Simon..

... seems to be getting his appetite back - he ate some cheese today!!

Simon

I realised the other day that in the melee of other issues I had blogged about, I had forgotten to mention my baby. Simon lost huge great chunks of his fur in December and has been very ill. At first I thought he was just getting old, but I thought about that for a bit and came to the conclusion that Simon is not really that old. Then I thought perhaps he might have an allergy to his bedding so I changed it. His condidtion didn't really change until a couple of weeks later when I noticed that he had lost another big old chunk of fur and that his skin seemed irritated... So, for the last month and a half he has been in and out of the vet and has been forced to take various disgusting medicines which he hates. The last time I took him, I pointed out that it was not really cost effective to come to the vet every week especially as he did not seem to be getting better or worse. The vet agreed and said to finish the medicine and if he did not get worse again, he would probably be alright. Well two weeks passed and Simon's skin got red again and he lost more fur, and now he's looking really ratty and ill, so I took him back to the vet this morning - thankfully I got the one who seems to know more about rodents than the other two- and she has given him some stronger medicine, told me I have to hand feed him pet milk 5 times a day as he has lost ANOTHER 3 grams, making a total of about 7 grams he's lost since the end of December... it doesn't sound a lot but given the size of a dwarf hamster that is huge! She also said that if he doesn't improve with the new medicine - the likelihood is that Simon only has about 4 weeks left...

All quiet...

Well they say no news is good news... I think we all know that in my case, the opposite is true.. I am only truly quiet when things are SO bad, I just can't talk about it any more. We thought things were going to get better when G-comm bought NOVA. How naive. They are in fact, difficult as this might be to understand, actually worse than NOVA ever were. They have been arbitrarily firing people and finding reasons not to renew contracts ever since we all went back to work, with the result that I am actually meeting with some lawyers tomorrow. It's all really long and complicated and I'm not sure I could adequately explain it and it would certainly be very dull in any case...
All this on top of not having been paid for X weeks, and my one shining, sparkly, the world is actually alright moment - ie. My SOLO on choir Sunday was a disaster. Well, I say disaster. It never happened because a week before hand, I came down with a sore throat that by Thursday showed no sign of improvement and I dragged myself to the doctor to discover that I had tonsillitis and so I got to church on Sunday and had the privilege of listening to Kumiko doing it. I can honestly say that no matter what had happened in my life before that moment - I have NEVER, EVER been SO GUTTED in my entire life. EVER. Needless to say that I blubbed my way through the entire thing and used up a good portion of my box of tissues. I have added a couple of Diva Moments to my side bar - the duet with Kumiko (the real Diva) I was really pleased with, the other one was really disappointing although it felt and sounded (I'm told) much better live.... I'll probably be coming home in May... More another time. Oh by the way, the spell checker isn't working and I'm too lazy to do it manually... so if you have any complaints - take them up with the management.