Monday, December 18, 2006

Miscellaneous - Blogs, Fleas, Teeth, & Hutch

Well, first of all, the new and improved Lynnster Zone's opening is going to be delayed just a little bit longer as I ran into a snag. That snag being that I crashed and fell asleep much of last night, without meaning to. Oops.

I'm kind of irritated about not getting further along yesterday evening but ehhh, it'll get done when it gets done. Hopefully by Wednesday at the latest I can switch my feed and everything else to point to the new blog. I could do that now, but as mentioned earlier, you can't tag posts over there without a full edit and my feed would be updating 300+ more times (whether now or later) without really being an update and you'd all and everyone at NIT would be pissed, so I'm going to do that first and that way it's done and nobody wants to beat my head in.

Anyone who's subscribed to the feed via Feedburner won't have to change a thing, once the new feed's ready to go I'll swap it and you'll never know the difference. I think most are probably subscribed via Feedburner no matter what reader platform you're using, but if by chance you subscribed a long time ago via the regular Atom/RSS feeds, you'll need to update the feed when I open up the new blog.

If you're reading/feeding on the LiveJournal mirror nothing will change, though I don't know why you would be reading over there instead regularly anyway. I mean you can if you want, but I don't pay much attention to the LJ blog other than transferring new posts over there. (That said, I guess if you're reading via feed it doesn't make much difference, but I do occasionally post stuff on the "main" blog that doesn't get put on the LJ mirror, and besides, the new blog is going to be way cooler anyhow.)

And Margaret, even though the new blog is sort of colorful, the content text is on a white background so I think you'll be OK with it!

So, fleas. I appreciate all the sympathy. The reason I am so pissed about it is because I have made a huge effort to keep us flea-free for years and other than one I stamped out super quick when the puppies were babies, we haven't really had an outbreak of fleas in probably 10 years. When my ex still lived here we used to fight the fleas with little success every year and it was just miserable, for us and the pets, and once veterinary medicine started coming out with all the modern flea stuff that was a lifesaver.

In fact, I have had such good luck with the topical flea crap that for the last several years, I have been able to get by flea-free with only dosing the dogs, don't even have to treat the cats 'cos treating the dogs keeps them gone. Our usual flea season is from March or April to October - usually once it starts freezing, the threat disappears - and never in the last several years anyway have I had to treat them after October. 'til now!!! So I'm pissed.

But what I guess I didn't count on and think about was some of my immediate neighbors have acquired new dogs recently - on both sides of my house, matter of fact - so I figure that's where the fleas came from, traveling over to my yard. Really I'm doubly pissed at myself because I really should have thought of that and prepared thusly.

I hope I see some signs of them going away before I leave for Christmas. Lulu's already missing huge patches of hair on her haunches from scratching (which I didn't notice 'til the other day either, bad mom that I am), and Dobie's got a spot that Petey alerted me to also. But I didn't really notice any of the pups scratching nor the cats 'til yesterday either so I'm hoping I have caught this outbreak early. I hate fleas, I hate 'em, I hate 'em!

And Contrary, I love you, and I realize fleas contribute to your salary and living wage; but my friend, you are a SADIST. Heh. I might forgive you for liking fleas if you will send tapeworm killer if THAT happens too. Ugh, I hate tapeworms fifty billion thousand times more than fleas. (And yes, folks, that's how dogs and cats often get tapeworms is by ingesting fleas when they're chewing due to the itching.)

Anyway, yes. Fleas bad. Bad, bad, bad.

Broken tooth again also bad. That's a post/slash/rant for another time but the Cliffs Notes version is I inherited my father's bad teeth and those thousands of dollars spent on my mouth for orthodontia as a teenager was just wasted money. My teeth are breaking at an alarming rate and there is, no doubt, thousands of dollars in dental work in my future. Now it's one of my front teeth again and I'm so pissed about it.

This is payback and karma, I'm sure, for my horrified commentary back when the documentary on the West Memphis 3 premiered on HBO , when I bitched about how the majority of people they interviewed had no teeth and thousands of people were going to not know the difference between West Memphis and Memphis, and would assume we have no teeth either on this side of the Mississippi River. In fact, I was rather involved in a certain Usenet newsgroup at the time and spent a good bit of effort explaining the difference between West Memphis, Arkansas, and Memphis, Tennessee for a while after that documentary was broadcast. And now my teeth are falling apart and it's payback. And traumatizing, since I have always been kind of funny about my teeth, but the double digit thousands it's probably going to cost to put my mouth back together is lots more traumatizing. Bad, bad, bad.

So what's good? What's GREAT is that I am having dinner with and get to enjoy the company of the famous, awesome, and irascible Hutchmo tonight, along with our mutual friend here in Mempho. That was just freaky to find that he not only knew and was friends with someone I know here in Memphis, but it's someone I have known and been good friends with for 15+ years!!! That was just wild, and wonderful.

So dinner this evening is going to be a blast and I'm totally excited about it. Except since they are both really hilarious, I fear I may need to tape up my ribs before leaving the house, 'cos I've probably only got like two or three ribs left to fracture from laughing so much the past week over McSmiley's 12 Days of Christmas. Actually just one now as today's entry has now fractured what was left.

Next on the agenda is meeting up with Newscoma either here or there in January probably, and I'm definitely plotting a trip to Nashville in January or February hoping to hang out with some of the rest of the bloggers and say hey. Also, if anyone's free around lunchtime the day after Christmas, I might be able to stop on the way back from Chattanooga - any takers? Sista, you free the day after? No ideas where, I bet the Mothership won't be open the day after Christmas, but if it is, a stop in Berry Hill is probably definitely in order. Or perhaps a stop Sewanee if Smiley and the belle will be there? Maybe a quick stop for coffee in Rutherford County too? So many places to go and people to see, it'll be like being on tour, whoa. Later!

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posted by Lynnster @ 8:58 AM