Good bye old friend!

Well, I have some sad and somber news. Unfortunately, we had to put one of our horses down this morning. Yes the long lived Pepper has passed on. Not terribly surprising though as he was the human equivalent of like 104 years old. He was healthy right up to the end and acted like his usual self until yesterday evening. He began rolling constantly, a sign of colic which Arabians are particularly prone to and he’d had several cases of in the past, and was cold to the touch and shaking. Obviously he was in shock, he’d never been this bad before, so the vet was called right away. When the vet got there he performed a quick examination and said he was almost positive it was a twisted bowel that was about to rupture if it hadn’t already. Normally, a surgery could be performed and the problem remedied, but due to Pepper’s age he most likely would not survive the surgery. So the decision was made to dope him up and force about half of a gallon of vegetable oil through his system to see if it might untwist on it’s own with a little lubrication. At about 4 this morning as the pain killers began to wear off, it was obvious that he was not doing well. He continued to worsen until 6 when my sister decided that she didn’t want him to suffer and made the decision to have him put to sleep. I had a feeling he’d go out quickly but I’d always imagined that someone would be riding him down a trail at about 40 mph and he’d just keel over. It’s a substantial loss to the family, particularly Ashley, and he will be sorely missed and dearly remembered. To make matters worse, when Ashley got home from this whole fiasco she learned that her dogs had gotten out and one of them had been hit by a car. Fortunately, it was a relatively low speed impact and there was only some soft tissue damage and Toby should be fine. Needless to say, it has been a rough 24 hours. On a lighter note, Nikki and I are finally ready to host a house warming party, which we plan to do this coming weekend. We were planning on having a few different things going on. First, we had thought about having a LAN party going on if there will be enough people interested to facilitate it. Second, although all we have is our standard home entertainment system, we could to some movies (stupid or otherwise). Third, I think it would be cool to start a game of full contact croquet. Or we could all just sit around and talk about the good old days when we were young and stupid. I am also game for suggestions so feel free to make them. I will expect you all to post your thoughts about what you’d like to do, movies we could watch, games we could play, etc. If you fail to suggest something (even one little thing) your invitation will be revoked and you will be warded off with gun fire (or something like it, perhaps angry possums or Backstreet Boys music)! Again all are invited (at least until I read your comments) and I will supply the food but if some of you could bring things like drinks, dessert, chips or whatever. I was thinking I could make some pizza’s and breadsticks for everyone, although I will need a head count of who will be attending. For those of you including friends with two or more heads, if they share the same stomach then only count one of the heads. If we decide to do a LAN party, we discovered a new game type in UT04 last HDR and will most likely be punting each other across levels if we decide to play. Let me know what you all think and we’ll go from there. Sorry to be less than entertaining this time, but I’m feeling a little down. I’ll try to post again tomorrow. Until then…

The party will begin at 4:00 Saturday afternoon, and it's BYOD (and although I could let you all make endless silly comments as to the meaning of the acronym, I'll just tell you that it stands for drinks! Bring Your Own Drinks!! Not Dudes, Not Dorks, Not Dinks, Not Diplomats, Not Durigibles, Not Deodorant, Not Dairy, Not Dandruf, Not Death, Not Dictionary, Not Dinosaur, Not Droppings, Not Dr-other-stuff, Just Drinks! And if it's not too inconvenient, in a resealable container. If it's too much trouble then that's ok but we'd ask that you be careful.

Totals thus far:

Lan = 5

Movies = 4
(Lost Skeleton of Cadavra = 3)

Full contact Croquet = 4

Others (including: ?drawing 3 ant dragons?, ?car-be-smokey?, and poking dave!) = 1

Those attending: Nikki, Shawn, Dave, Chris, Mandy, Heather, Jeff...