isabel was the most over-hyped weather event *ever* here in philly. the radio was all like "school's canceled!" and "stock up on supplies" and and i'm all like "yo. even if it is a big storm, it's only going to last ONE FREAKIN DAY and we can all get by on whatever is in our cupboards, even if it's only one ancient pbr, a mostly empty jar of lemon-tarragon mustard, and a can of heinz beans.

not to knock the people down in nc and va who had legitimately bad weather, of course. if you have no power, water, or phone service, then you would indeed have been wise to stock up and cancel school.

guinea pigs, big and small

19 September 2003 - 11:23 am

did you see? they found a new giant guinea pig? at nine feet long and 1500 lbs, it beats out the capaberra in size, but of course the capaberra has the distinct advantage of still being alive.

speaking of guinea pigs, miss fergusson is going bald again. i found small patches on her back legs. took her back to the penn vet school, and the vet (who i liked much better than the vet we saw last year, mostly because he didn't keep telling me that fergie had cancer and that when she died (she told me this at least 3 times) i should bring her body back to the hospital and they'd do an autopsy and creamate her for me) told me she probably had ovarian cysts. they probably weren't tumors, because tumors wouldn't have responded to the treatment last year. so she got two more shots of hcg. poor piggy, she screamed as the vet student held her down and the vet stuck her. poor piggy.

she's getting old, the piggy. she's 5 years and 8 months old. i've never had a piggy live this long before (i guess i take better care now than when i was 12), and i'm seeing the signs of aging in a piggy for the first time. mostly, she's unchanged. no grey hairs, no wrinkles, no flabby flappy skin. but her eyes get watery sometimes, like an old man. and she sleeps more. but she still hops up on top of her house to get to the top level of her cage. she still attacks the hay pile with gusto.

she's always been a mellow pig, but she gets mellower as she gets older. shortly after wuza died last year, i noticed that she was cuddlier. she would curl right up on my lap under a blanket and go to sleep. she loves having her head rubbed, especially if you rub her head with your thumb and one cheek with a finger. she pushes her head up into the rubbing and half closes her eyes. her favorite place is a dagobah (really, a piece of brown packing paper, crumbled up to make a tent for her, that she proceeds to eat "windows" in. the windows in the semi-roundish brown thing make it look like yoda's house on his swampy planet that was called (here's your useless fact of the day that may one day win you a quizzo game)... dagobah). she often comes to the front of the cage when i come over, to sniff my finger. she licks my nose and lips with her little tiny tongue.