Categories Nothing Much

Ok, just stop.

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Well, the good news is that it could have been EVER SO MUCH WORSE.

The bad news is we just spent $500 more on my car than we expected too.

Took my car in for new tires today, I probly could have gone another winter on the old ones, but it would have been pushing it, especially if we have a bad winter again.  Cringed at the price of the tires, but yah, about what we expected.  Go ahead and do an alignment, and do an oil change while you’re at it please.  Did NOT go to the Dealership for this, unless its warrenty work we never do, a reliable local place is almost always cheaper, not to mention nicer to deal with.

So they put it up on the lift, pull off the tires, and come back out to tell me that there’s a problem.  The lower control arm/ball joint connection is badly rusted, on both sides of the car, and needs replacement ASAP, like “I’m not sure its safe for you to drive” ASAP (and they just don’t say that there, they’re the perfect example of live and let the customer do what they want).

Crap.  So while they’re calling to find out if they can get the parts and how much they’ll cost, I’m calling the Dealership to find out if they’re covered under warrenty.  Or, I’m TRYING to call the Dealership.  The line is busy.  How is the line busy, its a multi-brand dealership with major multiple lines?  Maybe I have a wrong number.  So I dig out a business card out of my purse.  Nope, right number.  So I use my phone to Google for a different number, if nothing else one of the other car brand desks can transfer me to the Dodge repair shop folks right?  Nope, every number rings busy.  WTF?!  So the shop guys hand me their landline phone in case its something with my cell.  Nope, busy signal.  F*ck.  Well I’m not going to drive it over there (risking life and limb, cause of course now that I KNOW there’s a problem it would be NOW that it would fall apart) on the hope that its covered only to discover that its not and that the Dealership is going to charge twice as much to fix it.  So I tell them to go ahead and do it.  This is why we keep a paid off credit card with a high availible balence around.  One of the repair guys, sensitive to the fact that I’m still not happy about not getting ahold of the dealership, tells me to come with him out to my car, and procedes to remove the passenger side lower control arm so he can show me how bad it is.

Now for those of you who (like me) aren’t car savvy, the lower control arm looks like a big metal boomerang with the ball joint inset at one end that attaches to the wheel assembly, and a bushing inset at the other to connect to whatever in the car it connects too (or at least the one from my car does, online data shows they differ from car to car).  From what I can find online its what keeps your steering tires inline when you hit bumps and bounce around on the road.  Having one fail (in any way shape or form) while driving can mean loosing control of your car in a very painfull way.

So he pulls it off the car, and says “crap, now I’m really glad we’re doing this…..” which doesn’t fill me with thoughts of joy.  He points out the ball joint, and the area around it, and how rusty it all is, and says that THAT is what initially caught his attention and the recomendation for the replacement.  He then procedes to point out the bushing on the other end, grabs ahold of the bushing and starts to say “but this is even wor….” and the metal holding the bushing in place disintergrates in a cloud of rust leaving him with the control arm in one hand and the bushing in the other.  Cool huh?  Yah, not so much.

So, $220each for a new control arm with ball joint and bushing for each side of the car, plus an hour’s labor, on top of the price of the new tires, and I’m off, and hey, the extra squeeling sounds I was getting on corners is gone!  Well thats cool.  Though I never did hear any of the other warning sounds the repair guys kept asking me if I’d heard (seriously, I think 5 different guys asked me the same question at some various point during this whole thing.  I promise I’m not that car clueless, if it had been clunking on corners I’d have already had it into the shop).

Seriously Life, I know it coulda been alot worse, but can we just stop now?  I’d like to have a few normal months for a change so I can get things back under control!!

Categories Apollo, Dog

Ever so proud of the puppy!

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One of the hardest things we found in trying to teach manners to our pup is to teach him to drop or otherwise leave an interesting item.  This was especially hard because the most common methods for teaching this involve giving the dog a “high value” treat or toy in place of the “bad” item.  I know, that doesn’t sound hard at all right?

But see, Apollo, like most Tibetan Mastiffs, isn’t especially food or toy oriented.  Sure toys are cool, especially when they squeak, and cheese and peperoni are awesome treats…..but only till something CATCHES his attention, then I can wave peperoni in front of his nose all I want and he’s going to just ignore it.  Honest.  The lady who did our puppy class tried to tell us we must be doing something wrong if he wasn’t being attracted to the peperoni, the look on her face when she did it, and he ignored her and headed in the opposite direction was priceless.  To be fair to her she recovered nicely, and was able to help us cope and come up with alternative methods for most of the training regimen.  So sometimes offering him a treat in place of the “bad” item works really well, other times not so much.

Now over time (and remarkably quickly really) he’s learned whats his to chew on and what isn’t, but we’ve still struggled with getting him to “leave it” when something really tempting/tasty hits the ground or catches his eye.  Getting him to NOT steal cardboard or paper out of the box of burnable trash has been an on-going argument, and god forbid you drop something tasty food wise.  But over the last several weeks he’s headed for the burn box, grabbed something and attempted to make off with it, and I’ll tell him “no, thats not yours” and he’ll drop it and come over to me a bit sheepishly.  That all by itself was a HUGE improvement in that behavior, but then just now, I had a couple chocolate chip cookies on my plate, and I somehow managed to drop one on the floor.   Apollo lunged, and I said “no”, and he stopped and looked at me!  I’m so proud of my puppy!  (and yes, he got a couple slices of peperoni for that one).

Categories Nothing Much

It might be time….

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….to consider finding a new blogger software, when I see this, and the first thing that occurs to me is “oh god, how do I turn it off!!!!”

Seriously, stop “improving” the software, and actually improve it.  Fancier is not necessarily better, in fact its often so annoying it sucks.

Categories Apollo, Cats, Dog, Food

Dog food

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Now I know I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been making my own dog treats.  The reasons for this are a couple, first he’s on a gluten free diet and that all by itself cuts out over half the treats on the petstore shelf.  The other reason is concern over where the products IN the treats came from. 

Did you know that a company can import partially processed meats and other ingredients, complete the processing here in the USA, and legally put “Made in the USA” on the package?  And unless the package specifically says SOURCED in the USA that is likely whats happening.  Now not all imported ingredients are bad, the only country you REALLY have to watch out for is China, pretty much anywhere else in the world is fine as a food source.  But the problems with products from China never really went away, they just got relegated to “old news” and thus are rarely talked about any more.

Needless to say these concerns didn’t take long to make it over to what he was eating regularly.  Now he was already eating a gluten free kibble specifically recommended by his breeder.  So first off to do some research on them…..and no information on the package or website telling me where their ingredients comes from.  Not cool.  Now true, I can’t find any record of them being involved in any recalls either, BUT their parent company has a reputation for not always handling recalls well with some of their OTHER petfood brands.  Not cool.

So a bit more research and digging around.  I’d prefer to feed a raw diet but worry about making sure he’s getting the right balance of “stuff,” especially since he’s still a growing boy, not to mention the need for someone else in the family to feed him on the occasion we’re on vacation.  Ran across a company called The Honest Kitchen, they make a dehydrated raw dog and cat food.  Hey, they list where their ingredients are from!  Even better, they’re FDA certified for producing food for HUMAN consumption.  Thats right, unlike every other dog food company out there when they say their food is human grade they can prove it.  Thats really cool.  And cost wise, volume for volume its actually a bit cheaper than the equivalent amounts of Taste of the Wild canned foods and kibble.  Thats really cool.

Been feeding The Honest Kitchen’s Embark and Zeal foods for several weeks now and he quite enjoys it.  I’d been supplementing them with raw ground turkey or chicken for variety, when I ran across this post by Heather over at Raised by Wolves.  Now Apollo certainly doesn’t need the extra fat and whatnot that those babies do, but I like the concept of the “meatball” format, make ’em up, freeze ’em, pull out as much as you need for a meal.  Takes a bit more time cause they have to thaw, but not as much as if I was making it from scratch each time.  So I modified the basic recipe to fit my needs:

2lbs ground turkey or chicken
2lbs 90/10 ground beef
2 cups whole oats
a small splash of olive oil
a small dash of molasses
4 eggs
plus whatever else I feel like throwing in (sprinkle of ground dried garlic, a 1/2 cup of grated peperoni, left over cooked turkey, etc)

Mix it all up, use an ice cream scoop to make into meatballs and place onto a parchment or freezer paper lined cookie tray, place tray in freezer till meatballs are frozen (several hours, I just usually leave them over night), move meatballs into ziplock bags, and presto easy, predone supplements for a growing puppy.  And since I was usually making his food several hours ahead of time anyway due to the need to rehydrate it, adding in a meatball or two to thaw isn’t a huge deal.

I have to add, cause someone’s sure to wonder, I’ve tried REPEATEDLY to get my cats onto a raw diet, I highly suspect that it would help Janie’s health problems immensely, but they steadfastly REFUSE.  I keep trying!

Categories Solar Power

Solar power

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I posted, way back shortly after starting this blog, about a company called Clarian Power, which was attempting to produce less expensive, “plug n play,” solar and wind power systems for the average consumer.  Their products were decidedly interesting and I’d been keeping an eye on them for a while.  They were hoping to have product on the market by the end of this year.

So, today, with all the news about “green power” companies going under I decided to hit Clarian’s website to see if there’d been any updates.  Except the website has changed.  The link now auto redirects to www.clarianlabs.com which doesn’t have any information on it except a “contact us” button.  I can get around that new front page by typing in www.clarianpower.com/solar.html and see the originial website, but there’ve been no updates.  Well, that’s not cool, but hey, I was following their Facebook site, and now that I think about it there haven’t been any updates from that for a while either, but lets go check.  Except there’s no Facebook site any more either.  Under either the Clarian Power name, or the Clarian Labs name, and its not listed as a page I’m following any more.

Well f*ck.  Hit Google, nothing really comes up there either.  Links to past articles about the solar and wind projects, an article about a “new” project (dated a few months ago), and thats it.  Nothing about this being one of the companies thats closing, nothing.  So I don’t KNOW that something bad has happened to them, but the lack of anything anywhere is not promising!

Categories Nothing Much

Oddness in Stats

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For anyone else using Blogger (I have no idea if the other blog softwares do the same thing).

I mostly use SiteMeter to track visitors and the like to the blog, but I also keep an eye on the Stats page provided by Blogger.  I know most of the figures aren’t the most accurate, but it also shows me highest read posts and the like so I’ll glance at it every so often.

But I’ve noticed something odd in the Traffic Sources section of the Stats.  The large majority of the traffic sources are other blogs, either blogs where I’m on the blogroll, or where I’ve posted.  Not a huge surprise.  There are often a few from search engines as well, mostly with the search terms “kitty holster”, again, not a big surprise.

Whats odd is in the last month or so have been several websites listed that really shouldn’t be.  They appear to be business sites (though they strike me more as spam/scammer sites), and the referring URL is nothing more than the site’s main page.  If it was someone referring to my blog in a comment, or article the referring URL SHOULD be that article page, not the main page.  I’m not going to post the websites because I highly suspect they’re spammer/scammer sites, but even if they’re nothing more than advertisers, thats an awfully odd way to get links…..oh yah, and none of these odd referring URLs are showing up on SiteMeter!

Am I the only one with this phenomenon?

Categories Nothing Much

Life

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Life has been a bit interesting the last month or so.

First husband ends up on strike.  Then they call off the strike, but they don’t have a new contract, which means that they could go BACK on strike at any time.

Then my parents arrive, and well, I already posted about that visit.  Lets just say I’m very glad they’re home again.

Then a week ago today, Husband is leaving to go to work, and walks back into the house informing me that he’s seeing double.  Now seeing double COULD just mean he needs new glasses, the ones he’s currently got are going on two years old, but it ALSO could mean alot of bad things as well, so off we go to the urgent care clinic.  Urgent care promptly freaks out cause double vision combined with the insane headache he’d had the night before COULD mean stroke, so instead of sitting in the waiting room for a couple hours like usual he had a room to himself in about 5 minutes.  Doctor pokes and prods and asks questions and decides that its PROBABLY not a stroke, but we’re going to run an EKG, and a CAT scan just to make sure we’re not missing anything.  CAT scan came back normal, EKG informed us that his heart rate was a bit off the low end of normal.  Doctor says he wants Husband to follow up with a Neurologist and a Cardiologist just in case and sends us home.  So Monday he calls his regular doctor to set up the appropriate referrals, doc says come in so I can look at you first (not a huge surprise).  They do another EKG, and this one comes back normal.  Doc says that he thinks its probably nothing more than a sinus infection from hell, but we’ll check with the cardiologist and the neurologist just to be sure, and since you already have an appointment with an ear/nose/throat specialist Tuesday make sure you mention all this to him.

So Tuesday he goes to see the E/N/T specialist, an appointment he’s been waiting for a couple months now, cause for the last couple years he’s been getting sinus infections every 3 or 4 months, so by now the usual drugs don’t work very well on him, and the newer/less commonly used drugs give him vertigo, which means he basically ends up suffering through several days (and occasionally a couple weeks) of headaches, feeling nasty, and green snot far to regularly.  Cat scan of is sinuses showed some interesting artifacts in the sinus pathways so off to a specialist  you go.  The specialist listens to the whole story, sets him up to see an allergist (so he knows exactly what he’s dealing with), a balance trainer (cause chances are the vertigo isn’t going to be curable), and an appointment to take a closer look at the insides of his sinuses (I don’t want to know).  Specialist also agrees that its possible a sinus infection could cause the double vision, and stop taking the Allegra cause that could be making your sinus infections worse.  Instead take Ommaris and methylprednisone and we’ll see what happens.

So the fun’s not over yet, though by this time we’re  not really expecting the cardiologist or the neurologist to tell us anything bad, I really hope the E/N/T specialist can do something about the sinus infections though.  We were hoping that once we moved they’d go away, but that didn’t happen.

Edited to add: So yes, things could be aLOT worse, but that doesn’t keep it from being frustrating trying to keep up with it all…..