So Anyways

Mindy

I know it's weird to see a post on this all-but-abandoned blog, but there was a major event in our lives this weekend, and I feel the need to put my feelings about it down in writing. So, if anyone actually reads this, bear with me. It's being written solely as an expression of grief. I'm sure it'll be corny and some will say crazy, but I hope it will manage to express a little of how I really feel.

Hi Mindy.

It's been a couple of days since we sent you on your way, and I have to say, we really miss you. I just hope you and your bestest buddy in the whole world, Max, have found each other and are enjoying chasing each other around that big ol' backyard in the sky. I remember how much you guys used to really love chasing each other. I know you missed Max a lot when we had to send him on his way a few years ago. For most of your life, he was your constant companion and friend, and I can't even imagine how hard it must've been for you when he left us.

Well, this weekend, it was your turn to leave us. As much as I knew it was time for you to go, I wasn't as prepared for it as I thought I was going to be.

For a long time now, you've been showing your age, and it has been hard for us to watch. We hated seeing it happen to you - the hard time you had standing up, sometimes falling while just walking across the floor, being terribly sick occasionally to the point where you could barely hold your head up, being nearly totally deaf and blind. Even though you were bravely fighting through all of that, you still had some occasional sparks of life, and it didn't seem like you were quite ready to go. But then you got so sick on Friday. The vet said you had lost 4 pounds in less than a month (after losing about that much the month before), and you were so weak. It didn't seem fair to make you suffer like that any longer, even if we had been able to get your nausea under control.

So, we made the decision to let you go. As hard as it was to make that decision, I thought I was ready to do it. I didn't want to watch you failing a bit more day after day. It didn't seem that there were many days left on your downhill journey. If only you could have spoken and told us you were ready to go.

But you couldn't, and we had to try to make the right decision for you. Even though I was confident that we had made the best decision we could, I admit to having some doubts when my memories of our nearly 15 years together came crashing through my tears as I held you in the vet's office and you slipped away.

I remember when you were just a sparkle in my eye - I knew your mother's owner, and since Max was such a great dog, I was thrilled when Anna Belle's (your mom's) owner suggested that we let Max and Anna Belle spend a few days together. A few days later, we found out that you were on your way. You ended up being born on my sister's birthday, which just added to our excitement. I was allowed the "pick of the litter," and I picked you. When I came over to pick you out, you were the one who immediately came up to me to say hi. You always were a friendly girl!

It was pretty much love at first site. I didn't even consider any of your brothers or sisters. I chose you. It's hard to believe that was nearly 15 years ago! The years went by fast!

I won't say that I sometimes in those early days together, I wondered what I had gotten myself into. From the moment I put you in my car, all the way back to our house, you sat in the floorboard and screamed at the top of your little baby basset hound lungs. You kept it up for hours later after we got home. Even when I called my parents to tell them about the new addition to the family, you didn't stop crying. At least they were able to hear their new grandpuppy.

Your growing up years were a bit of a challenge, too. There was the time you stole my jeans off the top of my dresser, chewed a hole through them, got my wallet out of the pocket, destroyed it, ate a $20 bill, and forever dented my drivers' license with little puppy tooth marks. I really wasn't happy that day. But, I secretly laughed a little every time I had to pull that darn drivers' license out of my wallet after that. Even a cop noted that I "must have a puppy at home" when he asked for my license while writing me a speeding ticket.

Then there was the time you completely destroyed the brand-new irrigation system I had just installed in the backyard. Turns out, you just loved those little rubber tubes sticking up out of the ground. Didn't matter what I did to convince you otherwise, either. Even when, in desperation, I coated them with Tabasco sauce, you weren't deterred in the least. I soon learned to just give up on the idea of having an irrigation system.

It wasn't all bad, though. You were always the sweetest, most loving little girl I could imagine. You used to love to snuggle up in my lap (while you were still lap-dog size) and fall asleep with your nose tucked down between my arm and my body.

You were a clown, too. It was hilarious when I'd look outside and see you sitting like the queen of the world in the giant flower pot on the patio. Basset hounds just aren't supposed to sit in flower pots, but you seemed to enjoy it. Same with the time when I had taken you to my parents house and they saw you walking across their window sill. Basset hounds aren't supposed to be able to even fit on a window sill, but you somehow managed to. You were kind of cat-like back in those days.

As wild and crazy a puppy as you were, you mellowed out quite nicely with age. I think although you missed Max a lot when he left us, it seemed like you really came into your own as "an only dog." You seemed to enjoy all the attention that didn't have to be split anymore. Even though you enjoyed that brief period, you amazed me at how well you accepted Ed's cats when we moved into the new house. Not that you particularly liked the cats, but you were very tolerant of them.

You adjusted OK with the cats, but you definitely were not very happy the day we brought your new little brother, Toby, home for the first time. The look you gave me that day is forever burned in my memory. You were most definitely not a happy dog that day. But, even then, you managed to overcome your disappointment and actually started enjoying playing with Toby. Maybe not quite as much as he enjoyed it, but you did pretty well.

You were always a little skittish about some things. You absolutely hated the ironing board. (I'll be forever sorry for trying to get you over that irrational fear by making you sit on one.) You didn't like brooms much either. As you got older, you started to really hate thunderstorms (which was kind of a challenge here every August!). You got to the point where thunder and lightning and wind and rain caused you to get all pacey and to nearly hyperventilate.

As annoyed as I got some of those nights when you kept me from sleeping, I also used to feel a real sense of satisfaction when I could get you to calm down and fall asleep. Usually all it took was letting you up in the bed with me, with my hand gently patting your head or your tummy while you relaxed and finally fell asleep. I always enjoyed being your protector and the one you could count on to make things better.

I think that's why I took it so hard on Friday when I couldn't protect you any longer. You were counting on me. You were kind of scared and you knew something was happening that you didn't much like. And I couldn't do anything to make you feel better. When you stuck your nose down between my arm and my body again, looking for the comfort that you used to find when you were a baby, my heart broke just a little more.

I'm sorry I couldn't help you feel better and that I had to send you on a new journey, but I hope that at least you found Max and the two of you are happily rollicking around and annoying a new set of neighbors with your happy barking!

We miss you!

Kuala Lumpur Pix II

Todd took a walk over to the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur and sent thru some more pix...

Kuala Lumpur Pix

Todd has made it to Kuala Lumpur and has already sent me pictures!   Todd writes that he has been impressed with KL... very clean, cosmopolitan, crowded, and vibrant... and also very hot & humid. 

The last pic is a nightime shot of the Petronas Towers, currently the tallest building(s) in the world (though that honor is going to end soon).

Hopefully more pix to come...

Pictures from Hong Kong

Ni Hao, it's Ed!  Todd e-mailed me some pictures from Hong Kong and I thought I would share them with you over here on his blog.  You might be a little surprised by the last one.

Feel free to say hello to Todd in the comments...  I am sure he will appreciate hearing from some folks back home! 

Odds 'n Ends

There have been some things on my mind lately (believe it or not), but I haven't found time to blog about them. Now that it's finally Friday afternoon, and I'm pretty much sick of working, I thought I'd jot down some of those things that have been floating around up in the ether I call a brain...

• Why is it that conservative, evangelical Christians all profess so much concern for Israel? I mean, they all say essentially the same thing - if you haven't accepted Jesus as your personal lord and savior, you're going to hell. So, why do they love Israel so much? I'm pretty sure the folks in Israel who have accepted Jesus are a serious minority. Why then is Pat "Wacked-Out" Robertson so concerned about Ariel Sharon giving up part of the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians?
• I agree with Mr. WhineandCheese that folks should take it easy on Mrs. Alito. Her little crying spell really did nothing but make me believe she loves her husband and was affected by the stress of the Senate confirmation ordeal. It seemed genuine to me.
• Mr. Alito himself, however, is a whole 'nuther can of worms. If he truly doesn't recall being involved with the Princeton alumni club opposing women and minorities, then I'm sure David Duke doesn't recall being a member of the KKK either. That's not the kind of thing you forget. If a Supreme Court nominee can't tell the truth, isn't there a problem?
• Randi Rhoades on Air America Radio is a hoot to listen to. She's a liberal female homosexual-tolerant New York Jew who won't take an ounce of abuse from a conservative. And, she usually makes really well thought out arguments. There's too much polarization in America today, and there's no better way to realize that than to listen to any political talk radio. But, even if it's polarizing, it's nice to have an antidote to Rush, Hannity, and all the other right-wing hosts.
• It's embarrassing to admit, but I've become a huge fan of one of the FoodTV personalities. I never thought I'd say that. But, Paula Dean is one of my new favorite celebrities in all of celebrity-dom. She's just a good ol' girl from Savannah, with a dog named Gertie, a passion for butter (she puts at least one stick of it in anything she cooks), a sense of humor, and a southern charm that is addictive. Oh, and she has some hot sons, too.

So anyways, it's time for the weekend. Have a good one!

Ooops

Man, I bet whoever is responsible for this feels like crap today. I hadn't paid a lot of attention to the trapped miners story, but I had seen some headlines about it and saw a report on World News Tonight last night that seemed to indicate that it would take a miracle for those guys to be rescued.

When I checked in on CNN just before going to bed last night, there was a big "breaking news" headline saying 12 of the 13 were found alive. I even mentioned it to Ed since it seemed so opposite of what everyone was expecting to hear. We were both quite shocked (and a little confused) this morning when we saw the new headlines saying that instead of 12 survivors, there was only 1.

The guy who let that mistake happen should probably join the Michael Brown School of Disaster Management. President Bush would probably be first in line to pat him on the back.

But what's seemed really weird to me today is not so much that some asshole screwed the pooch big time on this, but that the news media (or at least the only two news outlets I keep up with during the day, cnn.com and msnbc.com, were making such a huge deal out of the screw-up. It would have been one thing if they had huge "breaking news" headlines screaming out about the tragedy itself, but it just seemed strange to me that they were totally focused on the screw-up. All day long, the headlines on both sites were focused on the mistake. It took Ariel Sharon's massive stroke to relegate the story to secondary status.

I don't know why that bothered me, but I think it's a pretty clear example of how the news media tends to focus attention on those stories that are shocking and/or sensational. No better way to "serve the public" than to scream out about some blunder of epic proportions, while ignoring the actual tragedy and its causes.

I can hardly wait to get home to see what Mary Hart has to say about it. Something tells me she'll be all over this one, probably asking Jennifer Aniston for her thoughts on the matter.

Size Matters

Apparently, size does matter. At least when it comes to soda.

Just before the holidays, all of the soda vending machines in our office were mysteriously allowed to run out of sodas. The machines weren't restocked for a week or two, so that eventually they were all empty. For those of us with addictions to feed, that was not a pretty time. It was pretty easy to tell who the soda addicts were - we were the ones who began pacing the halls early in the day, and who, by the end of the day, were gathering around the machines with looks of hopeful desperation as one after another of us would feed coinage in in hopes that somehow we'd be lucky and magically get that one magical soda that was still lurking somewhere in the machine just toying with our emotions.

It became clear today why the machines were not restocked. They were all switched out, so that now, instead of vending 12-ounce cans, they now only offer 20-ounce behemoth plastic bottles.

Now, I don't have a problem if people actually want that much soda, but I'm already feeling guilty about my addiction and I'd prefer to limit myself to 12 ounces of the stuff a day. No way do I need that extra 67%. I drink the diet stuff, and I get lectured everyday by several busy-bodies around here who claim that I'm going to die of cancer as a result. The extra 8 ounces is not going to make those people happy.

I guess I should be happy because, although there's a corresponding price increase with the larger bottles, it's a relatively small percentage increase (up to $1.10 per soda from $0.85, or a 30% increase in price). What a bargain. For only 30% more, I increase my risk of developing cancer by a whopping 67%.

I know that for a gay guy to wish for a smaller size of anything is a little unusual, but I'm no soda-size queen. Small is just fine with me.

Happy 2006!

Happy new year!  This has never been one of my favorite holidays - it just always seems like New Year's is a last-chance excuse to squeeze a little more "holiday" into the holiday season, but in reality, it's more like the day I have to start thinking about returning to life in the real world. Not that that's a bad thing, really. The holiday season is OK and the chance to relax is wonderful, but I couldn't deal with it for a lot longer.

This year seemed like a particularly active holiday season for us. Usually, at least for the past few years, we've not had a lot of things going on during the holidays. This year was different, though. My family descended upon us before Christmas, and the last one just left this morning. My parents and my sister were here for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and Ed (or as I like to call him, my own personal Martha Stewart) wowed us all with his culinary expertise, not to mention his holiday decorating touch. It was kind of cool to have a "real" family Christmas just like the old days, with lots of family and good food and festive decorations, and the really cool part was that I didn't have to do anything other than clean the kitchen. As I'm the only normal one in my family, the rest of them are hard to deal with for any length of time, but Ed manages to do it better than most.

After Christmas, my sister, my parents, my brother and his two kids, and I took off for a couple of days visiting "The Happiest Place on Earth," Disneyland. While it's a fairly happy place, I'm thinking the week between Christmas and New Year's it's really more like The Crowdedest Place on Earth. We had a great time there, but the shear mass of humanity was truly amazing. Waiting in line quickly became an accepted way of life. When it took us an hour after we entered the gate just to park the car, I knew it was going to be a rough couple of days. Add on another 20-minute wait for a shuttle from the parking area to the park entrance, another 20-minute wait to buy tickets, and another 20 minutes to go through security and actually get inside, and I was pretty much exhausted before we ever got started.

Just walking around inside Disneyland felt like being a part of a giant pin-ball machine - you pretty much just move through the park by bouncing off one collision with a stranger to another. It's almost a relief to get to an attraction and stand in a slow-moving line for the ride. Of course, every attraction had a line at least an hour long, and most were closer to two hours, all for 2-3 minutes of actual ride time. How we all managed to survive that without becoming raving homicidal maniacs is beyond me, but we did. That's probably thanks to the fact that my 9-year old nephew and 12-year old niece seemed to be having the time of their lives. Experiencing Disneyland even without kids is fun, but it's a lot more fun with kids who are seeing it for the first time. I was thankful to have the chance to bond even more with those two kids. They've had a rough year, so it was very cool to have a chance to share in some happy time with them.

Now it's time to move on to another new year. 2005 was a good year personally and I'm optimistic that 2006 will be just as good. I just hope that maybe it will be a year filled with less tragedy and devastation here and around the world than 2005 was.

I'm not big on making resolutions since I know I'm not capable of keeping most that I would make, but I try to at least start the year with a positive outlook and an intention of "doing better." One of those intentions (not resolutions!) this year is to be better about keeping this little blog going. It's all a matter of keeping perspective on my job and the workload that gets so overwhelming. If I can just manage to keep all those work-related stresses in check, maybe I'll be able to find the time and energy to post blog entries more often than once a month as I've been doing of late. Whether I'll be successful or not, we'll see. I'm gonna try, though.

So anyways, here's to a prosperous and happy 2006 to all of my blog buddies!

Boo!

Scared you, didn't I? 

I know it's scary when someone you thought was dead actually speaks. I'm not dead. I've just been a bad (very, very bad) boy and have all but abandoned my blog buddies.

I actually did survive my trip to France (spinning beds and all), and have been hard at work trying to get ready for the holidays, recover from the cold from hell, and get caught up at work, so there's been no time or energy for blogging.

I'll try to do better in 2006. In the meantime, "happy holidays" to all!

Who wants a Million Euros?

Unlike last night's wine-induced euphoria, tonight I'm suffering from France overkill.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, the room was spinning when I went to bed. That spinning only intensified when I actually got in bed - to the point that I thought for sure I was on some kind of carnival ride from hell. I kept asking that they just stop the ride because I wanted off. Didn't happen, though.

I haven't experienced anything quite like that since my college days. Fortunately, after a few prayers to the porcelain god, the spinning finally slowed back down to a manageable level, and I was able to fall asleep. Thankfully I awoke this morning without too many bad effects, but I'm pretty sure I won't be looking for any opportunities to drink a lot of wine again anytime soon.

This morning, I tried to estimate the amount of wine I consumed last night - it started out with 2 glasses of mescal, followed by 2 glasses of a white wine from the Alsace region with dinner, then 2 glasses of a pinot noir, and finally by 2 glasses of a Beaujolais. Eight freakin' glasses of wine in one night. I'm not entirely sure, but I'm thinking that was the equivalent of at least one full bottle of wine. No freakin' wonder the room was spinning. I'm just lucky I didn't pass out on the street as I was walking back to the hotel. It's a good thing I didn't, otherwise one of the very many hot French guys around here might've had his way with me. And that just wouldn't be a good thing.

I swore to myself this morning that tonight would be a *very* early night, with nothing more than a "Royale with Cheese" and a Coke from McDonald's. Unfortunately, when you travel with other co-workers, you're kind of obliged to go to dinner with them, even on nights when your hosts aren't taking you out to dinner and even when you want nothing more than to have a quiet night in the hotel room. Trying to be a good traveling partner, I reluctantly agreed to go to dinner with my co-worker tonight. He wanted to go to an Irish bar near the hotel for pizza and beer, so needless to say, I couldn't escape alcohol this evening. I did manage to limit myself to two beers, though, so I think maybe the bed won't spin out of control tonight. I'm keeping my fingers crossed anyway.

I'm now sitting in the hotel room watching French TV, which is an experience in itself. Tonight's show of choice - "Qui Veut Gagner des Millions?", which is apparently France's version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?".

I don't understand word one of French, but I've had fun watching the show. The Regis is just like Regis is supposed to be - slightly older, gruff but lovable, and wearing a dark suit with a dark shirt and a dark tie. It's like a little piece of home.

The first contestant on tonight's show got up to the 12,000 Euro question, although he had to use all three lifelines to get there. It was kind of funny when he phoned a friend and the phone connection was so bad that the friend couldn't hear the question. Didn't matter. 30 seconds expired, and the guy didn't get an answer. No do-overs allowed just because the phone connection sucked. Anyway, with no help from his friend, the guy got the answer wrong. The funny thing is, I would've gotten it right since one of the four answers was "DeGaulle." That was the only one of the four names I recognized, so that's the one I chose as my "final answer." Turns out, I was right. I have no idea what the question was, but at least I got the answer right. Too bad for the guy, though. He lost 10,500 Euro. I did pretty well on the Fastest Finger as well - I managed to surmise that the question was "Put these TV shows in order according to when they debuted on French television, starting with the earliest." Two of the answers were "Friends" and "Dallas." I put "Dallas" ahead of "Friends," which was correct, but I didn't recognize the other two and didn't get them in the right order.

So that's it for today. Tomorrow is the big group dinner, which I have a feeling means even more drinking and an extremely late night. Wish me luck.