Review of Encore and Wynn Las Vegas

Posted on January 24, 2012 by jenn

We stayed at the Encore when we were in Vegas in December 2011 to run the half marathon and our experience was fantastic, so I thought I would write about it here.

The Wynn and Encore definitely want to be known as separate hotels, but they are attached and are very similar, and the locals call it the Wynncore, and it certainly seems like you are indeed staying at the Wynncore when there!

ROOM:

But our room, was indeed at the Encore and it was beautiful!

Here are some interior shots:

This is the living area – office desk to one side and the couch is next to it

The tv revolves to face the bed or the couch.  The mini bar is next to the bed.

However, the view wasn’t very nice:

The deserted Eschelon Casino

Deserted Eschelon, The Adventure Dome and the Hilton that is now LVH.

This photo that looks like a drawing is the private golf course for resort guests.

The view was a little better at night, thanks to the bright lights of the Riviera and Circus Circus.  Yes, my camera is horrible at taking night shots. They are kind of super imposed on top of each other.

But I guess it could be worse, because the other side of the tower probably only has views of the Wynn Tower?  I don’t know for sure, cause I wasn’t over there.  And I certainly have had worse views at hotels, and in Vegas.  The super suites on the end appeared to have good views.

The view should not take away from the luxury of the room.  Because we were race participants, the first night we came back to our room, we found goodies on our desk, which included arm bands for the the exclusive party in the nightclub (we didn’t go), bottled water and knit hats for keeping our heads warm during the race.  Thanks!

Also, they had the electronic control panel that controlled the lights and the curtains, like the Aria, only these worked.  YAY.  So that was a plus.

HOTEL/CASINO AMENITIES ETC

One of the things I like the Wynn and Encore is that the casinos themselves are not that large.  You can find your way around it easily and the casinos are not usually that busy, so you can generally find your favorite slot machine and sometimes even a table game in your budget.  Sometimes.  This IS an upscale hotel, so after dinner, the table games are a little rich for our tastes and the minimums are usually $25 and so we have to go down the street a bit for that (or up to the Riveria or Circus Circus).

You can however get lost in the hallways connecting the hotels and in the shops.  If you love to window shop in the expensive stores, this is a nice place to do.  Don’t wear slippery shoes, or you risk falling on the shiny floors!

Another really nice thing about the hotel is because it is new, it doesn’t have the embedded cigarette smoke smell that so many of the casinos have.  Eww.  It is still new.  And these hotels are still the most beautiful hotels I have ever seen, and that includes the even newer Aria and Cosmopolitan, also beautiful.  You can see plenty of pictures of the hotels online, but you must see it to believe it.  Here is some of the Christmas decor:

 

The best thing about the Wynn and Encore?  The FOOD!

Of course, this comes from a vegan leaning vegetarian, and the owner of the hotels is a vegan, but I can assure that even the non-specifically vegan food in this hotel is wonderful.  We always came here for the pancakes (always vegetarian!) and they are the BEST PANCAKES on the Strip.  Every restaurant  had a vegan menu.  Even room service.  Check this out:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a vegan’s dream come true.  Usually, the choices are a salad and maybe a dinner roll.  I could have stayed in the room and never come out and not had the same thing twice!  And that was just room service.  Every time we ate at a restaurant in the Wynn or Encore, I chose from the vegan menu.  Even a non-vegan or vegetarian will eat well, because there is plenty of food for omnivores and also for those who are trying to eat less meat in general – and I know you are out there!

This was one of my breakfasts – a tofu scramble on flatbread – Yum!

One day, we ate at the buffet and I had a vegan alfredo that made me moan in joy and I plan to try to recreate that at home.  Oh yeah, I do.  I have a bunch of recipes and I am going to go through them all. I have one that is by the chef that creates the meals at the Wynn, although I am not sure if it is THAT one.   I was disappointed that we didn’t get to eat at the steakhouse, because I wanted to see what the vegan menu would have been like.  But seriously, I never ate so much good food as I did as when I stayed at the Wynn/Encore.

LOCATION

But there is always a downside, isn’t there.  And location is it.  It is pretty far down on the North End of the Strip.  You can see that the next two properties – the Riviera and Circus Circus – are the neighbors and that is pretty much the end.  The Stratosphere is about another mile away.  The Strip pretty much ends here.  If you are the kind of person who pretty much stays close to home base, then great.  Because with Fashion Show Mall, the Palazzo, Venetian, TI and The Mirage close by, you will still have plenty to do, but if you like to venture to places south, as we do, then you will have some walking to do.  So just prepare for that and you will be fine.

On our last full day, we went to see Michael Jackson’s Imortal (see it – it’s a must) and we walked the whole way down to Mandalay Bay and back in one day and stopped at all our favorite places along the way, and made a day of it.  We didn’t mind and we planned for it.  So just be aware of that.  Bring cab fare or be prepared to walk to monorail station, since the Wynn discontinued the shuttle to LVH for the monorail.

FINAL VERDICT: 

I definitely recommend staying at the Wynn and/or Encore!

Here are some bonus pictures of the Christmas Decor of Bellagio Garden and the Venetian!

The Venetian’s Walkway

The Venetian’s Spectacular Tree that changed colors and in which

photos can’t do it justice.

The rest are from the magnificant Bellagio

 

 

Posted in Holidays, Las Vegas, Travel | Leave a comment

Las Vegas Rock & Roll Marathon and Half Marathon 2011

Posted on December 16, 2011 by jenn

Where have you all been?  I have had a lot to say!   You missed it!  And now you’ll never know what it was all about.   :)

But today, I want to talk about the Las Vegas Rock & Roll Marathon and Half Marathon held this year on December 4, 2011.  Matt & I have participated in the half marathon for the last two years.  We were going to take a pass on it this year, but then it was decided that they were going to turn it into a night run, and well, we just had to do it. We had to be a part of history.  We were amongst the very first to sign up and were pretty excited about it for most of the year.  After all, Vegas is one of our very favorite places for some strange reason, considering that we don’t drink, go to nightclubs, gamble away a lot of money or spend a fortune in expensive stores.

Originally, we were going to stay at NY NY.  But then we received a friendly e-mail from the Wynn inviting us to stay there offering us some very too-g00d-to-pass-up-rates and a shuttle to/from the race start/finish and some other amenities.  We thought this was a great opportunity to stay there.  It was awesome.  We actually stayed at the Encore, and a full review will be upcoming (as well as some other Vegas hotel reviews).

Fast forward to race day.  I woke up at 5:00 a.m.  and went back to bed smiling.  The thing I hate the most about races is that early rising time.  I hate getting up at 3:00 a.m. to run a race.  I understand why races start so early.  I always thought it would be better if they started at 11:00 though.  But, that is just me.  And maybe, my friend Vicki.  Eventually, though, Matt and I did get up and we knew that there was a balance to follow between eating and not eating.   Same with movement.  We had a good breakfast, a good lunch, a little walking and resting in between.

We had planned to be on the shuttle at 4:00, for the race start at 5:30.  But as we headed to the lobby to the shuttle, we find a very long line  which doesn’t appear to be moving.  At all.  Long story  short – we get on the bus at 4:55.  The bus driver tells us that it will take an hour to get to the start.  Yikes!  I didn’t believe him.  As someone prone to exaggeration, I tend to think everyone is.  Well, he was right on.  There was so much traffic.  I guess the residents of Las Vegas didn’t get the memo about the Boulevard being closed.  Sigh.

Big races like this usually use a corral system for starting.  The faster runners start in an earlier corral and slower runners and walkers are to the back.  Matt was in corral 18 and I was in 33.  According to the booklet sent home with us at the expo, I was to start at 6:25.  We got to the start line at 6:05.  There were no corrals.  It was just a mass exodus to the start.  Matt and I were not able to gear check his warm clothes (it was to be going down to the 30s by the time the race was over), so I had to carry them with me and we were not able to use a porta potty.  In fact, the bus couldn’t even get us to the start line.  He dropped us off somewhere close by and said that it would be quicker for us to walk to the start.  When we got there, organizers were tearing up the start line and looked at us with disdain and said “Hurry it up, and get moving”.  Oh, like we are late on purpose.

I don’t know what they did with the literally hundreds of people that were still behind us waiting for busses at the Encore and Wynn and Venetian etc!  They were even later!

At this point, all we could do is … go.  It was already cold out.  Not unbearably so, but getting there.  I was warm, and I had a hat and gloves in my pocket.  I had planned to do a lot of running intervals in the beginning for about the first half and then walk totally the second half.  I wasn’t trained for much more than five miles of intervals, but at races, we can go further than we have trained for.  The cold slowed me down and having to use the bathroom made it worse.  I couldn’t run if I wanted to.  The cold made me stiff and it hurt to run.  I really needed that porta potty!

So, we are TRYING to go.  Really.  But here is the biggest problem  - Too. Damn. Crowded.  No room to move.  Couldn’t run. Couldn’t walk.  Everyone shoved in like sardines.

First water station – a little past the first mile.  It’s not even 6:25.  Not even an hour after the start of the half marathon.  This was MY ORIGINAL SCHEDULED STARTING TIME.  They had already started shutting it down.  Yes, we were all like “What? No water?”  Then we notice a little further up, water on the left side.  So we go over to the left and get some.   This was a pattern for the whole race.  Everything was on the left.  The water stations. The porta-potties.  Towards the end, there were some water tables on the right, finally.

Somewhere around mile 3, I hear “Please move aside.  Marathoners are coming through.  Please move.  We’ve already gone 15 miles” and stuff like that.  He sounded really rude. I was kind of taken aback.  I was on the right side anyway, so he wasn’t talking to me.  It was about mile 8 when I noticed that there were cones separating the lanes.  Little tiny cones.  Yeah, like we could see that.  How about putting water stations and porta potties on our side then?  Maybe we wouldn’t have to migrate over there?

All the lines to the potties were a mile long.  Eventually, around mile 5, I gave up looking for a short line and found one behind a band station. It was pretty demoralizing to watch the mass of people go swarming by.   I find out later that it was a band use toilet, but they still let us all use it. Thankfully.  When I left, I knew that I had time to make up and I did some running intervals.  I was freezing at this point, and my asthma threatened to kill me, but I put on my hat and went for it.

The crowd never ever lightened up.  The closest I got to a celebrity was seeing a Biggest Loser semi-finalist from season 3, who was running for the Colitis Foundation.  It just kept getting colder and colder.  I keptwalking faster and faster. I would find a person in front of me and catch up to them and then find another target and just keep doing that until I got to the finish.  The icing on the cake was the rain that fell during the last mile.  The sprinkles on top was that they ran out of half marathonmedals and I got a full marathon medal!  It was prettier but I didn’t earn it!

I finished in something like 3:39.  You can easily take 20 minutes of that off for my standing in line to use a toilet and that makes it 3:20 which seems about right.  This was definitely the worst race ever.  The most poorly run race ever by an experienced racing group.

 

Me at the finish line, with my green banana (it was ripe by Wednesday), marathon medal, very glad to be done and not be inside the madhouse, er, Mandalay Bay.

Physically, I was fine, I am fitter and lighter this year than last year.   I didn’t get sick like last year, although many did get sick.

I am going to list the complaints, mine or others’ that have shown up on facebook below:

*Expo:  Overcrowded.  I’m used to this and didn’t see anything out of the ordinary except for the Zappos area.  However, while we were there, we were given apologies and told they would have that fixed for next year.

*Illnesses:  Apparently hundreds got sick.  Not us.  Water was blamed.  Southern Nevada Health Department has tested the water and it has come back clean.  I suspect that it was due to the fact that it was a night race and people are not used to running at night. I literally saw hundreds of pieces of discarded clothing on the side of the road.  I thought people were being short sighted there.  I think these people were sick from hypothermia.  I also can’t tell you how many people I heard saying that they didn’t eat anything or hardly anything all day, thinking they couldn’t.  Just because you don’t eat before running a morning race (when do you have time when you wake up at 3:00 a.m. for a 5:00 race?  who can eat when you are still asleep?)  It is totally different at night!  It wasn’t the water!  I also suspect that there might have been some alcohol consumption going on.  In Vegas?  No, you say?

*Walkers:  Too many walkers.  I don’t think there were too many walkers.  I think the walkers were pushed to the front because of the late shuttle busses and the dismantling of the corrals, and people were more aware of them.   And I think a lot of people who walk/run were forced to walk a lot more than they would normally have because they had no choice due to the crowded conditions.  I have never heard so many rude things said about walkers at races as I did on the Competitor Group’s facebook event wall after the race.

*This race was awesome last year.  At 30,000 participants. This year, 45,000 participants were way too many.

*Apparently (I didn’t see this part) Mandalay Bay was a mess.  Gear check was inside Mandalay Bay and it was a dangerous situation with all the people.  They allowed the racers only in a certain part of the hotel.  Everyone was squished.  The medics were in there too.  People were being trampled trying to get warm, get to a bathroom, get medical attention/food, get to the tram, their gear.  Andboth before and after the race, the Michael Jackson show was letting in/out and I experienced that later in the week and that was its own kind of madhouse.  So glad we didn’t need to get in there.

*Shuttle busses – lots of people said that there were no shuttles at the end of the race.  There were. And they were clearly marked.  We had no trouble finding them.  I think the issue was when people went into Mandalay Bay never to return, when they came out , they ended up on some side street somewhere and couldn’t figure out where they were.  Gear check should have been outside

*Medals – again.  How the heck do you run out of these?  Oh, you let people take more than one?  You let people who didn’t participate take them?  That’s the rumors that I heard!  Competitor group has apologized and is making good on getting medals out to those who didn’t get them.  I e-mailed them and have heard back and I will be getting a new one.

*T-shirts –  they ran out of these too.  Apparently all the women are the size of 11 year olds cause they are tiny sized.  I have mine and it’s teeny tiny.  I should fit an XL.  There were no Half Marathon finisher shirts at the expo either.  I don’t know if they weren’t printed or if they were sold out.  Considering how early we were there on Saturday though, I would hope it was that they just didn’t print any, because that means they printed about 500 otherwise which is even stupider than not printing them at all.

At this point, that is all I can remember.

I am going to add three links below, two other blogs and a newspaper article below.  Wordpress doesn’t really link, so you’ll have to copy and press.  I particularly like the one that gives the perspective of the runner from the front of the pack who didn’t see all of the problems.

Thank you for reading this very long post!  :)

http://runitfast.com/2011/12/05/the-nightmare-on-the-strip-rock-n-roll-las-vegas-marathon-half-marathon-full-of-sin/

http://runforfun-stephanie.blogspot.com/2011/12/vegas-tale-of-two-races.html

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/dec/08/marathon/

Posted in Fitness, Las Vegas, Travel | 1 Comment

July Trips: Food Porn Edition

Posted on August 26, 2011 by jenn

The husband and I took two practically back to back trips this July.   We attended two conferences.  The first was to Las Vegas and the second to Portland, OR.  We were home for exactly four days in between.  Both cities are great for food.  The latter in particular for vegetarians and vegans (although I admit I didn’t take pictures of everything I ate at either place, just obviously, the gooey stuff, based on the title of this post).

First up:

BLT Burger’s Bread Pudding Made out of Krispy Kreme Donuts and Rum Raisin Ice Cream

(The Mirage)

Bread Pudding: A

Ice Cream: F

Next time, I’ll skip the ice cream.  Matt suggested I just get vanilla.  But since it isn’t anything special and it really does affect the pudding, I am okay with just skipping it altogether.  Then I won’t get a belly ache.

I do have to say that I LOVED the veggie burger.  It was made of falafel!  Yumm.  We will definitely be back.

Next Up:

Holstein’s Chocolate, Banana and Peanut Butter Slider and Fries

(Cosmopolitan Hotel)

Presentation/Creativity:  A+

Fries:  A+

Slider:  C  (it was too sweet for me – I ate two bites and had to put it away)

The fries are churros!  The ketchup there is strawberry sauce!  The burger is mouse-y stuff and the burger bread is something I don’t know, wafery thing.

The burger was a vegan patty that I thought was good too, but not better than Stripburger.  But the creativity in desserts here was great.  I would eat here again if I was in the area, but not actively seek it out if I was staying further out one end or the other of the Strip.

Third:

Red Velvet Pancakes, Sugar Factory

(Paris Las Vegas)

Yum.  A+ without the toppings.  No need to say more.  Get these.  You’ll stay full all day.  Only available until 11:00

Fourth:

Some candy place in center court at Forum Shops

We did not get these.  These make my face hurt just thinking about eating them.  I just took the picture because I found it quite fascinating.  It was a difficult thing to do because the person working kept coming over to me.

Now we move on to Portland.  It wasn’t as bad there.

One thing I love about Portland is that most of the local restaurants, that is to say, not the national chains and not the specifically vegan or vegetarian ones have at least two or three vegetarian things on their menu.  We went to a pasta restaurant near our hotel called Pastini Pastaria.  I HIGHLY recommend it.  They had a whole SECTION for veg-heads!  It took me a while to decide what to get.  However, there was no doubt I was getting dessert.  It WAS my birthday after all.  Here is my birthday gelato sundae!  :)

Yum.  No, I haven’t magically started liking chocolate ice cream or gelato. I ate around it.

And just to help unclog those pores, here is a representative of the kind of lunch I ate in Portland:

That is a “live” (or raw) falafel wrap from the Blossoming Lotus restaurant. I can hear all the raw food eaters groaning that I mixed all that dairy and ooziness with their raw goodness. But what can I say?  Isn’t vacation all about the food?  Oh, it’s not?

And the best thing of all? I didn’t gain one pound on this trip.  Not one.  Even with two cross-country flights, all those desserts.  It must have been the fact that I ate well around the other food and didn’t stress about it most of the time.

Next post, I’ll tell you a little about the trip highlights.  There’s not many, since it was mostly just sitting in conferences, but there were some (besides the food!)

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Kitten Camp

Posted on August 26, 2011 by jenn

Two weeks ago I was asked to foster some almost ready to be adopted kittens.  They had been in a foster home, but the their family was going on vacation so they needed someone to take them for a week or so while the two littlest ones put on a few ounces.  So of course I agreed.

This particular group was again a group of four.  Three boys and a girl.  Two tuxedos and a pair of black ones.  The girl kitten was one of the black ones.   I learned how to tell the black ones apart.  The girl, Lola, is of of thinner, sleeker stature and has yellow eyes and her twin brother, Andy, is rounder, plumper, has longer hair and green eyes.   When I brought them home, Lola and Andy were instantly wonderful and lovely, but the tuxes were a bit, um, not pleased with me.  They did not want me to hold them at all.  They were fine with me feeding them, and touching them. They would purr when I pet them.  But, it is important to know that purring isn’t always indicative of pleasure.  I was very perplexed.  ”Why don’t they like me?” I wondered.  I sat with them for awhile, the tuxedo boys ignoring me, and the twins loving me.  But eventually, I had to get ready for my evening outing.  When we got home that evening, my husband said that he would go take care of and visit with the kittens while I attended to the other cats for the night.  They seemed to like him a little better, but still weren’t too keen on him holding them.

Well, I don’t stand for that kind of behavior in this house and two weeks later, the tuxedos are now lap kittens, and allow me to trim their nails, put eye medications in and do whatever else I need.  I guess they just needed to get used to me and my environment.  They are now, however, unwilling to be foster kittens any longer.  When I open their door, they jump the baby gate (that is really quite adorable, as they are so tiny and yet so agile they can pull themselves up and over) and run all through the basement.  They want to be real cats now.  They want to have owners who love them and will let them have free reign of the house and explore and have a lap ready for them at all times.

They go back to the shelter tomorrow and I hope they all go home over the weekend. It is generally not hard for me to give them back to the shelter and to give them to new people.  It is hard for me to split them up from their siblings.  I’m also glad that I don’t have to choose which one of them to adopt.  Although I’d probably choose Andy, cause he is the cuddliest.  But I had to work hardest to get Thomas to like me.

Below, the first four pictures are my favorites of each of them, then I included some candids of their brief stay.

This is Thomas.  It took me nearly two weeks to get a good shot of him as he would never look at the camera.

This is Isaiah.

This is Lola (even though her eyes look green, they are yellow) .  She is wanting to sit on my lap, which is currently occupied.

Andy the lovebug

And some other photos just for fun.

See – he’d always close his eyes right when I’d snap the picture!

I love this one!

Bye-Bye Baby Kittens!  I’ll miss you guys and your fun antics!  Good luck in your new homes!

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Sometimes, they are too young ….

Posted on July 13, 2011 by jenn

When Cole first came to us, he was broken:

No, not like that.  More like this:

See the little shaved leg?  Yeah, it was was broken.   I met Cole at the shelter, the day he was brought back from the specialist and having his pins put in.  I saw him and said “Gimme! ” and sat him on my lap while I entered medical records into the computer.  Little dude just sat there and purred and didn’t move.  I was being suckered.  Just like his mentor, Indy, had done to me 16 years ago.  So when I saw Beth, the foster coordinator at the time, I said “I’m fostering him until he is better”.

Like that face couldn’t sucker you in!  :)

And boy did he get better.  As he got better, he got badder!


Skyler is telling him this is not a good idea!

I love how she says “I told you to stop!”

Then we get some foster kittens from a hoarding situation, and Cole teaches them all about how to be a kitten:

I apologize to the owners.

Eventually, Cole does settle down and become a very wonderful and loving cat, with just a tad a mischeviousness in him.

And he is actually the smartest cat I’ve ever owned.

So why this post?  Well last Sunday morning, at 3:30ish actually, I heard a strange noise.  It sounded very strange – I want to call it a scratching incident.  I was able to wake Matt easily and say “Hey, do you hear that?” and we went downstairs to investigate.  I was convinced it was wildlife outside.  But no.  Here is the conversation:

Matt:  ”It’s Cole”

Me:  ”Is he having a seizure”

Matt”  ”I think so”.

Me:  ”Oh no”  but not in a panicky way.

I get into the living room for the last twitch and lift his face (don’t try that at home) and he is all glassy eyed and foaming.  He is done twitching and we just wait it out and eventually he is able to get up and walk around, although he still confused.  He hisses at us, but not the other cats.  He walks around in the Halloween Cat position – back arched, tail straight out with fur all sticking out.  I didn’t know they could walk around like that.  I found it odd that he was hissy with us but not the cats.  None of the other cats were freaked by him except Blossom, who just tends not to like him in general, so we locked her in the bathroom.  We didn’t need her special kind of evil right then.

Eventually, he came out of it and acted normally, and let us pet and hold him and purred.  Had open mouth breathing.  When he started playing with his toys, I knew that he was totally 100% back to normal, and that we could go to bed (as if we could sleep – but surprisingly we did – and in my case – very well!).

A seizure is not a rush to the emergency vet type of emergency unless they last a very long time or continue to occur.  But of course, this was the Independence Day holiday, so we had to wait until Tuesday to see the vet.  I already had to be there early to take Willie for a dental, so I took Cole with me hoping for a morning appointment and I was lucky to get a cancellation.  Whew.

Nothing showed up on exam and so we took bloodwork.  The next day, the blood results were in and the only thing on the blood work was CPK, which is a marker for muscle inflammation.  It could be skeletal muscle, meaning that a seizure could have happened and made the inflammation/CPK high.  But my vet said that he doesn’t usually see that and that CPK is usually a heart function.  Sigh.  So we took the next step and had a chest x-ray done the next day (Thursday).

Cole has a slight – very slight – heart enlargement.  It is slight enough that in the absence of the seizure or other episode, which could have been syncope (three syllables), it would probably not register as a concern.  So right now, we are treating the heart with a glandular supplement, which fortunately Cole likes as a treat and we are going to retest the CPK in 6 weeks.  If it still elevated, then we will go for an ultrasound.

Cole is only 5 years old.  He is not supposed to be the one with health problems!  Not yet!  It’s not fair!

But you know what he has to say about all of this?

Told you he was smart.  :)

Posted in Cats, Family, Fostering | 1 Comment

Travelling Tales, Part IV: Glee! Live in Cleveland, OH

Posted on July 13, 2011 by jenn

For my (early) birthday present this year, Matt bought me tickets to see Glee! Live in Cleveland, OH, which is not too far from where we live.  It is about a two hour drive.  I was very very excited when he showed me these tickets.  :)  Even though Cleveland is not that far, we did decide to spend the night just because we knew we wouldn’t feel like driving home after the concert.

Before the show, we checked in to our hotel and headed over the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner, where we discovered, that yeah, they did change the veggie burger chainwide and now the whole chain has been ruined for me.  Such a sad sad thing.  It was perfect the way it was, why did they have to change a burger that was delicious and swap it out for Boca?  Why? Why?  Why?

What can I say about the concert?  It was AWESOME.  Here is the view from our seats:

That photo was taken with my iPhone which makes everything seem further away, so to see how close it was, well it is remarkable.  It had also been so long since I’ve been to a concert that I had totally forgotten that we are allowed to have cameras, so of course I hadn’t taken mine and all I had was my cell phone and got some rather bad photos, and should have given up, but I kept taking them. :)

So the concert.  The warm up act was a dance troupe Legion of Extraordinary Dancers, that I really didn’t find to be all that interesting.  I just discovered though that it a group that Harry Shum, Jr (plays Mike Chang) is involved with.  Everyone else was screaming and yelling, so either they enjoyed it or they were faking it.  :)

While we were waiting for the real act to start, they showed photos and quotes from the show on the big screens to entertain us.  Also, we were the last row before a big aisle there on the floor, before the next group of rows of chairs.  Behind that group of chairs was another stage – which we discovered would be used during the concert – as would that aisle.  Right before the performers, who will be in character, complete with Artie in a wheelchair, come out, cheerleaders come out and start to rile up the crowd and are passing out little bags.  I had no idea what they were, as I wasn’t given one.  I guess I wasn’t cheering and carrying on enough.  The big screen lights up and Jane Lynch as Sue Sylvester comes on and explains to us what is going on and it is her Cheerios passing out puke bags for the concert.  Oh Sue.  What are we going to do with you.  Turns out, I didn’t need that bag, eh?

Finally, the cast comes out and starts to sing.  They open with “Don’t Stop Believing” as expected, even though that was a Season #1 song.   At this point, I don’t remember everything about it in sequence, so I am going to just spill my thoughts.  :)

I loved the back stage because I was so freaking close to it.  I am not a crying because I am there with the performers live kind of fan.  Maybe cause I am old.  But I just really liked seeing everyone up close.  The Warblers sang in the back.  The first person to sing in the back was Puck.  The young girls really flipped out over that.  He walked through the aisle in front of me.  Again, I didn’t die.  I’m just old, I guess.  :)

Throughout the performance, they would put vignettes of Mr. Shu and Sue Sylvester on the big screen interacting with the “kids”.  Problem with that is that is that the dialogue got drowned out by the real kids screaming and yelling.  I didn’t really understand that.  It wasn’t like they were actually there?  Again, I didn’t get it.

I had heard a rumor that when they sing Born this Way, they switch their shirts, but they didn’t.   I heard a rumor that Gwyneth Paltrow toured with them.  I guess Cleveland wasn’t exciting enough.  :)

The only thing, besides Mr. Shu not being there, (I know, I know, he is on Broadway) that disappointed me was that they didn’t sing any of their mashups and, to me, those are their best songs which shows the creativity of this group.  Fiddler on the Roof/Umbrella (c’mon, that is creative genius) does require Gwyneth and Matthew, I know, and they weren’t there, but there are plenty of other mashups that could have been sung.  Surely, those are better choices than Big-Bottomed Girls?  But, whatever.

But it was a  great show, lots of talent, good music and good dancing (except from Finn) and even Matt, who doesn’t watch the tv show enjoyed the concert.  Here are some of the photos I took.  And these are the good ones.

This was when they first came out

Puck singing – yeah, lovely picture, but look how close!

iPhone perspective


Kurt and Rachel – back stage

Mercedes – backstage (no flash)

Artie – safety dance – big screen shot

Safety Dance

Single Ladies (Encore) Back Stage

Complete song list (from internet, not me) not including encores:

“Don’t Stop Believin’”
“Dog Days Are Over”
“Sing”
“Slave 4 U”
“Fat Bottom Girls”
“PYT”
“I Want To Hold Your Hand”
“Ain’t No Way”
“Born This Way”
“Firework”
“Teenage Dream”
“Silly Love Songs”
“Raise Ur Glass”
“Happy Days”
“Lucky”
“River Deep Mountain High”
“Don’t Rain on my Parade”
“Jesse’s Girl”
“Valerie”
“Loser Like Me”

Posted in Music/Concerts, Recreation, Travel | Leave a comment

Travelling Tales, Part III: Zoos and North Carolina

Posted on June 27, 2011 by jenn

I’m combining these two trips because I don’t have pictures from North Carolina.  Call me a bad aunt if you must.  However, you must then call Matt a bad uncle and Kayla a bad cousin.  After all, neither of them took pictures either and I at least remembered to take the camera.  I prefer to think of it as being such an awesome aunt that I was too busy having fun to be taking time out for pictures.  But mostly, I just forgot to take them.  But first, let’s start with the first weekend in June.

The first weekend in June, Matt and I went on a trip with my fellow zoo docents to the Columbus Zoo in Columbus, OH and the Good Zoo in Oglebay, WV.  Columbus Zoo is a HUGE and beautiful zoo and if you are a fan of zoos, I highly recommend this zoo.  There are animals there that we don’t have at our zoo, like koalas, tree kangaroos, red pandas, Pallas cats, artic foxes, wolves and the fishing cat.  Oh and a really big bat!  Thank goodness we don’t have those big bats in Pittsburgh.  I would have to move.  I couldn’t live in a place where those big bats are!  My favorite exhibits were the gorilla exhibit because it looked so small but yet was so big.  They have a lot of gorillas and you look at this exhibit and think it’s small, then you see a gorilla and how little space he takes up and you realize just how humungous it is.  I liked the exhibit because it had climbing things and ropes and ledges and all kinds of fun looking things for them to do.  I also liked the outdoor penguin exhibit.  I like outdoor penguin exhibits.  Not all breeds of penguins can be kept in outdoor exhibits of course, but when they can, I like the outdoor exhibits.  There were lots and lots of baby animals.  Mostly primates.  And they were all oh so cute.

It was extremely hot this particular weekend.  Heat indexes of 97 degrees.  Pretty much a heat wave on the whole Eastern Shore, I believe. Although Columbus is hardly the Shore.  Ha ha.  The Columbus Zoo does have a water park as well.  So if you go, you can make a weekend of it, spend one day at the zoo, and one day at the water park.  We stayed at the nearby Chase Suites Hotel, which was a very nice hotel.

The next day we went to the Good Zoo at Oglebay in Wheeling, WV.  I didn’t even know that this zoo existed.  It is 70 acres, so it much smaller.  But boy is it nice. They too have really nice exhibits and very well cared for animals.  We loved seeing the baby zebra.  She still had her fur on.   We had a great time!  Since I took about 400 pictures of this trip, I’ll just post four – one of my favorite animal, the baby zebra, and two more photos that I am just proud of.

Baby Zebra at Good Zoo

Always my favorite animal (next to kitty cats of course)

I’m proud of this photo because this little guy was elusive.  It took forever to get a good shot of him.  (Columbus Zoo)

And this shot?  Well, c’mon.  Look at it.  It’s just beautiful.  Also, not an official zoo animal.

Now on to North Carolina part of the post.

Just like St. Petersburg, the main reason we visit North Carolina is to spend time with family.  This time it is my sister, three nieces and nephew.   This trip was scheduled for Friday – Monday.  We do fly to Raleigh, and although we could fly direct via USAirways, we usually choose Southwest.  This time, we had to choose a flight with a 2-hour layover.  Then we get a notification that our plane was going to be delayed for two hours.  So four hours in the BWI airport.  That is way too long to have any layover anywhere!  But we finally get there and was very happy to be there!  :)

We got up early the next day to travel to King’s Dominion in Virginia.  The last time Matt and I were there Maddie was just a little thing, a baby.  I don’t think Owen was even born.  Maddie is now 11, so it had been a long time.  King’s Dominion is a three hour drive from where they live.  We got there shortly after opening.  The East Coast heat wave was still in effect.  The kids didn’t care.  :)  We had a nice split.  The two younger girls and their parents went their way and the two older ones came with Matt, Kayla and me.  We rode the big rides, the rode the small rides.  We did hook up for food and things we could all ride throughout the day.  It was so much fun.

One highlight – the biggest roller coaster in the park, the Intimidator, uses the elevator pulley to pull you up the first hill like the Millenium Force at Cedar Point does.  And like the Millenium Force – it will occasionally break down.  And it did.  With Owen and Kayla on it.  Um.  Uh-oh.  Owen was good about it though.  No freak outs.  So that was a relief.  Matt and I had that happen to us at Cedar Point, so we know how it feels.  The staff at King’s Dominion were a bit rude with us though.  Funny, Matt took a picture with his cell phone (okay, so I guess we do have a picture of this trip somewhere) and they said “You can’t take a picture of that”.  Matt said “I already did”.  At least they didn’t make him delete it.  We told them our small nephew was on the ride, but they still made us leave the premises, but we stayed as close as they would allow.  Yeah, we were those people.  :)

The park was not crowded.  The longest line was about 25 minutes and that was for the Volcano.  Which I love, but Matt says is too slow for him (I think that is why I liked it).  We kept thinking that all of the people were over in the water park and that they would be coming over to the rides side before long, but no, they never did.  In fact, the park just kept getting emptier and emptier.  :)

We had a blast.  Matt and I even got on the ferris wheel at night with the little girls.  CoCo is just filled with so much joy. She is just incredible to spend time with.  When people say we should look at life from the eyes of a child, they are talking about children like CoCo.  She is so very delightful.  Here are some quotes that I lifted from Matt’s facebook page.  Shh…. don’t tell him, and me = Matt in these.

CoCo: “It almost makes me want to cry!”

Me: What?

CoCo: “The ferris wheel. It’s so big… and beautiful!”

And another, from the Triple Spin:

Coco: I don’t like going down.

Me: Oh, you like when we go up?

Coco: No, I don’t like going up.

Me: What do you like, then?

Coco: I don’t like going down. I don’t like going up. I don’t like anything!

[ride ends]

Coco: That was the best ride ever!

And also:

Coco: Mostly everybody at school calls me Lala because they love me so much.

And lastly the heart melter:

[Leans over to tell me a secret but instead kisses me twice on the cheek.]

Coco: One was for taking us on the ferris wheel, and one was for, “Good night!”

We closed the park and headed home.  My sister and I were in the same van with the girls and the boys and Kayla in another van.  They took one route, we took another.  On our route, we encountered the road being closed and so we had to detour.  We are exhausted, sleepy, thirsty, and here we are lost in the dark in Williamsburg Virginia.  The GPS was useless as it kept wanting us to go back to the exit where we were forced to get off in the first place.  But we got home – it took an extra hour.

Then we discovered the hamster was out of her cage.  We had a middle of the night rescue.  Yes, this is definitely an interesting trip.  :)  Fortunately, Sunday and Monday were much less eventful.  We spent time in the pool and playing with the kids and talking and just having fun in general.

Of course, there was the fun of actually getting home.  We had a very very short layover coming home.  I guess to make up for the four hours going down, eh?  Then we find out our flight from Raleigh was delayed.  Yay!  Our record of getting out of RDU airport continues to be 0%.  But we are always very early anyway.  We check our bags, the ladies taking care of this area are not paying attention and this took a little too long for my liking.  I know, what is the hurry?  Stay with me here!  We go through security.  Didn’t take long, but everyone had to be naked checked, no more sneaking through metal detectors only, so that slows us down.  We get to our gate and what do we see?  A plane that is boarding going to BWI where we are headed!  After spending two minutes discussing with Matt whether we should try to get on the plane and him not wanting to, I try anyway, and I run to the Customer Service desk and the lady said that she can get us on, there is lots and lots of room, the plane is half empty!  Yippeee!  Except.  The stupid gate man wouldn’t let us on.  Boooo!  So now we are down to our original and still 20 minute layover.   Mind you – all those annoyances – the luggage ladies paying attention, or not using the stupid scanners or not arguing with Matt – and we could have gotten on that plane! We literally missed our chance by two minutes.  So it was hard to relax waiting for our plane and even being on our plane despite being reassured we would make our connection.  We get off at BWI and we are literally one gate over from our flight to Pittsburgh and they are just lining up.  We get right in line and get right on the plane.  WHEW!

If only layovers were always that smooth. Oh wait, no.  It was too tenseful.

We take Kayla home and go to bed.  The next day, we have to get to Cleveland for the Glee Live concert and that is a post for another day.  I’m quite tired of writing.  Talk to y’all tomorrow.

I’ll refer you to my sister’s blog for photos of the children – she is in my Blogroll – All My Little Chickadees.

Posted in Family, Recreation, Travel | Leave a comment

Travelling Tales, Part II: UFC 129 and Toronto, Canada

Posted on June 26, 2011 by jenn

For years, Matt has been wanting to go to a UFC event.  Waiting and waiting for one to come close enough for him to go to one.  Or else for one to be in Vegas when we were planning to be in Vegas, but the timing never seems to work out. Well… finally, UFC 129 was announced – April 30, 2011 Toronto, Ontario, Canada!  YAY!  Close enough to go and one of our favorite cities!  Yippeee!

So, as soon as he could buy the tickets, he did.  Then we started scouring flights.  Flying to Toronto used to be so easy.  It’s less than an hour and it used to be cheap.  Now … it was very expensive.  Anything cheap was not direct and took many, many hours.  So we decided to suck it up and just drive.  We are not generally fans of driving to destinations much further than 3-4 hours.  There are other considerations too.  A drive can be short, yet difficult.  Or long, yet easy.  The first time we travelled to Toronto together, we didn’t really find it difficult.  Our problem was when we left, when we tried to get home, we couldn’t find our way “out” and we were driving all over Cananda and even when we finally found a place to stop to ask for directions – well, the people spoke French.  So … we thought – now we have GPS.  We can survive.  So we drove.  And yes, it wasn’t hard.  The hardest part is just when you get close to the city and that is where I made Matt drive.  And we parked the car and didn’t use it again the entire trip, because we didn’t need it.  Toronto has excellent public transportation and is also very easily navigable on foot.

Unfortunately, Toronto’s weather shadows Pittsburgh’s, except colder.  So they were also having cold and rain, just like us.  So we had to deal with being cold and all of that.  In the past, we’ve gone to Toronto in July, when it’s hot, but we were hoping they would get a freaky warm episode, so that we could go enjoy the islands, but no such luck.

We drove up on a Thursday, got there in time for dinner.  We basically did just that.  Checked-in the hotel, went to dinner, walked just a short while just to feel like we were in Toronto and then hung out in the room.

The next morning, Friday, we got up and had breakfast at the hotel, which was included in our room rate (thanks AAA).  This was also the day of the Royal Wedding.  Just FYI.  :)

In all of the times we had been to Toronto, the one thing we had (surprisingly) not done was go to the Hockey Hall of Fame.  So we decided to go do that.  This was also the only place the whole trip, pretty much, that I took pictures.  Here are some of them:

The Great Hall in the Hall of Fame – used to be a bank building.  I just thought this was beautiful!

More of the Great Hall

Me with the current Stanley Cup.  I wanted to point out the square with the most recent Penguin win, but Matt wouldn’t let me.

Why so serious?

This is the original Stanley Cup

Later that evening, after locating some food, and believe me, we eat well in Toronto (I think we went to the Hard Rock), we saw the musical Billy Elliot.  We had never seen Billy Elliot before, and it was good.  There wasn’t a heck of a lot happening in the theater this particular weekend, but we managed to fill our time.  Anyway, we did enjoy the show and we had really awesome seats.  We always have good luck getting great seats at theater in Toronto.

Saturday was dedicated to the UFC event.  In the morning, it was hotel breakfast again.  Then to the UFC fan expo.  We chose to walk to the venue.  It was a good 1.5 miles.  And Mother Nature was actually kind enough to let it not rain long enough for us to get there without the rain.  It was still chilly though.  :) This was such a great idea!  There were vendors.  And there were fighters!  And the fighters were set up to meet the fans and there were going to be photo opps and autograph sessions.  However … I am not sure what exactly happened.   But the expo was WAY too crowded.  It was no fun at all.  What we actually got to see was LINES.  There were LINES to get into LINES.   The vendors were not very interesting – and some of the fighters were sponsored by the vendors, so the crowds were around the vendors and we couldn’t look at the vendors’ booths even if we wanted to. Everyone was packed in like sardines.  I would say that the expo needs some big time re-working.  :)     Matt was very disappointed that he didn’t get to have the experience he had hoped for and I felt horrible about it too.  I know he was really excited about it.  So we went back to the hotel and hung out until dinner.  I think we ate at Hey Lucy, which was tasty, tasty.  Then to the fight we went.

Now, I have to admit.  I was not excited about this.  Fighting never really seemed to be my thing.  It never really excited me. I don’t get it.  I am a very non-violent person.  Why would anyone want to beat anyone else up? FOR FUN?  And worse? BE BEAT UP?  I had planned to be totally bored.  Yep.  Planning for boredom.  I took a book with me in my purse.  But then I got to the event.  And I actually watched the events.  Every single one.  Some were quick.  Some were longer.  There was one fight where one fighter had a hematoma almost as big as his head and yet he kept on fighting.  Now that is tough.  I do admit that by the end, even though I did watch them all, I was kinda getting tired of being there.  Blame the ADD.  I was ready to move on to something else.  But they did keep things moving, and the down time between fights wasn’t that long.

My biggest gripe about the fight itself is the music.  At first it was okay.  But by the end of the night is was SO FREAKING LOUD that I was losing my mind.  It just kept. getting. louder. and. louder.  It totally wasn’t necessary.  I’ve been to concerts that weren’t as noisy.  I understand the music filled in the gaps between fights, but still!   And the people next to me – and yes, I realize this has nothing to do with the event – were smoking cigarettes!  They were not permitted and it wasn’t until the end of the night that I discovered who it was, or I would have reported them.  All I knew is that I smelled them.  I thought I was losing my mind! I asked Matt “Do you smell cigarettes?”  and of course, he either didn’t or he wasn’t sure because the smoke would start blowing in another direction.  Oh well.  So in addition to going deaf, I was getting lung cancer.

So, once again, I surprised myself by enjoying something I didn’t think I would.  Would I go to another UFC event?  Yes.  In fact, there is one in Pittsburgh tonight.  Oh sweet irony!  It was announced after we bought tickets to go to Toronto.  Thing is – I didn’t know if I would want to go.  So Matt bought two tickets only, so that he could take my cousin and then in the event she couldn’t go, I would go.  But had I known it wasn’t totally intolerable, I would have had him buy three.  Oh well!  What are you going to do?

It makes absolutely no sense to me, because I really do abhor violence.  I do not like people fighting each other, either physically or verbally.  I do not like acts of violence against ANY sentient being.  But maybe because this is agreed upon ahead time?  Consent?  Is that what makes the difference?  I do not know.  It is just another of life’s conundrums.

Back to the Toronto trip.

Sunday, we had no real plans.  So we decided to see the play Calendar Girls.  If you are not familiar with the story, it is about a group of mostly middle-aged women who need to raise money for their garden club, so they decide to pose nude for a calendar.  This is a true story, of which a move was made, and then the play.  We really liked it and thought it was really well done and funny.  We were pretty surprised to find out later that there were very very negative reviews of this posted online.  Harsh critics they were.  I can pretty harsh, and I am not an expert.  But really, it didn’t deserve the criticism.

Another thing we did on Sunday was go to a movie, which I have to admit, I forget which one.  But I have to say – this movie theater was the coolest theater I have ever been in.  It was an AMC  theater and the building was round.  You walk in and pay on the ground level.  You need to then go up two levels on the escalator before getting into any theaters.  The theater itself was two levels!  Toronto has an extensive underground city – the PATH they call it – and also a subway – and at ground level was a subway stop, and part of the PATH.  The first two levels of the building had shops and a food court.  Then the first level of theaters and the second.  The theaters were stadium seats, they had 3D theaters and an IMAX and it was so clean and super new.  It was just beautiful.  Honestly, I should have taken pictures.  But I would have looked really, really ridiculous.  But I wish theaters in this city were half that nice.  We have ghetto theaters, with a nice one thrown in here and there, but nothing on this scale.

Monday, we headed home and that was our wonderful trip to Toronto.  I love Toronto.  Even though it was cold and raining most of the time and we had to carry umbrellas, there is no such thing as a bad trip to Toronto.

Posted in Recreation, Travel | Leave a comment

Travelling Tales, Part I: St. Petersburg

Posted on June 26, 2011 by jenn

In March, yes, March, I am behind in talking about my travels, so what?, we went to St. Petersburg, Florida to escape the Pittsburgh winter, but mostly to see this beautiful little girl:

That is our niece Eva.  She is four years old.  Unfortunately, she doesn’t live near us, but fortunately, her mom picked a wonderful place to live and so we love to go visit!

This particular March, it was already hot in Florida.  Very hot.  But this is what we were leaving:

Since the main attraction is indeed spending time with Eva, we didn’t do a lot of touristy stuff.  The first night we got there, Eva was spending the day with her daddy, but we had lunch with her and then we fought to stay awake.  We walked down to the nearby park, Crescent Lake and walked the loop.

The next day, however, we spent the entire day with Eva and my sister-in-law.  We went to the park and just hung out and had a great time.  Eva picked out her outfit.  I think she did a good job:

That evening, we babysat her while her mother went to work.  Here was some of the stuff that went on.

The next day was BEACH day!  In MARCH!  Yes! Pinch me!  Not only was it hot enough to be outside in shorts, the water was warm enough to go into.  While we were laying on the beach, we decided what else we could do when we were done.  After all, none of us wanted to be there all day and become as red as a lobster.  Then we got hungry.  So we found a place for lunch and had some yummy food and then went mini-golfing.  It was Eva’s first time mini golfing and she had a blast!

The unique “twist” to the golf course was that it had alligators that we could feed.  A little alligator farm.  It was kinda cool, just because we could feed them.  But it also seemed a little cruel.  I mean – it wasn’t that big and there were a lot  of them.

Feeding the alligator what we believe to be dog treats

Perch where most of them stayed.  You can see an alligator head in the lower left of this photo.

Later on, we went home for a nap, then went to the St. Petersburg’ Pier where I finally, finally got to see dolphins jumping and frolicking.  I’ve seen dolphins of course.  I’ve seen them in captivity, but to see them in their natural environment and doing their natural dolphin things, it was just so wonderful.  There was a big group of them out there.  And I even got to see a baby!  It was oh so very cute.  The day ended with a great dinner at an Italian restaurant, and then we all went home and crashed.  Florida air just makes you sleep very well!

The next day, Wednesday, we headed home.  Our trip was too quick and next time, we agreed we would stay longer.  We are planning to go down for Halloween.  And hope to make this week in March/Spring Break an annual tradition too.

Posted in Family, Recreation | Leave a comment

Then They Get Old

Posted on June 9, 2011 by jenn

Oh Indy.

Indy is 16 years old now.  He has been through so much.  Pneumonia, a three month stint of anorexia complete with feeding tubes, and cholangeohepatitis.  That last one is recent, and there are former blog posts all about it.  He has also been through several moves, Matt moving in, cats moving in, fosters in and out and the loss of his first feline companion.  Through it all, he has been a rock.  He is a strong cat.  He is very vocal and he is the leader of the cat army.  Cat groups are not really determined by alpha, or top cat.  Some believe they form a hierarchy.  I don’t really think mine do. If they do, it’s Indy at the top and everyone else at the bottom.  He has taught all the others that they accept each other and be nice.  He breaks up fights.  When Blossom tries to test his authority, he literally takes her down – body slams her.  He never hurts her.  He just says that he won’t tolerate her foolishness.

But now?  Sigh.  He has to admit to being old.  Sometimes, Blossom gets away with that foolishness!  He won’t stop her.  When he was diagnosed with the cholangeohepatitis, he was also diagnosed with a small bit of arthritis.  I guess that happens to the best of us.  But in January, when we took him in to the vet for his usual 6-month senior comprehensive physical and blood work veterinary visit, as all senior pets should have ,we found out that he had developed hyperthyroidism – and that his liver enzymes were once again elevated.  UGH.

Well the good news in this is that hyperthyroidism is completely curable.  I’ve always said that if my cats have to have one of the big three cat diseases – kidney failure, hyperthyroid, diabetes – I would choose hyperthyroid, because there is a cure.  It is called radio-iodine treatment, and it is one shot, given subcutaneously, just like a vaccination.  There are downsides to the treatment which are a three day hospital stay (which can happen to your cat for any number of reasons anyway), and either having to save the fecal matter in a plastic bag for a few weeks before disposal or flushing (I chose the former).  There is also a slight risk of kidney damage, or that if the hyperthyroid is severe enough, the one treatment won’t be enough, and it would need replaced.   And it is an expensive upfront cost of $1,200.  But the upside trumps all of that – it IS a cure (even if you need the second round).

Left on its own, hyperthyroid eventually wears down the other organs, liver, kidneys and heart, and it wears them down faster than if they would on their own.  So you definitely want to treat it in some way.  Other treatments are surgery, although that is not done very often these days, and treatment with methimazole.  There are pros and cons to methimazole, and it can control and slow down, but not cure the condition.  One of the big downsides however, is the fact that the medication itslef can be harmful to the liver.  And as you just read, Indy was already compromised.

Eleven years ago, when our Joey was only ten years old and diagnosed with hyperthyroidism, we opted for the radio-iodine treatment, which back then was a brand new treatment.  His T4 levels were very high – 22 (normal .4 to 4)  - and it was expected that he would need to have it done twice – and he didn’t.  He never had a recurrence and never had any health issues until he was 16 years old old and developed kidney disease, which he had until he finally died at nearly 21 years old of heart disease.

Believing that getting the thyroid function back to normal and hoping that the thyroid was causing the liver values to be off, and having such a positive previous experience, we scheduled Indy for his radio-iodine treatment and waited.  We took him in two months later for his follow-up blood tests.  His thyroid was totally normal again, as expected.  It wasn’t that high, so we didn’t expect a different result.  His liver values did drop as well, although not back into the normal ranges quite yet and we were hopeful that they would continue to drop.  A few weeks after treatment, he started to give us difficulties with eating as well.  He just wouldn’t eat much – his treats always.  But a few times, he ignored those and he also refused bacon.  Bacon.  Uh-oh.  To the vet he went.  To our dismay, kidney values were elevated.  We force fed him a few meals, gave him fluids and in a few days he was feeling like his old self.  I continued him on fluids, and made an appointment to take him back to the vet in one month.  That appointment was this past Monday, June 6th.

The good news from that visit is that he pretty much maintained his weight.  But the results of his blood work are not very good.  His BUN value increased, although the creatinine, which is the more important factor, only went up to 2.8 from 2.6, so hopefully, the BUN was only a result of dehydration.  His liver values started rising again as well.  So now he is on the Joey regimen:  fluids 3x a week and bi-weekly acupuncture.  We will add liver meridians in, and are going to try calciferol, which is a vitamin D derivative which is showing promise in treating cats with kidney failure.  On his next visit, I’ll talk more with the vet about supporting the liver, but poor Indy is already on a daily vitamin that he takes once a day, another kidney support supplement, glucosamine treats and then the calciferol liquid coming soon (I’m getting it compounded and I hope I can get it made in bacon flavor – that is his favorite).

So this was a depressing post.  Go back and read the kitten post!  Or check out cute overload!  Or some LOL cats.  

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