Spring is in the air...

and in Memphis, that means it's either too damned cold or too damned hot. We've already been up to the mid-80's, and back down to frost warnings. Gotta love it.

Work is the same old thing. I've been convincing the kids that I'm over being the person to build all of the workstations, and that they're going to have to pick up the slack. I'm in the middle of redoing our network, and upgrading our exchange infrastructure. In other words, I'm finally concentrating on what I'm supposed to be doing, and leaving the lower level stuff for the support techs.

The search in Kentucky is still slow...though I think that I've stirred up some tech headhunter firms towards moving into the Purchase area. Maybe that will shake things up. I know it's pretty rural there, but there are some large firms that need IT support.

Julian is still a psychotic little old cat. Every time I go to Arlington for the weekend, he drives me totally batshit for the first 4 days after I get back. We've ended up with 2 cats in Kentucky...the father-in-law's tomcat and a little female cat that conned Gayle into letting her in. The tom, Stoopid, is the most laid back tomcat I think I've ever seen. As soon as I can arrange it I'll be having him neutered. I'm sure he'll forgive me eventually.  The little girl needs to be spayed asap, as she's already been in heat. She has the strangest yellow/golden eyes of any cat I've ever seen. I think that was one of the selling points in getting Gayle's attention.

It's my on-call week, so of course I've crap planned for most evenings and for the weekend. It's times like this I think I need to get a life!

Ok, lets catch up...

In case you were wondering if I succumbed to the ravages of influenza, sorry to disappoint. Gayle did call it correctly, and I had the nasty cough for 3 weeks after the fever broke.  As that was the first time on over 20 years that I've had the flu, I think I'll be hedging my bets in the future and getting a flu shot every fall.

Gayle's still in Arlington. Her mom's been in the nursing home since November, and Gayle's been trying to recover from the stress of dealing with and caring for her parents for 3 solid years. She was going to come down to Memphis this weekend for a break, until she got a call from the home telling her that her mom had fallen out of bed and broken her hip.  So, she's in the hospital in Paducah, with surgery scheduled to put a pin in her hip.

We've retained an attorney who is working to get the house there put into our name, so that we can finally be sure that repairs and upgrades we make won't be on behalf of the government. I've been looking for a job up there, but I'm becoming convinced that nobody uses computers there. There's not even any tech headhunters covering the area...only casual labor outfits like Kelly Services industrial division.

I'll try to keep this up a bit more often than I've been...but with working here, and going to Arlington every weekend that I'm not on call, I find that I can understand just how tired Gayle is.  And I've only been doing this for a year and a half!

influenza attacks!

I woke up in the middle of the night last Friday feeling uncomfortable, and woke up Saturday morning with a full on case of the flu. Temps over 102, chest full, along with my sinuses. The fever finally broke Monday evening, and with only a couple of bounces has stayed down. My chest is still full of congestion, making most breaths sound like a bellows with holes shot in it. Have I mentioned lately how much I hate being sick? I've really not been this sick in over 20 years, and I really hope it's another 20 before it happens again.

Fortunately, I had Julian the sneezing cat to take care of me. Gayle mostly wrote smartass texts about how men are such babies when they're a little under the weather, and that I should not even consider coming up this weekend unless I was over everything. Well, I'm over everything enough to go to work (people at the clinic are avoiding me, and spraying lysol whenever I've been around), so I guess I'm good to go to Kentucky, regardless of how much I sound like an escapee from a TB ward.

After the hiatus...

I was just pondering giving Gayle some grief over how long it had been since she'd updated her blog, and then noticed that I last posted to this in August. Sheesh!

Ok, lets get caught up. Gayle's still in Kentucky, but her mom is now in a nursing home, and has been since November. Gayle managed to not only NOT get rid of Stoopid, her dad's cat, but adopted by osmosis a cute little kitten. This kitten has one bad trait....she will not use a litter box. She'll go outside, but not in a box.  This is the first cat I've ever known who didn't do this instinctively. Even with Stoopid as an example (if he's outside, he'll come in to use the litter box, rather than using mother nature's) she refuses. But it's nice having a kitten around, and she gets along ok with Stoopid.

Work is still pretty much the same....long days, short weekends. We've implemented a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure project, which means that the users doesn't get a computer, but a terminal, and connect to a desktop that runs on a server.  Those that are using this don't mind, as the terminal takes up a lot less space on their desktops than a full sized pc, and desktop space is always at a premium.

 I've been pretty regular about going up to Kentucky when not on-call, which in some ways is more tiring that working all weekend. But, you do what you have to.

Last Saturday I woke up with a raging fever and have been fighting it ever since. I've finally got the fever licked, but am now working on the chest congestion and cough. This is actually the first time I've had the flu in over 20 years, and am very glad of that fact.  The flu sucks.

Well, I'll be back to work tomorrow (and hopefully non-contagious...I wouldn't wish this on anyone). I'll try to keep up with this a bit more regularly, especially as we get into spring, and work on the place in Kentucky gets going.

R.I.P. Mikey the Cat

 Mikey joined our family over 10 years ago. He was our neighbors cat, who decided that he liked us better. I think we were both the better for his decision.

He was no spring chicken when he moved in, and had gotten pretty arthritic as the years went by. A couple of weeks ago he started drooling, then stopped eating solid food. The last few days he couldn't even sleep for the pain.  I couldn't see anything wrong with his teeth, nor could I see anything obvious with gums and such. He was having issues with his hindquarters in walking, which was getting much worse, and I finally decided the big guy had been through enough. I took him to our vet, and ended his suffering at 4:42pm, 8.20.12.

I've always claimed to be rational about pets, and kidded one of my sisters for the way she treated hers as if they were her kids, or even better than that.

Tonight, I understand that behavior completely. I did the right thing in ending his suffering.

I'm still heartbroken.

To the best cat it was ever my privilege to share a recliner and a grounding strap with.

Old cats and decisions

After returning from a Kentucky weekend a few weeks ago, I found Mikey hiding in my closet. When I was able to get him to come out, he was barely able to walk. He favored neither side, and made me wonder if he'd had a stroke. He would come out occasionally, and continued to use the litter box, so I just let him stay where he wanted to. As time went by, he's gotten better, and is currently piled up behind me in my recliner.

The main thing is that Mikey is at least 15 years old, and I'd actually guess a bit old than that. Until the last five years he was allowed outside daily, and was exposed to all of the diseases and critter encounters that goes with being an outside cat. My problem is this: if he hadn't gotten better, when should I have pulled the plug?

Actually, as much as I love the boys, if I think that either of them is in pain, or suffering in some way, I'll not hesitate to take em to the vet and have them put down. Mikey was just lucky in that he recovered quickly, for if he'd stayed in the closet another day, he'd be gone now. Both Gayle and I aren't much for spending a ton of money on pets that have had a longer than expected lifespan, and that covers both of the boys. Julian has outlived 3 younger generations of his barn cat family, and is in fact the last survivor of that particular genetic line. So, not to be crass or cruel, neither of the boys will receive heroic measures if they get ill.

All that being said, it'll be a sad day in Memphis when either Mikey or Jules are no longer here.

No, I'm not dead...

I just post that way.

I knew it had been a while, but I really thought I'd posted something since April. It's not that I've had nothing to say...I've just not had the time to say it!

Since we last spoke, I've either been working in Memphis, or working in Arlington. Gayle's uncle Charles was kidding with her, wanting to know how I was enjoying driving to Kentucky every weekend I could just to work my ass off. It's not really that bad, but mowing the 5 acres and doing the weed eating, along with picking up any and all limbs that have fallen is pretty much all I can pull off on a Saturday, and I usually head back to Memphis by 11am on Sunday. So, not much rest from having put in at least 45  to 50 hours during the week at the clinic. On top of that, we've also had a major software upgrade, which (of course) happened on a weekend that I wasn't on call. Two weeks ago I went to Kentucky early Friday afternoon, and stayed through Monday. That weekend I didn't do a damned thing but sit, read and watch the tube. I'm sure that deep down Gayle wishes that I'd done something, but she was sweet enough to let me slide, and get some rest.

Both of the cats are really starting to show their age...Jules is 15, and Mikey is somewhere in that range. Mikey is getting to where he can't get up on anything that's taller than 18 inches, and Julian... well, if Jules was human, he'd be shaking his cane and yelling for everyone to get off his lawn! Like me, they have good days and bad. On the bad ones, Mikey tries to get me reported for animal abuse, as he howls his head off, sounding like he's being tortured. I'm never sure if he's just being noisy, if he's in pain, or if he's trying to contact the mother ship.

I'm not having much luck at all on job prospects in the Purchase. Every headhunter who contacts me is wanting me for positions that are 100+ miles away.  Sheesh, with Paducah, Mayfield, Murray and Fulton all driving distance from Arlington, you'd think that there would be some IT jobs. It'd just be nice to be able to actually live in the same zip code as Gayle.

See, the downside to going months without posting.  All you do is bitch, bitch bitch.

Ok, more later, and hopefully in less than 3 months.