Yes, I am still alive and Mouse Wars

Well, I decided to write again after a long layoff. Not because I have anything important to say, but mainly because I was getting tired of having my cute little niece flipping the bird at the top of my page.

Nancy got to see her a couple of weekends ago while she was in Austin. I still haven't seen her since the week she was born, so I'm looking forward to seeing her again on Thanksgiving. How am I going to be a bad influence on her if she doesn't even know who I am?

We have been going to College Station on all of the home football weekends, so we have been staying pretty busy watching our sad, pathetic excuse for a football team. It's still a lot of fun to get to go act like a college student again for a day 6-7 times per year. The group has dwindled a lot this year, due to our team's ineptness on the field. Most of them are bandwagoners who will act like the biggest fans in the world when the team is winning, but are nowhere to be found when we are not. If you can't stand behind your team in the bad times, you won't enjoy the good times as much. That's what we keep telling ourselves, at least. However, if the cesspool that is Texas Tech University wins a national championship this year, I may have to swear off college football altogether. I could not handle such a thing. I guess there's always the Houston Texans to fall back on. Wait, that would be even worse. Between the Aggies, the Texans, and the Astros...it has not been a banner year for our sports teams.

In other news, the vacant land next to our neighborhood is now being leveled and prepped for another section of homes to start going up. One consequence of bulldozing that land is that it has forced many a mouse from his home. I went to take the trash out one night and saw a mouse scurry across the garage floor. Then I made the mistake of telling Nancy about it. From her perch high atop the chair she got on within 2.3 seconds of my sharing the mouse sighting, Nancy screamed at me to do something about it...NOW. The only problem was, "now" was 11 pm, and I am not a cat, nor do I keep mouse traps on hand for this type of situation. So I was "urged" to make a late night trip to the store in search of some sort of mouse getting-rid-of apparatus. I returned with two packages of trusty old-fashioned mouse traps.

I put the squeezy cheese on the trigger and attempted to set the traps. Unfortunately, the traps did not like to stay set and I nearly lost a finger about eight times. I'm guessing that would not be good for my surgery business. Finally, after wrestling with the stupid thing for 20 minutes, as well as a good bit of cussing, I finally got two traps to stay set long enough to put them in the corners of our garage.

The next morning, I fully expected to find the little booger dead as a doornail in one of the traps. Then I would dispose of him and my wife could get down out of the chair. However, it was not to be. You see, despite the fact that the traps have such a hair trigger that I nearly amputated my finger every time I looked at it sideways, the mouse somehow managed to eat every last drop of the squeezy cheese off both of the traps without setting them off. Nancy, from atop her chair, so cleverly exclaimed "Mouse 1, Randy 0". So I tried it again the next night. Same result. Mouse 2, Randy 0.

I had opted for the traditional mouse trap on my late-night field trip to Kroger, instead of the glue traps, because I figured it would be a much quicker way for the little bastard to die. But now I was mad. No more humane treatment for this guy. So Plan B, the glue traps, were strategically placed throughout the garage. I knew now that it was only a matter of time before I got him. Except it wasn't him, as it turned out...it was them. Five so far. All about three inches long, head to tip of tail (But to hear Nancy describe them, they are rats the size of small possums). One even struggled so mightily against the glue trap that he peeled off his own skin. That was interesting. It has been three nights since we have caught any mice...so Nancy is down out of the chair. For now.

Makinley

Laura loves to video Makinley and post it on her blog. It is fun to watch these videos, especially since we don't ever actually get to see her. However, I think Makinley may be getting a little tired of all the videotaping that Laura and Scott are doing. Here is a screenshot from the 0:41 second mark of her latest video. http://www.lebigham.blogspot.com/ You be the judge.

She's already got a little attitude. I like it.

Hurricane Ike

Things have certainly been interesting here the past 36 hours.

I hope everyone in the Houston/Galveston area who reads this blog is doing okay after Ike. I know many of you are without power. Anyone who still doesn't have electricity is welcome to come and stay with us as long as you need to. Also, if you need some help picking up debris or making repairs, please call me.

We feel very blessed and lucky to have come out of this with minimal damage. The Fitz stood up to Ike well. Even our landscaping somehow survived. We never lost power for more than a few seconds, which puts us in the lucky 1% in the Greater Houston area. We went this morning to check on the clinic, which is further east than we are in Katy. We saw alot of relatively minor damage on the way--like downed trees, fences and lots of dangling stoplights. The clinic was thankfully spared from any major damage. there was some minor flooding in my office, but the three dogs that were boarding with us are doing great. We even had power back on by the time we got there.

Those in the Galveston and Clear Lake areas weren't as lucky as we were. We have heard secondhand that our family in that area are doing okay, and we hope that is true. They know that if they need anything, including a place to stay, or get out of the heat, or just take a shower...our doors are always open.

I am somewhat of a weather geek, so you can ignore this part if you want to. It was amazing that Ike became so much better organized and strengthened right before landfall. If he'd had another 24 hours over open water, he would have likely been a Cat 4 or 5 hurricane, which would have wiped out everything from Galveston to Pt. Arthur. The sheer size of Ike made his area of damage much greater than your average hurricane, but it also kept him from strengthening as much as he could have. Just look at the two pictures below. The one on the left is from Friday afternoon, about 12 hours prior to landfall. The eye is ragged and poorly organized, with relatively weak echoes in the eyewall. The one on the right is from 3-4 hours prior to landfall. You can see the eye has contracted down and is very symmetrical, with much stronger echoes in the eyewall, which is a sign of strengthening. If he had done this 24 hours before landfall, it would have been a whole different story. Not that it wasn't bad enough as it was.

We got estimated 70 mph winds with 80 mph gusts in Katy, and we were 40 miles from the eye. That tells you just how big this thing was. I have never seen winds like that. It just howls and makes the house creak and moan. And the rain is literally going sideways. The worst of it came between 4 am and 7 am. I really have no idea how our electricity stayed on. I shot a video once it was daylight, but by then the winds were only 40 mph with 55 mph gusts.

Pray for all those affected much more than we were.

Fixed it For You

My sister Laura posted a very cute picture of our niece Makinley on her blog. She went to her first tailgate party this weekend, which is very cool. However, they decided to dress her in a horrid burnt orange ensemble for some reason. As you can tell by this photo, in which she is clearly giving the "Gig 'Em Aggies" hand sign, she was protesting her parents' choice of clothes in her own silent way. Sort of like the U.S. Soldier in that photo where he is shaking Hillary Clinton's hand, but has the fingers on his other hand crossed, as a subtle protest.

With her clear allegience to her Aunt Nancy and Uncle Randy's alma mater, I took the liberty to fix the photo to reflect what Makinley so obviously would have preferred.

Gig 'Em, Makinley. Fightin' Texas Aggie Class of '30.

It's Been a While

Sorry (to the two people who read this blog) about the almost month in between posts. It's been a really busy month at the clinic, which is a good thing. But it has been busier than it normally would have been because I had two staff members leave at the same time. One has a degree from A&M and was trying to get a teaching job...so it was no huge surprise when she left. The other one caught me a little off guard. But she is going back to school, and I can never be upset about someone trying to better themselves and not just live off the government (or my measly 10 bucks an hour). That left me with two experienced employees. So I had to quickly find a few decent applicants to interview for the two jobs that had opened up.

The process works something like this: I put out an ad in a local classified paper and on Craigslist, and the listing specifically says to apply in person, and in bold says "No phone calls or emails will be answered regarding this position". So of course, every day we have to delete tons of emails from our inbox and answer a ton of phone calls asking about the position. It is my personal rule that we get the name of anyone who calls or emails...and if they do come in to apply, the application immediately goes to the shredder. My goal is to hire people with AT THE LEAST basic reading comprehension skills and the ability to follow directions. Is that too much to ask? Sometimes I think it might be.

Anyway, when the applicant comes in, my receptionist pre-screens them for me to weed out all the riff-raff and ne'r-do-wells. And 95% of the applicants would fit easily into one of those categories. She then brings me the applications of the friendly, clean, polite, intelligent-sounding individuals for me to interview. Someone who is all 4 of those things is like gold, especially if they don't want twenty bucks an hour or a company car. Those that don't quite fit the bill are at least sometimes mildly entertaining.

There was Angie "Bambi" Rhodes (actually how she filled out her name on the application). She came in wearing more makeup than Krusty The Clown and wearing, I kid you not, a feather boa. Her last place of employment was Treasures, a local gentlemen's establishment. This was at my prior clinic a few years ago, and German, a young male technician from Argentina, tried very hard to get her hired. I figured as much as she might attract a whole new sector of the male, pet-owning public to our clinic, it was best if she pursued other options.

There was also a young man that came in and filled out an application for a kennel position. He had evidently been involved in the dog training business as an assistant at a local kennel, which gave him some valuable experience. If only he hadn't listed his former position as "Ass Trainer" on the application. I am pretty sure he meant Assistant Trainer, but I can't take that chance.

There was a young lady that seemed nice enough to our receptionist, so I called her back for an interview. When I called, she was evidently in the middle of a fight with her husband/boyfriend/baby-daddy, who I could hear yelling in the background the whole time. At one point, she said, "Excuse me for a second" and tried to put her hand over the phone so i wouldn't hear her yell, "Shut the F--- up, I'm on the phone with the clinic where I am trying to get a f----ng job!". Then, nice as can be she continued our conversation. I had called her to set
up an interview, but after that I told her I was calling to let her know the position had been filled.

Finally, there was Molly, who came in just last week. She walked in with her resume in hand, walked up to the front desk and set the piece of paper on the counter. She then turned around and walked out the door. Never said a word, never smiled, never used sign language or even pantomime...just walked in, set her resume down, and left. She was not advanced to the next round by our pre-screening receptionist.

I finally found two reasonably intelligent, presentable, non-strippers and hired them. Now the fun part of getting them trained to the point that they don't make us all look like complete incompetents.

I must admit that the reason I am breaking down and blogging tonight is that I am spending the night at the clinic watching over Rowdy, who has a raging case of Pancreatitis. I'm glad I have a shower and a couch up here. Otherwise I would be grumpier and stinkier than normal tomorrow, and probably have to go through the hiring process again after everyone quit.

Green Thumbs

Nancy and I whipped out our green thumbs and did a little landscaping in the back yard last weekend. We really had absolutely no idea what we were doing, so there is a good chance this is the last time you will see any of these plants alive. We planted a pear tree (sans partridge), an oak tree, and some smaller flowers and plants. I basically pushed the cart around Home Depot while Nancy picked stuff out. My only contribution was to veto the plants that would be toxic to Shelby, since she eats everything that doesn't eat her first. We are slowly running out of projects around the new house, and I am quickly running out of things to blog about. I may have to branch out from The Fitz and start discussing ALL the mundane details of our lives. You won't wanna miss it.

Paint-the-fence, young Daniel-san

We decided that, after seeing all the wooden fences in our neighborhood faded after 6 months, we would weatherproof our fence to prevent this from happening. We decided on Redwood Weatherproofing Fence Stain, and naively went to Home Depot to buy a couple of gallons. The math on the side of the can said we would need about 3 gallons to cover our fence. However, we found that the five-gallon bucket was a better deal than buying three gallon cans. So we grabbed two 4" brushes and were on our way.

We woke up bright and early this morning to get started, to avoid being baked alive by the sun. I poured a little of the stain in Nancy's pan, and we each picked a random wood plank to start on. Ten minutes later, after we had each finished a grand total of ONE plank, we decided the brush technique was less than ideal, and that continuing with this method would put us finishing sometime around Labor Day.

Plan B. I went and got the trusty bug sprayer out of the garage, filled 'er up, and got to spraying. Worked like a charm, and certainly covered the wood much faster than brushes. However, sending the gooey stain airborne on its way to the fence gives it the opportunity to also blow into one's hair, mouth, eyes, and clothes. Well worth it, we decided, to avoid painstakingly painting it with a brush. One other problem. The bug sprayer was 1 gallon, which lasted about ten minutes of spraying. So every ten minutes we had to stop and fill it up again. Which also meant that, while much more efficient, this method was using much more stain than the side of the bucket said. We got about 1/3 of the way through and ran out of stain.

We had planned on taking a break for lunch during the heat of the day anyway. So after lunch we ran by Home Depot for another bucket. We decided to go ahead and get 2 more, thinking that we probably wouldn't use the second one, and we could return it. We also bought a 2.5 gallon sprayer made specifically for our task at hand, so we wouldn't have to fill it up as often. Besides, the bug sprayer was getting clogged by this point.

The sprayer worked beautifully, and the rest of the left side fence and the entire back fence went off without a hitch. By this time, Nancy had given up on trying to stay semi-clean, so she was covered head-to-toe with red goop. Then about halfway down the right side of the fence, the sprayer broke. It would still spray, but only if I held it together with two hands while spraying. Add that to the fact that the house next door already has siding up, so we had to be extra careful not to inadvertently paint their house in the process...and the last 40 feet of fence took almost as long as the other 100 feet.

We finally finished just before dark. And we used all but about 1 gallon of the 15 gallons we bought. Here is a picture of Nancy. Without knowing the above story, you would just assume by looking at her that she had just gone on a mass killing spree.

What doesn't show in the pictures is the thick layer of red goop lacquered to her hair like an orange helmet. It is still there, by the way, even after an hour-long shower. She will be spending all day in the shower tomorrow, I bet. She vetoed my plan of dunking her head in a vat of paint thinner.

Anyway, here is the finished product. It was worth it...I guess.

Before

After

On an unrelated note...I talked to my Mom tonight. The first thing she tells me is, "hey, I got my colostomy last week." I almost swerved off the road. Because it would not surprise me for my mother to have major surgery and not tell me. And a colostomy, which involves severing the large intestine, cutting a hole in your side, and re-routing the end of the colon to this hole, where one's poop exits into a nice little plastic bag, is certainly major surgery. I didn't even know she had any colon problems, let alone had anything serious enough to need a colostomy. "Why did you have to have a colocstomy?" I asked. "Wait," she said. "Maybe it wasn't a colostomy. Yeah, it was a colonoscopy." Thanks, mom. You almost gave me a heart attack. Because a minor procedure sticking a camera up your butt is almost the same as re-routing your entire gastrointestinal tract necessitating the need to empty your poop bag twice daily.