Journal Entries
Lobo
Posted Jul 27, 2012
I've been depressed often in my life, but I don't think I've ever been in as deep a hole as I am this week. For whatever reasons, seratonin levels or circumstance, I've been pretty low for most of this year. But this week has been like a pile driver to my heart. I had to have my best friend 'put down' Tuesday. Lobo had been suffering from a seemingly undiagnosable and possibly incurable skin disease. Just when I thought I'd determined it might be a food (corn) allergy and had him down to one last stubborn lesion. It rebounded and spread to his face. I decided to try giving him Benedryl in the hope that it might ease any allergic reactions, but I think it was too late. It quickly worsened from a few small spots, to an irritated mass that he couldn't help but scratch. Within a few days he got to the point where he was literally scratching his face apart. As soon as I could, I went to the pet supply store and got him a protective collar. I bought a new fancy and friendly inflatable collar first. On the way home I stopped at the vet to get antibiotics and steroids (prednisone). It was busy so I had to wait an hour and a half in the office while Lobo was at home further shredding his face. An hour after getting home I realized that this fancy, friendly collar may work well to keep a dog from chewing on himself, but it did no good at keeping him from scratching his face with a back paw. So, I rushed back to the pet supply store and got a proper Elizabethan collar.
That was Saturday. The E-collar worked as it should and prevented him from scratching his face further, but I could tell he was still quite distressed. The prednisone and Benedryl started kicking in a bit though and he would switch between two modes: laying down nearly asleep, or driven to mania by the need to scratch his intolerable pain and itching.
Skip forward to Monday morning and I discover that he's managed to find the tabs that fasten his E-collar and use those to reopen his wounds.
I had seen this moment coming for some time, but I really didn't want to face it. Some part of me hoped that my parents, at home with Lobo, would make the decision for me and take him to the vet while I was at work. But it was my decision to make. So, when I got home we quickly discussed it and I had my mother make the appointment for the morning. At this point, she volunteered to take him in for me. At the brink of a complete breakdown, I nodded my appreciation.
I skipped dinner, went upstairs to my apartment and bawled my eyes out.
I finally regained composure and brought both my dogs upstairs for the night.
It was a very tough night.
For months I'd been trying to prepare myself for this. I'd read a post on Reddit that impressed upon me that when it's time to have your pet euthanized, it's really best to be with your pet till they're gone.
That thought had haunted me from that point on. I knew it was the right thing to do, but every time I thought about it I would choke up and then chase the thought away, lest I break down crying in public about something that hadn't even happened yet. Could I do it? Could I sit with my best friend for the last moments of his life? I didn't know. I didn't want to know.
And up until about 4:30 on a sleepless Tuesday morning, I didn't think I could. I would have let my dear mother take my dog on that dreadful trip. Let her drop him off to the kindly care of my very compassionate, but unfamiliar veterinary staff. They would probably cage him for a bit until someone was ready to do "the procedure".
No, I had to be there. I had to take him for one last walk. I had give him one last "butt scritching". I had to make sure he wasn't alone and knew he was loved up until the end. And he looked back up into my eyes and showed me how much he loved me.
It was the right thing to do, but I haven't stopped crying since.
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Latest reply: Jul 27, 2012
Ordainment
Posted May 6, 2012
I'm now, officially, an ordained minister.
As an atheist, this makes me grin. But of course, it was done for a (good) reason. In a few months I will preside over the marriage of some friends. (possibly twice, but only once officially). I will be presiding as a minister of the Church of the Subgenius, unofficially, but ordained by the Universal Life Church officially.
I really didn't think I'd ever find a church I approved of until I looked up the ULC.
"Do only that which is right."
Well, that's close enough to Wheaton's law.
"Don't be a dick."
I approve.
Anyway, for a marriage, the only thing besides the signing, and registering of the papers that is required is the "statement of intent". In normal weddings this follows the form of "Do you solemnly take" blah blah blah...
I'll be following the form from the film *Joe vs. The Volcano*.
Tom Hanks' character has agreed to jump into the volcano. Meg Ryan's character asks him to marry her "for all of five minutes". Abe Vigoda, as the high priest of the island, marries them by saying this:
"Do you wanna marry him?"
"Yes."
"Do you wanna marry her?"
"Yes."
"You're married!"
By law, that constitutes the "statement of intent". I see little reason to drag it on beyond that. Both these folks have been unsatisfactorily and temporarily married before, so this time they've thought about it a bit more seriously... (maybe).
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Latest reply: May 6, 2012
Asea
Posted Apr 8, 2012
I'll be AFK for the next seven days as I'm about an hour away from hopping on a ship and going to the Caribbean. I'll probably pop on a couple of times (at exhorbitant rates on board) just to keep the backlog from becoming overwhelming upon my return. This will be the fourth time I've been to Roatan, Honduras. I absolutely adore that island because it has only local businesses. There's no Carlos & Charlies, no Hooters, no Rainforest Cafes, no Joe's Crab Shacks. I'll be on a zip line for an hour or so, then stopping by Fantasy Island resort for a few hours (and a few Salva Vita beers) and then dining at Geo's Crab House. Do I get the lobster and crab platter or the amazing seafood soup I had last time? We'll also be stopping in Belize City and Cozumel, both places I'm also quite familiar with. I'm not sure what I'll do in Belize City, but in Cozumel I'll be "discovering" scuba. This trip I splurged and got a stateroom all to myself. I won't have to worry about my snoring disturbing anyone nor their snoring disturbing me. On my last cruise I discovered and alerted my roommate to his sleep apnea. He now has a pace maker.
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Latest reply: Apr 8, 2012
What I do
Posted Feb 1, 2012
People often ask me what I do at NASA. While this fellow's work deals mostly with Hubble Space Telescope imagery and I work more with lunar and Earth Observation imagery, our daily jobs are quite similar. http://t.co/IdXCOqFW
Discuss this Journal entry [49]
Latest reply: Feb 1, 2012
The Owners
Posted Nov 1, 2011
(Not part of NaJoPoMo)
Here's a bowdlerized and partially edited version of a wonderful quote from George Carlin from 2008.
Carlin - The Real
Owners Of America
24.06.2008
"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They've got you by the [short hairs]. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying... lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want? They want more for themselves and less for everybody else."
"But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting [Belgium]ed by a system that threw them overboard 30 [Belgium]ing years ago.
"You know what they want? Obedient workers... people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly [more pooh laden] jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your [Belgium]ing retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this [Belgium]ing place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club. By the way, it's the same club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy"...
"It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it."
With the #OWS protests it seems Carlin was speaking to the 99%. I think he'd like what they're doing and saying. While much of the coverage of the protests, especially in the main stream media and Faux News focuses on their apparent lack of direction and message, they are accomplishing something very important. They are changing the dialogue. They are changing the questions the public are asking. I recently saw a report that looked at the terms used in the media. Before the protests the leading terms recurring in the press was about the deficit. Now it's about corporate greed. The term "corporate greed" appeared around 300 times in the month before the protests and 1600 in this last month. Whether the media is leading the story or not, people are looking at the oppressive financial inequality we're seeing everywhere today and many of these people aren't going to let it just get swept under the rug for the next talking point.
I'll use this journal entry to post things I find and things that occur to me that relate to this New Gilded Age we live in.
Today I read this article in the Guardian about The Corporation of London.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/31/corporation-london-city-medieval
This is something I'd certainly never heard of. I think a lot of people will be hearing about it soon. This makes the U.S. Chamber of Commerce look like rank amateurs, mere upstarts.
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Latest reply: Nov 1, 2011
Baron Grim
Researcher U69725
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