Craptacular

That's how I've generally felt today. Either I'm at the beginning of a cold or I overdid it a bit at the gym yesterday and the fibromyalgia is paying me back. Or maybe a bit of both. It didn't help that I spent the night on the couch to keep Tuck quiet, which meant a night of being awakened every ten minutes by the cats raising hell.

Yeah, I know, sleeping on the couch for the dog sounds a little crazy, but it (usually) beats the hell out of listening to barking all night and yesterday brought a bit of a change for him. I finally managed to de-Christmas the living room, moving our tiny, but very heavy, potted live tree off of the big dog crate, said tree being supported by three cases of motor oil stacked up inside the crate (no, really, we're not at all white trash 'round here). Tuck likes the new digs, but it means he has a clear view of me going up the stairs and leaving him alone. I also started him on amitriptyline last night to try to help him through his separation anxiety, but that takes time to kick in. So the couch it was.

Otherwise, yesterday was quite a productive day. Aside from the gym, I managed to get several errands run, the most important of which was this:



The dog license was the last bit of official business to take care of regarding Tuck. He has a home and family who love him now, which is as it should be. And next Tuesday, we're going to see what we can do about his airway issues. I'm a tiny bit nervous about putting him through anesthesia & surgery, as he had some problems when he was neutered, but these procedures should help at least to lessen the issues that caused those problems in the first place, and I'm taking him to a clinic with a laser surgery unit, which is the least traumatic option available.

More Soup, Please

I was a little surprised to see comments from so many people without pressure cookers. They're really very handy pieces of kitchen equipment, and for beans that take bloody forever to cook up, like garbanzos, they're damn near essential.

They're also available for not a huge amount of money. Mine is a super cheapo aluminum one that I bought at K-mart after moving back to Maine. It will likely give me Alzheimer's disease, being aluminum and all, but I was financially tapped out at the time and it has served well. Amazon has a reasonably-priced stainless model, as does Amazon.de (Interestingly, the German website uses the US product as the header photo for their Töpfe category on their main cookware page, but they don't appear to offer that model for sale). And yes, VUBOQ, canned garbanzos could be used. But would they be as tasty?

Anyway, last night I made another soup for dinner, this one not requiring a pressure cooker. I decided I wanted split pea soup and had to go with yellow peas, since that was all the local supermarket had left on the shelf. Who knew it was such a popular idea? Truth be told, there's little difference between this soup and the garbanzo one, except that peas cook up nicely without the pressure cooker. I didn't put any cumin in this one, and I cut up an onion and a few parsnips in it. I also crushed a few tiny-but-potent hot chilies that Don brought us when he visited before Christmas, just to give it a little bit of kick. It turned out very tasty, as you might imagine.



Travel Plans

Since I have to do the end-of-life talk and play the role of grief counselor so often at work, I registered last night for a symposium on veterinary hospice care in March at UC Davis. This will be my first trip to California at all in just over 6 years and the first time I've been within reasonable travel distance of San Francisco in nearly 14 years, so aside from getting in my continuing ed credits for the year, I'm hoping to be able to catch up with some friends I haven't seen for a while and meet a few folks I've only known virtually up to now.

I'm just a little excited.