Yes, They ARE Spoiled

We finally got around to disassembling ZoePig's cage today, and took the opportunity to clean out the bedroom, clean out part of the living room, and re purposed the "Cubes" her cage was made out of to create quite possibly the coolest cat condo I have ever seen!

In the photo to the left, you can see the little plastic charm of a guinea pig head that hung inside Zoe's cage with a chew toy and bell at the bottom. It's hanging on the front of the new tower so that she'll always be with us.

And now, I'd like to present the ZoePig Memorial Kitty Play Zone!

No surprise, Elphie was the first to investigate. She loves toys with feathers!

Then came Kilo, who tested the structural integrity. We had one connector pop off, but there's so many zip ties on here that there was no problem at all. Scott reattached it and we haven't had any other issues so far. **knock wood**

Finally Milo joined the party. Though with Milo, it's less 'party' and more 'let's nap.' He really is my grumpy old man!

This picture is my best chance to show & tell all the cool features of the ZPKPZ.

* The bottom level doesn't really have anything special about it. The two cubes facing the camera are open, but don't connect to the back side. This section is basically still intact from the cage.

* The second level has 2 sections - an open square and an L-shaped section (where Milo is). The left corner is open on top for "secret" access to the third level.

* Kilo is camped out on the third level, which is basically just the one platform.

* The fourth level has two squares with a wall in between. The section where Elphie is sitting doesn't easily connect to anywhere else, and she had to jump to get in there.

* The fifth level is where the cats go when they want to taunt me by threatening to jump to the top of the book shelf. So far none has made the leap, but I'm sure it's coming. Elphie jumps up there all the time when we're not around, making the "bad cat" trip from the back of the TV to the top of the TV to the top of the book shelf.

If we had it to do over again, we'd have done something cooler with the bottom section, and used some common sense to connect the two squares on the fourth level. So far, they seem really happy with their new space (though as I type this, Elphie is on my lap, Milo is asleep under the desk, and Kilo is laying right behind my chair). And in case you were wondering, the lovely burnt orange fabric covering the levels are cheap Wal-Mart towels that we got for Zoe's cage that never got used.

So, are you jealous? I am - I totally want a grown-up size Play Zone!

...and then she remembered to breathe!

My car is fine. I think I'm going to owe them something insane like $900 when I go pick her up tomorrow, but that includes a 15,000 mile service, 4 new tires and removal of a rogue piece of metal that was clanging around in my oil thing. Yep...that's the technical term.

Funny story from Hyundai: the first person to greet me when I pulled up was a sales manager who told me he could get me into a new Accent "for cheap." How desperate must they be to be pulling that? The second person to greet me was the service manager, who told me to pop the hood - right there in the drop-off zone - because my engine was clicking. He was like the car whisperer - put oil in right there, and then leaned in close to listen. He thought I might have a valve problem, but it turned out to be the mystery metal bit, which apparently would have blown my whole engine if it had left the oil thing and hit a gasket or something else. Sort of like a blood clot, I guess.

As it turns out, I'm fine too. Scott was nice enough to escort me to the Credit Union so that I could beg in person. It turns out nothing new has hit my credit report (yet) and I have a stellar credit score. I guess it was good enough - I was able to get a $6,000 unsecured loan with 48 months to pay it off. The girl who was helping me walked me through a bunch of options, was able to get me an ok interest rate, and was able to extend my credit card limit another $500. Oh yeah - and I found out that my credit card has a fixed rate of 7.4%. How sweet is that?!? Of course, I had originally applied for a loan big enough to consolidate all of my school debt, so it wasn't quite a home run, but the other collection agency seems content to take my $100/month. No crisis state there quite yet!

I have armed myself with some information from the FTC (thanks for the hint, mom!) and feel like I'm prepared to take on the skeevy DCH tomorrow. I think I know enough to keep them from bullying me any more. *fingers crossed*

Of course, there was no happy ending for ZoePig. I feel terrible that I didn't go with Scott to the vet, and that he had to be the grown-up in this chapter. It's a horrible thing to have to go through alone, but I think I would have never made it through the rest of the day if I'd gone. Scott knows that. Plus, friends of ours had a bad run with guinea pigs, and have one still living, so we're going to pack up her food (brand new giant bag purchased a week ago!) and a few other unused things for them. They told Scott that their little girl said that her two guinea pigs would show Zoe all the fun things to do in Heaven, which is maybe the sweetest thing we could have heard.

Well I think it's time for me to go cuddle with my kitties, and then with my hubby. We've had a helluva day. Plus, I've got to get myself psyched up for the final(?) battle tomorrow.

Bad Mommy

I woke up at 4:30 this morning and realized that ZoePig had been chewing on her water bottle longer than normal. Then I noticed that the water level was still at the very top. Then I remembered that I changed her water on Monday before I left for Mom's.


She's fine. The bottle had just been twisted shut too hard and the pressure was stopping the water from moving down the tube. Once I fixed that problem, she drank about 1/2" of water and then probably spent the next half hour peeing!

Maybe I should have put together the pieces sooner. I do remember thinking at one point yesterday that her bottle still looked remarkably full. It just didn't occur to me why the bottle looked full. Oh well... she's a trooper. And now we know how long a guinea pig can last without water!

Time for 1,003 Words

Isn't she precious?

Family Time

Scott had this brilliant idea tonight - bring ZoePig into the living room. I'm not sure if it was some sort of feline psychology experiment or if he just wanted to be the first one to feed her the fresh parsley we bought at Target today (Target, by the way, has the freshest cheapest parsley you can find anywhere).

So there they were in the man chair, and both cats moved in for a closer look. Kilo jumped up on the arm of the blue chair and sat there trying to figure out how to attack. Milo, meanwhile, jumped on the sofa behind me, and then jumped onto the back of the man chair. It was like that scene in Jurassic Park when the one raptor stands in front of the prey and then the other two attack from the sides.

The longer Kilo sat there, the more I got the impression he was running old Tom & Jerry cartoons in his head, picturing the Pig in between two pieces of bread with a slice of cheese and some mustard. He even started licking his lips!

So of course I grabbed my camera and snapped some pictures. Sadly, Milo was sitting on the floor between Scott's feet for most of ZoePig's parsley time, so I didn't get any pictures with both of them in it. But this story was really all about Kilo anyway...

Note: Kilo wasn't really launched across the room. He pretty much gave up and left the party. I was just looking for an excuse to throw in the gratuitous Milo "pretty boy" picture!

Dispatches from the Vet

Guest Blogger:
Mr. ParkHopper

So, after a night of fitful sleep on my part, our journey all to familiar to us down highways 27 and 50 began at around 10:15 this morning. For those who haven't been near our place in a while, 27 has endured quite possibly the longest road reconstruction project, other than the never ending I-4 debacle, known to man. Well, they decided to do a switch over yesterday, so now there are about 4 lanes of un-used space in the middle of the road between north and south bound lanes. Well… while exiting our complex this morning, turning left onto 27, and in the left turn lane with the left green turn arrow… imagine our surprise when we decided to play chicken with one of the early morning Wally World fuddy duddies. That's right, they apparently either A) Didn't take the turn lanes into consideration when the geniuses at the DOT planned out their "temporary fix" traffic pattern, or B) moron couldn't drive. Really, either is possible. But as WWFD blared his horn, I did escape and evasion techniques so we wouldn't get hit, and Jamie "waved hello."

The rest of the drive was uneventful. Our usual 40 minute drive to the vet, followed by 10-15 minutes in the waiting room, where we met Zoe the beagle, and then… The doctor. We haven't really talked about the vet himself. He is a very nice Hispanic gentleman. He's very soft spoken, but he's good. I believe Jamie said it best when she said that if we ever had need to take our cats to a vet, we would bypass the ones closest to us and go to him.

Well… The nice assistant came out and took our little girl back to the dreaded exam room. Jamie told me to just leave her our credit card, and go wait in the car. You see… when they put the staple in… that was rough. In case you didn't know, Zoepig will voice her displeasure at lots of things. But when she is in pain… that is a sound. I don't handle that sound very well. So, Jamie tried to save me the pain of hearing this sound. But I knew that Jamie needed support on this one, so I stayed firmly planted in the chair, bracing for the screams… That never came… ??? Literally 30 seconds to a minute after taking her back, the vet came out with a smile on his face, and a staple in his hand. He clapped his hands and said "Let's have a party!" Waaahhh?! That's it? It's over? Did I black out? Wow, good times! That's right folks, it appears the ordeal is over! Zoepig has no more metal in her head, only a small scab. And let's all knock on wood, find four leaved clovers, hang up horse shoes, toss salt, WHATEVER, that she will not scratch and open that sucker back up. Really though, it's been healing for a week and half without her doing anything to it, so I think we are okay!

After our 40 minute ride back home on the nicely new paved section of the road, Zoepig went back into her nice new play area, with fresh food, towels, and veggies, and promptly went to the chube, where she stayed at least until I came to work. I put some of her parsley in the chube with her as a peace offering, and she ate it all, so she's fine, just maybe a bit traumatized as usual with her dad's driving abilities. And thus, hopefully, ends yet another of life's little adventures. :o) If any of you need a good vet, and don't mind the LONG drive, just ask. :o) And now back to the resident blogger in the family.

I Should've Thought of This a Month Ago

If I had, everyone would have gotten valentines in the mail from me. Who needs Christmas cards when you can send personalized pet photos to the masses?

Parsley

Scott and I learned (quite accidentally) last week that ZoePig loves parsley. We also learned that she doesn't like alfalfa sprouts or cucumber. Parsley has become an interactive activity for us. It's something that we are able to hand-feed her, and she's really fun to watch.

So I tried to capture a little bit of that piggy magic with my digital camera. Sadly, the tiny memory card it came with (which is a different size than the card that my other camera uses) only captures a whopping 13 seconds of video. Just the same, I'm proud to present ZoePig's first movie, 13 Seconds with Parsley:



Perhaps some day I'll get a memory card large enough to record an entire vegetable!

Our visit to the vet, by the way, included a 40 minute drive there, a 15 minute wait, 3 minutes with the vet, a minute of him telling us that he wants to leave the staple in a few more days, 2 minutes to schedule an appointment for Saturday morning, and a 40 minute drive home. I feel like we should ask him to reimburse us for gas!

He did say that he thinks she's healing well, but just wants to give it a little more time. We're ok with that.

Iced Tea

I went out to dinner with Cat tonight and had four and one half glasses of iced tea. I have peed six times since I got home (about three hours ago).

This is the first time I've had caffeine since... well, since Scott and I went to Outback for our early V-Day dinner last week. But I don't remember our server being so quick with the refills that time.

This is also the second post I've written in the past twenty minutes. However, the CHIA update will have to wait until Blogger sees fit to allow me to once again publish photos. :-P

Since I'm here, I thought I'd mention that ZoePig has left her staple alone all week long, and has acquiesced to a certain amount of holding. "Holding" in her case means laying on the bed and letting her sit on my chest or my lap and eat carrots while I pet her (not near the head). That has absolutely got to be the silver lining in this whole head wound debacle - we had really given up on socializing with her when she was little, but three solid weeks of being forced to hold (and clean and, to a certain extent, torture) her has actually somehow made her less skittish and made me more inclined to hang out with her for a half hour a day.

We go back to the vet tomorrow, and I'm curious to see what he says. I'm just worried that he'll take the staple out, and that the scab is still fully formed under the two pieces of skin that were pulled together, and that we'll be back to square one. But even if that's the case (the worst case?), she will have still kept the same scab in place for over a week (it last came off on Saturday the third).

Wish us luck!

A Whole New World

ZoePig is getting a new home. It's going to be home-made and will add about 4 square feet to her current area, without that pesky "double-wide" divider in the way. We haven't yet acquired the plastic used to make the bottom of the tray, but we did get a set of storage cubes at Target today (on sale for $12) and I had a fun afternoon playing with them. And once I played with them, I couldn't wait to transform the little pig's cage.

(here's a reminder of what it looked like before)

As you can see, the design is open at the top. That's the biggest change so far. And I had no idea how much she wasn't looking through the white bars until I saw her gaze at the vast environment around her tonight. There's about 2" at the top of the picture and 2" that you can't see in the foreground that are currently stuffed with an old rolled up mattress pad because the cage is bigger than the two existing trays.

The other bonus to the new cage is its height. I had enough left over cube sections to make a basement of sorts to store all of the pig-related paraphernalia.

ZoePig also digs the height. I think being up high has made her a little less skittish about us - we're over a foot shorter than we were this morning!

Of course, this is definitely a work in progress. But this cage is plenty big for ZoePig and her hypothetical sibling.

I'm really excited about the way it's looking so far. I can't wait to finish the project.

Staple Update: It's still in after over 36 hours. Good sign? Too early to say. But we're still keeping our fingers crossed.

Eye Eye Eye!

Scalzi's Monday Photo Shoot: Get a really really really close shot of someone's eyes. Try not to use the flash. Or, you know, poke them with the camera. Some judicious cropping will do the job too.

Oh what fun! Finally a chance to show a little bit of my darling husband's evil genius side. The one-eyebrow-up trick is something I totally envy. I just can't do it! Not to mention, it really does make him look just a bit evil!

Milo and Kilo have the same color eyes, which is surprising because they look so different otherwise.
And the last picture is poor little ZoePig. She's got the big bug eyes of a rodent who has been terrorized.

After today's vet visit, she's sporting a hot little staple across her head (that horizontal line between her ears isn't just another white stripe of fur! The vet suggested stitches, but we ultimately ruled that out because if she scratched at them she would end up having an even bigger wound. So he pulled the skin together and stapled it. And next week we'll be spending yet another morning at the office following up. I really hope that she'll not scratch it anymore. One good week is probably all she needs to get past the big scab phase.

Ahh...Blessed Sleep...

I got almost 9 hours of sleep last night. Sound extreme? Please don't judge. The night before I figure I probably got less than 5.

Yep, piggie parenthood caused yet another restless night. ZoePig decided about 5 am yesterday to scratch her scab off - again - and then be upset about how much it hurt. WHEEEEEEEEEEEEK WHEEK WHEEK WHEEK WHEEEEEEEK. She'd stop squeaking long enough to run a lap around her cage, shake her head, and start all over again.

So we took her out of the cage, and Scott held her and pet her for a while before I pulled out the medieval torture ointment. I wish this cut was anywhere but her head - she hates having anything at all near her face and her ears.

After we finished cleaning and dressing the wound, we put her back in the cage, but she continued to squeak the low sad squeaks of one who has just had enough of life's troubles. By about 6, we couldn't take it anymore and took our pillows and blankets and camped out on the living room floor. I got maybe an hour's worth of sleep, tossing and turning and dealing with Kilo trying to crack my ribs and then meowing when I wouldn't let him.

Work yesterday ended up being 10 hours of me shaking my own head violently trying to get the cobwebs out.

ZoePig was better last night. She let us hold her for a while, and didn't give me too much trouble when I dressed the wound. Let's just hope this lasts. I like sleep, and would prefer to not live without it!

Happy February!

I flipped over the calendar this morning and was greeted by four medical appointments and a jury duty. Would anyone mind if we just skipped to March this year? Would anyone notice? I mean it's just February...

Anyway, the first of the four appointments is today for ZoePig. She had to reschedule her appointment from Tuesday because Scott got scheduled for a last-minute dental appointment. Sadly, the only time we could get was 11:30, and since I work at noon Scott has to go do this on his own. He's not thrilled.

We're a little worried about what the vet is going to say. She's gotten in the habit of scratching the scab off of her wound every other day. But I think it's healing regardless. We need to find out if she's got mites, since she seems to spend an awful lot of time scratching. And we're also worried about her ears, since after all this time she still seems to be shaking her head. And I don't want to end up spending $500 on a rodent. It's a fine line.

And when we're done with the current head wound issue, we might revisit the idea of getting her a companion. A female one, of course! And a new cage without the divider in the middle. Like this one. But first, the vet visit. We'll just have to take this step by step.

Darn Pig

Zoe scratched open her head wound again in the wee hours of Saturday morning. Last night it was much less shiny and oozy, but just the same we decided to change out the litter in her cage for towels ($1.50 each at wal mart). My theory was that the towels have less dust and other particles to settle onto her head. Of course, the little poops are also WAY more visible, but since she's not entered into any housekeeping competitions, I think that's ok.

I just wonder what the vet is going to do now. I'm pretty sure he ruled out staples because the cut was too wide. Don't they have some kind of liquid bandage for animal cuts? We're obviously not going to be able to stick her in one of those anti-scratching-satellite-dish-collars. Not only is her head the wrong shape, but if she could wear one, she'd just walk around like a tiny shovel scooping up litter from her cage.

Oh well, I guess we'll find out on Tuesday. Unless she's looking bad tomorrow and they can actually see her.

Baby's Got a Buzz Cut

They shaved my baby's head! Thankfully, they let me wait in the waiting room, but boy oh boy did we hear her!

At first, the vet was talking about staples and needing to use gas to knock her out and all sorts of stuff, but once they shaved her head they realized the cut was wide but shallow. Of course, this means she still has an open wound. Open wounds require daily washing and lots of attention and a return visit next week, but as long as she's eating normally that's all they require.

As you can imagine, she's SO not speaking to me right now, since I'm the one who took her out of her cage and manhandled her in and out of the cat carrier. The vet put some sort of powder on her cut to coagulate it a little bit, which just looks like an extension of her white streak. But the buzz cut (he said, "she'll look like a monk.") just looks silly. And I feel guilty for laughing at her.

But the baby is going to be fine. And she's definitely getting all the carrots she wants for the next week. This isn't going to be easy for either of us, that's for sure!

On a side note, I think I like this vet. I definitely like his office staff. Of course, there's three other vets between here and there, so I'm not sure whether I'd take my cats to him or not. Milo, I believe, would prefer to avoid any vet! The mere mention of the d-o-c-t-o-r just seems to annoy him. Wouldn't you agree?

A Crisis and the Dentist

A Post in Two Acts

ZoePig has a gaping head wound. (which, thankfully, you can't see in this picture) I'm not quite sure what happened to her, but Scott and I were absolutely heart-broken last night when I found it.

She's been squeaking a lot recently, shaking her head and scratching, so I did a bunch of internet research. It seems she may have ear mites (though who knows how that would've happened?) or an ear infection. The short-term cure was to apply a little mineral oil to her ears with a q-tip. Since we already had her out and in a secure death grip, it seemed a good time to clip her toenails as well. (not something that was covered in my original guinea pig primer... and she had grown curly old man toenails) And for the past few days, she hadn't been squeaking or scratching as much and we thought we had solved the problem.

Then last night as we were getting ready for bed, she started absolutely freaking out and when I went over to see what was going on, I saw this big spot (ok, "big" in this case equals slightly smaller than a dime) on the top of her head that was completely fur-less and all bloody. I don't know if she was scratching and one of her newly-trimmed nails was cut ragged and sharp, or if she banged it against the edge of her rainbow tunnel. We took her out and gave her a bath (her mantra for the event was "don't touch my head"), blow-dried her, and spent some quality time on the bathroom floor. When she went back to her cage, we gave her some carrots. She was eating and drinking normally, so we decided to call around to vets first thing this morning.

Note: guinea pigs are considered "exotics" and not seen by most vets. The one vet that was recommended by all of the other "small animal" vets in the area was in emergency surgery this morning and they were already rescheduling their clients who already had appointments.

So after a half dozen phone calls, I gave up. Ultimately, Scott took over phone duties and found a vet down on 50 who could see her tomorrow. Her head looks much better today. I really think that whatever she did had just happened when I noticed it. She's been quiet today, but still eating and drinking a lot. I think she's fine, but she obviously still needs to go to the doctor.

As for the dentist, he numbed up both sides of my mouth, which resulted in tons of fun saying tongue twisters (and having a Frosty for lunch because I was afraid to chew). He put a crown on my root canal tooth (#2 - upper right) and a temporary filling on the molar that's been throbbing for the past few days (#19 - lower left). If the filling stops the pain, he'll just do a regular filling. But it's close enough to the root that he wants to make sure I don't need a root canal. So I go back in two weeks to have fillings done on #18 and (hopefully) 19 (coincidentally, the same ones that Scott just had done) and also on #14. After that, just one more crown on a previously root canal-ed tooth and I'm done with my original treatment plan.

So in case you were wondering what I have planned for the next few weeks, Zoe's appointment tomorrow, then Scott has various dentist appointments and consultations this Wednesday and next Tuesday, then my appointment Feb 5, then he has two others on the 6th and 7th, and then I have jury duty on the 12th. I bet everyone on earth is jealous of the fun and excitement in store for me!!!

Photo Happy

And now for something completely different. Boy, the smell of those baking brownies must have induced euphoria! I know that my first few posts of the year have skewed toward the negative, so I decided to throw some happy into the blog! And what could be happier than focused pictures of my babies???

This is my first picture of 2007. ZoePig braves the world outside her rainbow cave for a few carrots. Yes, her cage does need a cleaning. Thank you for noticing!

Milo proves that even supermodel kitties have an "ugly moment" or two! This picture would have been great if a) I had taken it a second before when he was in mid-roll and b) if I had not snapped it from the "look at the remains of my feline gonads" vantage point. For some reason, he reminds me of road kill in this picture. Perhaps it's the vacant stare...

Thank you for indulging my inner mommy for a moment there.

Happy New Year!

So... umm... I was trying to come up with this great post topic, because it's the first one of the year and might be a sign of things to come, but then I realized that I was putting pressure on myself for no reason. So here's a few paragraphs of what's been going on:

I read a book on Monday. Yep, 300+ pages of Hannibal Rising. I was underwhelmed. I kept reading and reading waiting to get to the point in the story where my heart would race. And it just never did. Even in Hannibal (the third Lecter book), which was about 200 pages too long, the story was thrilling. This one was flat and, in my opinion, uninspired. Sure, I found parts interesting. And I'll probably even see the movie when it comes out. But I have to agree with the Amazon.com readers who gave the book a mere 2 1/2 stars out of 5.

On Tuesday, Scott and I went to the movies. We saw Night at the Museum. It was everything I've come to expect from a Ben Stiller movie, including Owen Wilson. This was a very enjoyable popcorn flick that didn't try to be anything else. And I think we probably learned a little about history. I give the movie JJJJ out of JJJJJ, and I'll let you know after I've seen it a dozen more times whether I liked it or Zoolander better.

Today was my first shift of the new year. Please don't let it be a sign of things to come. By the time I finished reading my e-mail before my shift started, I was fed up. I really really need to have some face-to-face time with my manager when no one else is around so that I can find out if I really am the only one expected to do their job. It certainly feels that way. I am really making a concerted effort to not talk badly about my co-workers in front of GT (girl trainee. c'mon - it hasn't been THAT long!), but today I snowplowed right over my mental stop sign. I tried to stop, but I am so gall-dang frustrated with a certain co-worker's blatant disregard for the operation that I would love to spend a week doing exactly what she does just to see what happens to the entire restaurant. My guess: it wouldn't be pretty. My other guess: I'D get fired for it!

Scott and I also went over to Cat and Mike's house to meet their bird. They are going out of town for the weekend some time soon and I got roped into stopping by before work to feed and water him/her (it's a baby of unknown gender...he/she doesn't even have a name). I left there wanting a bird. This bird will just sit on your shoulder forever and groom you. You can walk around, or read a book, or watch TV and the bird just chills up there. Of course, if I had a bird it would probably end up just like ZoePig - afraid of people and not wanting to be touched. And I certainly am not in the market for a bird with my two killer watch cats keeping things safe!

Oh - and what's that in the middle of the living room floor? It's a Magic Bullet! My favorite infomercial now lives in my apartment!! I can't wait to make salsa and chicken salad and pesto and alfredo sauce and omelets and so much more with one simple machine! I have to say, this could be the coolest Christmas present I have not asked for and gotten since the year I got a DVD player from my dad and WSM (wicked step-mother... do I need to make a glossary for you???) (and yes, that was back when she was just the chick who was shacking up with my dad). Thank you, ShirleyMom!!!

Well, that's enough randomness for this entry. Stay tuned for my plea to womankind, coming some time in the next few days, and please keep checking in on my budget progress. So far: I have thought about making a budget. Not quite what I had hoped to have accomplished by this point!

Boo!

from the ParkHopper Menagerie

aww...who are you trying to kid, ZoePig? You'r just too sweet to be a mean, nasty witch!


I just don't have the heart to tell my little "Easter Bunny" that the eggs are supposed to go inside the basket.

Does anyone else have a caption for my poor objectified pets?

Searching for my Babies

Scalzi's Weekend Assignment: Do a Web search on a pet's name and let us know some of the interesting things that pop up.

Let's start with my favorite cat (yes, the one currently clawing my mini ottoman), Milo:
* Milo is the Australian version of Quik.
* The Milo Foundation is a domestic animal shelter. Anyone want a kitten?
* Milo Ventimiglia is an actor from Anaheim, CA.

And the other one, Kilo:
* There's KILO 94.3, "Colorado's Pure Rock"
* Kilo is a backdoor Trojan that uses an IRC channel to contact a hacker. (according to the Symantec website)
* And The Russian Kilo Class submarine first entered service in the early 1980's.

Of course, we can't forget about ZoePig:
* Well, it looks like she has a MySpace page, but I guess we already knew that.
* And here's a picture of a little girl. The caption reads "Zoe's Pig Hat."