Sheep Guarding Llama

Today was a horribly sad day. When we returned home from church early this afternoon Dominica discovered that Mr. Humphries, our beloved hamster, had passed away. I had moved him into the dining room last night before we went to bed so that he would be warmer than he was in the office and so that it would be easier for us to check on him. When we had left for church he was still breathing but his breathing had become really shallow. He hadn’t moved since around 10:00 last night. I was afraid when I had carried him from the office into the dining room and he didn’t stir at all that he had slipped into a coma and I am pretty sure that he had. The good thing is that he slipped away in his sleep. He spent almost the last twenty four hours sleeping comfortably, as far as we could tell, and didn’t appear to be in any pain. We had been really hoping that he was going to recover but we knew that there wasn’t very much chance of that. Dad, at lunch, said that he thought that Mr. Humphries may have had a stroke while Dominica and I were vacationing in Florida but that he had recovered well enough that we could barely tell a difference in him other than the fact that he had stopped using his wheel almost completely.

We have had Mr. Humphries since September 17, 2003. When went to PetsMart in Greece. The thing that really made him stand out from the other hamsters that they had there was that he decided to pick us out. He climbed up onto a half tube and came up to see us when all of the other hamsters there were afraid of us. We couldn’t resist such a sweet and cute butterscotch and vanilla hamster. We took him home and totally fell in love with him and, after not too long, he fell in love with us too. Until the day he died he never bit a single person with the unfair exception of Katy Case who put her finger up to his mouth right after eating and without washing her hands so that he had no idea that she was a person and not food. He was the best hamster that I have ever heard of anyone having. He never tried to escape the entire time that we had him. A few times he got loose but only because we left his cage open by mistake. Actually I only ever did it once in all of the time that we had him, I think. Twice at most. That one time he ripped up the carpeting in front of our bedroom door during the night trying to get to us because he knew that we were in there. It was so sad that it really affected me. I was so shocked that he was trying so hard to get to me. Hamsters are always trying to get away. Not get to you. It was really touching.

Dominica and I spent a long time this afternoon crying and remembering our hamster. We have so many fond memories of him. He has been such an important part of our family. We are incredibly sad. He has been an integral part of our lives since before we were married. It is just really hard to believe that he is gone. But he went in his sleep and didn’t suffer and there isn’t much more than that that we could have asked for. We know that he was happy being our hamster and really loved us and he knew that we really loved him. He definitely isn’t in pain now. Now we just have to learn to deal with that empty place in our home and in our hearts.

I always have a really hard time dealing with pets dying. I didn’t realize this until today but Mr. Humphries was Dominica’s first ever pet, other than fish, to die. She has never had to deal with losing an animal like that so she is taking it really hard.

We put Mr. Humphries into a plastic bag to keep animals from trying to get to him, put that into a bag that Dominica had knit (it was originally going to be a purse but she hadn’t finished it – she had always wanted to knit him a little vest but she was afraid that he would try to eat it so she never did but at least now he will be buried in something that she knit) and we placed the knit pouch into a tin container that she had been keeping. We wrote an epitaph and placed it into the tin with him so that if anyone ever finds him they will know that he was a very special friend to someone and not just a rodent that died in a field. I plan to seal the tin with was and we are going to bury him out on the farm near the other two hamsters who died and were buried there in the 1980’s – Spunky (my first hamster) and Spinky. We put his name and our names into the box so that, if someone ever does find him, that they could potentially look him up online since the names in a search could lead them back to SGL and this information.

One of the great dangers of maintaining a journal, such as this, is that its pages are replete with memories of deal friends who are no longer with us. Memories that are not written as someone looking back on fond times but memories of events as they happened – with friends still near and dear to us. All of us oblivious to the future.

This is the epitaph that we included in his burial box:

Here lies Wilberforce Clayborn Humphries Miller. Beloved family member and faithful companion. Your time with us was much too short, but your memory will be with us always. Mr. Humphries you will be missed until we meet again. Thank you for choosing us.

Butterscotch and Vanilla Syrian Hamster: June 2003 – December 4, 2005

Child and Pet of Scott Alan and Dominica Anne Miller

I did a quick search for him online to see if he was easy to find. The third thing to come up from seaching for ‘Mr. Humphries hamster’ was the video of Dominica and Mr. Humphries our hamster that I took just two weeks ago. It is only sixteen seconds long because the batteries in the camera died and we didn’t have any more. This is the last time that Dominica played with him and one of the last days that he was really feeling good. We are so blessed that that video was taken then. It is one of our best memories of him. It really shows how active he was when hanging out with us. We are really going to cherish that memory.

We went to Walmart this afternoon in an attempt to take our minds off of our baby. I cleaned up all of his cage and stuff that was left so that we wouldn’t have to deal with it later. Fortunately we have friends who just got hamsters so that we know someone who will be able to put his stuff to good use. I feel really sad giving it away because of all of the memories connected with it but I know that it will just be painful memories in a box of wasted hamster stuff if we don’t let another hamster use it. That wouldn’t be wise.

While we were at Walmart we picked up Empire Earth II because I wanted to play something in the hope that it would take my mind off of the hamster. We also ended up getting Bring It On because it is finally not very expensive and we also got the new Harry Connick Christmas CD/DVD (Dualdisk) album. On our way out of the store we ran into Heather Schaeffer and her dad. We talked for a few minutes. Heather is moving up to Avon now and is working up there.

Min sat in the office and did some knitting for Oreo while I tried playing EE2. That game is really hard. I don’t have the hang of it at all yet. The computer was whoppin’ on me hard, even on the easiest level. We did that for a little while and then decided to go into the living room and watch some television. Basically we are just trying to get through the day. I started moving books up to the office. I have a lot of spare desk space now and we are totally out of space down in the basement. We are thinking that we want some shelves in the office because it is going to be an office to some extent for quite some time. We would like it to serve as a guest bedroom once I don’t need it to be the main office in the house. But it will be a while before we start getting my basement office really put together. And eventually we hope that we will have to use the upstairs office as a nursery and then eventually a second bedroom. But that is a long way off and we definitely shouldn’t be making long term plans for that yet. The good thing is that if we were to get the basement finished that the house really would have a lot of space. It is a small house but if we utilize it all wisely we could have at least one child in the house without a problem. Having two would not be feasible without getting a bigger house.

Without the hamster we are able to turn down the temperature in the house significantly. We used to have the house at 66F-67F but towards the end we had to turn it up to 69F in an attempt to keep the baby comfortable. Now it is down to 65F and we will probably turn it down even more. No reason to pay for all of that natural gas. Especially considering how expensive it is this year. We also closed the office heater vent and are keeping the office door closed when we are not using the room. That is a whole chunk of the house that we no longer have to pay to heat. That will help a ton with the heating cost since that room is one of only two rooms in the entire house that has two exposed walls. We are thinking about putting up a curtain in the hallway by the kitchen in an attempt to keep the cold air from the front of the house from getting easily into the rest of the house. That part of the house does not need to be heated either and it is relatively exposed as well and costs us a bit unnecessarily. It will be kind of weird to have a curtain there but if we put something up that can easily be taken down I think that we can make it very cost effective and be able to take it down when people come to visit so that they don’t think that we are freaks. Of course, I just told the entire world that we are so maybe it doesn’t really matter.

Dominica put the finishing touches on her Christmas tree tonight. I had to go to Walmart the other day and get more garland because she didn’t have enough but she didn’t put it on until now. Now everything is done. Dad is coming over tomorrow morning to take our Christmas picture for our Christmas card. We are going to have the three of us, Dominica, Oreo and I, on the card. We had been trying to figure out how to get Mr. Humphries into the picture because we were determined not to leave him out but I guess that we don’t have to worry about that now. We are having breakfast with dad at 8:45 tomorrow morning and then dad and I are taking Dominica’s car over to Livonia so that she can get her new Nokian snow tires put onto the car. She is very relived that there was no significant amount of snow on the roads any day that she had to drive to work before she was able to get real snow tires. The Lord was really watching over us there.

Dad found mom’s Bible cover, it is a Thomas Kinkade one, and brought it to church this morning so that Dominica can use it to cover and protect her new TNIV study Bible that she bought last week.

I continued working on making archival copies of all of the SGL Podcasts tonight. The show is actually getting listened too decently often in its higher quality form on the Internet Archive. I don’t know who is checking it out but that is pretty cool. Too bad all of those people weren’t checking out the original feed on podOmatic or we would skyrocket to the top of the charts.

I didn’t feel like I was being very productive tonight and I always feel better when I have been productive so I decided to do some vacuuming and dishes. Dominica spent a lot of the evening on the telephone with her parents and her sister. It helped take her mind off of the hamster. I got a bit of cleaning done today and that will help a bit. There is always plenty of cleaning to be done around here.

Before going to bed I posted the Bible reading for the day and recorded a very sad SGL Podcast, Episode 32 for our little boy. Talking about him in the podcast was all that I could handle. I only managed to go for about one minute. If anyone wants to know what naked podcasting sounds like, listen to that. The past two years have been really hard for Dominica and I. Thank you everyone for all of the love and support.

It is a bright and sunny day and so far we still have a hamster. I have been doing some reading online and, as far as I can determine, we are pretty sure that he has had a stroke. His left side is almost completely useless. There is some hope that might be able to recover yet. It is going to be a long, hard road but he might be able to come back from this. But he will definitely never be the same hamster again if he does. I took away his wheel and his “big house” and all his now is the small, warmer apartment piece where he moved to a few days ago. There is nothing in that section for him to climb onto and I think that that is critical in keeping him from hurting himself. It is weird having him in just this tiny little cage. His big cage has been a mainstay in our house ever since we first moved in. Now it is so small and he is just huddled in the corner. It is going to be weird not having him around. We have never really lived in this house without having him there. At the beginning he used to sleep right at the side of the bed next to me. That way he would always know that I was close even when I was just sleeping. For the past few months he has been next to me on the desk and we have spent tons of time together.

I was up at 7:00 this morning and was able to get a lot of work done before my client came over at 9:00. We wrapped up by 11:30 and Andy came over just minutes later. We went to lunch at, you guessed it, the Omega Grill. The waitress said that she hadn’t seen dad yet today. Must be his day off.

Andy didn’t hang out for very long. His parents were expecting him to go up there as well and he had some errands to run too so he had a busy day. So I was back home around 2:00 and had the afternoon to myself.

I called Nate this afternoon and he said that Tammy wasn’t feeling well and he wasn’t sure whether or not he was going to be able to make it out to see the musical tonight. While I was on the phone with him Jocelyn called and said that she wanted to go to the show. So one way or another I am going to the show with somebody, I guess. I told Andy to ask Tony if he would like to go to the show. He sometimes goes to musicals at other schools but he is probably busy. Too busy to hang out with us here in Geneseo. See how he is?

Nate called me back at 5:00 and said that Tammy was too sick for him to come up and leave her home with the kids. Fortunately Jocelyn wanted to go so that we can make use of the ticket that I have being held down at the school.

The was over two hours long. The performance was good but the show itself was awful. First of all I am not a fan of Dr. Seuss in the least. But to make matters worse the show was just a random assortment of Dr. Seuss inside jokes mashed together into one incoherrent jumble with bad musical numbers constantly interrupting any semblance of a plot.

Mary and Jocelyn came over and hung out after the show. I ran over to the hotel and picked Mary up from work when she got off at 11:00. We all hung out until about 2:00 in the morning. We all needed some sleep at that point.

I spent six hours last night compressing the first thirty episodes of the SGL Podcast in the hopes of being able to fit them onto a DVD for a backup. No luck. They are so huge that they don’t fit. That is the original files, the Audacity files. The are gigantic. So I have given up on attempting to store the original files and am just going to make do with having some high quality MP3 and Ogg Vorbis files that I can work from it I ever need to. So I began converting everything to those formats and am making an online copy of them at the Internet Archive so everyone is welcome to get super high quality copies of them there. I am starting with the oldest shows because those are the ones that had to be dropped from podOmatic when my account filled up. That is too bad that they have to made to delete your old stuff but the service is free and storage is expensive. Espeically when most of that old stuff will never be heard ever again.

Dad found his VHS copy of “The King’s Special Christmas” which is a short puppet video that we have from when I was younger. It is a hilarious Christian video that almost no one knows. In fact, I did a Google search on the title and there wasn’t a single hit. I couldn’t believe it. So I mentioned here first I guess and in a few weeks you will be able to do a search for it and find SGL. I am having dad convert the aging VHS to a digital format so that we won’t lose the video. I want to track down the company that actually holds the copyright on that but I have no idea who they are since the name of the video doesn’t even appear online. It is a really funny video. Everyone should check it out.

UPS came by this morning and dropped off my new book “How-To Hydroponics Fourth Edition” by Keith Roberto that I have been waiting for for several weeks. This is the book that I had ordered from Amazon but they forgot to ship. This is the one that I had actually placed the order for. The other books were just filler.

Dad’s old friend Mohawk who worked at Kodak with him came by to visit him today. They haven’t seen each other in fourteen years! Just popped in and surprised him.

Dad was hungry for lunch and probably for a fish fry so he came over to pick me up to go over to the Omega at 1:00. He had breakfast there just a few hours ago. Same waitress. It is becoming a joke how often we are there.

You know that you are getting old when you no longer even expect to have plans on a Friday night. I can’t remember the last time that we actually had regular plans on a Friday night. Now Saturdays are a completely different story. Sort of.

Dominica and I are very sad because Mr. Humphries is sick. He is quite old. Not exceptionally old for a hamster but we had felt that he had been doing so well that he was probably going to make it for quite a while but now it is looking like we might lose him any day. He is very weak and definitely losing weight. It is very hard to tell whem a hamster is sick. He does so many weird things all of the time and so often acts sick and is actually just tired that we never know for sure what is going on. But I have had suspicions for weeks that he seemed to be aging rapidly and not feeling up to his old self. We were hoping to have him for at least another year if not two. He is such a wonderful hamster. A bit of a character and very high maintenance but so incredibly sweet and wonderful. We are so blessed to have gotten him. He really loved us and just liked to spend time with us. We have had him since before we were married. He is the first pet that Dominica and I have had together. I have him some treats and some lettuce. I wanted to make sure that he was eating and that at least he was eating things that he liked. We will just have to wait and see what happens.

Those who miss Anne’s updates that we used to have you can find out more on her blog which you can get via RSS or just check out the web version.

I have spent a bit of time the last two days uploading audio files to the Internet Archive. My account at podOmatic is completely full and cannot hold any more podcast audio. Which is, obviously, a problem. So I have been converting everything that I can into higher quality versions in both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis formats and uploading them. So the first six episodes of the SGL Podcast are all ready no longer available on the podOmatic page but they are available from the Internet Archive. Now you just download them one at a time instead of getting them through an RSS feed. I am going to have to figure out how I want to deal with that in the future. But most archived content isn’t done through a feed anyway. So that seems to work decently well the way that it is for the time being. You can get to my Internet Archive stuff by clicking on the Our Media button to the right.

Here is some exciting news: We have health insurance again! Whoo-hoo. It is amazing how exciting that can be but when you have been going for half a year without any you really begin to wish that you had some.

I took a couple of quick pictures tonight because we have more or less devoid of new pictures on the Flicrcast for weeks now and I know that everyone wants something new to see.

Mr. Humphries is definitely declining. He has not opened his eyes all day. At 10:00 tonight he came out to get a drink of water and just fell right over. He hasn’t slept in days either as far as I can tell. He lays there like he is sleeping but doesn’t actually ever stop figiting. I really expect that we will lose him in the next 48 hours. I turned up the temperature in the house in the hope of making it more comfortable for him. But I doubt that he will notice at this point. I gave him some more Romaine lettuce. He ate all that I had given him before. He seems to really appreciate that so I will keep giving him as much as he wants to eat.

It is so windy tonight that they lost power up at Dominica’s office and they don’t have any backup systems so they just let them go home. So Dominica was able to leave work twenty minutes early tonight. That was a pleasant surprise.

So here is something funny: If you go onto Flickr and do a search on the tag Scott you end up getting nothing but pictures of or by me! How cool is that.

I did some cleaning and organizing in the office. That is what you have to do when you have a client coming down and working at your house. I have a client that is going to be working here at the house with me for about three hours tomorrow morning and I suppose that I need to have the office clean before he comes. I also took the opportunity to do some bill paying while I was sitting at the desk going through papers in the office. Best to get that stuff out of the way when you are thinking about it.

It took Dominica an hour to get home tonight. That is almost twice as long as it normally takes her. The wind is really awful. That is one thing that I really just can’t stand about Upstate New York is the unbelievable amount of wind that never stops. For several months of the year the wind just blows and blows. Even when the temperatures are nice, which is rare enough, it makes the outdoors relatively unusable because of how windy it always is. Our tiki torches on the deck are practically useless all year round.

When Min got home she spent some time with Mr. Humphries. He let her pet him for a little bit. He is not improving any. It is not happy day here.

I discovered tonight that I had accidentally let my car’s registration expire. Oops. I hate dealing with that kind of stuff. Luckily New York allows you to do your registration online now so I was able to get it taken care of really quickly. Pheww.

Before going to bed we watched a few episodes of The Family Guy but we were both pretty tired and headed for bed before 1:00. I have to be up pretty early in the morning to get everything ready so I want to be able to get some sleep. Hopefully we will still have a hamster in the morning. If anyone needs me tomorrow I am going to be pretty busy so try the cell.