It’s not like I’m doing anything else…

I just put my name on a volunteer list for clean-up for the Gulf oil spill. I took the optional wildlife courses in vet school, and have some basic knowledge of what the grunt work would be on site, so I figure that makes me useful. If they want me I could be on my way south in the not-too-distant future.

Meanwhile, here under the Salamander’s rock we are undergoing a technological overhaul. The Prof and I traded in our AT&T coverage for less costly T-Mobile coverage. AT&T was completely unwilling to work with us to come up with a lower cost plan, so we shopped around a week ago and stumbled across T-Mobile. We got a plan that better suits us for more than a 40% savings.
We also got a quote from Verizon for internet and television, and used it to leverage a new deal from Comcast. Comcast gave us an upgrade to HD with more channels for less money than we’re paying for their basic services now. I have heard from others that it is really easy to negotiate a lower rate with Comcast if you threaten to leave them for Verizon, but hadn’t believed it until we tried it ourselves.

I’ve taken the advice Yetzirah gave me back in March and will try growing four o’clocks in my garden this year. While I love the Cup and Saucer Canterbury Bells, they did not do well in the garden next to the deck. To my surprise, the mums I planted in last fall returned this spring (I did nothing special to bed them down) so I’ll leave them grow back in. I’ll plant the four o’clocks behind them. I’ll have to be fast about it though. At some date in far distant history a prior inhabitant of our condo must have planted sensitive ferns underneath the deck. Since we moved in the ferns have never looked particularly thrifty, but they never died either. For some reason, they began to take off last year, and this spring they are rapidly taking over the garden bed. They’ve begun to advance from under the deck and new baby ferns are now poking their little fiddle heads up through the soil more than a foot away from the deck. While I like their soft green color and their low maintenance demands, I was hoping to have something a little more colorful growing in this spot. I’m hoping that the ferns and four o’clocks can learn to coexist, the ferns supplyin ground cover while the four o’clocks giving some height and color. We’ll see what happens.

At her latest check up last a few weeks ago we discovered that LGS is starting to develope cataracts. While far from unheard of, primary cataracts are unusual in indoor cats. Feline cataracts are usually related to a disease process like glaucoma, and tend to occur in only one eye. LGS’s cataracts are still in a very early stage, and we don’t believe they are affecting her eyesight to any great degree, but it’s yet another bad break my little grey cat has had thrown her way. Meanwhile, LBlS has recovered well from her surgery for the Mother of All Hairballs, and got an all clear at her check-up at the vet’s today.

The Little Grey Shit