The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case of Golan vs. Holder, according to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education: A Professor’s Fight Over Shostakovich Heads to the Supreme Court. When Congress changed the law on when a work enters the public domain in 1994, a lot of works that had been…
Insulin resistant horses like Isis have trouble with heat. Insulin resistance is similar to a pre-diabetic condition in people: the horses who have this metabolic issue do not process insulin (and sugars) normally. IR impacts everything else in one giant cascade: IR horses’ immune systems aren’t quite at 100%, heat affects them harder than other…
Nasty weather this week. Temperature hit 98F today (heat index of 109F) and tomorrow the temperature is supposed to be 100F with thunderstorms in the evening. Looks like the girls will have tonight and tomorrow off. Some good news for Isis: The barn owner called me back. Isis seemed to be better around noon. She…
We’ve hit the first heat wave of summer. Two weeks ago the highs some times reached 80. Suddenly, the temperatures are close to 100F all this week. High temperatures plus high humidity means that the horses (and their humans) are feeling the heat as if Atlas’ burden was sudden dropped on their shoulders. Two out…
I realized it had been a while since I had posted any pictures of Kiesha (aka Squeakitty because she squeaks). One of the ladies on Deviant Art was looking for pictures of cats to include in a series of paintings. (Natamon already did a painting of Ambush a few weeks ago.) Here are some recent…
My Mom told me about an outbreak of equine herpesvirus-1 (EHV-1) amongst horses that had attended the National Cutting Horse Association’s Western National Championship show in Ogden, Utah, from April 29-May 8. EHV-1 is a highly contagious disease that can be spread horse to horse from skin contact, on tack, etc. One of the initial…
The first blog post on Ceffyl.net was on April 11, 2004. At that time, I had two horses (Isis and Logan) and four cats (Basette, Ambush, Stella, and Kiesha). Seven years later, I have only one kitty and three horses. I started this blog as an outlet for dealing with the medical issues my cats…
The first Doctor Who episodes I saw featured Tom Baker (fourth Doctor) and his companion, Sarah Jane Smith, played by a very young Elisabeth Sladen. Many more Doctors and companions have followed in their shoes over the decades, but Sarah Jane was always a favourite. One of my favourite episodes from the new series of…
Vera Nazarian, of Norilana books and author of Mansfield Park and Mummies, needs your help. Like many other people, she has been hit hard by the economy and an impending foreclosure. You can help her by seeing if some of the books available (see links below) would find good homes with you. Great ideas for…
Gizmodo featured this stop-motion animation of Legos gone wild. The video has it all: sex, violence, and AT-ATs. What’s not to like? When you consider how much animation went into this project, it’s really pretty slick. Ah from studio shelter on Vimeo. Related Images:
On the way to the barn, the vet called me back. Here is the surprising thing: the vet thinks that Isis might not have had another EPM episode/relapse. (Granted, she can’t say for sure since she hasn’t seen Isis.) She said that she thinks Isis might have had a head trauma. Blindness in horses can…
Yesterday morning around 8:00, Chris, the barn owner, went out to give Isis her morning hay. Isis startled when Chris walked around the corner of Isis’ shelter. Isis was shaking and seemed to have trouble focusing her sight. She was anxious and would not lead unless Chris walked next to Isis. Isis would pull back…
I woke up by grabbing my cell phone and then dropping it by running out of power cord length. Dropped it. Alarm reset and then never went off… and well I’m late today. Not feeling great. Would rather stay home but might as well go to the barn. Heck of a way to start a…
Orchids and chrysanthemums smell like death to me: the cloying sweetness of casket-side flowers, wilting from the heat of bodies pressed too close as passersby sob their payment to Chiron. The trees outside my apartment complex have a sickeningly sweet scent: not pleasing like honeysuckle, but of something decaying like fruit left too long in…
The next Supernatural episode goes meta: the Winchester boys get swapped to another reality where they play actors playing themselves. An article in