tigertoy

My phone rang while I was at coffee.  I stepped outside to take the call.  It was Robin.  She told me that Meg had found a way through the fence of the yard she was exercising in, and had gotten hit by a car.  Animal Control found her and took her to the U of I; they tracked Robin down and she got there, but Meg's injuries were too bad to save her, and Robin didn't have my number at the time.  By the time she could tell me, Meg was dead.

For those who came in late, Meg was my 80 lb. malamute, who hasn't lived with me for several years because of stuff I don't want to talk about in a public post.  Because Robin lives in Champaign, I could visit her and the other malamutes once a week.  Right now, of course, I'm regretting how little time I spent with her recently, like it always is when someone you love dies unexpectedly.  I'm not sure if I even have any pictures of her.

Enjoyed it even!

In a little more detail:  I got up too early Saturday morning.  As I was on I-465 around Indy I realized I'd forgotten my phone.  Fortunately, I managed to not get lost or have any emergencies on the trip.  My first destination was a home on a lake in Rome City, IN (a small town north of Ft. Wayne), for a meeting of the Midwest Exotic Feline Educational Society.  I estimated that it would be a 4 hour drive, and it was supposed to be at 12:30 (EDT).  I planned to leave at 7:30 (CDT).  I actually left at 7:40, and I arrived at 12:41.  Pretty darn good estimate.  After the meeting, I headed back south a couple of hours to tollers's housewarming, where much food and music was enjoyed.  After the party closed down sometime after 1, I crashed in tollers's basement.  The alarm rang at 7:00; I wanted to be on the road at 7:30.  Even though all I did was get dressed, throw stuff in the car, and leave, it was 8:00 before I got going.  I made it to EFRC, got through the day, and have arrived at home.  I'm pretty tired, but good.

I have to comment on the canine portion of my trip.  tollers's housemates have two Shiba Inus.  I didn't recognize the name when I ran across it earlier this week in a context that implied it was a breed of dog.  Yesterday, I discovered that "Shiba Inu" is, in fact, Japanese for "absurdly cute".  I am not a small dog person, but if Snickers and Secret are fair examples of the breed, I could actually imagine myself owning one.  Sadly, I never brought my camera into the house, so I didn't get any pictures.

Home safe.

House apparently as left (no sign that it burned down, blew away, or was ransacked by packs of rabid woodchucks).

Had wonderful time.

Pants probably bankrupt.

More later as I find time.

No malamute kisses; it's much too late for me to go fetch Meg tonight.

I go fall over now.

I must report that I appear to be in possession of a defective malamute.

Meg does not like the snow at all.  She has several times acted like she wants to go out, and then when I open the door, balked at the snow.

Since I last posted about Windy, he pretty much stopped eating.  He wouldn't eat his dog food at all; some days I could tempt him to eat a little human food, and I was letting him have what he would eat of summer sausage (which seemed to be his favorite), turkey, or whatever I was having for dinner, because I figured not-proper-dog-food was better than eating nothing at all.  Even on his best days he was only getting a few hundred calories, and he was getting very gaunt, but he still seemed to be chipper and happy, though he was getting pretty slow this week.

Last night at 3 AM or so he wanted to go out, and he wouldn't come in.  He made some awful howling noises, and walked right past me a couple of times.  Eventually he came in and got on the bed, but for the first time since he's been sick, he seemed to be really suffering.  I tried to comfort him, and found that his pulse was racing, well over 200.

When I woke up this morning, he was dead.

For my friends worried about me:  I'm OK.  I feel sad, but not devastated.  I think it's easier to handle a natural death than euthanasia, and I've known for weeks that he was not just sick but definitely dying, so I was as ready for it as I could be.

Windy didn't eat his regular food over the weekend, and he wasn't interested in his food today, even with some weird stuff that Robin gave me mixed in.  He seems to be better than he was on Friday, but he's still seeming weak, and if he's not willing to eat, that's really starting to say that he's not really interested in sticking around.

He is, at least, still interested in the soft food I give him his pills in, and he's licking the pan my dinner was in.  He's at least able to get himself on and off the bed.  Jim and Robin think he's got major arthritis issues, which is possible but still doesn't explain to me why he seemed to be so weak Thursday night and Friday morning he couldn't stand.

I'm watching him at this point, but I'm afraid he's about done with life.  I don't want to ask him to hang on when he's ready to go, because I don't really think things are going to get better for him.  Even if I could give him a magic pill that cured all his health problems, he's still 12.

Jim and Robin don't have any really helpful advice.  They're not actually telling me to put him down, but they're making it pretty clear that they're supporting me in doing what I need to do, not trying to convince me that I'm overreacting.

Arrived home safely from Windycon.  Leaving was delayed slightly because Windy had spent the night at the vet's; birder2 helped me bring him home, which seemed to make him a little less stressed at being in the car, but he still managed to poop in the car and make a mess (of himself, the car, and birder2) which we had to clean up.  This, on top of the delay getting him from the vet and getting his thyroid medicine, meant that we didn't hit the road until about 1:30, and despite making very good time on the road up to Chicago, didn't get there until about 4:30.  This was late enough that we did not beat the rain, but was just early enough that it was still possible to park in the inadequate hotel parking lot.  (The consensus among people I've talked to is that the single biggest problem with Windycon's current hotel is that the hotel lot is only big enough for perhaps half of the cars that Windycon brings, and the overflow lot is far enough away that they have a shuttle bus.  I heard more than one person say that they wouldn't come back to the con at this hotel because the parking situation is too painful.)  I got myself rather soggy getting my stuff in in the rain, but fortunately none of my stuff appears to have suffered.

I thought I had 8 pieces to put in the art show this year -- I didn't have anything new, and I procrastinated too much on getting old stuff ready, so I planned for a minimal spread.  When I got there and checked in I discovered I only had 7.  After getting in at the art show, I made a halfhearted effort to find a dinner party, ate a sandwich in my room, hung out in the GT suite, filked until a little after 1, got extremely tired, and went to bed.

By the time I was up and ready Saturday, I'd missed all but the end of the Drake Equation panel, but I had a one on one conversation with beamjockey where he offered a reasonable case that the Drake Equation isn't quite as silly as it seemed to me.  And he told me the super-secret history of the Heterodyne Boys, so now I'm one of the elite.  I bought some books, listened to some concerts, attended the panel on the ethics of first contact, checked out the art show, hung out with GT, and generally felt like I always wanted to be in at least one other place in addition to the place I was until the filk pizza party.  I think Giordano's has gone downhill, but it was still food.  Despite being scheduled, no filk happened before almeda's concert, for which I was recruited to put arrows on the map of the US marking where the writers of the songs she was singing were found.  It was a fun bit of shtick, and almeda gave a good show.  The filk afterwards was pretty good, though I again found myself tiring earlier than I wanted to.  I didn't actually get to my room until 3, somehow, since I thought I started heading there by 2, and worse, I didn't manage to sleep soundly and was rather zombified Sunday.

Sunday the main business was getting out.  I got my stuff to the car without too much pain, thanks to having put one guitar and my filk bag in the car Saturday night and keeping the other guitar (Tiger) and my art bag out.  I got my art, where I discovered that someone had bought Tuckered Out at minimum, so I actually sold two pieces.  And I just realized as I wrote the last sentence that I forgot to pick up my check in person before I left (she'd been too busy to write checks by the time I'd checked out), so Trouble will have to mail it to me.  I spent half an hour taking down flats, which I actually really enjoyed; I enjoyed taking the art show down a lot last year and I would have helped out more, but I had to get The Copier of Doom.  So after Art Warneke's concert, which went well, and a bit of jamming which was fairly fun though not tremendous, and I followed janmagic to her place.

Somehow, Jan had acquired a color copier that she wanted to donate to EFRC, but she couldn't fit it in her car, so at OVFF she had recruited me to come get it.  And we managed to do this this afternoon, and the copier and all of our stuff all fit in the car -- but only just barely.  And the copier, which is a good deal bigger than Jan had suggested with her "it's about this big" hand motions, and also way too heavy for me to lift by myself, is still in my car and probably will have to stay there until Sunday, because I can't get it out of the car without help and if I do, I won't be able to get it back in to deliver it.

Now I go fall over.  My pants may well be bankrupt; at the very least, I'm not catching up tonight.

Well, it took all afternoon, but eventually I got the Hilton to take my reservation, so I have a room for Chambanacon. (A word to the wise: the hotel seems to be out of 2-bed rooms, and looks to be full enough that if you miss the deadline for the convention rate, you probably won't even be able to get a 1-bed room at the convention rate. Based on something the clerk mumbled, you might be able to book a room on the web using the group code 'CHA' -- but since I didn't know that until I'd already gotten a room by phone, I don't know if that actually works.)

If I can manage to arrange for dog care, I'll actually be at the con.

Which is the same boat as I'm in for Windycon.

( the dog situation )

Shopping last night so I'd have milk and bananas for breakfast today, I ran into an old co-worker from the late 1980's I think I've seen once since that job went south.  It was kind of interesting to chat with him but I really was in a hurry.

Gaming was good.  We played Ticket to Ride Marklin, and my instincts for general Ticket to Ride strategy proved sufficient; I was in last place before scoring destination tickets, but I had the most tickets and finished in first place.

The dogs were safely picked up from Jim and Robin last night.  Windy is pretty much the same -- signs of major internal trouble and he's lost a third of his fur, but he's still in good spirits.

The last memory card finished copying into the temporary holding directory last night while I slept.  2698 images from the trip.

Got up and got to the post office to get my mail; turned out they are open half an hour later than I remembered so I could have fiddled around a little longer before going.

Now, as I write this, I'm starting to sort the images.  (There are a bunch of "wait for a bunch of files to copy" steps in my work flow.)

My trip itinerary was:

Thursday, June 15: Drove to Wisconsin.  Stopped at Castle Rock wayside on I-90/94 (exit 55 on I-90, just before Tomah), a quite impressive rock formation, well worth stopping.  Spent the night in Tomah.

Friday, June 16: Spent a few hours at Black River State Forest along I-94.  Drove to Minneapolis, found the motel, found the pre-wedding party, had a good time, found the motel again.

Saturday, June 17: Found Minnehaha Park in the morning. Took a bunch of pictures of the falls area.  Lunch at the park restaurant.  Wandered around, eventually found the wedding site.  Wedding.  Trouble (see below).  Potluck after reception, then found the after-wedding music party, and the motel again.

Sunday, June 18: Drove north.  Visited Gooseberry Falls, Split Rock Lighthouse, and Temperance River on the way to motel in Grand Marais.

Monday, June 19: Drove north again, stopped at Kadunce Creek, visited Grand Portage State Park (Pigeon Falls) and Judge C. R. Magney State Park (Brule River), then back to Grand Marais.

Tuesday, June 20: Briefly north again, explored Kadunce Creek upstream, thoroughly explored Temperance River, stopped at Cross River, found motel in Illgen City, quick look at Palisade Head.

Wednesday, June 21: A couple miles up Highway 1 to the Baptism River crossing at Eckbeck Campground, spent most of the day at Tettegouche State Park (Baptism River), Palisade Head again, dinner at Northern Lights restaurant at Beaver Bay, then a wayside a bit past Split Rock Lighthouse at dusk because the lighthouse was actually lit.  Then on to Duluth for the night.

Thursday, June 22: Visited Banning State Park and Wild River State Park, then headed down along the Great River Road, stopping at Interstate State Park and Afton State Park.  No more significant stops, due to poor time management/planning, but nice views.  All motels full at Winona; finally found a Wendy's in La Crosse and a motel in Sparta.

Friday, June 23: Just drove home.

( the bad stuff )

In spite of the bad things, I had a wonderful time up there.

I got Windy to the vet this morning, and we discovered that he's gained 10 lbs. despite the fact that his ribs and hips are very prominent.  The vet did give me a course of antibiotics for the probable infection in his nose, but we also did blood work.  It shows elevated white blood cells, reinforcing the theory that he has an infection, but he also has enlarged red blood cells and some nucleated red blood cells, which is suggestive of cancer, though it might be brought on by a serious infection.  We had The Conversation about cancer treatment.  I'm not really disposed to aggressive treatment; even if it didn't cost a fortune I don't have right now, the treatment tends to make the dog sick and miserable and then it dies anyway.  I'll be talking about it with Jim and Robin, but I expect that I'll just watch his condition.  He's still eating and in reasonably good spirits now.  He's nearly 12, and he's always been a bit sickly, so he probably won't be with me for a really long time even if he doesn't have the cancer I suspect.

I'm not attached to him the way I was to Lori.  It will hurt to lose him, but right now at least, I just want to give him a good quality of life for as long as I can.