#hives

My AQHA has had hives for the past year, we’ve had him allergy tested. (Allergic to wheat and alfalfa & teff) he’s only eating orchard grass hay right now.

He’s allergic to fly spray and doesn’t get any of they, and on steroids & hydroxizine to reduce the inflammation. But recently he is covered in hives again.

Any suggestions for what we could test him for or if anyone’s had a similar experience? We’re keeping him in consistent work since our vet gave us the all clear but other than that we want them to go away, poor guy is pretty itchy

Lima; Winter 2003.

I met Yenny at my workplace in Spring via her other Peruvian co-worker friend and somewhat-sister Yvonne. We hit it off by the start of Summer and by the end of that year, I got my tickets to Lima to go with her to visit her family there. No girl I dated had me board a flight that quickly and took me places like Yenny did. It was the first time I ever stepped foot in South America, and would be the first of two trips to Lima.

Lima is not the type of locale that’s normally in the news. Salsa and other native musics still run king and queen all throughout Peru, though thanks to an expanded internet, the kids have picked up skate, anime, and EDM culture. As Yenny & I took one of our walks down the Lima streets, we came across many outside flea markets, sidewalk sandwich vendors, tee-shirt and patch shops, clothing stores, and even casinos where she won $20.00 (S/69.20) on slots with a light giggle.

We also came across many video game and music stores as well, yet these were not your oh-so-typical stores. Most, if not all of these on the busy Lima streets, made and sold counterfeit copies. Back then, there wasn’t much emphasis for genuine copies sold because the gaming world didn't have the global legal foothold like it has now. These discs sold there were nowhere near the quality of the fresh originals you'd get in any video-game store. You'd get them on CD-Rs placed in fragile, thin low-quality cases with spotty printed artwork. You had to have emulators to make them work, and half of those games didn't. No surprise.

For the one and only time I went music-shopping in Lima, I did pretty well. Even when I converted the Peruvian soles into American dollars, however, and I learned that I paid only about 25-30% percent for what I would spend in the states. The Peruvian shops happened to price them much lower. That gave me a good opportunity to catch up on favorites and try new ones. Though a good number of them were indeed copies and duplicates, many came close or even on-the-bullseye to the real thing.

The Strokes, The Vines, and The Hives represented the new wave of trendy 'Vice-era' bands (as we called them), with The Strokes becoming the strongest winners. Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell came back after a sizeable hiatus by re-uniting with Rage Against The Machine (minus Zach De La Rocha) to become Audioslave. Post-Sepultura Max Cavalera kept it going with his third Soulfly endeavor while Cypress Hill was still going strong. Around this time, we were treated to Queens Of The Stone Age featuring David Grohl. What I didn’t expect was that Lima had electronic music with the likes of Underworld, Bjork’s first greatest hits release, and even Leftfield’s legendary Leftism.

I also happened to pick up several titles of a genre I normally don’t mention here: nu-metal. Thank both mainstream rock radio and Yenny for that one, as she always had to have that station on every time I drove her around. Conversely, you have legacy bands in Linkin Park, and the Deftones who all are still very much making records, not like favorites System Of A Down who have not released anything since 2005. As an added bonus, Yenny gave me a disc from her uncles' band: Punto G.

Here is all I took home on the first of two trips to Lima, a what’s-what that happened just after the turn of the millennium. I kpet them all even to this day.

The Vines: Highly Evolved

The Hives: Veni Vidi Vicious

The Strokes: Is This It

Punto G: Extasis Musical

Audioslave: self-titled

System Of A Down: Steal This Album!

Linkin Park: Reanimation

Soulfly: 3

System Of A Down: Toxicity

Queens Of The Stone Age: Songs For The Deaf

Deftones: White Pony

Underworld: Beaucoup Fish

Bjork: Greatest Hits

Leftfield: Leftism

Underworld: A Hundred Days Off

Cypress Hill: Stoned Raiders