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Health

Animals, Health
Cobras got their kitty cohorts covered
06.02.10 | Permalink | Comment?

Last week we had a scare when Kanika got a sudden massive respiratory infection and didn’t eat or drink for days. We took her to the emergency clinic one night, and they assured us she’d be fine after getting some antibiotics and a subcutaneous shot of liquids to help hydrate her. We took her home and isolated her in our room, but the next day she seemed worse. She still wouldn’t eat, and she hadn’t taken a drink on her own yet. We called Lesley and she told us to take Kanika back to the hospital and have her put on IV fluids overnight to ensure she was getting proper nourishment. The next morning Holly called and was told Kanika was looking much better.

That evening, shortly before leaving to pick her up, the hospital called to say she was again doing worse and would once again need to spend the night and remain on IV liquids. We were starting to get really worried, but the next day she came home. Once again quarantined in our room, she seemed a thousand times better. She had a bandage on her paw from the IV (which Holly and I both swear we were told to leave on, but apparently it was supposed to be removed) which was too tight and made her paw swell up, as you can see above.

I’m happy to say that after plenty of car rides, about $800, and a whole lot of emotional outbursts, she is now pretty much back to her old self in every way. As soon as her arm patch grows back, you’ll never be able to tell she was sick.

Look at us. Able to provide for our cats, even in an unexpected emergency. Who would have ever thought we could manage such a task?

Hiss! Hiss! Hooray!
Animals, Health, Photos
Crappy Cobra cardio
05.28.10 | Permalink | Comment?

Yesterday my brother and I went for a hike through the Gorge. When we left the house he commented on how perfect it was outside. About 10 minutes into our hike he said it was too hot out. By the time we reached our regular smoke stops we were both soaked in sweat and dying. We decided to forgo the smoking until we got back home, since we’d probably die on the stairs going back up. Above is what we looked like once we reached the top again.

Along the way we saw tons of millipedes, and I found a large corn snake hiding in the rocks near the rapids.

On our way up the stairs I saw this fuzzy little caterpillar on the stairs. The blue in him was much brighter in person, but my camera doesn’t seem to capture colours that well – or I don’t know how best to use it.

After the hike we went for milkshakes, and a well earned smoke. Both very counterproductive to our exercise. So what.
Food, Health, Life, Photos
Cobra Cake Collection
04.21.10 | Permalink | Comment?

This weekend we celebrated the Cobra Calendar’s completion with cake, cake, and cake.

First up was Friday night’s cake courtesy of Subs Plus, commissioned by Holly. It was a Star Trek cake (in case you didn’t figure that out, or you read faster than your browser can load images) complete with a scaled down Enterprise with working lights! and strawberry filling! It was a huge cake and there was tons left over since Holly’s entire family bailed at the last minute.

Then Sunday we went to my parent’s house for BBQ and two more cakes! There was a spice cake (above) for everyone who was too afraid of the awesomeness that is my annual cheesecake (below).

Not surprisingly, when I stepped on my mum’s scale I am now almost 20 pounds heavier than I was at this time last year. It’s time to get serious-er about the gym I think.

I miss my bike.
Health, Life
Cobra constitutionals and carving connections
04.21.10 | Permalink | Comment?

I’ve been going on mini-hikes in the Gorge regularly with my brother now that he’s in his exam week and the weather is getting better and better. Mini because we’ve both got things we need to do, but can’t resist nature in the sun.

I also can’t resist a chance to grab some fresh nip for the kitties, and right now it’s perfect for picking. I even tried to bring an entire plant home and transplant it into the side garden close to the basement window where the cats sit all the time, thinking they could “hit it” without even having to pick it. I’m not sure it’s going to survive since I did pick a huge plant, tear it out brutally, then not even water it. So far it’s still alive but terribly wilted.

One of the days we got there and the carving shop at the top was open. I went in and asked for information about the courses they offered and talked to the owner/operator/instructor. He said they only offered kids courses, but if I was really interested I could stay in touch with him by visiting there regularly and possibly in the fall work with him in his shop. I would love to learn even a small fraction of what I’ve seen him create. Although I think most of what is on display out front of the shop is stupid, what he had for sale was awesome.

While talking to him I realized he wasn’t a decent carver with poor taste, he was a great carver who was stuck carving ridiculous shit like Sponge Bob because the people here don’t appreciate native art at all. He told me he was from BC originally but moved here to teach traditional native carving. No one here is interested in culture or heritage, or at least not to the degree you see out west. He said he’s forced to carve what draws the crowds, and unfortunately that means cartoon characters. Out west you see beautiful stuff everywhere, and almost no graffiti or vandalism of any type. Here, this guy carves one totem, puts it on a public access path and has to repair it a half dozen times before giving up and just leaving it broken.

I’m hoping he was being sincere, and not just saying what I wanted to hear so I’d leave him alone. I’d really like to master hand carving one day.
Health, Photos, Random, Roanisms
Cobra-bbit
02.26.10 | Permalink | Comment?

Last night was Holly and my first night of busting our asses at the YMCA. The night before, we went and registered after bailing on Cub Car prelims. I was the only one who had to get their photo taken because the boys and Holly were just reactivating their memberships, where as I was a new member. Roan and I had been goofing around, so he felt it necessary to give me bunny ears in my membership photo.

Now I have to wear prosthetic fingers on my head whenever I go workout.
Health, Life, Love, Random, Video
Holly’s photonic-puppy-peepers
01.18.10 | Permalink | Comment?

Holly had her laser eye surgery ten days ago, and was on vacation the entire time. Her company, coupled with my laziness, prevented me from doing any blog updating. I had intended to write all about her surgery on here, and post a video of the procedure, but didn’t want to do so until she was able to watch the video, and look at the images to give her stamp of approval (well, all but one… can you guess which one got fast-tracked and bypassed approval?). Or maybe I was just using that as an excuse to be lazy longer.

Anyway, here it is:

Holly’s Super Big Fun Laser Eye Adventure Here We Go Awesome!

It began with the usual waiting room stuff, then after a short wait we went into an office to have a preliminary interview with one of the nurse people. She told us what to expect, and how to take care of her eyes after the operation then asked if we had any questions. Holly asked her if she could tell her what her eyesight would be after the procedure – meaning 20/20, 15/20 40/20?? – and the girl said “Oh, you have what we refer to as three finger vision. Basically, if you can’t see the big “E” at the top of the letter chart, we hold up three fingers just to make sure you’re not blind.” – Yikes! After a few more questions, she told me if I wanted to I could watch them do the procedure. Of course I jumped at the opportunity, and am always ready with my camera.

I had to stand behind glass in another room for sterilization reasons, but they had a monitor showing the procedure which I was able to see. I took a video of the whole procedure, but split it into parts. This is the best one, and shows the end of the first eye, and most of the second eye.

She didn’t seem too bothered by the whole ordeal, but was in intense pain almost immediately after. I took her home and went to retrieve a prescription for pain medicine.

When we got home, Roan was glad to see that she was okay – he had been worried sick while we were gone. Then he asked what colour Holly’s new eyes were. I then realized he thought she had an eye transplant. I, being the clever, playful cobra I am, decided to tell him she had a pair of puppy eyes put in. Beagle eyes, that were the same colour. He believed me for a minute, but then Holly ruined the game with her truth bullshit.

Hopefully once her eyes are fully healed she can see zombies coming at her a little better.
Angry Art, Health, Life, Movies, Random, Sketchup
Sore backs, ninja robot attacks
11.18.09 | Permalink | Comment?

Monday I went and helped the Dude do some work at his buddy’s house. It wasn’t a tough job, but it was a pain in the ass because we were on our backs the entire time, under a 24″ crawl space. It took us about 6 hours, but it looked pretty decent when we were done.

Yesterday I woke up and my back and knee were killing me. I hurt my knee last year, about this time, and it feels like I woke a sleeping giant somehow while crawling around on the pavement. Going up and down Holly’s stairs is brutal. Sitting in my chair at my desk is also brutal. I didn’t do much of that yesterday, nor do I plan to today.

I did spend some time at the desk with the Dude yesterday, making some changes to his winery model with him. Then he left and asked me to fix some geometry in another model he made, which is also part of the winery (the lab). I took a look at his model to see where he’d gone wrong, and I saw a few things I’ve been guilty of doing more than once. Nothing too major, but I decided hunting down the problems and solving them was more time consuming than redoing the entire model. It took less than an hour to recreate it, “improve” it, and put it in place to find out it was too large in two directions, and although it didn’t take much work, it was all for nothing.

The Dude came back late last night, and I showed him what was happening. His origilnal model is on the left, mine the right. In this view, you really can’t tell there is anything wrong with the Dude’s model, but mine certainly looks “neater”. The Dude decided to start over, but I’m not sure if he meant the entire model, or just the lab, or what.

Holly got home just as he left, and we had almost 4 entire sentences of dialogue before she passed out. I watched some UFC ultimate knockouts, then tried to sleep. It wasn’t happening so I threw on Idiocracy until my laptop started to get white hot. I finally fell asleep around 1:30. I woke up this morning feeling like shit. My back is killing me, nnd so is my knee. I should force myself to get my last drawings finished, but at this point I don’t think I can sit in that chair long enough to finish a single drawing.

I did manage to finally remember to transfer some images of a ninja robot I made a few days ago. He’s not as cool looking as I’d hoped, but I dig his sword and tribute logo. I’m calling him Gary the Gear driven Gaijin. I should have put some blood dripping off the tip of his blade. Oh well.
Gabriola, Health, Life, Log building, Sketchup
Cobra chiropractors in the house?
06.12.09 | Permalink | Comment?

The last couple of days I’ve been getting robbed of my Holly time. Because of the time difference we usually only get to chat for about 20 minutes in the morning on msn, and maybe an hour in the evening on skype. The last few days though we have been getting even less than that. She’s been busy socializing and being a mom as well as a professional, and I’ve had my nights eaten up by trying to teach Don and Zack how to use Skethcup. It’s been going well, but hopefully last night was the last night of late evening skethcup class for a little bit. While I don’t mind teaching them I also have my own work to do. It’s not possible to do my stuff while helping them, so I have to wait until they leave. Not a huge problem, but I feel like I need to start getting more sleep – probably due to the fact that I’m working really hard all day, every day, in the sun, with little water, then biking to and from school ontop of that. I keep falling asleep at my computer and waking up in the middle of the night to close it. That wouldn’t be so bad, but I sit awkwardly in bed, and it’s starting to kill my back.

With no spare time to do my work, I’m forced to try and do it while James is speaking to the class in the morning. Right now my priorities are as follows: layout the triple hammer bent (frame, foundation, and fireplaces), finish my log course notes, finish James’ book, and then, finish modeling a jig James and a friend designed to make log building simple enough that one person could do it with little room for error. I spent the entire hour we were in class yesterday working on two drawings. The top one is cool. It’s the jig. I made that drawing in less than 5 minutes. It’s simple looking, but some of the things I did to make it, would have taken me hours to figure out a few months ago.

The other drawing is just a foundation and footing drawing for the triple bent. That building is kind of annoying from my point of view, but it will be a nice place when it’s finished. And I will hopefully get to be involved in erecting it, so that will make up for any annoyance I’ve encountered so far, I’m sure.
Gabriola, Health, Log building
Cobra Vs Tree
06.08.09 | Permalink | 2 Comments

Yesterday I was planning on spending the afternoon relaxing and working on some drawings, and hopefully talking with Holly. Shortly after noon (I think) Don, Zack, and Blaire showed up here asking if I wanted to come join them and learn to do some falling. I wasn’t prepared and tried to get out of going, but Don was persistent and offered to drive me to and from, so I asked him to wait while I got dressed and rolled a joint. We went to the school and cleared some trees to make a path from the school to the new property James bought. I watched Zack and Blaire drop a few small trees, then Alex (the dude from Korea), had a turn. Then I got a quick lesson and got to drop two fairly big trees, and a smaller one. The biggest one I dropped was about 60 something feet, but my memory card ran out of space just as we were pushing it over. Still, it was cool even if I didn’t catch it on camera. This tree was off aim by a few feet, but for my first one, I think I did alright.

After we drank a few beers Don dropped us all off, and brought me and Vince (another dude from our course who showed up just before we were leaving) back to David’s. Vince stayed here in April while he was taking the Post and Beam course, but now he’s camping down at Page’s Marina. He’d asked about coming over one night for a barbecque a couple times, so I offered to make him veggie burgers. We were chatting about how neither of us like tv much, and then I mentioned how much Star Trek I watch. He said he’s seen every episode of every series, but he hadn’t seen any of the movies since Star Trek V. I told him I had the newest, and that it was decent, so we watched it while we ate.

Then I went to bed with a brutal headache and woke up with it still there this morning. Now I’m procrastinating riding to school by writing this entry, and drinking tea. I really don’t feel up to going, but I hate not showing up because not only is it an expensive place to miss a day you paid for, it’s also a group effort, and I feel like it’s rude to not do my share of the work. Not to mention the fact that James seems like a person who has never taken a sick day in his life, so I don’t think he’d be okay with it.

Oh, I forgot to mention, Vince was a real life Cowboy for years before deciding to come to the school! YeeeeHaw!
Food, Health, Random
Sick day
02.20.09 | Permalink | Comment?

I got up about an hour ago, after going to bed around 9:30 last night. I slept like shit, then woke up with a bad cough and really sore, really red throat. After expelling lots of gross gelatinous fluids from my face I made myself a licorice root tea, and am currently sipping it while going through some pictures I took yesterday at the beach near Holland Point Park. Dave and I took the dog there when he got home from work and walked around looking at rocks and different geological things that he knows all about. We found a nice point with a great view of the sunset and decided to sit and smoke a joint. We discussed theories on how the rocks we were standing on were formed, and then I saw what I thought was a dorsal fin surface then quickly re submerge. I pointed to where I saw it, and then it resurfaced again a little closer to us. This time I saw it was actually a sea lion. That is the first time I’ve ever seen a sea lion that wasn’t at Marine Land.

After it got too dark to hang out on the beach, we went back to Dave’s and ordered a pizza from this place. We had it the other night, and I’ve wanted it again ever since. Had to use my visa to buy it, but so the fuck what. It was fantastic. Then for dessert I ate three mini cheesecakes I got from a place called Cheesecakes 101 the day before. Today, I might start a master cleanse since I feel like shit and most likely won’t go anywhere, do anything, or eat. I’m also going to try really hard to not smoke any weed today, and decided last night I need to no longer smoke blunts exclusively.

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