New music in the player to the left! (If you're reading on www.sonicplague.com.)
So many, many broken things ...
First, on a personal level:
1. According to the fine folks at Xbox.com, my unit is already on the way back to me. Quite the snappy turnaround! Less than a week? I really can't complain about the experience (if true), especially - as I'd written previously - since it resulted in me re-discovering God of War on my PS2. If I could only kill that Hades creature thing. Ugh.
2. Braces! They will be applied (installed?) on September 10, and will be the old-fashioned metal kind, which I've been told "are gonna hurt like hell" for a while. I don't know. I would imagine the technology has improved a great deal since my teen years, when I probably should have had them in the first place, so maybe it's not going to be as bad as people my age who've had them and are now slightly razzing me about them would have me believe.
I had my x-rays and dental molds taken last week. I know orthodontics is not an easy field of medicine and science, but $350 for literally twenty minutes worth of work? Seriously? But before anyone accuses me of being a raging anti-dentite, I have nothing but the greatest optimism that this is the right plan for me. It's just ... $350? And the foamy gel used to make my mold tasted NOTHING like the vanilla I was promised.
I'll post some "before" photos at some point, though we'll have to wait 12-18 months for the "after" ones.
3. The dogs. Remember when I wrote, regarding having two dogs in the apartment, "what could possibly go wrong?"
Ahh, ahem ...
In fairness to Joey, our crazy half-Husky/half-jackass, this wasn't his fault at all:
Rocky, my dog-in-law, had to have emergency surgery this past Friday morning.
Flashback to a early August: Nicole and I (and Joey) drove to Boston to celebrate my brother-in-law's 30th birthday at a cookout at her family's house. As the evening grew dark, we found a lump under Rocky's left eye that we thought was possibly swelling due to a bee sting. When we left the next day, the swelling hadn't gone down, but nobody thought much of it.
On August 17th, Nicole's folks drove Rocky to our apartment in New Jersey, so we could doggie-sit him while they enjoyed a vacation in Italy (lucky ducks!). His eye was still puffed up. It looked like he had a ping-pong ball trapped under his skin.
Last Wednesday (8/27), Nicole went to work and everything was fine, but by the time she got home, the swelling had grown even larger. With obvious concern, we got Rocky an emergency appointment at the Morristown Animal Hospital for that same afternoon. Rocky was given a physical examination, including having his temperature taken (the fun way!) and having blood drawn for lab work.
Long story short, Rocky had an abscess due to a problem with a tooth in his upper jaw. The big ball under his eye was mostly pus. Our vet suggested that Rocky should have surgery two days later (8/29) to fix it, otherwise the infection would just get worse and cause more problems. We brought home some antibiotics, and ... well, I can't say we "looked forward" to the surgery, but we were happy something was going to be done about it, let's put it that way. Oh yeah, and the price estimate was $800 - $1200. Nice.
But Rocky's a member of the family, and has been for 13 years. The cost was never an issue. I mention it only because when it rains, it pours ... just as we decided to get braces and have started paying for those, here comes emergency dog surgery.
Thursday morning, Nicole went to work, expecting that she might be let out early, since her company (very generously) gives the Friday before the Monday holiday off for Labor day, too. And if people have Friday off, they tend to start to bail halfway through the day before ...
It didn't really matter, though, because I had to call her to come home early anyway. About half an hour after taking Rocky for his after-lunch walk, I noticed a little spot of red on our floor and investigated. Sure enough, Rocky's swelling had started to come down, but there was a mess on his face, and he was bleeding. I don't know if he accidentally punctured himself with his paw, or if the tooth or something inside his mouth moved just the right way, or if the swelling literally got too big and "exploded" on him ... It was gross, though. He didn't seem to care, and it's not as if it was oozing out of him like a human with a bloody nose, but it was sufficiently upsetting for me to call the animal hospital for another emergency visit, with a follow-up to Nicole saying hey, get home ASAP, the dog's having a medical emergency.
The whole time, by the way, Joey was camping out in the bedroom, unaware of the drama unfolding. He just wanted to be left alone, and this ... this ...
invading dog could just go to hell anyway.
Nicole got home, we went to the vet, and Rocky was taken to an examination room immediately. (For the record, I cannot say enough good things about the staff at the Morristown Animal Hospital - they were, and have continued to be - absolutely fantastic.) The abscess had ruptured, but Rocky was in no danger, and could wait until surgery the next morning. He (and we) would just have to survive overnight with a big, slightly moist wound under his eye.
I had been charged with the task of collecting a urine sample (from Rocky, not from me - though that would have been MUCH easier), on the day of the surgery. We grabbed a glass and a lid and headed outside. Lucky for me, I didn't get any splash-back until, at the completion of the act, Rocky kicked over the glass. Nice. Fortunately, he had a little left over and the mission, though messier than anticipated after a seemingly ideal beginning, was complete.
So, on Friday, the third consecutive day of going to the vet, we dropped Rocky off for his surgery. Nicole, having grown up for so many years with the dog, was incredibly nervous (and rightly so). They were going to put him under general anesthesia, which is always dicey under any circumstances, for animals or humans.
For good measure, since we didn't know how Rocky would react to his pain meds and everything else, we dropped Joey off at the kennel, or "Doggie Summer Camp" as we call it, just so they wouldn't tangle while Rocky healed. And, more importantly, so we could possibly enjoy part of our long weekend.
Gross side note: when the vet flushed out the abscess area, the water came out the wound under his eye. The dog had a damn hole in his face.
Rocky came home late the same day, with a big protective plastic cone strapped to his head. It was a long night. He didn't sleep well, and whined for most of it. I slept in the living room, so that he could find me if he was in severe distress, and in the hopes that he'd leave Nicole to get some rest.
In the end, Rocky's doing just fine, though I alternate between calling him Two Face and Scarface. The swelling he has now is from stitches, not the abscess. His face-hole is sealed up. He can't eat solid food for another week and a half or so. He's sleeping well every night, and his energy levels seem to be back up to pre-surgery expectations.
His owners, however, are still in Italy and don't know what their dog (or its babysitters) had to endure. If I knew where they'd be at any given point, I'd send a reverse-vacation postcard to THEM at their hotel from New Jersey, written in Rocky's voice. "Having a great time in Jersey! They took my blood, stuck something in my butt, and cut my face open. I'll have to tell you about my head-cone in person. But I'm on drugs, so everything's been a blast, really. Wish you were here! Love, Rocky."
He's happy and healthy, and in the end, that's all that matters.
We have pictures, of course, but (in keeping with the theme of this post) our digital camera is broken (and has been since our trip to the also-as-yet-unblogged trip to Cooperstown back in May). Nicole will drop off our disposable camera to be developed tomorrow. Fair warning on grossness will be posted before the pictures come up on your internets from out of nowhere.
**********
Item #4. The Republican VP candidate.
I just don't know what to make of this. On one hand, I think it's a gift from John McCain to the Democrats. On the other hand, this country is so fickle and backwards with politics sometimes that his
overlords handlers advisers and PR people may be able to spin this and fool more people into voting for him.
I, like many of my friends, view Sarah Palin as a stunt candidate. Yes, in the short time she's been a public servant she's put together a pretty impressive resume for herself. I'll give her that. And her approval ratings in Alaska are apparently pretty high, and I've heard the stories about her standing up to her own party to try to eradicate corruption (something ALL parties should strive for). So there is some encouraging material there for which she deserves praise.
HOWEVER.
I think it's a pathetic attempt at pandering to the would-be Hillary vote. I (would like to) think that women voters who are disappointed that Clinton is not the Democratic candidate would realize that it's Clinton's stance on political issues that matter, not her genetic makeup. Palin is anti-choice, anti-stem cell research, anti-gay marriage rights, and pro-creationism. And that's just to start. Any one of those four would be a flag to me, but having all four at once is the kiss of death, as far as I'm concerned.
I'm loathe to tell anyone what to believe, but I can't imagine the set of circumstances I'd have to face for me to choose someone like Palin for ANY public office. And I don't say that because she's a woman. I say that because her political stances are so completely opposite my own that she horrifies me as a potential Vice President (and, as such, potential President, should something unfortunate happen to John McCain).
But I would absolutely hope that any woman voter who wanted to vote for Hillary Clinton wanted to do so because of her views, not her gender. Anyone who wanted to vote for Clinton simply because she's a woman needs to seriously re-evaluate their own political and personal beliefs. I don't know why anyone would sell out their own personal beliefs like that, but look where it got John McCain 2008 compared to John McCain 2000. It seemed to work for him.
So as a pro-oil, pro-drilling, pro-gun, bible-thumping evangelical, she'll probably make the hard-right base much happier than they were with just McCain at the top of the ticket. She seems to mean what she says and stand behind her words (at least, 72 hours after the announcement that she's the candidate), so she's already more conservative than McCain. I'm convinced that Mitt Romney is a fraud and would be a terrible candidate on any national level. Giuliani had nothing to offer outside of yelling "911!" all the time. So in the end she's a good pick in the sense of getting the conservative base to support its candidate, disappointed as they may be with him.
But the undecideds and independents? Anyone pro-oil, pro-drilling, pro-gun, anti-choice, anti-stem cell research, anti-evolution, anti-gay marriage wasn't going to vote for Barack Obama anyway.
So I don't know what McCain stands to gain here, unless that magical 30% of undecided would-be Hillary voters are, in fact, complete dolts. And even then, I don't know if it would be enough for McCain.
I'm not terribly concerned about the whole "lack of experience" argument thrown around by both sides regarding their respective opponents, either. Obama doesn't have the experience, the Republicans say, yet they have nominated the governor of a state with a population the size of Austin, Texas. But she's also a former mayor! Yeah ... of a city of less than 7,000 residents. That's JV stuff. But as governor and mayor, she has more "Executive" experience than Senators Biden and Obama, who've never held such an office! OK, but by that standard, she also has more experience than her running mate, John McCain.
Sounds pretty ridiculous, doesn't it?
Further, there's the whole
pregnant daughter angle, which seems like a powder keg about to explode. Something about the story doesn't seem quite right, but I don't know exactly what. My spidey senses tell me there's more to this story that's going to come out in the next few days and weeks.
Then, there's
ownthesidewalk.com, a blog by a resident of Anchorage, Alaska, that provides a first-hand (though admittedly biased) perspective of Palin as governor. A very good read, and one I'll be sure to keep up with as the campaign progresses.
It also seems that
someone "scrubbed" Palin's Wikipedia entry just before the announcement of her candidacy. Seems a little ... odd.
I don't know what to think about
this article, which discusses how Palin may have been chosen not by, but FOR, McCain. I don't know anything about the website or who runs it, and I've never heard of the Council for National Policy before. So maybe this is some crazy black helicopter conspiracy stuff that doesn't deserve anyone's attention. But, as a piece of a larger puzzle, I wonder if it fits, especially given
this article from the much more reputable L.A. Times, which says that McCain and Palin are "practically strangers", and that "Palin said she had met McCain only once or twice".
Really? They don't know each other well?
Say what you will about Joe Biden (I've never been his biggest fan, particularly due to his smug demeanor - frankly, his selection as VP running mate was a bit of a disappointment to me, at least at first), but over the course of the last two years as fellow candidates, he and Obama have developed a strong relationship, and they both understand the other because they've been around each other for so long.
But McCain and Palin had only met "once or twice"? REALLY?
This is a huge statement, to me. McCain thinks she's the best available candidate, and he's only met her "once or twice"? REALLY?
And if he's making important decisions like this in this manner, is this what we can expect in the future? Is it worth the risk?
Kids, it's a stunt. He's pandering. It seems clear to me, but I'll admit I'm biased and have been an Obama supporter since the day he announced his candidacy. More importantly, I hope it's clear to others still in the decision-making process, and I hope those people aren't fooled by the usual righty suspects (Limbaugh, Hannity, etc.) into believing that the Republican ticket is something it's not.
Time for a change, everyone. Let's fix what's broken and elect Barack Obama in November.
