Now My Heart Breaks Again

The last couple of weeks have been great; epic in fact. I accepted a new job offer that had Kelly and I flying, my dad's recovery is going well, the kids are well, Kelly's doing good. Things were as close to perfect as they can get.

Then, late Friday night Jasmine bit Raelin on the head. Again. This is #3 and Kelly and I promised that after #2 if there was ever another incident we were done. See, thing is, once a dog bites (and there's a whole range of biting on which these all were the very minor end), no one will touch it. Shelters won't take it and neither will the rescue groups I talked to. Add to this her bad and getting worse knees and it's a certain lost cause for adoption, to say nothing of the stress it would be on the dog to up and move to another home.

So, most likely tomorrow we will have her euthanized. And this has my heart torn open. As angry as I am about her behavior, and as much fury I felt seeing Raelin crying on the floor with her face bleeding, I love this dog. I love her a lot. For me it's one thing to put an animal down at the end of its natural life; it's another to take that step of compassion and apply to every 'what if' scenario that we can think of. In other words, due to factors largely out of our control (her puppy hood and socialization) or environment (we've got 2 young kids that leave little time for retraining), this is the end of her natural life. And in some ways, several ways, it is the compassionate path. Just so happens that compassion doesn't always equate with happiness.

So I sit here now in a sort of emotional void. Took her out for a long walk today, fed her steak for dinner, invited her up on the bed this morning, and have been popping pain meds into her 3x a day. It's just so hard to let a friend go...

Anyhow, love your dogs; I look forward to the day when we can have one again...

Random Round Up

Let's see if I can capture some Raelinisms. The other morning I was making her toast. As I waited for the bread-come-toast to pop up R started mutternig something about a cow and toast. I asked her what she was saying; something along the lines of "cows can make toast and when the toast is done it pops out of their head!" "really...?" "yeah, and they stand on their 2 back feet!" "i see..."

Kelly's been telling her about the "Switch Witch," which is really just a parental scam to bribe your kids with gifts to give up all their Halloween candy. Raelin's definitely not sure she's willing to invite the SW over to our house; the deal is that the kids leave out their candy (they can keep a few choice pieces), and then that night the SW comes along and leaves a gift in place of the candy. Anyhow, since I'm frequently pulling some accent out of somewhere the other night in the tub I was doing one of my favorites: Deep Redneck. See, there's some rules to the vernacular: drop most "s" and soften all hard consonants. Vowels should be drawled together. So something like "switch witch" gets turned into "whit whit" or so. Anyhow, Raelin was in the tub and I started saying this, so she started saying it, which is frickin' hilarious. I had her do it for Kelly and Kel couldn't stop laughing. Hint: don't laugh too much at anything a 3 year old does even if it is really funny or that's all they'll do for several days =)

And let's see. The big personal/professional news is that I'm going corporate =) Yup, gonna be an employee. One of my clients has extended me a full time job offer that I just can't pass up. I'll be a user interface engineer for their enterprise-grade web applications. Should be a lot of fun. Contractng with them through the end of the year, then pow! It's been interesting the various reactions from clients. Most have been very supportive though bummed, some so slammed that they can hardly register, and one that I haven't told yet.

Really, it was a great space to be able to make a decision from. My business is totally cranking and I've had the best quarter ever. If this work level were to keep up I'd easily make the same amount as I'll be earning on salary, though that's not for certain at all. And while the security of a job is totally illusary, it's a bit more solid in many ways than freelancing, which can be downright nerve-racking. The whole money situation would pretty much wash out I think between taxes, benefits, etc. For a while now I've been getting really tired of working alone. Especially since I don't know any geeks here, so I basically put my head down and do my thing day after day. When I'd get stuck I could ask one of my buddies for help, but I guess it just had gotten a bit old always being on my own.

One of the things that really struck me on the first gig I did with this company a couple months ago was both how dialed the people were I was working with, and how down to earth they seemed. After meeting many of them face to face on my last trip out West that impression has gone deeper. Since then I've worked with a couple other project managers, and have met the guy who will be my boss. All seem like really good people. Solid.

And what would a blog entry be without some sort of house update. In this case, a non-update. Yup, the market officially sucks hairy goat balls here. Not much interest at all on the house. Our realtor's busting her ass and nothing's coming up. Looks like we may check out renting the place out if that means we can rent the place up in the hills rather than buy it outright. Looks like we could probably swing it, and getting up there would be *really* nice.

Anyhow, that's the scoop for now...off to bed...

Creative Pumpkin Carving

OK, so on Monday we had our first house showing, which means we all had to be out. I was planning on hitting one of the local wifi hotspots and working. Then Kelly announced that she was taking the kids to the annual Pumpkin Regatta.

Pumpkins as we know are squashes. Since I live on the coast I know that a regatta is a big boat parade or something. Turns out that those monstrous pumpkins weighing in at the county fair have a use after all: hollow the fuckers out, slap an outboard on 'em and putter around Damariscotta Harbor.

So indeed, this was not something I could pass up and glad I saw it. There were only 2 craft launched this year: a 700+ pounder and an 800+ pounder. One of them had a 25 horse outboard on it, which was so overpowered at idle it was almost too much. At one point the guy in the pumpkin gunned the motor and almost flipped the whole rig over. The other craft was powered by a more sane electric trolling motor, though one bystander did wonder aloud what would happen if the pumpkin filled with water what kind of shock the driver would get. I'll get some photos posted...

Back at the Homestead

After a 24 hour car, plane, rental car shuttle ride punctuated with lots of waiting at the airport I made it home. It's good to be home. It's good to have one of the major projects I've been working on for over a year launched and running more or less totally smooth. It's good to be able to go to work and feel merely maxed rather than completely overwhelmed with the list of stuff to do. It's very good to send out the invoices for it all and even better to get the checks back.

All that, and it was also good to be back out west, to see my folks and brother and get some good hang time in the Cruz (though mostly I just worked =). I must say, each time I've worn my Conexus Cathedral shirt from Burning Man I've gotten comments. Out here mostly people just like the shirt. Out there burners recognize it and start up a conversation. I ended up talking with another Burner during the initial phase of the app launch; he was using the app. We ended up having a very authentic conversation, about things that really matter to me and he really listened and cared and was supportive. This is a guy I don't even know his name, that I will probably never see again. That's part of the magic of Burning Man, and for me why people that haven't been, and I include myself in this camp prior to this year, can't begin to comprehend what a mind-warp it is. There's a great 2-part article in the Santa Cruz Metro about Burning Man:

http://metrosantacruz.com/metro-santa-cruz/09.20.06/burning-man-0638.html
http://metrosantacruz.com/metro-santa-cruz/09.27.06/burning-man-0639.html

Just makes you wanna up and head out to the Playa, eh? Really though, she mostly needed to drink more water. There was a day when I put away over a gallon of water and gatorade and still pissed yellow. Totally crazy.

So yeah, kind of a dry and boring entry, but I mostly just wanted to put something up. It's nice to be back home, really good. More than nice to see my family, and also excellent to have the work realm a little more under control than it's been in months if not years...