When there’s one, there’s more than one…or at least that’s the saying. This week, I was not able to prove and exception to the rule, and unfortunatly, we’re going to be paying the price. On Thursday, I was preparing a presentation for work, which was due in 30 minutes. I was working hard, kicking ass and taking names, then I got a phone call. It was Melissa. Dagny was hurt…and from the sound of the whelping in the background, it wasn’t good. I told Melissa to bring her to the vet and see what they could do.
I don’t want to get into every detail of things, so to make a long story short, we don’t know what’s exactly wrong with our sweet innocent pupper. She’s been on pain meds for two days, she doesn’t seem to be in that much pain if we keep them going into her every six hours or so, but if we don’t keep up with it, she starts to quake. The poor girl had slipped on the hardwood floors when she was running into the house, she slid into this oak chair that we have and hurt her neck. The vet believes that she has a facture of her neck, and things aren’t looking good. She can’t walk well at all…she is stumbling around like she’s drunk, which points to swelling around her spinal cord. As of now, we have her locked in her crate to keep her still, but things don’t look good. We’ve upped the dose of steroids to hopefully bring down the swelling, and we’re going to see how things go as the week moves on, but if things aren’t looking better by the end of the week, we’ll really have run out of options. Unfortunatly, when Melissa brought her into the vet on Thursday and got X-Rays, we found out that Dag’s hips are really really bad and are likely going to have to be surgically fixed, so that, combined with neck surgery just doesn’t make sense and would drastically effect her quality of life. We’re hoping that by the end of the week things will be looking better for her, but right now, that’s all we can do.

Last week, Pud was the victim of a terrible attack. She’s been maimed, but luckily, is recovering quite well. Almost $1,000 later, she’s recovering quite well I should say. Well, as it turns out, she’s not the only gimpy animal that we have around, and no, I’m not talking about my three-legged cat Seven. I’m talking about the cute and wonerful puppy, Dagny, that, as of yesterday, has been relegated to her crate.
Yesterday afternoon, I was in the middle of preparing for a presentation that was set to go off in a little more than 30 minutes. I got a call from Melissa, but I was strapped for time, so I clicked the ignore. She called, again, and I hit ignore. She called a third time (our “Emergency” sequence), so I picked up the phone. She was crying and trying to explain that Dagny was screaming, although it was aparent, as I could here her whealping in the background. I told her to take Dagny to the vet, which, luckily for us, is about a mile down the road.
Melissa got Dag to the vet, and after some X-Rays, and some coddling, Dag was sent home. Now, I won’t get into the misery that was dealing with a crying dog and an upset girlfriend, but it culminated in my having to call the vet to find out what to do with our crazy sedated pain-striken pupper. After talking to the vet (around 8:30pm when I am still at work trying to get things done) I was able to get enough information to verify that Dagny was not in peril of a massive spine injury, which was the main concern of the vet.
The injury was initially caused by Seven of all things…the fat bastard ran outside, got spooked by the dog and proceeded to run into the house. Nimble as his tri-poddedness allows him, he skirted through the door with blazing speed. Well, sure enough, when there is a running cat, there’s a running Dag. She came bolting into the house, paws wet from the rain and slid into this chair that we have. Now, we don’t know what happened when she hit it, but she was immediatly in a ton of pain.
Typically, I would have been home to help Melissa deal with all this animal goodness, but no, I had to stay an extra day in Baltimore for the project, so I won’t get home for another few hours.
Anyway, I am glad that this week is over. I’m very much looking forward to having another little vacation around the Holidays. Speaking of which…I need to go Christmas shopping.

For the past week, I have been working on a project up in Baltimore, M.D. The weather is fine, it’s not too cold, the people I am working with are hard workers who are very competent. Unfortunatly, the project is running behind schedule, so there’s a bit of pressure right now to get things taken care of in the next two weeks. I’ve been brought in to do the front end report development. While that is all good and well, I’m currently missing much of the data that I need to create all the reports that they are asking for, so it’s been a waiting game to get that data into the system.
Typically, we have been working from around 8am through 7pm while we are there. Those are fairly long days, but nothing crazy. Today, I left the office around 7:00pm, thinking that the evening was going to progress as expected, well, turns out those crazy bastards are STILL THERE at almost midnight. Now, I just got put onto this project a week ago, so I honestly don’t feel obligated to be involved in all nighters at the last moment, but at the same time, I’m kind of feeling like I missed a company wide memo…”Yes ladies and gentlemen, we’ll be staying until 1:00am tomorrow morning, so go get your P.J’s and lets get to work.”…yeah, i didn’t get that memo. Half of me is fighting to say “wtf…it shouldn’t have come to this point…it’s your issues…deal.” and the other half of me is pissed that I didn’t stay, even if I was just going to be sitting there listening to podcasts or whatever. Anyway, I’ll get into the office early tomorrow and crank out as many reports as I can think of and hopefully that’ll make up for things. Additionally, my boss asked if I could stay until Friday, which, as you can imagine, is the last thing that I want to do, and I expressed those wishes in a political way. He got me set up with VPN access so that I could work from home on Friday, but I have this nagging feeling that I should have just said that I’d stay. I’ll talk to him tomorrow and see what he thinks.
I have to be up early, so off I go.

I started playing with Itunes and podcasts a bit more in the past week, and I subscribed to the “Best of Youtube” and this video was on there…Simply amazing…

After spending 3 months up in Charlotte, I was finally moved off of that project. I promptly took a 2 week vacation up to the New York area. Melissa and I drove up, brought the puppy with us and overall had quite a good trip. There were some ups and downs, but nothing horrible, and it was mostly good stuff. We got to visit with my brother and his girlfriend up in Boston, traveled into NYC on a few different occasions, but other than that, it was a good bit of rest and relaxation.
During the middle of the vacation, I got an email from my boss informing me that I would be put on a project up in Baltimore, M.D. Maryland isn’t exactly an amazing place to be during December, but I am glad that I got put onto a project instead of sitting around the office all day doing nothing. I’ll roll off on December 19th, and head down to Florida for another two week vacation with Melissa’s family. I am looking forward to it.
Last night, I had a call with my Project Manager from my previous project. In all of his tail tucking glory, I got a semi-appology from him for putting me in such a difficult situation. That was nice and all, but it didn’t change my feelings towards his poor project management. He gave me the “well, looking back, there are probably quite a few things that we could have done differently…”No shit…anyway….water under the bridge, right?
With the NFL in full swing, the Dolphins contending for a playoff spot and the cold weather setting in, I’m actually getting excited about Sunday again. There’s a small brew-pub about two miles from my house where I go to watch the Dolphins play. After my debacle with DirecTV last year, I voted against getting the NFL package again. Didn’t want to deal with that crap again…so I am stuck without being able to watch the Phins play. Melissa and I have been so busy that I’ve really only gotten to see a little more than ½ their games, making the ones that I do get to see, all that much more enjoyable.
A few weeks ago, I got a package in the mail from my old Wrestling coach at Columbia. Inside the envelope, he had stuffed three old Mini-DV tapes of some of my old wrestling matches. I’ve gotta get myself a firewire card to plug into my father’s video camera, but it’ll be nice to see some footage that I thought I had lost. One of the side benefits of this mailing is that I now have possession of my father’s video camera. I’ll be posting up some videos of Dagny and whatever else I find worthwhile once I get it all up and working.
Okay…one last story. Pud Leigh is one of my cats. She’s sweet, but feisty. She was irritated that Melissa and I left for so long (up to NY) and decided that to spite us, she would run outside the house as soon as we opened the door. Well…what Pud didn’t realize was that while we were away and the Dog wasn’t playing outside, all the neighborhood cats took up residence in our carport. Pud got an ass beating. The next morning, I opened the door and she daintily plodded inside. I pet her on the head and didn’t really look at her. It wasn’t until about an hour later that I realized there was something going on with her left eye. As it turns out, some bastard stray took a swipe at Pud’s face, landed a claw in the corner of her eye and proceeded to drag that claw across Pud’s third eyelid, slicing it into two frayed pieces. After a visit to the vet, a $750 check and some minor eye surgery, Pud is now chilling out in the guest bedroom,