Tag: scully

Not much time to write a blog post. I spent all my time today completing my report on the Berlin standards meeting for Standards Australia, writing my new ethics topic for the week on the topic of “Sharing”, running a class with it, then writing and making a new Darths & Droids strip so I don’t get behind and miss an update.

And walking Scully. Here’s a photo.

The weather was nice, but it looks like it’ll be the last day for a while. The forecast is for a lot of rain over the next few days, and no more sunshine until Tuesday next week!

Not much to report about today, which was occupied with the usual online classes and comic writing.

For lunch I took Scully for a longish walk, paste the Grumpy Baker and around the harbour shore. I grabbed a spicy vegetable roll from the bakery for lunch and walked with Scully down to the grassy area by the water to eat it at the table there. But when we got there, there were gardeners cutting and trimming the grass, mostly completed.

Now, Scully loves cut grass. She loves to roll in it, getting it all over her fur, where it sticks and is nigh impossible to remove without painstakingly picking off each individual bit of grass. I’d planned to sit and eat my vege roll while letting Scully roam around and do her own thing. But now I had to keep an eagle eye on her the whole time and be prepared to run over and stop her if I saw a sign of preparing to roll in the grass.

Fortunately she behaved (mostly) and I managed to eat my lunch without ending up with a dog covered in grass.

In other news, I contacted my friend who lives in the Netherlands and told him the dates we’d be in Europe in June/July. He said he might have a spare weekend to travel on the days that we will be in Prague, and so might meet up with us there. It’s still a considerable trip for him, but in the past we’ve met up in Paris, Barcelona, and Essen, so it’s not beyond possibility that we’ll be seeing him in Prague.

Scully slept well through the night, but her morning poop had more blood in it. My wife decided to take the day off work and take her into the vet again. They took a blood sample (they tried to do this last night but Scully was too wriggly for them) and did some simple tests right there, and sent the remainder of the sample off for more detailed testing at a pathology lab. They’ve already ruled out giardia infection, or any liver or kidney issues.

They said Scully was a bit dehydrated from blood loss, so they kept her at the vet all afternoon with a drip for rehydration. Now she’s home again for the night, but we have an antibiotic to give her, and also some probiotic paste to restore her gut flora with all the good bacteria. They’ve also given us some special tinned dog food that will be super gentle on her digestive system for the next few days. We’re to give her the medication and monitor her condition and if there’s no improvement in a couple of days they might want to do an ultrasound scan.

Despite all of this, Scully is chipper and shows no signs of discomfort or lethargy or loss of appetite, so that’s good.

Otherwise I spent some time writing up brief outlines for new ethics class topics for the next few weeks. And some comics writing. And I took the opportunity with my wife home and Scully at the vet to go for a 5k run in the afternoon. It was warmer than the mornings, but the humidity was much lower today, so I managed a decent time.

For dinner I made the satay broccolini and tofu with rice that I’d planned for last night, but was interrupted by taking Scully to the vet. It turned out pretty good!

I had an interrupted sleep because Scully woke up about 3am and wanted to go out for a toilet. I had to get dressed and take her out. This is very unusual – normally she sleeps right through the night. She did a poop, and then multiple more throughout today, again unusual. The last couple looked like they had blood in them, so we contacted the vet and took her in for an examination. Apart from that, she’s been energetic and lively as usual, no change in behaviour. So the vet was not terribly concerned and took some blood for a test, but suggested it might resolve without treatment. So hopefully it’s nothing serious.

Also today my Internet service went out just before 9am, and didn’t come back until 4pm. I had two ethics classes in the middle of the day. I cancelled one and then tried the second one using my iPad and a 4G connection. It worked okay, but was considerably more fiddly, and not something I’d want to do again unless I really have to.

So my day has been pretty disrupted, and I still can’t relax because Scully is still at the vet getting the blood test done, and we are waiting to be notified to go pick her up.

I’d planned to cook a special dinner tonight of satay vegetables and tofu with rice, and even specially bought tofu today to go into it. But we had to just quickly make some toast and eat quickly in between getting back from the vet and my evening ethics class starting. So overall not a great day.

Today was a big day. Scully’s 7th birthday!

My wife took her to work with her, because today we also had an electrician in to install our new light fittings. He arrived early at 07:30, and was occupied with working and making clutter with all of the boxes and packaging the light fittings came in. A couple of the lights needed some tricky reconfiguring of screw placements, due to overly large holes cut through the ceiling plasterboard. But he managed to successfully install everything within a couple of hours. And the new fittings look great!

But I had to go out and buy some new light bulbs, because the old fittings were all bayonet style, and three of the new ones are now Edison screw fittings, so the old bulbs don’t fit in the new sockets. So I went to the hardware store to buy some new bulbs, before returning to fit them in place.

My wife worked half a day and had the afternoon off to celebrate Scully’s birthday. I picked her up in the car and we drove over to Lil’ Mix bakery to get some food. My wife really likes it there, but it’s not open on weekends, so we don’t have much chance to go there during the week.

Back home I cleaned up the packing material and took it out to the bins. And kept some of the spare parts in case we need them later. I made fried rice for dinner, and then had three ethics classes in a row. And now I have a yummy cookie form Lil’ Mix for dessert.

Scully didn’t get much walking time yesterday because of the heatwave weather conditions, followed by the evening hailstorm. So given today was a lot cooler, I made sure to take her out for a couple of good long walks. First thing in the morning I took her up to Moon Phase, the patisserie, and got myself one of their delectable char siu buns. Barbecue pork inside a delicately laminated pastry shell, with a super crisp sweet glaze on the outside. It’s an astonishing flavour combination and works really well.

I spent some time today assembling more Irregular Webcomic! strips, and also writing and making a new Darths & Droids strip. For lunch I just had some sandwiches with my home made sourdough, cheese, tomato, and lettuce.

After lunch I took Scully one a longer walk, around Waverton and down past the harbour shore. I also did an eBird count and tallied 12 different species. About average for a walk down there. The weather was mild and grey, and there were a few brief showers passing over during the day, with rumbling thunder, but nothing heavy.

Not much else to say about today.

New content today:

• Irregular Webcomic! #5363
• Square Root of Minus Garfield #5734