Go team Venture!

You know what's truly awesome about my phone? The fact that I can set any .mp3 as my ringtone. Therefore my current ringtone is "Where, Oh Werewolf?" From MST3k. And if my family calls it's Blind Guardian's cover of "Mr. Sandman."

What else is neat is .mp3 editing software, so I was able to get exactly the part of those songs that I wanted instead of the less catchy beginning parts.

What else is new? Oh yeah, flu. It sucks hardcore. Everyone in my office has been being obliterated by this. In fact, half my department was gone on Monday. That's when it finally caught me. I started feeling yucky about 2 hours before quitting time, and then I woke up on Monday with a massive headache, a sore throat, and bad case of the retches.

I still feel like hell today, but I managed to drag my sorry body into the office, despite its complaints against me.

Final proofs are, in theory, going to be printed tomorrow, which means I will see for the first time one of my book cover designs on an actual book. I still need to upload all of those things to a) my portfolio, b) deviantart, and c) facebook so I can show the world just how awesome I am. And, y'know, make use of that $75 a year website I has. Which I had an inkling to make a massive overhaul to, but we'll see how lazy I'm not. Which is not at all (oh, decipher the double negative!).

I also have a few book recommendations! Check out STIFF: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. As the title implies, it's about dead bodies and all the fascinating stuff that happens to them when they get donated to science. And other things that used to happen to them, such as medical cannibalism (Yum!).

For The fiction fellow or fellowette (fellowina? It's not as cool without the alliteration...) out there who doesn't mind a bit of racy content and language, check out I Just Want My Pants Back, by David J. Rosen. Like any story worth telling, it's about a girl. I can't really do it justice describing it, you'll just have to read the back cover.

Our cats are weird and adorable. And annoying.

Man... I can't believe this: there's apparently a huge outbreak of Feline Distemper in the country, and a lot of people are losing their cats. First it was the contaminated pet food, and now this. At least this isn't really anybody's fault, it's just a super crappy situation. At least it's not contagious to any other species, but it still sucks. There's already a bunch of news reports about people bringing home kittens and finding all their cats dead within a week. I couldn't even begin to imagine that kind of thing. Just losing one at a young age is hard enough, but three or four? That has to be devastating!

Anyway... just... everybody, be very careful, especially if you have cats, don't go around ... handling strange cat's poop. And, as heartless as it sounds, don't go adopting any kitties until this blows over.

=\ This world can be so crappy and unfair sometimes.

I took like a 2 hour lunch today. It was really awesome. My supervisor, Brandon, asked if we wanted to go to lunch, but I was like "nah, I don't have any money." Then one of my coworkers chimed and was like "I'll pay for you!" So that was pretty cool. We went to... someone's Irish Pub. *looks it up* Darcy's, that's what it was. Genuine Irish cuisine. I thought about getting corned beef and cabbage, but I figured that my coworkers wouldn't appreciate that, so I went with some sort of chicken sandwich.

When we were getting drinks, everyone else ordered some sort of beer, and I was completely unprepared so I had the waitress rattle off some names. The only one I heard was Guinness, so I got one of those. I forgot that those are like... a glass of bread. So we ate, and I felt logy, then we were getting ready to leave, when Brandon was like "let's stay a bit longer. I'll buy us another round!"

So we had another round, and I drank another glass of bread. We basically just shot the shit exchanging stories about getting drunk and going to strip clubs (not necessarily at the same time). Good fun.

In other work related news, I neglected to mention what an ass the owner of the company is. Sometime yesterday he went into my boss, Richard's office, and was like, "So, we need to advertise. We have ad space in the Denver Post, and it needs to be ready by noon tomorrow." Fucking great. So Erin and I were conscripted to put that together. The hardest part was finding pictures and verbiage for all the properties listed. There was something like 45. It's a big pain in the ass when you don't know who the the designer was and the site is like... 3 years old.

In other news, I hate dealing with customer service. Because they almost always have thick Indian accents and/or speak very softly, so I have to ask them to repeat themselves thirty times and I end up looking like dumbass.

I also hate how lawers tend to get involved when you don't pay vet bills for your dead cat.

This is a long ass entry. Is anybody still reading?

Holy crap, this kitty at the dumb friends league looks JUST like Odin!

Odin

Not Odin

=O Want!

Old, discarded, forgotten about cat food is still enough to make me cry.

This is poop.

Fri Mar 23, 12:16 PM ET

ALBANY, N.Y. - Rat poison has been found in pet food blamed for the deaths of at least 16 cats and dogs, a spokeswoman for the State
Department of Agriculture and Markets said Friday.
ADVERTISEMENT

Spokeswoman Jessica Chittenden would not identify the chemical or its source beyond saying it was a rodent poison.

ABC News reported it was aminopterin that may have been on imported wheat used in the pet food. Aminopterin is used to kill rats in some countries but is not registered for that use in the United States, according to the
Environmental Protection Agency. The chemical, also a cancer drug, is highly toxic in high doses.

Officials from the agriculture department and Cornell University's Animal Health Diagnostic Center would not immediately confirm the ABC report but scheduled a news conference Friday afternoon to release laboratory findings from tests on the pet food.

The
Food and Drug Administration has said the investigation was focusing on wheat gluten in the food. Wheat gluten itself would not cause kidney failure, but the common ingredient could have been contaminated by heavy metals or mold toxins, the FDA said.

State and
FBI officials said they knew of no criminal investigations in the case.

The pet deaths led to a recall of 60 million cans and pouches of pet food produced by Menu Foods and sold throughout North America under 95 brand names. There have been several reports of kidney failure in pets that ate the recalled brands, and the company has confirmed the deaths of 15 cats and one dog.

Menu Foods last week recalled "cuts and gravy" style dog and cat food. The recall sparked concern among pet owners across North America. It includes food sold under store brands carried by Wal-Mart, Kroger, Safeway and other large retailers, as well as private labels such as Iams, Nutro and Eukanuba.

Menu Foods is majority owned by Menu Foods Income Fund of Streetsville. The company also makes foods for zoo cats, but those products are unaffected by the recall.

The company's chief executive and president said Menu Foods delayed announcing the recall until it could confirm that the animals had eaten its product before dying. Two earlier complaints from consumers whose cats had died involved animals that lived outside or had access to a garage, which left open the possibility they had been poisoned by something other than contaminated food, he said.

Menu Foods planned a media teleconference for later Friday, a spokesman said.

A spokesman for New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said he was not aware of any criminal investigation involving the tainted food. FBI spokesman Paul Holstein in Albany said Friday he was not aware of any FBI involvement in the case.

"I don't know where we'll go from here," he said.

A complete list of the recalled products along with product codes, descriptions and production dates was posted online by Menu Foods and is available at http://tinyurl.com/2pn6mm. The company also designated two phone numbers that pet owners could call for information: (866) 463-6738 and (866) 895-2708.

___

Associated Press writer Andrew Bridges in Washington contributed to this report.

___

On the Net:

FDA pet food recall information: http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/petfood.html

For those that haven't heard, Odin died last night.

And I'm super fucking sad.

I just... I don't know. I can't even formulate words about how I'm feeling. This sucks. It was so sad to just watch him gradually declining from a super fun happy meow meow all the time kitty into a shaking, falling down, not even getting up to poop kitty.

=\ He wasn't even 2 years old.

How is this fair at all?

My mom called me at work, and it was all I could do to keep from bursting into tears in my office.

Seriously. This fucking sucks.

At least he's happy now. And not all shaky. And he can eat whenever he wants instead of having to have a syringe forced into his throat.

And now it's my favorite picture of him, because this always cheers me up!



Rest in peace, little buddy.