http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/luckycoyote.asp

Photographs purportedly show a coyote that survived an eight-hour trip wedged behind a car bumper.

Posted awhile back about Mia and her issue. Its been about a month now and her vulva is still swollen and irritated, otherwise she is perfectly healthy. We are using the same litter we always have (arm and hammer unscented clumping) so we don't think it is that and neither does the vet. At first the vet thought it was maybe an allergic reaction to something and gave her a shot. I wasn't at this first vet visit so not sure what all he did, but he said it wasn't infected or a yeast infection. Also he doesn't think its a tumor or anything like that. We waited a week with no results, so went back to vet. He gave us some antibiotics to try to see if that will make a difference. We just finished them up Friday and haven't seen really any difference, maybe a little less red. Calling the vet tomorrow to set up another appointment, he wants to do a biopsy to try to figure out finally what the hell it is.

Just for the hell of it I'm switching her to feline pine on the slim chance she spontaneously developed an allergy to the litter she has been using for ever.

Any suggestions? Anyone ever heard of anything like this?

Also she is spayed.

I am still getting over whatever bug I had this week and am semi-horrifically busy besides; the Dayjob will be crazy next week, so I am stocking armaments, canned food, and hurricane lamps in preparation. Or doing laundry and putting up casseroles, whichever. In any case this means I haven't been writing, nor have I been thinking the kind of exciting! and fascinating! thoughts that merit blog posts.

So I give you Benjamin Rosenbaum, who is a fine writer and a smart man besides, on the Swiss vote to ban minarets.

Abusers typically, in the moment they are exercising their power, believe themselves to be the victims. The Nazis feared the Jews, the slaveholders feared the slaves, rapists feel humiliated and controlled by short skirts. There's something much scarier about this detachment from reality than there would be in mere cynical political manipulation. The most dangerous people in the world are the powerful caught in a fever dream of victimhood.

We will not discuss how many modern situations this applies to.

We took m-i-l to lunch. Except the buffet place near where she lives does not do lunch on weekends. They start dinner at about 11, which means they charge dinner prices all day, which I found interesting.

And more expensive than I'd planned, of course.

Yesterday was real wintry weather. Cold, with a bite in the air, and misty. And that sort of winter smell of peat smoke and cold air. To which last we added our mite when taliesinn lit a fire and watched the rugby. It was pleasing that we won, not least because the last (and only other) time we beat South Africa was in 1965.

Today we had my family over for afternoon tea, because it was my sister-in-law's birthday. I did it all proper-like with little sandwiches, and scones with jam and cream, and apple cake also with cream. The scones were a bit of a disaster; they didn't rise, but several of them got eaten, so they can't have tasted too bad. But everything else was good, and I made people take most of the cake away with them, since we certainly wouldn't get it eaten before it went stale. In exchange, my parents gave us leeks.

I had one of Bobby playing in yarn, too, but it didn't turn out.

I did not know that there were so many alternative lyrics to Frère Jacques out there, including ones in many different languages.

http://www.scatoday.net/node/14567

History professor Valerie Garver knows that women faced challenges in the medieval world, but believes that they still played an important role in the world of Charlemagne. Garver's book, Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World has been published by Cornell University Press.

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Last week I took drabble requests, and here's what I came up with!

( The sparkly shoes. )

( A morning jog during S2.0. )

( The Presidential Sofa. )

( Two ficlets set in the 'Reality and Immortality' universe. )

The results of my diary for the week of 23.11.2009 - 29.11.2009 were posted on my journal. Well, my results for that week have improved significantly in compare with the week before. So, I continue fighting ))))

The results of my diary for the week of 23.11.2009 - 29.11.2009 were posted on my journal. Well, my results for that week have improved significantly in compare with the week before. So, I continue fighting ))))

Softer than a cloud
It billows from my fingers
Like a waterfall.
Cutting silk feels like murder
And destiny all at once.

What can I say? Even after all these years, the hardest part is making that first cut. Especially on a bolt of 16" wide kimono silk with a saya gata motif woven into it. Will I mis-measure? Will there be enough?

Because you know I'm never going to find a bolt of silk like this again.

Well, they've readjusted my insulin again. Now taking the Lantus twice a day, which has a bad habit of drooping my blood sugar in the middle of the night.

Of course, since I'm not used to having lows, I can't seem to keep from over-correcting, which leads to going from 64 when I wake up shaking to waking up at 200 when my alarm actually goes off.

Seriously. Fighting the urge to rip my endocrine system out and hit it with the sledgewand.