Archives for July 2006

Not amused

July 30, 2006 by Tricia

No, I am not amused at all. When I turned on my computer this morning and loaded my sites in my browser this is what greeted me:

My domain triciaswaterdragon.com, the one that is home to my popular website that has had over 10 million visitors in the last almost 11 years, was up for renewal on July 27th. My hosting company told me they would automatically renew it for me when I asked about it at the beginning of June.

You know when they renewed it? This morning.

Some idiot must have snapped it when it floated free into the world of domain names and registrars. They probably hoped I would come crawling to them and buy it off them for a high price. Idiots!

I wrote to my hosting company as soon as I discovered that my domain was no longer mine. It had been there early this morning at about 6 a.m. after all. They wrote back stating that they were aware of the “mistake” and that they were already in the process of fixing it. I don’t know what they did, maybe they had to buy it back themselves. Either way it’s back.

I just about had a heart attack when I saw the gun registry page though. As I stated in my last post I wrote and article for Reptiles USA annual edition and it’s going to be on the stands August 1st. I’m expecting a lot of new visitors to my site as of this coming week. All I could think of when I realized that I had lost my domain was that all those people would be greeted by a gun registery site. Arghhh.

___________________________________

On top of that …

My husband is working this weekend. But at noon the front door opened and in walked Chris. He had spent a good portion of the morning in the emergency department as a patient due to dizziness, chest pain and extreme sweating.

He had all of these symptoms several times a day for about 8 months two years ago. At the time they thought he had a rare heart arrhythmia called Brugada syndrome. It was thought to be the kind of arrhythmia that could cause sudden death. So he was admitted to the hospital and had a ton of tests to try to see if they could reproduce the symptoms. If they could, they would have a diagnosis and he’d end up with a defibrillator installed in his chest.

They couldn’t reproduce the symptoms but they were sure that something had happened with his heart because he had, and still has, permanent ecg (EKG) changes.

He hasn’t had any bad symptoms for about a year so this was a surprise. Right now he’s lying on the couch relaxing but he’s doing better than the last time he had these symptoms.

I guess our bad luck is continuing.

Monkshood

July 30, 2006 by Tricia

Green Thumb Sunday

JoinThis is a photo of Bi-color Monkshood. Are the blossoms the oddest looking things? I love this flower though. I have Azure Monkshood too and I’m anxiously awaiting it’s blooms.

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

My Reptilian Pets

July 29, 2006 by Tricia

Grab the Scavenger Hunt code.Photo Theme. Join the blogroll. Visit participants.

This weeks theme is Pets/Animals

Warning: If you really don’t like turtles or lizards go away now and come back another day.

The Box Turtles:

The box turtle on the left is Spaz. He’s an Eastern box turtle and he thinks he’s a lizard.

He likes to climb. Only problem is that he doesn’t do it all that well. Hence the name Spaz. The turtle on the right is Spaz’ love interest Myrtle. She’s an Ornate box turtle. She’s not a very good climber either but she tries. Spaz is about 11 years old and Myrtle was 35 or so when we got her so I guess she’s 46 now. She’s getting up there. They were out for a garden walk when I snapped these pics.

Now for the Water Dragons!

This is a photo of two of my water dragons. Night is on the left and Rogue is on the right. Don’t they look cute, it’s almost as if they posed that way. I had a total of 7 water dragons at one time, but sadly all are long gone.

My main website started as a way to help people care for their water dragon lizards, but over the 11 years that it’s been in existence it’s grown into a monster of a site with information on the care of over 100 popular pet reptiles. The site has also had over 10 million visitors in that time. I have an article coming out in Reptiles USA magazine August 1st about the care of Water Dragons. Yep, these babies have made me famous in select circles.

Finally, my beloved Napoleon. I really care/cared about all of my pets but Napoleon was so very special. He was a rescue and we never thought we’d end up keeping him but he grew on us and we ended up having him 9 years. We think he was about 13 when he passed away in 2003.

He never liked the camera so it was hard to take a picture of him looking relaxed. He was such a sweetie. I think rescued animals know when they’ve found a good home and I think he was such a good boy because he’d had such a terrible life before we brought him home. If you like iguanas and want to know more about Napoleons story go to my main site and read about his rescue.

He was tame, very tame, but that came with a lot of work and training. He also had a TON of personality and was smart. He was trained to poop in a particular area too. Now would you think you could potty train a lizard? Well ya can.

I’d say his personality was a cross between a cat and a dog to use familiar examples. He was like a cat in that he would do the things he wanted to do when he wanted to whether that be come over for a visit and a rub or get curious and get into trouble. He was like a dog in that he really enjoyed attention and seemed to know when we were talking to him and he’d usually respond by “talking” back to us by bobbing his head.

Anyway, to end this and give you and idea of just how big he was here’s a picture of him with my husband Chris. Napoleon was 7 feet long and weighed approx 15 pounds near the time of his passing. May he rest in peace. I felt like I lost a son when he died. Actually, I think I’m still grieving.

Leave a link Only if you are a participant of Saturday Photo Scavenger hunt. Don’t link and run, it’s very rude.

Little princess is driving me Mad!

July 28, 2006 by Tricia

I’m so damn angry right now!

My boarder, a home stay student from Korea, has been driving me nuts all week. I could just break something right now!

I’m not going to get into all the details right now. I’m too pissed to do that. Grrrrrr!

The really short story is that we have to provide three meals for her each day. She does pay for room and board after all. In the past week she’s been switching things around, telling me she doesn’t want the food that we’ve been making for her for the last two months anymore. She wants her Korean food. So she’s been making some of her own lunches this week. Fine. She’s also been pretty much demanding a lot of other things, totally taking advantage of our good nature. Remember her New York trip a couple of weeks ago when she came home two days later than we expected. Shit, we thought something had happened to her.

Earlier today I was cleaning. Sweeping the hardwood floors both on the main floor and upstairs. We put an air conditioner in her room, so it didn’t make sense that I would sweep hallway and the rest of the rooms upstairs and not hers. If I didn’t then any dust in her room would blow out onto the nice clean floors. So I went into her room and swept.

In the process of sweeping her tiny room I accidentally knocked over her garbage can when I moved it. To my surprise out fell the sandwich that she’d made HERSELF last night for lunch today. Huh? She doesn’t want our food so she’s making her own and for some reason she throws it in the garbage before she goes to school? Uhmmm didn’t we tell her that as of last week, we are in a financial bind thanks to my medical unemployment coverage ending? We can’t afford for her to make food and then just throw it away. What a waste! I also found it sneaky. She could have just left it in the fridge and perhaps my husband would have eaten it.

So all week she’s been asking if she can buy the supplies (and be re-embursed by us) so that she can make herself Sushi for lunch. Ah, what does that cost? She said she’d find out and let us know.

While she was telling us this evening that she was going to go to the Korean section of town tomorrow to find out what the cost of the ingredients that she needs is, I decided to tell her that I had accidentally found her sandwich in her garbage and asked her why she did that.

She freaked on me! She accused me of violating her privacy and then got all teary. She said that we’ve been treating her different in the last couple of weeks too.

Well duh! You lied to us about your New York trip. Said it was a school trip then went on your own and met people down there, and then didn’t come home until the Wednesday rather than the Monday when we were expecting you. You also gobbled up a gift that one of our neighbors had given us just before that. We share things in this house. Yeah, no wonder we aren’t treating you with quite the same warmth, you made us lose trust in you.

But violating your privacy? No way princess. I never go in your room except to either turn the air-conditioner on, off or turn it up higher. That’s it and you know I do that. Today was a first, going in to do you a favor and sweep your floor. I didn’t mean to knock over your garbage and discover your deceit.

Speaking of having her privacy violated. I’m the one who’s mail is gone through and who’s cupboards, that you haven’t been given permission to look through, are riffled through. I’m the one who’s computer you jump on without invitation even though you have one that we provided for you upstairs in your room. I’m also the one that’s being stalked by an elderly neighbor so I don’t go outside during the day time unless the coast is clear and have to do most of my gardening in the dark with the raccoons! Geeesh!

Our discussion ended with both she and I in tears, and my husband sitting on the couch looking stressed and perplexed and trying to moderate the discussion. She calmed down and went upstairs to wash her face. She had been supposed to go out with friends but didn’t think she would after that discussion. Ten minutes later she was back downstairs saying she was going out. She’s still not home and I’m wondering if she’ll even come back tonight.

She’s paid up until the 10th of August so I don’t know if she’ll want to leave early or stay or what. As of right now I don’t fucking care. Of all people to accuse of violating her privacy … I respect privacy since I don’t feel like I have any. Does she think I went snooping around in her room? Why would I do that … and why is she so worried I wonder now … hmmm?

I’ve got steam coming out my ears! I’m so damn angry. She’s walked all over us, especially in the last month. When we picked her up at her former homestay the owners of the house told us that she was a handful, that she was a little princess, and they sure weren’t kidding. They wished us luck … guess we needed it. Damn, we should have turned around and left her there when they warned us.

Why in the hell am I doing this boarder thing anyway? Oh yeah, I almost forgot that I’m home, sick, so we need the money.

I don’t need this shit, really I don’t.

Popular Blogger Fired for Blogging

July 28, 2006 by Tricia

Unbelievable!

My dear friend Mr. Fab of Pointless Drivel has been fired for having a blog. Some IDIOT in his workplace apparently complained that his having a blog created a “Hostile Work Environment”.

Yes, he did occasionally write about his work, workplace and his co-workers. But, and big BUT it is, he never ever said anything bad about his workplace or his co-workers. He would occasionally poke fun at his co-workers but I’m sure that it would be clear to anyone reading his blog that he was joking. Heck, most of the co-workers that he wrote about ended up doing guest posts on his site from time to time.

It’s rare for people to actually love their job, or at least I think it is since I hear more complaints about peoples jobs or workplaces than compliments. However, Mr. Fab was one of those rare individuals who happened to love his job. He loved it so much that he had planned to work there until retirement.

Blogs are online journals. Many bloggers use their blogs to write about the day to day happenings in their life. For those of us that work, there’s a good chance that from time to time we are going to write about our work, our workplace or even our co-workers. Particularly if we either hate or love our job.

I haven’t worked due to illness for almost 9 months now, but I too love my job and I’ve written about it occasionally. I’m sure that when I do get back to work I’ll write about it more often. Or, at least I thought I would until I heard that this had happened to Mr. Fab on Wednesday.

Since I’m a nurse, if I were to get fired from my job for having a blog and or writing about my workplace in my blog it would probably be because I compromised a patients or the hospitals confidentiality. That, of course, will not happen, because if and when I do write about my work I plan to be very vague about the details. I don’t think I’ll let any of my co-workers know that I have a blog either.

I don’t plan to hide who I am or where I am as I think it would be easy enough for someone who knows me or who wants to find out who I am to figure it out by reading this blog and doing a bit of digging. But I’m not going to make it easy by telling my co-workers about this site either.

I’m also not going to promise myself that I won’t write about my work. I love my job, it’s part of my life and who I am and I don’t think that I could stop myself from mentioning a few things about work or my profession from time to time.

I also don’t think that Mr. Fab could have stopped himself from writing about his work occasionally either as it was part of him too. He loved his job and it sounds like he was a fantastic employee to have around. He planned fund raising events and entertained at them and other work related events. He traveled for his job too. What a great blogging opportunity! Travel and write about your experiences. How could he NOT write about it I ask.

He didn’t blog from work. He didn’t write anything bad about his workplace or co-workers. Why was he fired? Why wasn’t he given a warning rather than the axe? What he thinks happened is that someone that he might have offended in someway at work, or perhaps someone that might have something to gain if he were either reprimanded or fired went to the boss and LIED about his blogging activities. Go read his blog, obviously his boss didn’t ’cause there’s nothing there that would create a Hostile work environment. Nothing.

It just doesn’t make any sense. I’m very upset for him that this has happened. He’s in Florida, and according to the laws there they can fire you without first giving you a warning, or at least I think that is the case. Either way, I do hope that he finds some way to fight this. It’s a shame really, and I hope his former workplace realizes that they did themselves a disservice by firing him. He was a good worker, with a great attitude who loved his job. That’s rare.

I’ve worked with far too many people over the years who to them, their job is just a job, and they barely gave 50% of themselves to their work. For the most part I’m talking about nurses. Now do you want to be cared for by a nurse that is only there because it’s a job or one who loves her work and actually cares how you feel? Yeah, I thought so. Then there’s people like Mr. Fab who sounds like he gave more than 100%, that’s what I mean by rare.

Go over to Mr. Fabs site and read his last three posts for a better idea of just what happened to him and to give him a cyber hug.

Some questions for you before you go:

Do you write about your work on your blog?
Do you hide your identity and even perhaps where you are from?
Do your co-workers, bosses or family know about your blog or visit your blog?
If your co-workers, boss or family reads your blog has it ever gotten you into a situation you regret?

Come on, talk to me.

Not amused

Monkshood

My Reptilian Pets

Little princess is driving me Mad!

Popular Blogger Fired for Blogging

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Archives for July 2006

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