Unexpected Houseguests

Now that summer has passed, I've signed on to pick up a few more Sunday day shifts for a bit of extra income. Today was a fairly busy one that included this rather surprising arrival:



Eastern box turtles are actually an endangered species in this state and this one, a female, just happened to be found at the corner of a busy intersection in downtown Portland. She probably didn't stumble into town from the wilds, though. Far more likely that she was being kept in captivity, which is illegal here due to their state endangered status, and either escaped or was released.

Although the chances are that she was caught somewhere down South, where they are far more plentiful, the fact that she's in this state now meant that I needed to try to contact someone from the state. So I called the state's Endangered Species Program office and, unsurprisingly, got a voice mailbox.

Fortunately, I just happen to know someone, who just happened to know whom to bug (only a little bit) on his day off. A couple phone calls and e-mails later, we sorted out a game plan for communicating about a hand-off after the weekend and I decided it would be easier to bring her home with me, in case it meant driving her up to Augusta (on my day off, though I can use it as an excuse to go see my mom).

Meantime, a good Samaritan (actually, they were Jehovah's Witness - or at least they were calling from a Kingdom Hall - but as they didn't leave a Watchtower, I'm going to call them a good Samaritan) brought in a far more common Eastern Painted Turtle that had been hit by a car. This one I didn't take photos of, though. She has a pretty nasty, but potentially fixable, crack in her carapace, and the wound had fly eggs laid in it.

Again fortunately, the fly eggs hadn't hatched out yet, so I did a bit of debriding to try to clean them all out and gave her a dose of antibiotics. Then brought her home, as well, so that I can take her over to the nearby York Center for Wildlife, where I expect they'll be able to put her back together and get her back into the wild by sometime next year.

YCfW is where I take pretty much all the injured or orphaned wildlife that I write about here, and they're a bunch of really dedicated people who do a really phenomenal job. They're also funded by donations, which is why I put that link over there in the sidebar a little while back. I give them a bit when I can, but their costs run about $70 for each animal they rehab. So if you can spare $5 (or even a bit more - it's tax-deductible), I'm sure I can something nice in my stash, possibly several somethings nice - to do a little drawing.

And if you really need the incentive, I'll go stash diving once I've gotten some sleep and take some photos.

Inga

We lost Inga last night after two-plus years of dealing with her chronic renal failure. She'd deteriorated a lot over the past few months, so it was pretty clear that this was coming. Her decline over the past couple days was particularly rapid, though. She didn't try to move from my lap at all when I gave her fluids Thursday night, and then barely managed to walk from the kitchen into the living room afterwards. When I left for work yesterday afternoon it was all she could do to lift her head. By the time David got home, she couldn't even do that.

She was the first pet of David's adult life, adopted from the shelter in Lincoln, Nebraska, nearly twenty years ago at 8 months of age. She'd been with David for practically half of his life. I was a newcomer by comparison. In her last three years she'd had to learn to live with dogs for the first time in her life and with a kitten for the first time in about ten years. She took it all in stride. When Tolo, and later Cougar, tried to play rough with her, she gave them a much needed smackdown and taught them some proper respect for a lady.

A lady is what she always was, and queen of the household. The house and our hearts will be a little bit emptier without her.

The Daily Show on Palin

Jon takes on the pundits. You'd think they'd know better by now.

Post-Vegas Re-entry

Has it really only been 4 days since we got home? In some ways it seems like longer, possibly because I haven't gotten much sleep since our return. Anyway, the trip was good. David made some promising contacts and got a good bit of interest at the trade show. We went to see Kà, which was David's first Cirque du Soleil show and my fourth. I got to meet some of my favorite musicians. We got propositioned by a whore. I even ended up a few dollars ahead at the slots.

All in all, a good trip, but it was so nice to leave the desert and get back home, where it's beginning to feel downright autumnal. I finally managed this evening to get outside and do a bit of needed work in my raised beds. Mostly I needed to do a bit of harvesting. I picked some noodle beans, which haven't been great producers (nor all of them red), but a little does go a long way.

There were also several roma tomatoes ready for picking and a whole mess of soldier beans and Vermont cranberry beans ready for shelling (I'll try to get a pic of my own when I've got decent natural light). The noodle beans and some of the romas went into the curried tofu I made for dinner, and even more of the romas went into the guacamole I made as an appetizer. Nom, nom, nom.

Among things that still need to be done in the garden are clearing out dead and spent plants, seeing if I can collect any of the mustard seeds either as a spice or for planting next year (though I wasn't thrilled with how fast this variety bolted), planting some lettuce mix for fall mesclun, planting some kale to see if I can get any decent production before we get a really hard freeze, and trying to do a bit of cleaning up in the front flower beds.

We did a garlic exchange with Rain at Green Label Organic (buy their awesome shirts!), so that will need to be planted later in the month. I've also got what appears to be some sort of Artemisia growing in one of my front beds which looks nice enough when it's small but tends to get leggy and flop over late in the season. I'm thinking I may just dig it up altogether and see about replacing it next spring with this rosemary. In theory, at least, it should be able to survive our coastal winters, particularly if it's planted right up against the front of the house, since we're south facing.

Speaking of the house, we're still waiting on the verdict of appraisal #2, which was done while we were away. If it's good, then we're all set and can close in 12 days as planned. If not, which is a distinct possibility, then we have to figure out what other options exist. Hopefully we'll know tomorrow sometime.

And since I've shown no photos from Vegas (there are a few from my phone, but I downloaded them onto the work computer the other night), I offer you a bit of cuteness that I took this afternoon.

Starstruck

Okay, so this is my first big fashion industry show, and it is HUGE. It takes over the entire Las Vegas Convention Center complex, which is several enormous buildings, plus the adjacent Hilton - a big complex in itself. It's not just designers showing their lines here; there are buyers looking for product, of course, and sales reps looking for lines, other designers looking to see what's out there, suppliers looking for potential customers - upwards of 100,000 people. Like I said, HUGE!

For all that, though, the "Ecollection" section where we are feels small and intimate. And we've got musical entertainment. Yesterday, while I was stuck at the booth by myself, a singer with guitar started playing and singing. A lot of his repertoire were songs by Toad the Wet Sprocket, which was a band who started up when I was in college 20 years ago and one I absolutely loved (not the least because they had a really cute lead singer). I only got to see them play once, back in '95, but it is one of my favorite concert memories.

As I sat there waiting for potential customers to stop and ask about David's line, I thought, "Boy, that guy is doing a pretty good job of sounding like Glen Phillips." When the mini-concert was over, David's production manager, Christine, came back to the booth and our conversation went kind of like this:

C: "That guy used to be the lead singer of this band, Toad the...."
Me: "OMFG, it was Glen Phillips!"
C: "Yeah, I went up and introduced myself."
Me: "OMFG, I am soooo jealous!"

Not only that, he was there with Sara and Sean Watkins of Nickel Creek, another band I love. They played today, and Glen got back up on stage for several songs with them. And this time, I got to go over and say hi and had a really nice conversation with a musical idol. And then David brought over socks for them all.

What's even funnier/odder about all this is that all last week I had Nightingale Song by Toad bouncing around in my head for no apparent reason (It's a YouTube video, but I can't figure how to turn off the autoplay so I'm just linking - and I'm not sure what the deal is with the trains). I hadn't even heard any of their music in quite a while and it just popped up in there.

So yeah, it totally made my day.

Small World

The other freaky thing that happened today is that this morning we were sitting in the booth when this guy comes by looking at the line and he turned out to be someone I knew from college in South Carolina. For those who may be a little confused, I started college at a small school in South Carolina, then went to Spain for a semester, then went to the University of Maine, where I earned my undergrad degree - a little complicated, but that's how life often works.

Anyway, this guy was a year behind me, but he had an older brother in my class, we lived in the same dorm and basically ran in the same circles (not hard, considering there were barely 1000 students at the entire school). He actually ended up rooming with my former roommate when I left for Spain. Now he's in charge of sales for a knit fabric producer in South Carolina with a division that specializes in organics. So freakin' bizarre to bump into him like that after 20 years.

When we were in school, he was a buff, blond 18-year-old hottie. Now I can work a fitted t-shirt so much better, despite having a little extra flesh of my own. I think I even have better hair - what's left of it. Is it bad that I feel just slightly good about that?

Potty Mouths

Okay, so I've overheard two weird cell phone conversations in bathrooms today. Is this a Vegas thing?

First, I went to the bathroom in the convention center this morning and got to listen to a guy who was sitting on the toilet while giving relationship advice very loudly in Spanish. His argument was repetitive but basically along the lines of, "She's a nice girl and all, but her character just doesn't really balance yours so I think you're being with her is a mistake." Just stretch that out for several minutes and imagine it emanating from a bathroom stall.

Then this evening we went out to eat at an Asian fusion sort of restaurant, which was pretty good. At the end of the evening I decided I'd better go pee before we headed back to the hotel, and when I opened the door to the bathroom, it bumped one of the servers, who was standing right behind it talking on his cell phone.

He was apparently talking to a girlfriend (possibly a boyfriend, but my gaydar says not likely), because there was a bit of "I love you" going on. Then he said, "George wants to smoke with us tonight, so we're gonna go pick up a gram somewhere. Did you smoke that other stuff? Okay, I love you."

So, um, yeah. It's an interesting city.

It Never Fails

I'm in Cleveland at the moment awaiting my connection to Las Vegas. The flight from Boston was loaded with cute boys and fabulosity. Of course, I got stuck sitting next to the old guy with the tropical print shirt and no sense of personal space who was reading the large print version of The Greatest Generation. *sigh*

And the Cleveland airport is full of scary people and smells funny. Prospects for a halfway interesting neighbor on this flight look even grimmer.

Oh well, only 4 more hours 'til the land of whores and poker.

Viva Las Vegas!

David is already there for the MAGIC trade show. After I finish tonight's shift at work, I have to run home, pack, hit the ATM, make sure the pet sitter is all ready for the hand-off, and get myself down to Boston to fly out there myself.

The forecast for the coming week: 107, 106, 105, 105, 106, 107; no clouds; overnight lows of around 80 (for the metricals out there, that's around 41, give or take, in the daytime and 27 at night). What's that you say? It's a dry heat? Ah yes, the daytime humidity will be running somewhere between 12% & 17%, which should actually make a huge difference. That 107 high will only feel like a mere 102.

So long as we can get tickets to one of the Cirque du Soleil shows, I suppose I can deal with it. Just wish me luck at the quarter slots!

Happy Flu!

This just warms my little epidemiologically-minded heart. Come on and go viral with me.

Hint: Pull the scroll bar all the way down. Then click and drag.

Twitter Humor

From my friend Jonathan:



My German isn't very good, but I'm pretty sure it's not a direct translation.

Setbacks

I spoke to the loan officer at the bank today, and the appraisal on the house came in below the purchase price. Way below. In fact, it appraised pretty close to what I had originally thought would be a reasonable market price for the house. The realtor The Ladies talked to thought differently, but then I don't know that he ever really got a look under the hood, so to speak.

This bit of news wouldn't be so bad if there were a chance on negotiating down somewhere close to the appraisal value. I'm pretty sure that's not going to happen, though. Which leaves us in a bit of a state of limbo until we can sort out the possibilities. The bank apparently told Wendy that there's some sort of process of appeal on the appraisal, but the discrepancy is so huge, that I don't expect a rethinking of the appraisal to come anywhere to The Ladies' comfort zone.

In other news, I decided I'd gone a little too fast on stepping up the new meds. So after several very dizzy and not terribly productive days, I decided to back off just a little until I've adjusted a bit better. In the meantime, I do like being able to sleep really deeply for a change.

Making Up

Since I've been such a slacker lately and because we actually had nice weather for a change, I thought I'd take a few photos today. It was even a nice enough day that I could do this:



And before anyone says anything, yes, there are some tightie whities on those lines. I'll leave it to you to guess whether they're mine or David's. Of course, because my day starts rather late, some items were still a little damp by the time it was getting dark, so they did end up in the dryer for a short run to finish the job. Still, that's less energy than would have been used otherwise, and I'm very happy the sun obliged.

Also, I've been meaning to get pictures of the cedar waxwing nest in the sumacs in our sideyard. I swear she's been sitting in this same position for the past week.



Can't see her? How about from this angle (biggifying might help, too)?



Lastly, these are some duck eggs I got from Wendy & Paula this evening. The ducks have been laying like crazy, so The Ladies have been more than happy to give us all we'll take off their hands. They're a little different from chicken eggs (bigger, for one thing), but they still made a very tasty omelet for tonight's dinner.