Cancer Cat-astrophe!

Recently I found a scabby lump on Elsie's neck. Once the scab came off we realized that what I previously thought was a tiny wart had grown into a good-sized tumor. I brought her to the vet, who was able to immediately aspirate it and diagnose it as a mast cell tumor. The vet removed it during her lunch break and the pathology report was optimistic that it hadn't spread (but still a 25% chance of recurrence). Our little cancer survivor was back at home the same day and pretty unhappy about the whole ordeal:

Casey was very concerned about Princess Meowkins (no relation to Mr. Meowkins)
But after a few days there was no discernible effect on appetite for cat food (side note: Elsie has lost almost 2 lbs in the past year due to diligent dieting!)
or snuggling:
Hopefully this is the end of the story!

Pizza. Pizza Party.

The flavor of eggs can vary greatly depending on the diet of the chickens. Casey and I have grown weary with these egg-flavored eggs. What if we could have pizza-flavored eggs? Awesome, right?

Actually we got a frozen pizza from Safeway that had obviously been thawed for days (weeks?) and refrozen so that when we cooked it, the meat was rancid (WTF Safeway!). So we passed it on to the chickens and they had a sleepover pizza party!

Even the new chickens got some pizza!:

Yosemite Trip with the Crablab

While Californians are horrified to hear that people actually live in cold places (like Wisconsin), they simultaneously love, love, love to go up into the mountains and hang out in the snow. I guess it is really exotic for them. I got rid of all my winter stuff when I moved here, only to find that I now have to borrow jackets and gloves from Californians.

So...president's day weekend, Casey and I went up to Yosemite with a bunch of people from my lab and rented a house together. It was pretty fun, but since it was the most crowded day of the year for skiing, we went showshoeing instead. We went out a bunch of miles to some point where you can see the valley. Here is a famous rock, maybe El Capitan?

It was a long way down!
This I know, it's half dome! (taken from the parking lot at the ice skating rink, which was pretty lame compared to the lakes in WI)

Here's Casey, our intrepid leader, pointing the way to unexplored territory!

Here's me at Hech heche dam (where the bay area gets most of its water). Jokes about peeing in it abounded!

No pictures of Eric and Dipa in this post. I'm sure they will be relieved.

Thanksgiving Reminiscence w/ Drs. U and S

The previous post brought back fond memories of Thanksgiving 2009 which we spent with E and D in beautiful Oakland. It was a totally awesome time. We prepared a super feast including lentils-cured pork products super dish, roasted capon, super fancy green bean casserole, cookie-cake-pie, coors lights, and probably some other awesome stuff that I can't remember. Here are a few photos.

A sampling of the spread. Some dishes are under aluminum foil or have yet to be prepared.

Brett Farve is salivating over that capon. It was that tasty!

Cookie-Cake-Pie

Oddly, I didn't photograph any of the attendees of this super party. But, I was able to find this old picture of our hosts at another holiday. Here's Dipa dressed as Jane Goodall and Eric as Don Draper from Mad Men.