Still Valve!

Hi friends. Been a minute. Sorry this is so long.

Cat Story

Went to visit my parents 2 weekends ago, with my in-laws watching our cats. Our oldest (cat tax, he's on the left) developed some bad urethra/bladder/kidney issues from the stress of us leaving, although we have left many times before and it's never been a problem. Poor little guy went to the kitty hospital on a Sunday night and spent 4 days there before coming home. When he returned, he was still acting strangely. On Friday morning (my partner was at work), I called the vet...

"So he keeps going between litter boxes but isn't successful in peeing, won't eat or drink, is lethargic, and extremely moody. We thought he was just uneasy about being back after so long away, but something definitely seems wrong. Oh, also, his ears are hot. I'm not sure if that's relevant."

"Oh, his ears are hot? Do you have a thermometer?" Dr. L asked.

"What, like a mouth thermometer?"

"Yeah, something you wouldn't mind shoving up your cat's butt."

As I dig through my partner's bedside table (sorry, love): "So...what's the average temperature inside a cat's butthole?"

Dr. L: "Probably about 102.5 on the high end. If it's up over 103, he's definitely gonna need to come in, because it's an infection. I hope you have Vaseline."

As I balance Rhett on my knee, the vet on speaker phone, a tub of lube next to me: "Uh...should I call you back?"

"Yeah, you're gonna need two hands."

So I hang up, tell my cat I love him, and do the deed. Once it's firmly in there (he's really not a fan), I push the button, but don't get a reading. I try again. Nothing. Yup, dead batteries.

I pull it back out (he liked THAT even less), call the vet back and explain the situation, then call my partner and ask her to pick up a new thermometer on the way home. When the vet saw the cat, they determined that he still had a slight urethral blockage. To fix that, they "applied light pressure to the abdomen and were able to express the bladder, removing the blockage in the process," or, in layman's terms, "we squeezed the fuck out of kitty cat till his massive piss rocks cratered our floor and he saw God."

All's well that ends well. He's recovered nicely, and work was very understanding about me missing large chunks of the day (just like the vets missed large chunks of kitty's urethral blockage ayyyyy). The first few days in hospital ran us just shy of 3k USD, which is far from ideal, but a small price to pay for an alive cat, and also we probably would have paid anything for treatment given how obsessed we are with him. When we brought him in the second time, they didn't charge us for anything except his new antibiotic, which was good of him. I love veterinarians so much. They're good people.

General Life

That has obviously been pretty all-absorbing. On other fronts, a moment of personal pride this past week (setting aside my reservations against evaluating your "worth" and the advantages I had to get here, namely living with in-laws and not paying rent for a full year) as I crossed from a negative to a positive net worth. I did work hard to get here with aggressively paying off debt and saving/investing, and despite $5,000 or so in unexpected expenses. My goal was to reach the black by the end of the year, so it was nice to be 2.5 months early.

I have also decided to go to law school, so I'm studying for the LSAT, and we'll go from there. Again, I have personal reservations, but I'll get over them and/or figure them out.

If anyone in the Northeast US would like to meet up to ski this winter, I would love company. I bought a pass before my cat couldn't piss. Discounted tickets are a possibility, and I would be able to borrow some of my in-laws gear if needed. I love teaching new people!

Oh, and since I never post without tagging galen, I ended up in a game of TF2 yesterday with one of my favorite players, something he has also experienced.

When I opened Hubski this morning I thought I Rip Van Winkel'd myself through October.

Why are they paying a child all this money, anyway?!

I say this every 2 weeks.

Job continues to go well. I've been investigating a couple of the shadier entities in the vastly under-regulated supplement market, set to publish results in a couple weeks.

In the process of moving my savings into a credit union. Appeals to my sensibilities, and my wallet. 5% APY on savings account for the first 2k with .25% on everything else, meaning that I will be earning about 166 times the interest on 2k, and about 6 times the interest above that. Plus, I currently live a 6 hour drive from the nearest branch of my bank, so I'm about done with that.

Have been going to the gym almost every day. Feels good, have lost a lot of the gut. I don't like being fat in my 20s. My partner shares my membership and goes frequently, and the accountability is helpful. Because of my area, the gym caters mainly to septuagenarians, so I don't have to worry about unsavory gym folk, although their taste in treadmill-view TVs is lacking. A friend of mine is a cross country running/track and field coach and gives good advice, but the other day he joked "You asking more for advice now will end with you asking for advice on your first half-marathon in 6 months." As much as I don't want him to be, as I hate running with a passion, I'm afraid he might be right.

galen is planning a visit at the end of next month. I am excited to show him my neck of the (literal) woods, catch a baseball game, and maybe go clamming...? We'll see. Also I need to brew beer so he can try my shitty beer when he's here. Hubski meetup in New England?

The best part of each being those qualities aren’t centerpieces of their campaign.

Big mood. I still get "Isn't It Time?" Hillary episodes.

Cheers!

New job continues to be ridiculously good. I jumped yesterday when my desk phone rang with the name of the paper I was currently reading.

My partner and I are changing life plans. We're no longer planning to move to Chicago for her to get a graduate degree, but instead are looking to stay local. Decision is 1/3 to keep this job I've landed, 1/3 economic, and 1/3 emotional (family, including the old and dying, are all local). Cost will be less than half that of the other degree.

The snafu of US Democratic primaries is frustrating, but I think overall it is a good thing. The post-2016 rules, largely instituted by the progressives, lead directly to a wider field (specifically, 15% threshold, more and more-populated debates), and gave voters the ability to express their first-choice preference, even if it's Marianne Williamson the Earth Mother like it was for 91 people in NH. In Political Science they talk about the primary cleavages between parties, the single thing that mostly decides which side of the aisle you fall on. I think the Dems are positioning themselves well to be the party of democracy, as opposed to the Rs, actively and vocally suppressing non-white votes. I'd love to hear others' views on it.

galen and I have been talking, only slightly jokingly, about writing music reviews/having an album listening club on here. If there's interest, we can do a thread this weekend. If not, we'll probably just continue to text each other our pretentious opinions about Coltrane.