Random stuff...

Another fantasy baseball draft completed! I’m actually rather happy with my team this year – at least happier than I was with my team last year after the draft. I of course did not end up with Sabathia (our friend Nick picked him up), but I got a couple good pitchers with Webb and Lackey. I also took Joba Chamberlain, who COULD have a really good year – if he stays healthy and isn’t thrown in jail for driving drunk. Here’s hoping. My one other Yankee is Arod – he had hip surgery a few weeks ago, so he’ll be out at the beginning of the season. But I figured it would be worth it to pick him up and use a mediocre third baseman in his absence, because HOPEFULLY when he’s back, he’ll make up the difference. Anyway, I’m SO looking forward to baseball season and can’t wait for opening day!

Our friends Jen and Jason and their kids are here visiting from Chicago. And Eric flew down for a few days, too. So mom, as per the rules of the “When Eric Comes to Visit” handbook, baked a couple pies. This has been a point of contention between Rick and my mom for years, as it seems she only bakes her yummy, perfect pies when Eric comes to visit. The few times she’s attempted to bake pies “for Rick,” Eric has just happened to be in town also. She even once tried to bake an apple pie with an “R” for “Rick” carved into the crust, but since Eric was here too, I think everyone assumed that the “E,” “I” and “C” were implied. Ah well, when you have pies as good as the ones mom bakes, who cares if they’re for Eric?? :)

So who watched Obama’s little address last night? We’ve figured out that there’s pretty much a pattern to everything he says. It’s something like, "blah blah blah unfair, blah blah blah bad selfish rich people, blah blah blah share the wealth, blah blah blah me myself and I, blah blah blah I will be the solution for all of mankind’s evils." The emphasis being placed on the “unfairness” of how some people earn more money than others is seriously disturbing to me. It reminds me of something I read the other day, about a crazy woman who was divorcing her multi-millionaire husband because he could only afford to give her 52K a week and that wasn’t “enough” for her. (She spent over four thousand dollars a WEEK just on clothing… what the heck??) Now, in this case, I believe the judge should award this woman NOTHING and tell her to go out and get a job and figure out how to pay for her OWN life. No one is under any obligation to give this woman four thousand dollars a week to waste on clothing. However, if it was the other way around, and SHE was the multi-millionaire, then that money would be HERS to spend as she saw fit. If she wanted to be stupid and wasteful and spend her money on frivolous things, that would be HER decision. As wasteful as it might be, NO ONE has the right to swoop in and say, “I’m sorry, we don’t like the way you’re spending your money – you’re being selfish, so we’re going to take most of it and give it to these people who are sitting around doing nothing.” The HOPE is that someone with that much money would, in fact, be generous and GIVE some of it away. (This is what CHARITIES are for…) Ugh… if I get started on this, it’ll take over my entire blog post… :)

Oh, it looks like Echo is doing MUCH better now! We were worried because she’d been eating again, and then she once again lost her appetite – it seemed for a while like it would come and go, and we weren’t sure she would ever feel better. But the second loss of appetite coincided with the beginning of a new antibiotic we were giving her – so we think it may have been a side effect of medication. But after a few days she was back to eating again, and once the antibiotic was finished, we took her back to the vet for a follow up – and all of her elevated enzymes were nearly back to normal, which was great news. Since she’s doing so well now, we’ve started giving her shots of something called Adequan – it’s a medication that’s supposed to help rebuild joint cartilage and has been shown to really help dogs with arthritis. And it could just be my imagination, but it seems like she’s already a bit more active than she was before (the vet said it would take about a month to tell if it was really having an effect). Now we’re just trying to fatten her up, because she lost quite a bit of weight when she wasn’t feeling well. I’m feeding everything she wants right now – pizza crusts, chicken, steak, extra dog treats, extra canned food for breakfast. She is getting seriously spoiled right now!

Okay, I believe it may be time for an impromptu cappuccino run, so I’m off to partake of a lovely caffeinated beverage…