A Trip to the Emergency Vet

I was so happy to make it to spin class this morning. I haven't been to a class in over 2 weeks because of being sick and going to Vancouver. Afterwards, I went to Target and A.C. Moore. There was quite a lot of jewelry on clearance so I picked out two that I liked. Normally, I think $5 is more than I'd be willing to pay but since I had a 25% off jewelry Cartwheel coupon, I felt like I could justify the purchase. I didn't find anything that I wanted at A.C. Moore and I was okay with that.

When I got home, I noticed that RJ was struggling to pee.  He go into his litterbox and sit there for quite some time, leave and then come back to pee again.  Ugh.  Something's not right.  I had a feeling that he had some sort of blockage.  I called the emergency vet and told them what the situation was and they told me to bring him in.  So I got back in the car with RJ and headed to the vet.  Yep, I was right.  He wasn't totally blocked, but he was definitely feeling uncomfortable.  They sent me home with some pain and anti-spasm medication and instructed me to keep an eye on him the next few days.  Good thing I don't have to got to work tomorrow!  When we got home from the vet, he wanted to sleep on my stinky gym clothes.  Sigh.  I had to give him medication orally tonight and wow, he was not happy.  Sorry, but I don't want to take you back to the vet!

Fingers crossed that things will be better tomorrow!

Back to Normal

I am so thankful for the 3-day weekend so that I can get back to some sort of routine. With my bout with shingles and vacation and work travel, I'm glad to be getting things back to normal. 

For example, grocery shopping.  Haven't done that in a while!  I went to Walgreens this morning in search of the Limited Edition Wet 'N Wild eyeshadow palettes that people have been talking about on the beauty blogs.  I didn't find them, but to make sure that the trip wasn't a waste, I went next door to Giant to get some grocery shopping done.  I came back with some fresh vegetables so that I can get some healthier foods back in my diet!  Well, I couldn't pass up the ice cream that was on sale, but dairy is one of the food groups, isn't it?  This Haagen-Dazs peanut butter pie ice cream was pretty amazing.

After dropping off the groceries at home and putting them away, I headed to Target.  Meh, nothing too interesting there.  I got some lunch there and while I was waiting for my take out order, Mom called to say there was food at the house and invited me to come over.  Between the grocery shopping trip and my parents' house, I went to 2 CVSs and still didn't find the eyeshadow palettes.  Oh well.  I ate my lunch at my parents' house and also took some of the food they ordered back home with me to eat for dinner.  Healthy food consumption will start tomorrow, I promise!

Time for a nap and caught up on watching some YouTube videos and I made some cards for my Etsy shop because I sold 7 cards while I was on vacation.  Time to replenish!

Atlanta, Day 2

Yay for productive meetings.  There's only so much that you can accomplish over the phone anyway.

Thankfully the trip to the Atlanta airport was far less stressful than the trip going there.  I fell asleep for most of the flight, so that left me with some energy before bedtime to unpack and even get a load of laundry done.  I came home to a patched up hole in my ceiling that was a result from a visit from a plumber back in July.  When my parents came to check on RJ, they also brought a ladder and supplies to help me out.  They also brought me a huge thing of kitty litter since there's no reason for them to have it at home because Ginger passed away.

Atlanta, Day 1

On the road again...but this time for work and not for fun.

So many things went wrong this morning while I was trying to get to the airport. :P

a. My iPhone turned off sometime during the night so I didn't have an alarm to wake me up.  I had it set for 4 AM, but I ended up waking up at 6 AM.  Good thing I had packed many of my things the night before and I had set out the clothes I was going to wear.

b. When I transferred Metro stations, I wasn't looking closely at which train I went on, so I had to backtrack one step.

c. When I got to the airport, my Metro card didn't work and the station manager showed me that it was because my card was cracked and broken.

I was smart in checking into my flight last night so I could go directly to security.  I made it to my gate as people were boarding.  Whew!

In the rush to get out, I realize that I forgot my toothbrush and worse, my Fitbit.  :(

I went to the meeting site directly from the airport and sat in the café with my chicken tenders and fries while I killed time before the meeting. Yay for free Wi-Fi!  The pre-meeting meeting was very productive and I think it was a good decision to get our ducks in a row before talking to the larger group tomorrow.

At least the day ended on a good note with a trip to Violette, a French restaurant in Atlanta. I had the Bouchée à la Reine (Puff pastry filled with chicken breast, topped with creamy herb- mushroom sauce).  Yum!  I knew that it'd be delicious because that's what I got when I was in Atlanta last August.  What's interesting is that the presentation of it looked totally different from last time.  Equally delicious though!

After dinner, my boss drove me and a colleague to a nearby Target.  This was a blessing because I needed a toothbrush.  I suppose I could have gotten one from the hotel front desk, but I wanted something of higher quality.

Vancouver, Day 5

Aw, man.  The last day of vacation!  :(

Oh well, we gotta make the best of it.

Since our flight wasn't until 7:30 PM, we had some time to goof off before heading to the airport.  We decided to take the train to Science World.  This place was a lot of fun because you could touch and interact with many of the exhibits.  For example, there was a section just of jigsaw puzzles and ones that you had to think things through.  There was one where you had 4 Ts and you had to fit it in a square and then you had to see if the same 4 Ts would fit in smaller square.  Julie was really struggling with that one.  Several of the volunteers came to help, but none of them knew the answer.  One of them offered to get the answer key.  Yes, please! 

There was an exhibit about animals, one about the human body, one about sports, and one about energy.  Very cool stuff.

A giant hamster wheel for humans.

Success!

Yay, kitties!

We were there for about 3 hours until it was time to head back to the hotel, grab our stuff and get back on the train.  And wait and wait and wait for our flight.

Vancouver, Day 4

Volunteer Activity #7 of 2014: Today's goal was to volunteer at the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre for their lunch service. There were lots of things that we needed to get done logistically to make this possible: pick up rental car, find parking near convention hotel to park said rental car, move donations from vendor room to rental car, get volunteers, drive to women's center, and find parking.  Whew.

When we went to pick up the donations, one of the vendors said that one of the people that donated left their cell phone in the bag of donations they brought in.  Fortunately, they remembered who that person was and I remembered what they brought so it didn't take too long to figure out which bag was theirs.  The timing was perfect because they were 5 minutes away from donating a cell phone to the women's center!

There were 2 volunteers that came with us: one from Washington state who drove up to Vancouver to do the volunteer event (but wasn't doing the convention) and one fan from Finland (?!).  Both of them were very cool.  The girl from Finland was a naval architect, which I thought was very interesting.

I was Julie's navigator to the women's center.  Like old school fold out map.  This was a challenge because there were quite a few roads that were one way, but we managed!  It was a little slow in the beginning because we were early, but once lunch service started, there was a steady stream of women from 12:30 to 2 PM, when we left.  The food today was "Temple food" which I found out meant that it was donated from a local temple.  Many of the women that came through grumbled under their breath that they "hated" temple food.  Uh oh.  Yikes.

My job was to set out sets of folks, spoons, and napkins for the women to pick up before they found a place to sit.  Everyone else helped with plate preparation and serving the food.  It was quite humbling experience to see how many women came through.  Some had children.  Some looked like they were suffering from some sort of mental illness and/or had a drug problem. 

Hah, you can see me in the window reflection on the left!

Time for dinner! Julie and I went to Commune Cafe, which was one of the places on our to-eat list (it's the only place that we actually went to on the list since we didn't have a car and were on a budget).  While we were there, I had the map out to look up how far the Science Center was from our hotel.  The waitress came by with our drinks and asked us where we were from and what brought us to Vancouver.  I mentioned that we were there for vacation and to attend the Supernatural Convention.  "Oh, really?  Do you see who's sitting on the other side of the glass?"  Oh whoa.  It was one of the cast members, Mark Sheppard. This was funny because Julie had found out about this restaurant because this actor had said many nice things about it and what a coincidence that he's here too!  He was there with one of the actresses from the show.  We decided to give him his privacy and let him be a normal person and eat dinner in peace.  I'm sure a few days of fangirls can be very exhausting.

Julie got the California sandwich.  I got the mac and cheese with the Red Lychee drink.  This worked out nicely because the lunches were 50% off at the time that we went.

Vancouver, Day 3

Volunteer Activity #6 of 2014: Today was about collecting donations at the Supernatural Convention that was held in Vancouver.  The organization that Julie volunteers for had a table in the vendors sections so I helped her man the table.  Meh, that's pretty easy.  Collect donations, smile, be nice to people...it's not unlike any booth that I would do for work or crafting.  People were very generous with the donations they were handing over to benefit the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre.

Aside from doing good today, it was also a good people watching event.  Wow, these fans are...passionate.  There was a bunch of cosplaying people.  There were people that had Supernatural related tattoos.  I mean, whoa.  And it was really surprising to me to see how much money these fans would be willing to shell out for a convention, photo op, autograph, etc.  I love my TV shows, but I wouldn't be willing to pay hundreds of dollars to go to something like this.

Dinner was pretty low key tonight with me eating leftovers and Julie getting a salad from a local grocery store.  By the time we left the convention, many things were closing down and we were TIRED.  Even the Asian market that we went to yesterday, the hot food selection was different and much more expensive.  No, thanks.  We're on a budget!