AtomicMrX

For the 4th I went over to Jim’s house and he prepared some very delicious chicken, BBQ Beans and Potato Salad. It was a nice time. I unfortunately spent a great deal of the visit on Andy’s new laptop hooking him up with fonts, software, and basic updates. You could call it a working dinner. I still had fun but in a geek-e-er way.

I still have to do one software install for him. For some reason it didn’t work right at all. It could be how I duped the files. I’ll retry from the original.

When I got home from Jim’s; Shannon and I went to the River Front Park and watched the fireworks. It was crazy packed with people. They gave shuttle busses of people rides from the River Market to the River Front Park. There were probably about 12 or so very long school busses making the circuit.

I didn’t like being around that many people in one little area. It was weird. Kind of felt like a sci-fi movie and we were all fleeing the city with the only transportation left. As we sat in the school bus going over the bridges; people were walking along side the bus in hordes. It was very surreal.

Jaki handled the fireworks very well this year. I don’t think there was as much illegal stuff shooting off this year as in the past.

I hope everyone had a safe and fun filled fourth!

My Topsy Turvy Tomato plants are really growing with all the rain we’ve had this past week. The gardens are really enjoying the rain as well.

I got the Wii Fit and have been using it every day. It is a good work out for a person like me (totally out of shape). The Yoga and Strength exercises are really making my thighs work! I can feel it and then some! I have really good balance and posture (at least that’s what my Wii Fit Instructor keeps saying) I just need to work on my core so I have better balance. I tend to sway when the exercise requires me to balance on one foot. I just need to build up the muscles in my feet. I use to have fairly strong feet in college but that was over 25 years ago (I AM SO VERY OLD! - sigh).

Jaki is loving the backyard. She runs around out there whenever we are working on the gardens and stuff. We don’t leave her back there unattended because there are some VERY big dogs that could (and have) jumped our fence and would easily think she is dinner.

Shannon put a lot of time into our gardens and it shows! I will take some pictures and post in the next week!

I used Mr Clean on the floors yesterday and I am very impressed! I use to use Pine Sol and thought it was good but we used it all up and I happen to have some Mr Clean left over from apartment days (over 5 years ago) so I used it instead. The floors have never been so clean, shiny, and feel great on the ol’ bare feet! The Pine Sol would tend to leave the floors sticky if you got the ratio off on water to product.

I had a great concoction last night. I wanted a smoothie and I didn’t have all the ingredients to make a Weight Watchers recipe so I made one up base on it. It was like a shake and kind of like sorbet. Very good and I ate the whole thing (I need to make a smaller batch next time!). Here is the recipe and it is very easy and simple.

1 package of Sugar Free - Fat Free Instant Vanilla Pudding & Pie Filling mix
16 oz package of whole frozen Strawberries
2 Cups Skim Milk

This makes 2 rather large servings or 4 one and a half cup servings (I went with one humungous serving!).

In a blender, put the milk, Vanilla Pudding & Pie Filling powder mix, and frozen strawberries; blend on high (scrapping down the sides often) till nice and smooth. This will thicken as it sets because of the Vanilla mix. It’s part of the Core plan for me so I don’t know how many points it would be for the Flex people.

It was so good - I thought I was cheating! I also bought a Chocolate Fudge Pudding & Pie Filling mix and can’t wait to try that one out!

Work has been very slow which is very unusual. We are normally doing over time because of the political season and the Memorial Day holiday - but we are not. We barely have work to keep us busy during the work day! I hope things pick up a little bit more as we get closer to election day!

I downloaded a free demo of DS Crosswords and it was a lot of fun. Made me think about spelling (which I’m horrible at) and wasn’t too hard to make me feel discouraged. It’s a cheap game too… only $20! That is unusual! I think I may pick it up - I need to keep this old brain a thinking and a little practice at spelling words correctly wouldn’t hurt either!

Well, I’ve been busy and neglected the blogging. Sorry everyone!

Shannon is doing great on his diet. He has lost 35 pounds in a little over a month. My diet? not bad but nothing like the great looser Shannon (whoops, that doesn’t sound right). I have lost (in 7 weeks) 10.1 pounds. Not bad, and at least I’ve lost each week and haven’t gained (yet). I’m on Weight Watchers and Shannon is on a modified Atkins diet.

Last weekend was crazy busy on the computer. I spent the entire weekend working on a friends web site to finish it up. He had paid me some more money and I thought it was time I stopped dragging my feet and just dig in and get it done. Take a look at it if you want. Bense (the owner of the web site) did all of his own layouts for each page and I did the code/HTML to make it work online.

I changed doctors and went for a physical this past week. It had been almost 10 years since I had a good physical. I’ve gone to the doctor plenty of times - just not for a physical. Since I’m well over 40 I should have my prostate checked every year. I got that done and a ton of blood work. I have to get up every night at least 3 times to go to the bathroom and I have recently had a sudden outbreak of boils (fun! aint it?) both of which are warning signs of diabetes. So they will check that out and let me know. I just had the blood drawn this morning, since I forgot that is usually done during a physical and I ate the day of the physical.

Jaki is doing great. No more weird behavior that we could not explain (stroke? siezures?) and she is letting me work my finger around on her teeth in prep for teeth brushing!

Have a great Easter Weekend everyone!

Well, I have been busy and tired…. all at the same time.

I am doing well with the Weight Watchers. Last week I lost over 3 pounds and so this week it was only a couple of ounces! No really 0.2 pounds! But that is okay - it was still a loss.

Jaki is doing fine. She is just as perky as ever. I need to start up her weekly teeth cleaning. I just couldn’t do it the other week cause she had such a bad week.

My web work has picked up with a project that got put on hold last year. It’s nice to get going with that project. It’s been on the back burner for too long.

I was going to go eat sushi with a co-worker this weekend and I was going to save my points (Weight Watchers) for it but now she’s canceled and I feel the need to eat sushi! I was looking forward to it this Saturday. I hope it isn’t postponed too long!

Jaki started acting very odd around 6:15 last night. She was having trouble walking and had a glazed over look in her eyes and had trouble with balance and depth perception. She was also dribbling pee everywhere uncontrollably. It was very scary and came out of no where. We could not figure out what caused it. I immediately called our vet which was closed so called the Emergency Vet Hospital and then we took her there. The Emergency Vet Hospital is in Mission, Kansas so it was a good thirty minute drive but I trusted them the most over two other emergency vets that were close to us.

Jaki just stared blankly out at the cars and traffic and usually in the car she is ecstatic. They did a bunch of tests. They first thought it could be internal bleeding but she clotted just fine so it was disproved. Then then did an extensive blood work to see if she ate something poisonous or drug related. That came back fine. So they thought it would be best if she stayed overnight on an IV to flush out what ever may not show up on a test and to watch her closely and keep track of her liver functions.

We were to be contacted by them if anything went wrong over night and then at 7:00 AM for her status. When they called this morning they said she began coming out of what ever it was around 3:00 AM and started to control her pee and was more responsive. At 7:00, she was alert and ate some bland food and had no problems with either. She was ready to come home.

The vet guessed that it could have been a seizure and we were seeing the after effects. Most seizures are only a few seconds and Shannon probably would not have seen it happen since she was in her kennel before he notice the odd behavior. There is no way of knowing if she had a seizure for sure but now we have to watch her and if she does have a seizure we will need to contact or regular vet and get her started on medication for it.

The poor thing was very ready to leave the hospital and was very glad to be home. She ran around from room to room very excited. She had a little more food to eat and then laid down to rest up from the very bad night she had. Here is a picture of her on the couch wrapped up in a quilt with her bandage covering up her IV insertion. Shannon took the bandage off and Jaki was not at all happy about anyone touching her bandaged leg! I tried to distract her enough so she would not snap at Shannon.

She has had a very rough week. She got her teeth cleaned on Tuesday and an overnight stay at the Emergency Vet Hospital on Friday. It was also a very expensive one for me. The overnight stay at the Emergency Vet Hospital was $587.50. Lucky for me they have a animal vet credit card and I had no trouble qualifying so I was able to put the bill on there and I can then pay it off monthly.