blind in one eye and nearly deaf. Nietzsche is 15 years old and has arthritis. They are essentially just grumpy, old cats at this point in their lives and definitely no longer mouser material.

When Tina and I got married in New Mexico, Nietzsche was not yet a year old but proved to be an excellent mouser. He caught at least two in the short time that we stayed at Jan and Tom’s house and even left one on our pillow for us one night! Those days are long gone now, but they both enjoyed when I let them check out our most recently trapped mouse this morning. More on that later.