two of the budgies — the ones that came from ian — apparently are unsymptomatic carriers of a disease that, when disease-free birds are in their presence, bad things happen to the disease-free birds. and, apparently, more than 40% of pet birds are unsymptomatic carriers… apparently, they have only recently determined that this disease exists, which means that they don’t know very much about it, yet, and testing for it means sending samples to a testing lab… so, we gave the two birds back to ian, after losing one of our own budgies, and almost losing another one. at this point, we’ve got two “baby” birds, grover and fozzie, and one remaining bird from the disease fiasco, bert, but bert has been in isolation for a few days. ernie and bert were the ones that went back and forth from work, with moe, but, with ernie dead, that whole scene has been disrupted.

the whole dog-training facility scene is scheduled to reach its current climax the last week of may, and moe has been overwhelmed with emails, and phone calls, and meetings, and this, that, and the other thing in preparation. she’s kind of got to hit the ground running at a speed faster than she can run, because she’s got to start IMMEDIATELY making about three times as much money as the business has been bringing in, because the former owners have been paying on a mortgage that was put in place 20 years ago, and moe is paying on a mortgage that was put in place yesterday. to start out with, that means putting more classes on the schedule, but all of the infrastructure to do that, including the class instructors, is in flux, because the old owners are retiring and moe hasn’t taken possession yet. it sounds as though moe knows what she’s doing, and has everything under control, but there’s a lot of running around, shouting, and arm-waving going on, which makes me (who is only vaguely informed about all of this) kind of nervous.

i’m still thinking that i’m probably going to have another flare-up of diverticulitis, eventually, but it hasn’t happened, yet, which is also making me kind of nervous.

i wrote to proto-pipe llc about my pipe which the stem broke off of, and they said that they can fix it for me, so i’ve got it all packaged up and ready to ship out tomorrow. i have another one, but it is brand new from the manufacturer, never even been unwrapped, and i want to keep it pristine.

oh, also, my “left-handed” mouse started acting like it was possessed by demons, so i got another, right-handed mouse, went to “System Settings -> Input Devices -> Mouse” and chose “Left handed mode”, and, by gum, it works! fuck the more expensive, demon-possessed mouse that was “made for left-handers”! i got a perfectly good, 3-button mouse for $10 that works just fine!