Happy (slightly early) New Year's

Tonight is New Year’s Eve, and we’re all prepared to drink sparkling beverages and eat appetizers while we watch fireworks on TV.  We even got some ... well, we usually call them poppers in our house, but don’t try Googling that, unless you want to learn all sorts of new and exciting facts about drug culture.  (To be fair, I should have remembered that term from reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but that whole experience is a bit of a blur.  Which is to be expected, I suppose.)  Wikipedia has them listed as bang snaps, which is a super-bizarre term that I not only have never heard another human utter, but I’m relativley convinced that no human ever has uttered.  Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.  But, anyways, we found a giant-size box of them at Costco (because, of course)—I’m pretty sure serious fireworks are illegal in California, but apparently a bit of silver fulminate slips under the wire—and we just couldn’t resist.  So we’re going to add a new component to our New Year’s Eve spectacular celebration, and then probably regret it tomorrow morning when our patio is littered with all the leftover cigarette paper bits.

Two weeks ago, I posted a bit more post-surgery news (check out the links in that post for further details, if you need them).  In that, I described the Smaller Animal’s suture granuloma and mentioned there was a chance they would want to do a second (although extremely minor) surgery to remove it.  Well, the good news this week is that we finally got him back to the hospital the day after Christmas (visit was delayed due to sickness), and spoke to a different doctor, who confirmed that, yes, the potential infection seemed to have disappeared, and, yes, that little black line at the bottom of the former bubble was indeed the stitch, and he could just cut the end off it and leave the rest and we could come back later if any more of it came close to the surface, and he could just do it right now, and just lay back, and I started to open my mouth to say “should I come around there and hold his hand while you do it?” and he said “it’s done.”  And we were like, oh.  Okay.  And then we came home.  So that’s done.

And that’s all I’ve got for you today, as per the new blog schedule.  Tune in next wek for a longer post.