Month: December 2012

I think Tucker is feeling a little better, although it’s difficult to tell. He doesn’t seem to want to do much more than lie around in the same spot, though his fever is down a little, and he does seem to have a bit more an appetite. Even if he does appear to need some convincing at first to eat.

I spent a good bite of the day just watching over him, hanging out watching television while he mostly slept. I watched Tower Heist, which I guess is a movie, although not much of one. I like pretty much everybody in it, but there’s not a whole lot to recommend it beyond that. Rare Exports, which I watched last night, was also slightly disappointing, but at least it had the decency to be weird and bizarre.

I can’t believe it’s already Thursday. This hasn’t exactly been the most vacationy of vacations.

I didn’t get to sleep last night until sometime after two in the morning.

Before that, I’d watched A View to a Kill, which proved to be a little longer than I expected, and which really didn’t reward my patience with it. It’s the last of the Roger Moore James Bond films, and while it’s not the worst of that bunch, I think that says more about the series at that time as a whole than it does about the relative merits of this movie. I like Roger Moore a lot, even today, but the simple truth is, he was just too old to be playing James Bond. His last outing isn’t his worst, but it’s a far cry from his (much less the series’) best.

After that, there was a whole bunch of wrapping of presents and stuff like that. And I thought, well okay, this is later than I wanted to go to bed tonight, but I can always sleep a little late in the morning.

Around 4:30, my father woke me up to tell me that he and my father were taking our dog, Tucker, to the emergency vet.

Tucker had been listless and moaning and not at all hungry, not at all himself, and my parents just wanted to rule anything serious out. I didn’t go with them, just stayed home, and awake, for the next two and half to three hours.

The vet gave Tucker something for pain and discomfort — which we later found out, with some surprise, was a shot of methadone — and ran some tests. He was running a fever, then and later still, when we went to his regular doctor this evening. I thought 105 seemed unfathomably high, but it turns out the normal body temperature for dogs is around 101 and 102.5°F. (So you learn something new every day.) The vet gave him another shot, this time of antibiotics, plus some to take orally. He said it’s more likely a virus, and will hopefully pass, but the medicine’s to try and cover all bases. We’ll keep an eye on him overnight. He seems better, still a little slow and hesitant, a little more tired than even his usual, but better than this morning. He has some appetite, and we’re hoping this is just a stomach bug that’s hit him a little harder than usual.

I got a little sleep after my parents and Tucker came back home around 7 am, by which I mean maybe two and a half hours. That’s when Tucker’s barking to go outside woke me up, followed by the phone ringing, and the phone repairman showing up to put us on the fiber-optic system. (Verizon is apparently committed to not repairing the existing copper line, so I guess my parents finally relented.)

Then it was just a trip to the post office, setting up Christmas lights outside, furniture repairmen come to fix a broken living room chair, watching over the sick dog, watching an episode of Quantum Leap, listening to music, thinking about taking a nap, ultimately not doing so, and generally just puttering around. And that was my whatever this day is. Wednesday? Frankly, I was just glad, as I fell back asleep at 7:30, that I didn’t have to be at work in an hour.

Another dreary, rainy day, although less rainy than yesterday. I even managed to take a walk this afternoon. I spent the rest of the day just puttering around the house, doing some reading and setting up the Christmas tree, which is itself a surprisingly time-consuming endeavor. (Even after getting the box out of the attic, each row of the tree is color-coded and has to be fanned out and added a bough at a time, for something like ten or eleven rows.)

This evening, I watched Octopussy, which turned out to be surprisingly not terrible, especially considering the not so great track record I’ve had with the Roger Moore Bond films. This was one of the few, if only, Bond movies I ever saw in theaters when I was younger…and that six-year-old me is probably still the movie’s ideal audience. But it was significantly better than the often tedious For Your Eyes Only, which is maybe all I can hope for this far along in the series. (Just one more Moore, then Timothy Dalton’s pair of movies. I’m not yet sure I want to revisit Pierce Brosnan’s four.)

And that was whatever this day was. Monday? Sure, let’s go with that.