I guess I'm lucky my flist was at only skip=180 when I finally read it this morning for the first time since Friday afternoon. I can't say I've been terribly busy except for Saturday; I just didn't manage to spend any time on LJ during that time. And now, some updates.
1. First off, celebrity deaths. OMG I can't keep up with all of them lately. Ed McMahon - well, he was older than my dad and I knew his health was failing. Farrah Fawcett was much younger than Ed, of course, but her struggle with cancer had gone on for five years, so I wasn't terribly surprised. Michael Jackson and Billy Mays, though, were shocks. IMO Billy's face always looked red; I just attributed that to him getting too much sun, but it could have been due to high blood pressure - according to the autopsy, he died of heart disease. MJ - well, to me he had looked sickly for a long time. I'll be interested to find out the actual cause of death.
2. Last week we took our new cat, Jakob, to the veterinarian who has taken care of our other pets (currently a rabbit and a guinea pig). Dr. Donna said Jakob is mostly in good health except for two things. He weighs almost 14 lb. so he's a couple pounds overweight. We attribute his chubbiness to living in a cage at an animal shelter the past 7 months. Anyway she said to feed him 1/3rd cup of dry cat food twice a day. We hope this, plus having a lot more opportunities to move around, will help him lose the excess weight; I am guessing he should weight 11-12 lb. The really bad news, though, is that his upper right canine tooth is broken off just below the gum line. We suspect this happened while he was a stray, as the broken area has healed over. Regardless, we were not informed about this before we adopted him, and Dr. Donna gave us estimates of $600 - $1,100 to remove the tooth (not including the necessary pre-op blood work). We simply don't have that kind of extra money lying around, so I guess we won't be getting his tooth removed. I guess we could get an estimate somewhere else but I don't know that it would help; it's still a lot of money. So far Jakob doesn't really seem to be bothered by the tooth and it isn't affecting his personality or his eating; he's still very sweet and friendly. I told my dad, this cat is so mellow we could probably dress him up in costumes if we wanted to.
3. Saturday evening Mr. Annearchy and I drove down to Genoa City, WI, for another "reunion" of staff and guests who worked at/visited Nippersink Manor, a resort his parents used to co-own from 1964 to 1982. We joined about 100 people
for dinner and a talent show. We left home about 3:15 p.m., arrived around 5:15 and were able to spend some time with his dad before dinner (not so much with his mom, who was one of the talent show organizers). The dinner was pretty boring but it was great to see a lot of his family's friends whom I've met during the 24 years I've known him. The talent show was decent, mostly because several of the performers were seasoned professionals who've performed at resorts, on cruise ships and (in the case of
this guy) even on Broadway. Unfortunately the talent show didn't end until almost midnight (and where we sat made it impossible for us to sneak out) so we didn't get home until 2 a.m. DD literally stayed up and waited for us, which wasn't so bad for her because she'd got up around noon. Needless to say we were all exhausted by the time we got to bed around 2:30, and we didn't get up on Sunday until 10:30 a.m. Anyway I had fun, and I got a couple new Facebook friends out of it, so whee :)
4. Yesterday, thanks to #1, we were all very lazy. I didn't change out of my nightshirt until about 2 p.m. I spent a lot of time hanging out with DD, because I'd barely seen her on Saturday. We watched some Monty Python eps on DVD (Deja Vu, The Ministry of Silly Walks, and The Spanish Inquisition) and also played some two-player games on
AddictingGames.com - which is an apt name for this site. Around 8:30 we left to see a big fireworks display (Rhythm and Booms) which had been postponed from Saturday night. We drove to a hilly park about 1-2 miles from our house, played Apples to Apples until the fireworks started, and watched with a couple hundred other people. If we'd wanted to see the fireworks close up we would have had to brave a crowd of over 100,000, so this was much more convenient. But I am WAY too old to kneel on a pillow for half an hour. I vowed that next year we'll toss stuff into the car much earlier, including some collapsible chairs.