It's that time of year again... if any of you ladies out there are interested in trying a sprint triathlon (1/3 or 1/2 mile swim - ~400 yards/meters, 12 mile bike, 3.1 mile run/jog/walk) the registration for the Seattle Danskin Womens Triathlon opens on Tuesday. The race itself is August 17th, a Sunday. It's pretty low key with a lot of different ranges of abilities, shapes, and sizes.

I promise to cheer you on, just like last year. ;o)

http://www.danskin.com/seattlemain.html

(For anyone not in Seattle, there are other races in other cities. No excuses! ;o))

While I'm here, I'll post an Azrael update (our kidney cat, humpy). He's still on subcutaneous fluids (150mL daily), but he has gained 3 lbs in the last month (up to 13.10 from 10.06 last month). Last month, his BUN was the same, but his creatinine actually dropped slightly. Next blood test and weigh-in is March 3rd. His personality is very different than it was 6 months ago, he's back to his clumsy, chatty self. A little more cuddly than he used to be, turning himself into a mama's boy. The best part: we don't have to clean up any more refused cat food except when he eats out of the wrong bowl or partakes in his cat grass to excess (he loves green things, and grass is better than trying to eat any of our plants). :o)

An update on Azrael for anyone reading...

We went back to the vet today for our 7-day check-in. We've been doing subcutaneous fluids every day since then, which has been... fun. He's been tolerating them pretty well, but we do have some "off" days where he really just doesn't want it. Yesterday felt a little like bad cat acupuncture -- you know, when they don't get the needle quite right and jab a nerve. :(

Today's visit was just for a blood test and weight check. He's gained almost a whole pound since the beginning, 99% of that in the last week. Hooray! His creatinine was at 3.7 this week, 3.5 last week, and his BUN was at 48 (can't remember which week, it all runs together after a while). When we started at the emergency vet the day after t(of)urkey day, it was 4.0, so we haven't seen a huge increase, more of a maintenance thing.

The vet, really everyone at the vet's office, was really impressed with how much his eyes, coat, weight, and personality have all improved. The prescription from the vet was that we're going to have to stay on the subcutaneous fluids and come back in in 30 days for another blood test to see where we are then. She flat out said what I had figured but was still disappointed to hear: we'll never see his numbers normal, but we can hope that he responds like this to fluids and special diet for as long as possible.

So, home we went, to more fluids (we had skipped them beforehand at the vet's request), more special cat food, and more TLC. He's good about "asking" to be fed or when he needs something, and he is definitely responding with more affection. ;o)

A couple sites on CRF I've been reading:
http://www.felinecrf.com/
http://felinecrf.org/

You win this round, blogs! I'm terrible at maintaining a blog. I knew it would happen. I either need to start documenting mundane details of my life, have a life-changing event, or blog about work. Eh, probably none of the above, and I'll wait another 29 weeks before updating again. :P

It appears my last post was about the Danskin Triathlon, which was in August. There was swimming, there was riding, there was running, and there was rain. Rain, rain, rain. Lots of racing stripes on our backs for those of us who don't have fenders on our bikes, or at least not on the bikes we use for this kind of thing.

I did a few other things over the summer, most of which I did put in my (evil) MySpace "blog" last week (so, I neglected that one all summer, too). Some day I'll teach myself to come here first when I do think of blogging. I ran a half marathon in May (I was slow, what's new), then I did a triathlon in July (my bike and I did great), the Danskin triathlon in August (did I mention it was wet?), then a big lull where I mostly worked. A lot. Work work work, all the way to October. Last weekend, I ran the Seattle Marathon. It was such a beautiful day, especially compared to last year (snow, rain, wind, wind, rain, rain). My two complaints about the Seattle Marathon: not enough people watching and cheering, and running the I-90 express lanes for 6 miles is super boring.

Before Thanksgiving, one of my cats (Azrael, a well sized boy in black) started losing weight. He's had problems keeping food down for a long time (forever), but usually if we fed him decent food (Science Diet, Hairball Control or Sensitive Stomach) he was fine. It took a while to find a food that he could keep down, but we thought we were doing really well. About a month ago, he had problems keeping food down, so we started supplementing with wet food (gooshyfood ;o)). For a while he seemed great, got his personality back, but then whatever it was came back and he started losing more weight. He was definitely getting a little clingy, too, trying to tell us he needed something. A few years ago, he had got to the point where he couldn't keep ANYTHING down, so we took him to the vet, where they gave him fluids, gave him antibiotics, and took blood tests that were apparently normal. So, last week when we took him to the vet, we expected the same thing. No such luck. :o(

Monday, they gave him fluids, felt around, and took a blood test. His creatinine levels were high, along with potassium, white blood cells, and various other things. Signs seemed to point to a kidney infection. We took him home, continued feeding him wet food, and his personality bounced back a little bit. By Thursday (T(of)urkey Day), he was back to crappy. He had trouble about once a day with food (usually in the middle of the night), and was starting to get the "worried kitty" look again. Sigh. Friday, before we left for the marathon, we decided to take him back. Unfortunately, our vet's advice was to hospitalize at an emergency care facility for the weekend. We missed our flight, but it was important that Azrael be safe. We dropped him off at the emergency vet (open all weekend until 8am Monday) where they talked more about his blood test results and what their treatment plan was: IV fluids, antibiotics, and some TLC. The vet was optimistic it'd only be 24-36 hours, but when we called after the marathon on Sunday night, they still had to take another blood test and decide what happened next. His creatinine levels were still at 4.0, where normal for a cat is 0.6-1.8. :o( We knew we'd have to pick him up the next day before 8, so I let my dad know the plan, and he made sure Azrael was picked up. I talked to the emergency care place when he was picked up, it was still not looking perfect, though he was slowly improving. They said it was definitely still a kidney problem, and we needed to take him to our normal vet when we could. They sent him home with antibiotics in a dropper, which is awesome... he HATES the antibiotics with a passion. Good news: he loves food. ;o)

As you can imagine, this entire process isn't cheap, but both vets were very complimentary of his demeanor and how friendly he is. At this point, he's about 9 years old, and we picked him up as a rescue when we were in college. If anyone was going to have problems, it would probably be him. So, Monday afternoon after we returned from the marathon, we called our vet, who said to bring him in for another day of IV fluids on Tuesday. Poor guy. At this point he knows what it means when you open the garage door and carry him to the car -- he's already a howler in the car, but now he's immediately paranoid and starts trying to escape. Tuesday afternoon, we picked him up, and got the prognosis: another day of IV fluids on Wednesday, plus we start the special kidney formula cat food. The kidney formula is higher in fat and lower in protein. Just like with humans, cats with kidney disease need extra help to process foods because their kidneys can't get the job done. The fluids help him use what he has left of his kidneys, and the lower protein food helps his stomach -- otherwise, the kidneys just can't process it and it turns into a poison rather than a food (hence the vomiting). Our vet said he was still improving, and after Wednesday's visit the prognosis was to keep on the kidney diet and 150mL of subcutaneous fluids for the next 7 days after which we'll re-evaluate things once again with another blood test. Nothing like sticking an 18 gauge needle into your cat's neck and giving him a camel hump to start your day. I am glad to say today he finally got his purr back, he hasn't really purred for the last 10 days with all of the stress.

So far, our other cats seem to be taking to their new situation fairly well. We have had to take away their ability to constantly graze whenever they want, putting them on kitty home monitoring. They all have to take turns eating after the food trough gets opened. ;o) Azrael doesn't really like it either, he had adjusted to eating small amounts at a time to keep it down, and now he only gets to eat when we're around to watch. Personality is getting better, and he really likes the special kidney function food. Today is the first day in at least a month, if not several, that all of his food has stayed down. His doggie friend (our boxer-rottweiler mix, Boots) is protective of him, making sure she has an eye on him at all times when anything scary is involved. The instant he meows in the sad kitty meow voice, she's there, ready to be his substitute mommy and protect him from evil Colby's vet visits or camel hump injection.

Can't say it's been a boring 29 weeks since my last post... :o)

Now that I've got that off my chest, here's what I actually came to re-post from MySpace.

For any of my (female) friends out there who are interested in trying a triathlon, the Danskin Womens Triathlon is a great one to start with. It's a 1/3 mile swim, 12 mile bike, and 5k run at Seward Park in Seattle. There is a LOT of positive support, and you'll be joined by women of all shapes and sizes. You can always sign up in the "mixed" age group which tends to be less competitive -- though we're talking competitive on a scale of "not very" to "does not compute." Your biggest competition is yourself. ;o)

The online sign-up has been full for some time, but if you attend one of their seminars, as a first time participant it is likely you'll be able to sign up on-site. They usually hold enough spots for first timers at each of these seminars.

The first Seattle seminar is on Saturday, May 19th at the Bellevue Square Nordstrom's at 8:00 AM. There will be at least one or two more at REI, but I don't know how guaranteed the slots are at the later seminars. Unfortunately, I will be out of town that weekend and can't attend. :o(

They do ask that you RSVP, but it's not super-critical. You will get a chance to hear about the triathlon, buy Danskin gear (including tri stuff) at a discount, and in general get pumped up about the event.

http://www.danskin.com/buzz.html

I promise to stand on the sidelines and cheer you on if you decide to go, and if you start or finish while I'm still out there, I promise to have my cheering squad cheer you on. My mother in law and I will both be there as participants.

If you have any questions, I'd be glad to answer whatever I can.

There are a number of ways to start a journal. Should I go with "f1rst p0st" or some variation thereof? Should I include a picture or link to ponies, cats, or something that includes the word "0wned?" Should I make a long post about my hopes and dreams, my career aspirations, my darkest secrets? Should I post a random drive-by that makes you wonder if I'm the person you thought I was after all?

For a while now, I have been using MySpace (yes) as my only outlet for blogging information, and only to the extent that I have blogged my last season's "races" (running, triathlon) and a speaking engagement I had at Grace Hopper Women in Computing. Last night, I went to update my MySpace with my results from a 12k run (don't worry, you're not missing much, I am slow), and immediately got spammed. We're not talking a single message. We're talking 25 messages, nearly identical in content, from what appeared to be legitimate users. Yuck.

While conceptually MySpace and other social networking sites are a good idea, it seems that they have forgotten two things: the human factor (12 year olds pretending to be 18 year olds, 45 year olds pretending to be 12 year olds, the noteriety of "hacking" a large network), and the money factor (if there is a mechanism to deliver more page views, more click-throughs, and more spam, someone will exploit your site to do it). The big question for me as a user of MySpace is: does the bad outweigh the good? It's really cool that new up and coming bands have a way to get their name out there. It's cool that you can "friend" the local skate shop, show your support, and get notified of upcoming events. It's cool that you can reconnect with people you went to school with or had met in the past (which is why I joined MySpace in the first place).

I can see how a site like LinkedIn has their focus set narrowly enough for this to work. Similar to what Google did with the launch of GMail, LinkedIn requires an invitation to join. I am a member there, and have a handful of "friends" that are actually business contacts -- people I've worked with, networked with, or otherwise know in a professional context. So far, being a member of LinkedIn hasn't garnered me any spam, but I also haven't really seen anything positive come of it either. I'd call that one neutral, but perhaps if I were actively looking for a job, wanted to use LinkedIn for recruiting, or needed to communicate with a friend-of-a-friend, it might be more positive. Actually, by not getting spam at all, it might be considered "positive," but it's hard to put that spin on it without any personal benefit.

Another one that drives me nuts is classmates.com. I only signed up to see what was up with my peeps out there in the great city of Des Moines, only to get constant up-sells. Nothing's more annoying than "someone commented on you, but you can't figure out who it is unless you pay us more money." I know LJ has membership levels, but at least they are honest about them. If you pay $X more, you get Y features.  Communication with ex-schoolmates seems to be a service all its own. There seems to be an upside down bell curve of interest where you are most interested when the yearbook ink is fresh on your fingers, and when all of your old schoolmates are starting to fade into the sunset. We all know those people don't have money of their own or aren't spending it on the intarwebs, which means the rest of us in the middle get nagged to no end.

Where does LJ fit into this? I'm honestly not sure. Somehow, LJ has managed to be a somewhat independent yet growing force that has stood the test of time. Despite that fact that hosting your own blog is relatively cheap these days, LJ offers a combination of journaling, connecting with friends, and true "blogging" that is still somehow unique. It may not appeal to the 16 year olds (either the legitimate ones or the fake ones) like MySpace or Xanga, but maybe that's part of the appeal.

What I really came here to say was the same thing I said in a MySpace bulletin, but when I posted that, I got spammed again, which really just pissed me off, and you got this instead.

PS: first