it's a fuzzy fuzzy world…

I was working from home on Monday, and along about mid-morning I realized that I hadn’t been to Rickers yet for my morning Diet Mt Dew fix. So I hopped in the car, went to the store, spun a Pokestop, caught a couple of Orna monsters and went home. Total time out of the house? Maybe 20 minutes.

All seemed normal when I got home, ’til I spotted a Campbell’s soup can in the floor in the dining room. Someone Who Shall Remain Nameless had clearly been counter surfing. The can was unpunctured, so I put it back in the kitchen with the rest of the groceries that needed to be put away, and proceeded into the living room.

There, in the middle of the floor, was a Raisin Bran box. Across the room was Nicky, looking awfully proud of himself. The box was empty. No sign of actual cereal or the wax-paper bag that had been in the box. Kept looking. Oh, hey, there’s the bag… tucked under the edge of a kitchen cabinet in a dark corner. No wonder I didn’t see it sooner. No sign of cereal… clearly the Cereal Killer (my friend Brandy dubbed him that) had been thorough.

“But wait!” says my brain… “Aren’t raisins toxic to dogs??”

Ruh roh… So off I went, down the rabbithole of web searches, where at least the articles about canine maladies are somewhat less fear-inducing than sites like WebMD (no, really, it’s cereal, not cancer). My fears were confirmed, though… yes, grapes and raisins are toxic to dogs but (and here’s where it gets fun) nobody really knows what is actually toxic about raisins or why some dogs react and others don’t. But the reaction, if it happens, is acute kidney failure… sometimes fatal.

So I called the local emergency vet… “Hey… Nicky just ate about a third of a box of Raisin Bran. What should I do?” Conversation ensued and the end result was that Nicky and I hopped in the car and headed to Northwood so they could induce vomiting. After a bit, Dr. Mejeur came out to talk to me. Good news was that Nicky was showing no signs of distress. He was also steadfastly refusing to barf, even after a dose of apomorphine. Dr. Mejeur explained that because nobody really knows which dogs will react to raisins or why, and because the potential amount ingested (did you know people have actually studied how many raisins are in a box of Raisin Bran??) was enough to potentially trigger a reaction, the gold standard of care was 48 hours of high-volume IV fluids in order to flush the potential toxins out of his system and also to encourage kidney function.

I agreed to leave him, and one of the techs came and talked me through the estimate so I could be prepared for that side of things (ouch), and then they brought Nick to an exam room so I could snuggle with him for a few minutes. The apomorphine had clearly hit him like a ton of bricks and he was sooooooo sleepy. He was snuggly, but leaning on me with his head in my hands. Awwwww…

At that point, I headed home to get some work done, and they took Nick back to get him hooked up to his IV. I called later in the afternoon and the report was that he was doing well… hanging out calmly in his cage, being fascinated by the comings and goings of the staff.

I called again yesterday morning, and the news was still good… no symptoms. Peeing and pooping a lot (because IV fluids and a bunch of bran will do that to you!) and still just chillin’ in his cage. I asked if I could come see him, and they said absolutely, so I made plans to do that as soon as my morning conference calls were finished.

This time, I remembered to get pictures! He was happy to see me, bouncy and active and clearly unaware that he was “supposed” to be sick.

Well of course I played fetch with him! Doesn’t everybody go to visit their hospitalized dogs carrying a toy and a bag of treats??

Dr. Mejeur came in to chat with us for a few minutes, and commented that “Somebody seems to have missed the memo” that he was supposed to be feeling ill effects of his raisin ingestion. His bloodwork was still looking good… kidney values were right where they needed to be. In essence, he was doing great! The plan was to take him off the IV fluids at midnight last night, recheck kidney values mid- to late-morning, and then hopefully I could bring him home. I handed the leash off to Dr. Mejeur and Nicky happily trotted back to the back with him, wagging his tail and looking perfectly happy to be there. That made it a little easier to leave him there again, seeing that he was clearly not stressed by the strange environment.

Fast forward to this morning, when I called and the bloodwork machine was on the fritz! Eek!! LOL! The vet assured me that he’d give me a call as soon as they had the results, now that he’d been off the IV fluids for almost 12 hours. Not long after, the phone rang with the good news. Bloodwork looked great and Nicky could come home! So I headed back over to Northwood, ransomed Raisin Bran Boy, and we headed off to Rally’s for a burger (for me) and french fries (for both of us).

So, after an eventful couple of days, my boy is home again, happily hogging the sofa and doing lots of napping. Apparently being in the hospital was hard work, even though he didn’t seem stressed about it.

The moral of this story… don’t leave the Raisin Bran where a dog can reach it!

It’s been cold here and we’re finally getting actual wintery winter weather, after months of it being pretty mild. I wandered out into the yard yesterday for long enough to take a few pictures.

So, if anyone is still paying attention and is surprised that (a) there’s stuff here again and (b) it’s mostly about Ingress and not about the critters…

No, the site hasn’t been invaded by hackers or aliens or anything, but I’ve always posted my Ingress-related stuff on Google Plus and now Google, in their infinite wisdom, is going to shut that down. 🙁

Thankfully, I found Google+ Exporter and I’ve now imported (complete with comments!!!) the posts from my G+ page. It’s a little messy, and over time I’ll probably go back and move images into galleries and that kind of thing, but at least I won’t lose the history of my Ingress shenanigans and various other snippets of life that got posted to G+.

So if you were looking for dog posts, I’ll start doing that again too, but there will be Ingress mixed in with it from here forward.

Happy Birthday, Christine Jeffery!!! 💙💙💙Love you!!

Best thing about Ingress? The amazing people you meet and the friendships you make. Being on Team KoaBFsD with you has been a blast!

#HeartsForVJ #IHeartIngress #TeamKoaBFsDForever

Midwest RES did a thing. It was very blue (also very fun).

I love my team… working on this op was a blast, not just because we made big blue triangles but because we did it with friends and we had fun.

#ilovethesepeople #whyiingress #somuchblue #stoopedisfamily

Originally shared by Victor Linares

Operation Smurfin 2: Electric Bugaloo!

Unlike some of my crazier ops, this one was conceived long ago, in a galaxy far, far away… During the spring of 2016, I hatched a plan to cover Chicago, Milwaukee and Indianapolis in layered fields. I was making contacts throughout the Midwest and had a sets of keys to areas in Northern Illinois and a little highway rest area just outside of Iowa City. So, with that I began asking for help from the Indy locals and Stinkiehippie helped to farm keys for that area. We met in St. Louis for Via Lux, transferred keys and were ready to set the plan in action that fall. Then it happened – Chicago got Via Noir and the plan was postponed.

As time went on, we still had the plans in the backpocket in case we ever needed a large field. More time passed, more localized Resistance fields were thrown, so much so that the Resistance won every cycle in AM01-Juliet07 for 2017!

With 2017 over, I decided it was time to go back to some of my old plans and checked with all locations to make sure keys were still in place. I pulled in some of my contacts from throughout the region and within 2 weeks we were able to gather nearly 100 agents to assist. The day of the operation was a nerve wracking one as green links blocking the lake had to be taken down and replaced with blue links. During lunch time, a few agents were able to gather along the lake and simultaneously drop the blockers and throw blue links to Big Sable Lighthouse in Michigan. With the anxiety of lake links over, we could now concentrate on the night’s activities.

The plan was to throw the fields for the first checkpoint of the new cycle at midnight Central Time. An hour or so before that, agents began to gather along the lanes in near freezing temperatures to drop all blocking links. As our throw time came closer and closer, the call went out to drop all links, but then there was a sudden stop as a new blocker came up and the nearest participating agent was 20 minutes away – which would have put us over checkpoint. Frantic calls were put out and luckily, unbeknownst to us, an agent was playing at the opposite end of the link and took it down, saving the day! The call to drop all links was put out and the first field went up successfully for over 8 million MU! Agents in Iowa and Indiana carefully went through their areas and put up all 11 layers with only a few minutes to spare to checkpoint. At checkpoint, our final tally was: 11 fields for 96,725,155 MUs! And, as a bonus, 2 newer agents that were included in the field throwing (FernMae and LilFern) were able to get their onyx Illuminator medals with 25 million and 17 million MU captured respectively!

Info:

11 Layers

96,725,155 Mind Units (Average of 8.79 Million per field)

109 Total Participating Agents

1 Accidental Video Call

And now it’s time to roll the credits:

PARTICIPATING AGENTS (In somewhat alphabetical order)

(redacted)

(redacted)

(redacted)

adrenalinejunky

aoideanthousa

biddlet

bkartheiser

bodiehi

Boooooop

bulletstopper13

cammyb63

CaptainMalsGal

CaptainObvious9

Ccdkp

chibri

ChuckStake

coolbluewaters

daddyoak

DavidOneOne

DBQMARAUDER

DeathsHead2

Delaney83

Dirtheart

DrTookie

Druesyllia

DrunkenBrewer

ebonyhoof

ElKrem

failedgeometry

FernMae

Finntrinsic

FirinMaLazers

fl00d

flowerhopper

geneodude

Genres

GoochDI

hapto

Harleyrider

HoorayJen

ig88hunter

Intemerata

Katablue

kenisazO

kramerus

Kresh42

KwanLi

LilFern

LilMissObvious

mamatazzi

Maniac15

MrsDirtheart

MsAuntSue

MsDirtheart

Nihilistproxy

nr0x

Pamagica

pewpewski

PhaseolusV

QuantumThumb

Redfox1701

RehdBlob

Revenge2U

roha257

sassydew

semanticdm

SerranoChic

ShadowPhox

ShadowsDragonX

Silverhawk1

simontauer

skategod

SleepyfishRPSGT

Sofakat

soyabeansouplvr

SpectralSage

Stinkiehippie

stoopedgamertag

stoopedtollers

superpanda85

Swiftsquire

SySperling

TastesLikeChkn

TheBraydon99

TheHamlinHooker

TheRatt1994

TheRattsWife

Theundeadsoul

timphawk

titanup

tripledeuce

Toxoplasmolly

UndeadSoulMate

Vanteo

Vicious1016

Victor73

VWThing

WinterrRose

wrenchmaster

Xim3

xChalupaBatmanx

xxKelikinZxx

xxxMATZOxxx

YamaOnan

yourarmyboy

zatodog

zatoitchi

Ziggymom

zipcode52

A special shoutout to my Intel crew & the cat herders!

#Sitrep #Ingress #IngressReport #BlueLove #MidwestResistanceDoesItBest #ACrayCrayProduction #