Busted!

Blogger problems fixed - hopefully soon I'll be part of the Cat Blogging Community.

So I guess it seems appropiate that I share of Adira's adventure in which she got busted for big time. I had opened up the porch door while I was watching the World Series. I heard her go on the porch rail and I assumed that she was going on the window ledge and over to the neighbors porch. I don't remember if there was a specific noise I heard that compelled me to check on Adira, but I went to my porch (wearing my PJ's).

To my surprise, there were people on my neighbor's porch. Adira being very people shy if they're in my place, I immediately started to look for her thinking the people on the porch would freak her out. A half second later, I found her on the ledge, hunkered down with a frightened look in her eyes. I mananged to talk her into coming my way, and on the porch ledge (although I could grab a cat if on the ledge, it's too scary an experience to repeat).

I apologized to my neighbor if there was any inconvience, shooed her inside, and closed the patio door. Turned out to be good timing because the grey and white cat showed up again howling downstairs. That always gets the cats in a mood (Adira curious, Magnum pissed-off).

Future posts regarding specific cat will be authored by them.)

Must be Monday

Blogger is having issues today. I tried to update my template, and it couldn't republish. Then I tried to delete a repeated post, but it again just sat there at 0% progress. Hopefully these things will be fixed by the time I can get back to this.

I had a terrible Saturday. Sometime during Friday night, I set off a major pain flare. Saturday AM, I was really hurting, but managed to get a bland breakfast in. I couldn't really sit up, so I went back to bed. Even sleeping was difficult because I was hurting so much. So I worked on my self-hypnosis management techniques the rest of the day. I don't know if it's really hypnosis, or lucid dreams, but it DOES help me keep the pain "at bay". But I don't have the ability to do this type of management with any real activity (yet), so at least I enjoyed a few hours of not experiencing the pain.

The only problem was that Adira, being the sweet empathic creature she is, tried to make me feel better. When I had my MCS surgery and had no hair, she would lick my incision site on my head (to this day, I don't know how she knew where to lick but she really did). Now that my hair is too long for her, she licks my face - and Saturday she kept it to my pain-free side. I don't know how she can figure it out, but she does.

The only drawback to this is that it brings me back to reality and the pain will hit me full force. So just when I started to feel like I was going to throw up, the pain began to abate. This was by far the longest pain episode I've had post surgery, so I was a bit disappointed in that (and the fact that I wasn't able to do anything on my day off).

The strangest thing about Saturday was that I had been talking to my boyfriend via IM for a couple hours when I decided that I was really pain-free and should try and eat something. A minute after eating apple slices is when I finally did get sick. I don't know if that was payback for all the hours of feeling sick to my stomach or what. But after that, I didn't get sick again, carried on for the rest of the night, and went to bed.

Before I feel asleep, Adira gave me a couple slurps on the side of my face that had been hurting all day. It felt good.

My personal jihad

Now I'm getting seriously annoyed. It starts as an invisible enemy, and by the time you see it, it's too late. Mold.

I have spent a good part of this year fighting the battle that this building is unsafe for research purposes. The biggest reason is the fresh air intakes of this building that supposedly provides half the ventilation for this building. I can tell if it's raining outside without looking out a window because I SMELL the moisture in the rooms.

And every time it rains, we start growing out mold in our tissue cultures. But it's so abundant now, that even on days when there's no rain, we're having trouble. This is the most maddening part - I could be in the culture room setting up two dishes for incubation. Dish A and dish B are setup using the same media, sterilized instruments, and equipment. The only difference is that when the cover for dish A is open, dish B is closed. Yet, dish B will go moldy but dish A will stay clean.

This doesn't even mention that I'm very allergic to mold! I've even tried the occupational health approach, only to be told there's nothing that can be done.

I'm getting sick and tired of losing cultures that I spend hours setting up. I'm fed up with if there's rain coming, you can't be setting up cultures because they will ALL go moldy. I'm fed up with these bozos that allowed for mold to grow on the buildings filters then say "sorry, we can't do anything now except change the filters".

The question that needs to be answered now is, how do you wage war against an invisible enemy?