The dishes are done, the kitchen is clean, and my bed is made.  Yes, Shiva decided to remove himself from the bed for a few minutes.  Here is a picture of him resting on the way to the food bowl. [caption id="attachment_184" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Shiva, resting on the way to the food bowl."] [/caption] 'Scuse the carpet, it gets vacuumed tomorrow.  Six animals can generate a metric ton of hair each week.  It's a never ending job. In my last post I mentioned Ares' eye.  We still don't know what happened to him, but his eyelid really started to get red about a week ago.  Then it started swelling... really puffing out big.  When it got down to his muzzle, we decided to take him to the vet Friday morning.  Poor guy looked like he'd gone a few rounds with Mike Tyson. The vet looked at him and thought he saw a foxtail inside of his eyelid, so we left him there to be sedated and checked.  Well, the vet didn't find anything in there, but he did have an ulcer on his eye, and the swelling was just huge.  So, he sent him home with some antibiotics and some eye gel stuff for lubrication and pain relief. I am so glad that Ares is such a good pill taker.  No arguing with him, just tip his head back and pop the pill in his mouth.  He gets treats afterwards, so he looks forward to that.  So does Apollo, because I give him treats as well.  Anyway... it's been nearly a week, and most of the swelling is gone.  I can't take him for walks yet, because he wears a headcollar, and that would hurt! [caption id="attachment_185" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Ares' eye"] [/caption] Apollo really wants to go somewhere.  This is him barking at me to take him somewhere.  He gets really excited when he thinks he's leaving the house.  Next week we can go, I'm sure Ares will be better by then. [caption id="attachment_187" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Apollo telling me we need to go somewhere"] [/caption] Now I can relax, have some lunch, and hang out on the computer guilt free for the rest of the day.  Well, at least until Will gets home, I promised him some World of Warcraft time after he does his homework.

Damn, I'm falling behind.  It's been a bit chaotic around here, with the holidays and all, but things are finally starting to calm down. I'm still trying to get the business off the ground.  I have repaired a grand total of ONE computer, but I totally kicked its butt and cleaned off the half dozen virii it was infected with, all data saved.  Happy me. My computer wasn't so fortunate.  I bought a new motherboard (dead RAID controller), power supply (the old one was making funny noises), and case (because this one is just dead sexy).  Everything is up and running just fine, but I was unable to salvage the OS/data from the drives.  I currently have it set up as two separate drives, and (other than the annoyance of having two separate drives) is working just peachy.  I had a current backup in place on our server, so all of my pictures, music, documents, and my World of Warcraft configuration were safe and sound.  It took me the better part of two days to get everything set up the way I wanted it, and now it's running just how I like it.  So of course, I'm going to partition the main hard drive and install Windows 7 beta on the other partition.   Of course I can't just leave well enough alone, you should know me better than that by now. :D On the joys of home ownership:  plumbing sucks.  After two days of drains getting progressively more and more backed up (and stinky!), we finally called in a professional who fixed it in an hour.  Apparently the sewer drain pipe under the house had come apart and was draining sewage right there under the house.  ICK!!!  Brave man that he was, the plumber crawled under the house, reattached the pipe, and restored our drainage... all for the low, low price of $97.  You couldn't get me to climb under a house with a crawl space filled with sewage for that price.  Maybe not for any price!  Anyway, it's all fixed up, cleaned up, and smelling ... well, not like sewage anymore.  Whew. Other than that, things are going relatively well.  Brian is not liking his new job much, and my current full-time job is at a company that is on the verge of bankruptcy... but we're doing ok.  Bills are getting paid, the animals are all happy, we still have the internet.  I wish we had more hours in the day, but other than that... yeah, it's not bad. Here's hoping it stays that way.

Pictures were not forthcoming when I said they'd be.  So, I need to upload a few on Thursday when I have some time off to take pictures. My computer is dead, the RAID controller on the motherboard is no longer recognizing my hard drive.  I still have a laptop (or two) to stay online, and I can play World of Warcraft on the one I'm using right now.  That is, if I set it up with a keyboard and mouse.  Too hard to play with a laptop keyboard... I can't even type very well on it!  Ah well. A new motherboard is on the way from Newegg.com, and it looks like I may be up and running before the weekend is over.   So... pictures on Thursday, computers fixed on Friday or Saturday, then back to work on Sunday.  I think I have Tuesday off, but I'm working (closing) Christmas Eve.  I volunteered, because everyone else has small children at home and I figured they'd be better off at home with their kids.  So does that make me nice or a sucker?  I'm hoping the former, but leaning to the latter. ;)