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Noyzi the YouTube star… now starring as a “tramp”!

My “street dog”, Noyzo from Kosovo, sitting on the rug next to my computer, striking a pose…

First thing’s first. I’m happy to report that my left eye is back to normal now. It only took a few days, rather than the couple of weeks predicted in the articles and videos on the subject of subconjunctival hemorrhages.

I was going to make one of my usual music videos yesterday, having discovered the wonderful Peggy Lee last week. Well, I shouldn’t say I “discovered” her, per se… I had heard of her. I just never bought much of her music and listened to it intently. That changed last week, when I covered her version of “Blue Moon”, a song I never really had much affection for, until I heard Peggy do it.

One of the three songs I did last week… I ended up buying a big a Peggy Lee album.

After I did a version of Peggy Lee’s cover of “Blue Moon”, I came across her song “He’s a Tramp”, from Lady and the Tramp. I haven’t seen that move in decades, but I am a committed dog lover, and I loved Peggy’s sultry purr. I decided to try it yesterday… and since my eye was only about 90% healed, I had Noyzi from Kosovo star in the video. I happened to have a few candid Noyzi clips from around the house… I thought it would be easy to throw them in a movie made on my new computer. Well… I was wrong. But I did manage to make the video on my older laptop. Below is the end result.

There’s a long instrumental intro… but it’s a short video.

It was sheer luck that his wiggly butt matched the tempo of the song. It was hard to manipulate the clips on the laptop, since I don’t have a magic mouse for it. I need to research how to fix the settings on my computer so I don’t have the same issue adding clips to my videos on the desktop machine in the future. I think it has something to do with permissions. Whatever it is, it’s a highly annoying problem, especially when I just want to make a quick video without a lot of fuss. I wish I were more of a technical guru.

Here’s a fun factoid. Noyzi loves watching videos, especially if they have any type of animal in it. He will watch animals of any species whatsoever, but he especially likes watching other dogs. When I played the animated version of “He’s a Tramp” just to hear how Peggy Lee did it, Noyzi came in and stood next to me. He was watching the video of Peg, the shelter dog, singing about the Tramp who broke doggy hearts with no compunction.

I wouldn’t say our Noyzi is really a “tramp”. He’s actually the best behaved dog we’ve ever had, in spite of his being a “street dog”. He’s clean and very quiet, and never has accidents in the house. He doesn’t get into the trash or break into the basement. Most of the time, I barely know he’s here. He loves people, car rides, other dogs, and seeing and doing new things, and he doesn’t have a mean bone in his body. I just thought his cute little tail wag would be perfect for that song! And it gave me an excuse not to put on makeup for my weekly music video.

By the way… my guitar playing is coming along. I might even be ready to do a guitar video soon. I just have to iron out some technical issues first.

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gadgets, housekeeping tips

“Up, up, up, in my studio, studio…” with apologies to Sponjetta Parrish…

Back in 2010 or so, when Bill and I were living in Georgia, I was an avid viewer of America’s Got Talent. There was a very charming performer that year named Sponjetta, and she came up with an extremely catchy hook, with her original song, “Studio”. Years later, I still sing it. And now, after this week, I have a special reason to be singing it. I spent this week upgrading my workspace.

“I’ll be in my studio…”

If you follow me on Facebook or read my main blog, you may have already seen some photos of the work I’ve been doing. It’s been a busy week, but I made a lot of progress and, in fact, my former landlady might even be surprised. She apparently thought I was a total dirtbag. Oh well. In the end, we got the last laugh. 😀

I didn’t actually plan to upgrade my work area when I bought my new computer. I thought I’d be dumping the old one into the pile of three worn out machines that need ditching. But then I realized what a huge collection of music my old computer has, and it’s also compatible with a lot of my peripherals. Yes, I can and will update the peripherals eventually, but I just spent about $2700 on a new, souped up machine. So, I want to wait a little while before I replace things like microphone interfaces and power hubs. It probably won’t take long before I replace them, but I wanted a workaround for now.

So there I was a few days ago, finally mounting my new computer on the VESA arm that caused some drama last weekend… The old computer was sitting on the floor, and it was awkward to use it. I went looking on Amazon for a solution, and found a really excellent wooden table. I also decided to buy another HomePod Mini, so I could upgrade the sound in my office.

As the week wore on, the work continued… it culminated to today with me putting together a CD tower for the CDs I’ve bought since we’ve been back in Germany. I probably have 1000 more of these at home in storage, but for now, the CDs were taking up valuable room in the IKEA desk I stole from my first German landlord in 2009. I’m kidding… we took the desk with his blessing. It’s made to accommodate a computer tower. 😮

When I bought the second HomePod, Apple did a clever suggestive sell, and I bought some really cool strip lights that I can control on my computer. It really dresses up my area and will probably jazz up my videos, next time I make one. I have a new song in mind, by the way… I’ll probably record it tomorrow or Monday. I might even play guitar, too.

Anyway, here are a few photos. I’m rather proud of myself. I am especially delighted by the new table. I feel all “Brownlee Vila” now (a joke, since my favorite late Uncle Brownlee was a genius at building stuff. He was also a great, self-taught musician. I miss him terribly.) By the way, I can set those lights to about 1500 shades or so, just with the flick of a hand. I think I paid 35 euros for the lights. Seriously, this looks way better. My hand is also looking better now. The blisters don’t hurt today. That table will probably last the rest of my life, too. It’s VERY solid. Just what I’d expect from a German vendor.

Oh… and we didn’t go our for Valentine’s Day again this year. 🙁 But Bill did send me a beautiful bouquet of roses. He’s the best.

And for those who are wondering… Arran is still with us and perky as ever, even if he’s a bit lumpier. Noyzi is also doing very well, even if he’s had unusual fart power this week. You can see Noyzi watching his favorite Dodo videos, while Arran is doing what he does best… begging for food and being handsome.

There are still a few things I need to fix until the space is just right. For one thing, we need to do something about the Internet going out at the drop of a hat. I did dump a lot of stuff off the old computer, but it still hangs up and cuts out too much. I’m sure there’s a simple fix that my old brain hasn’t found yet. Bill went out today and bought a brand new power drill/screwdriver, so I hope I won’t have to suffer blisters again, if I have another screwing project to do. 😉 At least, if I have one that doesn’t involve genital herpes.

I am hoping tomorrow, we will go out and enjoy the weekend… and maybe we’ll even get mooned again, like we did in 2019.

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Arran update…

Arran went in for another Vincristine chemo treatment yesterday. I think we might be at week #16, but I’m not positive. I told the vet about his swollen lymph nodes, which have gotten bigger since I first noticed their enlarged sizes on Saturday. She looked dismayed and we made plans to come in after a week, rather than in two weeks. When we got home, there was a small traffic jam in our cul-de-sac. Our neighbor’s daughter had left her car running next to her parking spot. The car and a trash can prevented me from getting to our house. Someone else was behind me, too.

I put Arran in the house, then came out to move the car to the driveway, only to be confronted by our neighbor, who was trying to park her car in the spot next to ours. I finally just turned the car around and parked in front of the house. Maybe I’ll move the car later today, while no one is home.

Aside from the larger lymph nodes, Arran has mostly been his usual, bright, colorful, spotted self. He happily took a walk yesterday and woke me at 3:00 AM for his breakfast. Then, he wanted his dinner twelve hours later. He got it at 4:00 PM, as that was an hour before our appointment. He wolfed it down.

All was fine after the chemo, until sometime around 9:00, when I suddenly smelled the familiar stench of dog shit. It was a rather messy pile he’d left for me in the living room. This isn’t actually that unusual for Arran. He’s never been 100 percent perfect at housetraining, in spite of my best efforts to teach him the right way.

I cleaned up the mess and went back upstairs to chat with Bill. At about 11:30 PM, Arran woke me up with a concerned look on his face. He was trembling a bit. I asked him if he wanted to go out. He eagerly jumped off the bed and ran downstairs. I let him go outside and he immediately pooped again. Then, he acted like he still needed to go, but nothing was coming out. He ran back inside and tried to go again in the living room. I shooed him outside, where he tried a couple more times for a moment. Finally, the compulsion seemed to have passed. We went back to bed.

Of course, by that point, I was freaked out and wide awake. I was wondering if I’d need to load Arran into the car and take him to the Tierklinik Hofheim, a high speed veterinary facility nearby that we’ve used a few times over the past four years. The funny thing is, when we still lived near Stuttgart and our dog, Zane, was the one with health issues, our vet down there suggested the Tierklinik Hofheim as one of the best vet hospitals in Germany. At that time, it was over two hours away by car. Now, it’s maybe 20 minutes away.

I don’t really know exactly how to get to the Tierklinik Hofheim, because Bill always takes the dogs there without me. And although the car has a GPS, I never use it. I don’t even know how I’d turn it on. I do know kind of where it is, and I have an excellent knack for finding things. But that doesn’t mean I want to go hunting for it in the middle of the night during an emergency. Looking at their Web site, I see that face masks are now optional at the Tierklinik Hofheim. The same isn’t true at our regular vet’s office.

I laid next to Arran and stroked him. He sighed and relaxed, and soon he was sleeping peacefully. It took me a bit longer to drop off, so I read more of my latest book before finally falling asleep.

I woke up at about 4:15 AM. Arran woke up a few minutes later, and was keen to eat breakfast. I fed him and Noyzi, then went back to bed to try to sleep a bit more. I ended up dry heaving, for some reason. I didn’t drink a lot of alcohol last night. I suspect it was an attack of GERD, which tends to strike when I don’t eat right, drink too much, and experience stress. I have to admit, it was pretty stressful dealing with Arran last night.

At about 6:30 AM, I finally turned on Alexa Thunderstorm, which worked surprisingly well… I dozed for about an hour before I finally got up to make some coffee. I probably would have actually slept, if Arran hadn’t repeatedly been licking his asshole.

He’s now lying in my office, just like he usually does when I’m writing… Noyzi has started doing that, too. At least I’ll always have a doggy buddy when I blog.

The vet said she would look to see if there were other drugs we could try, how expensive they would be, and how onerous administering them would be. I told her that we are not in a hurry to lose Arran, but we’re also not expecting miracles. Zane had lymphoma, too. We know how this will end.

But, amazingly enough, Arran still seems very interested in living. His eyes are bright; his ears perk up; and he’s still got his indomitable personality. The vet tested his blood yesterday, and aside from having slightly low platelets, the results weren’t too alarming. He got a dose of Endoxan this morning, which seems to make him sleepy.

Arran is a very special dog, and we don’t want to lose him. I know we will, and it likely won’t be too much longer. He needs to stick around until tomorrow, when Bill comes home.

My computer is in a death spiral and won’t play music without hanging up repeatedly. Since I make music on my computer, this is a fireable offense. It also freezes up randomly, even after I quit unnecessary processes and dump large files. I ordered a new computer a couple of days ago. Hopefully, very soon, I’ll have my snazzy new machine.

He’s still such a scrapper.

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