My Cousin's Wedding

Today, I went to my cousin Allison's wedding in Connecticut. I rode up with my Aunt Helen and her boyfriend Sonny, my cousin Lori and her daughter Danielle. Despite a way-too-early start (I had to get up at 4:15AM!), the day turned out to be enjoyable. There was more food than any person could eat -- hors d'oeuvres, antipasto, pasta, salad, a slab of prime rib, cake, Viennese table... I'm full again just thinking about it.

The reason for mentioning this here is that Allison is in vet school. Apparently, they are teaching a bit about ferrets to our up-and-coming vets. Not a lot in the general curriculum, mind you, but Allison and her classmates will graduate knowing that ferrets get adrenal disease and insulinoma -- even though they haven't done an elective in "exotics." It may not seem like much, but when we first got ferrets back in 1992 not much was known about adrenal disease in ferrets. In fact, many vets would tell their ferret clients that ferrets "just lose hair" when they get old. Considering how common adrenal disease is in ferrets, I think it's a major milestone to get vets coming out of school having heard of it, even if they aren't necessarily comfortable with doing the surgery or aren't up on the more esoteric treatment options. It's far better to have a properly diagnosed ferret than to leave the disease untreated.

So ... that's all for now. I just wanted to say that. Allison's a really wonderful lady. My cousin Charlie and his wife Linda did a wonderful job.

--Mary

The Weather

We had wicked thunderstorms yesterday. I don't remember any storms that severe recently. Afterwards, it was just as humid as before. I'm grateful for air conditioning. I think Gabby's grateful for it, too. Or maybe she doesn't even know the difference; she's never been without air conditioning.

A Dream

I had a dream about all kinds of little animals last night. I was trying to get into a van (for some reason, my car was a van) and there were gophers and stoats in it. I was trying to shoo them out, but they weren't afraid of me. They just looked at me like they were really annoyed. I finally got them all out of the van just as I woke up. Odd. There was also a part of the dream where I had a bunch of ferrets that were actually guinea pigs and I was keeping them in a kitchen cabinet. More oddity.

Usually, my ferret-related dreams have to do with me trying to catch all my ferrets (living and deceased) as they run loose outside or something. This time, my ferrets were safe, but I was chasing stoats and gophers away. If anyone has any idea what that means, let me know.

--Mary

June?

I don't know how it got to be June. OK, so I do know how it got to be June, but I don't know how it got to be June so quickly.

I've been working on the AmysDesigns web site -- creating t-shirts & all sorts of other stuff. Now if we could make some money ...

At long last we got Gabby to tolerate being in her cage again. She still fusses a bit, but she does settle down. Now Eric gets to sleep through the night (Gabby had been waking him up several times during the night by digging at his feet).

I wish I had more to say, but I really don't. At least not here in this blog. We're still plugging away at the FerretNews newsletter every week. Still trying to help make a difference.

--Mary