Wishing you the Luck of the Irish!

My little guinea pig, Rollo was acting mopey at the beginning of the week, so I took him to the vet(his first time) and discovered he has a bladder infection.The photo is one taken at the vet and posted on their Facebook and Instagram account. I wished they had taken it before he was wrapped up for his exam.
He was prescribed liquid antibiotics, which provoked wrestling matches at first, but after a couple of days, he would take them with a minimum of wriggles. He is eating better, but still not drinking his usual amount and is more active when he's awake, but antibiotics always make guinea pigs sleepy.
There was a mix-up with his samples, so we had to go back a second time to give more and now the vet has ordered more tests done on them, as they are showing red blood cells & proteins, which she did say could be signs of a receding infection or irritation of the bladder. I hope the results don't show anything more serious.
The medicine is to continue for 2 weeks and I really hope he makes a full recovery. I'm eager to have my perky little piglet back in top form again.

I used to get very upset about Valentine's Day, it really excludes people without a sweetheart. One year I bought myself a gift of a red betta fish and named him Valentine. Though I can't buy myself a gift every year, sometimes I do something to divert myself. But overall, I've mellowed over the years and even though I might feel a pang at the absence of a sweetie, I don't get angry & depressed.
This year, my sister and I are supposed to go to a small local antique show, so that will be fun.We usually don't buy much, if anything, but it's fun to see the old items & sometimes we have to guess what they are. lol

The year is off to a bad start. Last Monday afternoon, I got online to find the shocking news that David Bowie had died of cancer two days after his 69th birthday and the release of his newest album, "Blackstar". I spent most of the week trying to absorb the news and remembering his music. Though it's weird thinking of a rock star being 69 years old, that still seems too young to die.
The outpouring of grief from people all over the world was even more than I was expecting. It was touching reading things that people wrote about him and the effect he had on their lives.Some people waxed quite poetic and profound. One article called him the "Picasso of rock music", which was entirely apt. In browsing through a lot of photographs taken of him over the years, I was struck by not just how his looks changed, but also how he was a person entirely at home in front of the camera and who knew how to best use it. He could pose in clothes like a fashion model, but one who knew how to create a vibe and a statement. His hair styles were such a huge part of his look and I always noticed those feral teeth.
The first time I heard of Bowie was in 1973, when I was 13 and my sister's art class was doing a project where they were making illustrations to the lyrics of "Space Oddity", which were then put together as a primitive sort of music video. In high school, a brief friendship with a person who liked Bowie to the extent of having her hair cut like his, made me more familiar with his music and when I borrowed "Diamond Dogs", I was gobsmacked as the British say. He was also on the radio everyday and it was interesting to hear how his songs evolved. "Heroes" was so different from "Rebel, Rebel" musically, but had the same refreshing defiance. Decades later, it was intriguing how Peter Gabriel redid the song with a somber weariness.
Bowie was well represented in the MTV era and was a perfect subject for music videos. When he got more into club music, such as "Let's Dance", I didn't really care for that style, but I greatly enjoyed the duet with Mick Jagger remaking "Dancing in the Street". There was wonderful energy in their performance.
I haven't heard much of his recent music from the last few years, unfortunately.Though I really enjoyed the song and commercial he did for Louis Vuitton. Very few people other than Bowie would look at home in a setting combining Alice in Wonderland and Versailles.
So while it has been weird coming to terms with the loss of someone who I've liked since my early teens, I console myself with the fact that he left so much wonderful music behind, some of which I haven't heard yet, so it will seem new(and promote the illusion that he's just created it).
Towards the end of the week, I found a YouTube video of a Netherland church which played "Space Oddity" on it's tower church bells, the impromptu tribute ringing out over the town and up into the sky. It was a splendid farewell.

This past year has been so stressful that I am glad to see the end of it. I'm hoping for a calmer 2016 for everyone.

Since my sister has to work for the 4 days around Christmas(she's a nurse), her shortest scheduled day was Christmas Eve, so that's when we had our celebration, such as it was. It was just us three, our mom and us, so my sister stopped at our favorite Italian restaurant for take out pasta dinners, which we all enjoyed. Then we opened our gifts, all of us getting some nice practical gifts, as well as funny ones. My sister loves the Minions, so there were several items featuring the little yellow creatures. She got me a Chia Pet dinosaur, since I've retained my childhood fascination with prehistoric beast. And I bought our mom a t-shirt with some cartoon polar bears, which I think she liked better than anything else she got.
We usually do everything on Christmas Day, so the early celebration has left me a bit confused about the exact date right at the moment. I know some families always do things on Christmas Eve, so it's interesting to see how habits affect one's perceptions. Thus, my very late greetings.

When I was looking at some of my photos, I realized I'd never posted the pic of the plant I was drawing on July Fourth. The neighbor placed it in a pot amid the flowerbed by the back door of our building and I could see it from my apartment windows, where the curly leaves beckoned me to draw them. So on my country's national holiday, I spent several hours drawing the plant from different angles. The curly leaves were indeed a challenge to draw and I enjoyed trying to capture the way they cascaded over one another. As the afternoon wore on, the sun crept over to the bench I was sitting on and got too bright to continue. By then I had several detailed drawings and it was time to make supper anyways.

I still have no idea what kind of plant it is. I never saw any kind of flowers or berries, etc. on it, though the leaves got a bit bigger.Even if I never get it identified, it was still a fun afternoon sketching it.

Cleveland is getting our first snow of the season. It began in the wee hours of the morning, when rain turned to snow, and everything was white by 6 am. I hope it wasn't icy and worried about my sister driving to work(she's a nurse) if the changing weather was affecting the roads. By 9 am, much of the snow had melted, except for the edges of lawns and roofs. But it's been intermittently snowing through the day and some of it is starting to cover the ground again.
This fall has been one of the warmest I can remember. Just this past Monday, I was out in a t-shirt, not even needing a jacket. The leaves have clung to the trees longer than usual too, some trees still nearly intact with their bright colored leaves. There are some years where all of the leaves turn and disappear in a week or two, so it's been great to savor the colors this year. There's a couple maple trees in front of my apartment building that are still mostly green. Of course, now with the colder temps, perhaps that will hurry them through the process or even cut it short? I don't know how much temperature affects foliage colors. From what I understand, it's mostly the amount of sunlight that influences the green chlorophyll to fade and the fall colors to appear. I really need to learn more about how that process works.
But even if I don't know all of the technical details, it doesn't prevent me from enjoying the sights of the seasons in all of their glory.