Snakes on a train


Snakes on a train
Originally uploaded by rynosoft.

This guy also had a three-legged pit bull with him. It took me several minutes before I noticed the snake wrapped around his neck. He claimed the dog liked having the snake wrapped around him but the dog wasn’t too keen when he demonstrated for everyone.

I declined to inform him of TriMet’s anti-pet rules.

Vital Statistics

Bike odometer: n/a
Weight lost: 58 lbs.
Hours of sleep last night: 6
Hours billed last week: 37
Total mice caught: 15
Current reading: 2107 Curious Word Origins, Says & Expressions by Charles Earle Funk, The Book of Totally Useless Information by Don Voorhees, The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Recent listening: Coverville, KBOO Bike Show
Recent viewing: The Colbert Report, The Daily Show, Lakers at Suns, Crater Lake: The Mirror of Heaven, Battlestar Galactica, Kingdom Hospital (finale), 24, Frontline, 60 Minutes
Recent playing: Donut Games, Elebits
Recently accomplished: Bought and installed new front bike fender, cleaned and lubed bike, minor garage cleaning, major office cleaning and dusting, sorted inbox, paid bills, filed taxes, recycling, hair cut, cat to vet, beat Elebits
Imperative To Do: RMA old Tivo drive, fix bathroom sink, backup everyone’s computer, determine vacation availability

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.

Vital Statistics

Two more Half.com gift certificates arrived after my birthday. Here’s the rest of the stuff I bought:

Thanks a bunch to Tom & Jan and Tina, Graham & Thomas. As I mentioned earlier Half.com has become my favorite semi-annual ritual.

Bike odometer: 220 miles
Weight lost: 32 lbs.
Hours of sleep last night: 7.2
Current reading: I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe, The Prince by Machiavelli
Recent listening: Portrait: The Music of Dan Fogelberg by Dan Fogelberg, DrugMusic, Humpy’s Soul Show, It’s The Jump Off
Recent viewing: Without A Trace, Mystery of the Megavolcano, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report
Recent playing: Zuma
Recently accomplished: Installed memory in Graham’s computer
Imperative To Do: Finish old blog entries, rake, install new hard drive for Thomas, clean garage, return stuff to hardware store
Cool Link: Kittens: Pictures taken by a man in Taiwan who rescues street cats before the government collects and “disposes” of them.