APS is Antiphospholipid Antibody Syndrome but you can refer to it as antiphospho-what? It’s also known as Antiphospholipid Syndrome, Hughes Syndrome, and Sticky Blood in the UK which makes it sound like something you’re likely to find in a horror movie. So what is it? It’s not Lupus! It’s a rare disease where your body makes antibodies that attack the phospholipids in your body. So the phospholipids in your blood cells get hit and the blood cells no longer have a nice smooth surface that can slip past one another. The blood cells catch on to one another, eventually forming a clot and once you get to the clots you face all the risks associated with clots.

As you might have guess by now, it is the cause for my two blood clots and as a result I am set to be on blood thinners until a way to fix it is figured out. There is no known way to fix the problem, and they don’t know what causes the problem. About all it seems that is known (at least to the end user) is that it isn’t a genetic condition which means I didn’t get it from my parents and I haven’t passed it on to Olive. If you look at every other blood metric my blood is fantastic, it’s just under attack. I don’t know whether I have primary or secondary APS. Primary means it’s all I have and secondary means I have something like Lupus as the primary. I wasn’t tested for that because I would have to go off blood thinners to test for that and it wouldn’t change my treatment of being on blood thinners. The doctor didn’t seem to think I have Lupus though so I’m going with primary.

So there you go, now all of you reading are aware of APS and I’ve done my part… very late. If you like you can ask me questions or find more information at the APS Foundation site.

Nicole just reminded me that the time it went down is the time we had the power outage. So that just means that I need make it start automatically when the system reboots. I feel slightly better about it but not completely.

Sunday we went to Castroville for the artichoke festival. The number of restored and modified cars on display was much larger this year. The We had some fried artichokes and I had an artichoke and carne asada taco (very good). There was a sign for artichoke cupcakes but unfortunately they were sold out. Oh well, that’s what we get for going two hours before closing. The vegetable sculptures weren’t as impressive or numerous this year except for the snake in a tree that was the first one you ssee when entering the hall. Having done almost all we went to do, it was time to buy a couple cases of artichokes and go. The nice thing about going late on Sunday is that they don’t want to haul all those artichokes away so by the time we were there a case of 18 jumbo artichokes was going for $16.

On the way back to the car I rested the artichokes down on top of a fire hydrant while we watched some dancers inside the festival area. Then I picked up the cases and turned to continue with a jolt of pain as I slammed my shin into the fire hydrant valve. About a block later I stopped and checked my shin and found it was already swollen quite a bit. Nicole got the car and came back for me and the future food. When I got home I rested it andiced it on and off for about 45 minutes which greatly reduced the swelling and today the pain and swelling is very minor, yay!

We can’t just use natural cocoa and expect the same result because dutch-processed cocoa is pH neutral. We could try a work-around by adding baking powder to natural cocoa but that probably won’t come out the same. When did it become so hard to get dutch-processed cocoa? We purchased some without difficulty a few years ago for the first death by chocolate trials. My theory is that since natural cocoa retains the anti-oxidants in chocolate while dutch-processed cocoa destroys them, people are demanding their healthier cocoa and not considering the desserts! I could order it on-line, but it’s not something I thought I would have to order on-line or be able to get on short notice in this area.

Well a co-worker was nice enough to drop me off at the corner on their way home and I was told that I couldn’t cross to my house because it was all a crime scene. I told them I lived one house away but that didn’t help and said I could go home if I could find a way into my yard without them seeing me. I thought about crossing behind my neighbor’s house but I would still have to cross to my house in view of the street and I didn’t want to have the cops irritated at me. So I called Nicole and told her the details I heard a sheriff tell the camera man from fox-35/kion-46 who was there filming and asking questions. I decided to ask how long they thought it would be.

When I asked another sheriff how long he thought it would be he asked if I was the taxi guy and I said I was. He went to check but he got caught up in helping the CSI. T alked to the camera man for awhile, learned that channels 35 and 46 share a building and that his footage goes to both of their stations. I also learned that kion-46 is owned by Clear Channel but that it is up for sale as Clear Channel is trying to sell off all their tv stations. I learned that they used dogs to track the suspects to Dougmar, a street off the opposite side of the block, that there was a bullet lodged in teh house directly across the street from ours, that the victim was in critical-critical condition which I think means they weren’t expecting him to live and indeed he died at 1AM.

After more chatting and watching the ksbw-8 reporter show up without a camera man and just trying to make due with a digital camera the sheriff returned and I asked again if I could make it to my house. He decided I could cross my neighbor’s yard in front while he paralleled be on the sidewalk. About halfway across the CSI questioned why I was there and he explained for me that it was ok and I had been waiting patiently (for about an hour and a half) as I crossed the dividing picket fence between our yards.

The block was closed off for almost 8 hours, ending at about half past midnight.

Last night on the way to the store sheriffs on foot approached us as we were about to go to the store and they asked Nicole about everything she might know to establish timelines. When we got back from the store they were still canvasing the neighborhood.

Today in the paper I learned that the shooter was 16 and they are working on charging him as an adult.

I cooled the “cake” some and could see that the fluidity was not getting any better so I decided to turn it out to see just how bad it was. After rinsing the molten sugar goo (nicely insulated in the middle) off my finger before it could burn I could see there was probably about 1/3 uncooked. The cooked part was fairly tasty though and it might work well in ramikens or added to something else; Nicole suggested crumbs on ice cream.

Now the only question is: Will I try again before Top Chef tonight?

On the home front, we bought a fountain for the front yard but it isn’t in place yet. I’ve added another irrigation zone to better handle parts of the front yard, and I planted 3 heirloom tomatoes, a serpent cucumber, and an Israeli melon, all provided by a co-worker. Painting of the tv toom is about to happen, followed by carpet, followed by the couch which is now delayed 2-3 weeks to mid to late July.

Oh yeah, last week Grover and Sage got in some disagreement during a 10-15 minute window from the time I left to the time Nicole got home. Sage ended up the worst with a bruise above her eye, a cut below her eye, and a flap of skin torn under her jaw. Grover had a cut on his leg. Both required staples for their cuts. I was hoping to go to the Maker’s Faire on Saturday but figured we should stay around to watch Grover and his bandage. Grover hadn’t shown any tendency to mess with his bandaged and taped leg whether we were present or not, except while we were gone today. He unwrapped the whole thing and then pulled out his staples but didn’t otehrwise mess with the wound. He was already scheduled to return to the vet tomorrow so they could check his bandage. We’ve re-bandaged it for now.

Oh yeah, we went to the Artichoke Festival today, saw some cool vegetable sculpture, bought a case of artichokes cheap, and finished off the day with frozen custard.

About three weeks ago Grover and Sage turned four. On the weekend of the 19th of August I felt a lump on Grover and asked Nicole about it. She thought I was talking about another lump on him that was from normal day-to-day stuff like bruises from playing or a poke from a fox tail. A few days later she asked me about the lump since she felt it too and we realized that we were talking about different lumps a few days ago.

Nicole took Grover in the next day (Friday) and the x-ray showed a mass growing next to his kidney. Further testing was scheduled for Monday.

Monday they aspirated the area and found a lot of blood. The ultrasound results showed it to be large and growing fast. They couldn’t tell for sure but based on the bloody aspiration and the ultrasound the doctor thought it might be a hemangiosarcoma. It didn’t appear to be invading any organs, but the doctor x-rayed his lungs and they appeared clean. We agreed it needed to come out so we scheduled surgery for the next day.

Tuesday Grover had his tumor excised and sent to the lab. They cut out some of his side muscle since it was growing into the muscle but they couldn’t get it all. The tumor had a pretty good blood supply going to it. The doctor said it was a spindle cell tumor which is good because mast cell tumors I guess are just plain nasty right off the bat. We kept his drain tube going and waited for the results. By Thursday Grover wanted to be a lot more active but he listened to us when we told him to lay down.

Friday he got his tube out which made our lives easier since we didn’t have to keep watching out for him messing with the drain tube (he didn’t much anyway). We put a tube top on him when we aren’t around so he won’t mess with the stiches but he doesn’t seem too inclined to do that either. Later Friday we got the call back about the tumor, it is cancer. An unknown cancer. We didn’t think unknown was in the realm of possible answers, but apparently it’s fairly common. So we still don’t know if it’s the nasty hemangiosarcoma or not. From reading about the various cancer types on caninecancerawareness.org it seems like the only one that fits what we know. It doesn’t target specific areas, it’s not a mast cell tumor mass, and it grew very rapidly.

Today the doctor called and told us that it will definitely come back if we don’t do anything. They recommend 16 radiation sessions over 5 weeks. Each time he must be anesthetized. Apparently radiation is handled better by animals better than people. The biggest side effects should be a bald spot or maybe a fur color change. Friday Grover gets his stitches out so he can really go run and play.

So I watched Moonlighting and Hell Boy and sorted recycling. Then my nose was done by around 8am and at 10am was breakfast. Then came wandering around downtown, followed by taking the dogs out to run around and ordering lighting.

Around 5 or 6PM I felt warm so I checked my temp and found it was 100.4. Monday morning it was in the 99s so I worked from home and it dropped into the 98s by evening. Today it’s back to a more normal 97.4. Now I just need the gunk in my head to go away.

I just went to go deal with is and scrape the ice out, but as I grabbed for the nearest hunk it collapsed in my hand. Well, collapsed isnt’ the right word really. It offered no resistance and was soft and fluffy like snow!

Today I was waiting for Nicole out side of Red Poppy and reading a book on number theory when I look down and see two bees attempting to land on me. I dodged a few times before giving up and going inside. The smells inside the store confused it and it stopped at the doorway.

Was my soap secretly replaced with pollen?

I just looked at a consumer reaction message board for Nasonex and a number of other people started getting headaches after 6 months to a year as well. I’ll have to talk to the allergist about this.

A little while later he gets ahead of me because he runs the red light I’m stopped at. Shortly after the light switches to green I caught up with him and he was going pretty slow so I slowed down. Since I ride in the bike lane most of the time I have to wait for openings in traffic to go around. Traffic opened slightly and he hopped into the traffic lane so I took the opportunity to pass him in the bike lane when he yelled out “Nazi!” to me.

I ignored it and went on because I needed to make it to the meeting but it really pissed me off and I really wanted to ask him :WTF?!” I can’t even figure out why he might have so casually thrown that out there. The best I can come up with is he thinks my scooter helmet looks like a nazi helmet, but even so, WTF?! My helmet only has a brim in front and it’s silver and sparkly. I wish I had the time to stop and confront him. I didn’t even know I had this button waiting to be pressed.

In this case they ate the lump of chicken fat and chicken neck from the chicken we just roasted (in a plastic bad in the kitchen sink ready to throw away). I think Grover ate this because he has the more sensitive nose and he could reach it more easily. Also eaten was a wooden spoon; the kind you cook with. It was on the counter because we just got some new ones and the old ones were set out to give/throw away. Not much was left with it and we think Sage ate it because she’ll eat pretty much anything (she once ate couch foam). Also she was acting more hungry than Grover.

We didn’t feed them last night so we could keep an eye on them but they both seem ok this morning even after feeding.

Anyway, Nicole hadn’t seen the original and that made me want to see it again so we rented it. It’s still good and holds up well for a movie 72 years old! Nicole wasn’t crazy about how the level of violence in the film which is fairly high, and the ending made her sad. It is violent and sad, but she liked the movie anyway.

Oh yeah. I had a Blockbuster gift card that I tried to use to rent this, but it turns out that Blockbuster’s system for determining inventory is to dump anything that hasn’t been rented in a month. So you will never be able to rent an old movie there. There isn’t even a classics section to try and have any interest in it. Family, Comedy, Action, Drama. Those are the only categories you get.

This morning in trying out the voice recorder function on the mp3 player I just got I deleted the files since I couldn’t hear them. Then I saw that my headphones weren’t plugged in.

I need my brain back in shape and I probably shouldn’t be so easy with the delete functions. (Will not delete this post, will not delete this post.)

She managed to get out and dried off and shut off the water, but now we have no water since if water is on it will spray in the shower. I called the rv people and they said to bring it in and they would replace the shower. So now I lose part of my work day during a critical 2 weeks for the project. I guess I’m going to be working late.

The CS desk says they need the SKU# and start to call someone. Knowing it’ll take awhile for someone to get back there I tell them I’ll get it. I return a few minutes later with the SKU and they look it up. The computer reports that they have two of them in stock and so they can’t order it.

They call someone to go look for them and he then goes walking out the front door. We ask where he will be. They said “Here (CS desk) or there (cabinet aisle).” I figure we should wait by the cabinet aisle since then if he makes it there but not back to the CS desk we’ll still have seen him. After about 10 minutes, during which time I talked to Dar to confirm the selection, we go back up front to say he never showed.

They call him again and this time he goes back. After 5 minutes he comes back and says he can’t find any. He also says that he’s not a kitchen & bath guy but is normally the appliance guy. Glad they have enough people and give them the training they need.

So 1.5 hours wasted and no cabinet. We go home and I try to find it on-line. Home Depot’s site doesn’t offer it on-line or even show it exists. The manufacturer says it is exclusively sold at Home Depot.

Anyway, not I just need to work out why sound isn’t being recorded (I think I have a cable hooked up to the wrong hole) and I’ll be set to move forward on Star Wars!

We went to OSH and picked out some paint and ran other errands before returning home. I got out the shop-vac, converted it to wet mode, and started trying to get all the water I could out of the carpet before I we tried to rip it out. I covered all the area I could and got about a gallon out of it. Then we went back to OSH for more painting supplies and a utility knife so I could cut the carpet. I decided removing small pieces would be easier and it was.

So I cut rectangles in the carpet and start pulling it and the foam out (yuck!) and find the concrete until the carpet used to be painted green. That makes sense since long ago this used to be outdoor carpet in an area connecting the house to the garage (which is now the tv room). However, it is not what we were expecting. We were thinking we would just leave it as concrete for awhile but now we’ll have to actually do something with it whether it’s paint it another color, or have a better floor put down.

Anyway, most of the visible wet carpet was removed and then we started moving the furniture and stuff from atop the furniture to the tv room (former garage). Then we moved the wood cabinets which exposed the wettest of the wet carpet, then the computers and desks. Finally I pulled out the rest of the wet carpet and carpet tack strips.

Then I was really tired and it was midnight and we’d been going at this all day so I set up a box fan to blow on it and help it dry and I went to bed.

This morning I got up and pulled out the rest of the dry carpet and carpet tack strips, dusted all the walls, removed all the witch plate covers, removed the smoke alarm and heat register, and pulled off the lamp fixture (but left it wired for extra light). Then I used the converted-back-to-dry-use shop-vac to pick up all the junk on the floor.

Today Nicole with the help of Julie will pain the walls and ceiling.

You’re probably wondering why I have movie talk as a category for this. Well A number of laser discs I had waiting to be recorded to DVD were on the floor (including the Star Wars ones) and the jackets of them got pretty wet! I haven’t looked inside yet but they have plastic-lined sleeves so I think they are ok, but this is interfering with the Star Wars project.

The only source for that could be the water heater. So I went outside in the rain to access the water heater closet which is on the same slab as the computer room but divided but some dry wall. In the closet the concrete was wet but that could be from the rain. Then after a few minutes I saw a drip from the temperature and pressure relieve valve. After putting a pot under the outlet fo rthat valve and watching during Nicole’s shower I saw the drip rate increase.

The next morning the concrete was dry but the pot was completely full. Since the pipe from the valve extended in to the pot some got sloshed on to the concrete in the process of dumping it out. From this little bit on the dry slab I could see the water running in the direction of the computer room.

We went to OSH and got a new valve, waited until everyone showered, and then shut off the hot water, turned down the burner on it, and drained some water out of it so it wouldn’t spew hot water out of the side when I pulled the valve off.

I then took off the outlet pipe (easy), and put the pipe wrench on the valve and foun dit was stuck. Then I saw there was putty stuff that was used to seal it in place. I called my parents to ask for advice (since I sisn’t want to bust the whole water heater). My mom answered and she said it sounded like I wanted to talk to my dad, and I agreed, but she was disappointed that she wasn’t getting asked, so I asked her first. I explained it was stuck and had putty stuff and I wasn’t sure how to proceed. She suggested a bigger wrench (I only have a 10 inch pipe wrench).

Then she passed me off to my dad who pretty much suggested the same thing except also suggested cutting away the putty with a utility knife and putting a pipe on the end of the wrench for more leverage. He recommended against whacking the wrench with a hammer to break it free because the wrench is springy and would fly off and cause damage.

The cutting away the putty suggestion reminded me that I have some nice picks for doing that sort of thing and using them the putty came off pretty easily. The valve was still stuck without the putty so I wrapped my hands around the wrench, hunched up, and slowly too kthe weight off my feet. That did it and the valve moved!

I put the teflon tape on the new valve and installed it and then I put some on teh drain pipe and put that in.

Still to do is to change the drainage to it goes to the outside instead of straight down since there is no drain except for the computer room. Also is to find a way to channel water to the outside in case something else fails (like the whole heater tank.