Experiments in Life

As I sit here staring at the keyboard, trying to find the the right words, I am overcome by grief. For today, I have just received word that a very faithful companion of mine has passed away. Yes, it was time, and it’s better this way, but it still hurts my heart terribly to know that he is gone.

Today, my parents had to put down one of their dogs. I have only lived through this one other time in my entire life, and I must say, this time is no easier than the last. In fact, it may be harder simply because I had much longer with this dog than the last. So, in order to work through the pain that only time will somewhat heal, I dedicate this post to one of the most wonderful and loyal companions I have ever known…Abu Garcia a.k.a. Boo.

Boo was a mixed breed, part cocker spaniel and part poodle, a cockapoo if you will. He was so small when Mom brought him home. We weren’t even looking for a new dog but when she saw him at the vet, she just couldn’t leave him. He was just too cute My Dad wasn’t very pleased at first, but it didn’t take long for this little fellow to win his heart.

One of my first memories of Boo is a few hours after bringing him home. He was just a small pup and not quite sure about what was going on. I was in 8th grade I believe, making my brother 10 or so. My brother came home and startled the new puppy. Boo ran into the corner of the kitchen, yelped once, and then proceeded to pee all over the floor. It was priceless, especially when my brother got into trouble for it

It was fun watching this little puppy grow up. I remember his favorite summer activity. He loved to play in the water, and would play in his water bowl if you let him. We use to take out a cake pan, fill it up with water, take it outside and let Boo play in it. As soon as we put it down, he would climb in, pick a corner, and then dig. I guess he was trying to get all of the water out of that corner, I’m not really sure though. It was very entertaining to watch him throw water all over the place. And when he got tired of that one corner, he would go to another. He couldn’t rest until there was little or no water left in the pan. He would do this for hours, while we would just sit and watch. Boo however, did not like the swimming pool at all. How strange

As Boo got older, he could be quite tempermental. When we got Boo, I was around the age at which Girl Scout Camp became very important to me. I was going a lot and preparing for the CIT program (counselors-in-training). It’s a month long program that takes place over the course of two years. So, I left for camp, with only one weekend break over the month for two years. Each time I left and then returned, Boo would get mad at me. He would growl and walk off every time I would try to pet him. He would eventually get over it and I could win him over within a day or so. I guess it was his way of telling me that he missed me and loved me that much and that he didn’t appreciate me leaving him like that. We all have our quirks.

I was the one who took Boo to obediance training. You couldn’t tell it though. He only obeyed Mom it seems. But that was okay too, my brother and I didn’t really obey Mom so it was good that someone did

For the last decade (plus some), Boo has been one of the few constants in my life. As much as I watched him change, he in turn watched the major changes in my life. He saw me go from middle school to high school, from high school to college, and from college to graduate school. He also witnessed my first major boyfriend, and continuously growled at him for the entire couple of months that we were together. And while I have flourished and become the person that I am, he unfortunately got older, and sicker. For the most part, he was healthy. Afew years ago, he developed cataracts and lost most of his sight. Then, his hearing went as a result of taking a certain medication. Then we found out his heart was enlarged. But still, his little body kept on ticking. He was a fighter.

I am sorry that I did not get to properly say goodbye. I saw him just last weekend. Boo had developed quite a cough that was very annoying to most. It was very pitiful, and constant. He was waking my parents up by 4 in the morning, and was beginning to lose all sense of time. My Mother wasn’t even quite sure he knew who she was anymore. Boo was really beginning to lose it. Yet, he was still strong.

A few jokes were made about his cough and putting him out of his misery (and ours) but a little cough, while inconvenient, was no reason to put down an otherwise healthy dog for his age (somewhere around 13 or older). I hate that I made some of those comments about putting him down. In retrospect, it wasn’t a very nice thing to say. Apparently, over this past week, he deteriorated rapidly. He began having trouble breathing and eventually stopped eating. And eating was about all that he lived for. My parents made the decision based on his quality of life and had him put down this morning. I just received the email about 20 min. ago. My heart aches and there is a small hole that can never be filled. But my mother’s words stick with me…

I feel like even though he didn’t know me, he did know he was safe and loved to the very end.

Isn’t that all what we want in the end? I know I do.

Yes, I will go on. And with time, the pain will fade but never go away. All I can do is be thankful that I got to see him one last time before the end and cherish the memories that we made together. I guess there is a lesson in all this, one that you hear time and time again but never seem to fully realize until something tragic, yet not unexpected happens, the loss of a friend.

So, I will take comfort in my mother’s words and our hearts will hurt together.

I know that we did the right thing in letting him go. My head tells me all the things it should about a good long life, best for Boo, no more pain but… it is not my head that hurts. My heart does. Boo was a true and faithful companion. After all, who else will sit on a hill all night and look for you to come home

I’ll miss you Boo, but I know you are in a better place. And thank you for making my life a little brighter.

I thought this was a pretty interesting article. But then again, I’m such a nerd for these kinds of things

Grammar revealed in a whale’s love song

Enjoy

Some people fight for honor. Some fight for glory. Some fight to save a princess. I am the third kind. I carry a sword. Now it is time to venture into the mystical land of Hyrule once more to battle against the forces of evil, old school.

It took me a while, but I finally was able to get my hands on a copy of the Legend of Zelda: Collector’s Edition for the GameCube. Now, I have the two NES Zelda games and the two N64 Zelda games for the GC. I was a little disappointed that it did not come with the SNES version of Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, but since Ashley’s SNES still works, I may see if I can track that down at some point. After an 80’s retrospective conversation with some friends on Thursday night, I felt a need to play some classic Zelda again. I have not played the Wind Waker version of Zelda for the GC yet, but I will probably pick that up this summer to prepare for the upcoming release of Twilight Princess this fall.

Games have come a long way in the past 20 years.

Breakfast is more important than sleep, no matter how tired you think you are. You never know when you will have a meeting push your lunch time an hour later.

I just finished watching Pirates of Silicon Valley again. I saw this made for TV movie back in 1999 when it came out, but I have been doing a lot of reading about the making of the original Macintosh lately and I wanted to rewatch the video to see if I get a different perspective. Pirates of Silicon Valley is about the startup of Apple Computers and Microsoft. For the computer hackers and visionaries of the day, that was an exciting time period. Personal computing as we know it simply did not exist at the time — the companies headed by Steve Jobs and Bill Gates molded the personal computer into their own visions.

In retrospective, it was truly a great time for the computer hobbyist. A personal computer was something that one could create at home and have it be completely unique and yet at least as powerful as any of the other personal computers of the time. In the present day, computer hardware is so complicated that the hobbyist has to cross a significant barrier of entry for creating anything new and different The software world is the new frontier of the computing arena — hence, the dot-com boom of the late Nineties was born.

Sometimes I wonder what the next big thing on the horizon will be. Is it ubiquitous computing, computers that are so commonplace that we do not even realize that we are using them? Computers trends are leaning towards that direction, from computers the size of a room to computers the size of a handheld notebook. Is it some new form of user interface, augmenting the graphical and command line interfaces? Work is being done towards an auditory interface using technology like voice recognition and voice synthesis. Where can the hobbyists of today work to make an impact in the computing platforms of tomorrow?

These questions seem to stay in my mind more and more these days as I try to figure out what I really want to be doing with my life. Currently, I am very interested in programming language theory and in operating system design but neither of these interests are very revolutionary. Am I just not visionary? Does this mean that I just do not have what it takes to change the world? In the movie, Bill Gates says something like you have to figure out what someone needs, but does not realize that he needs, and then sell it to them. Are the ideas really so visionary or is it just being in the right place at the right time?

Okay, so yesterday was not exactly the best day for me. I had a rough day at work simply because everything I touched either blew up in my face, or I messed things up for other people. Really, I’m not exaggerating. Everyone that I came in contact with for the most part ended up having severe technical difficulties during the time of our interaction. Someone must have cursed me yesterday.

Anyway, I ended up leaving early since the weather was going to get pretty bad and I have a slightly neurotic dog during thunderstorms. So, I went home to take care of her and make sure she didn’t wet my carpet. Things went well, no puddles….yet.

Later that night, about 9 p.m., I was searching through my memory collection looking for some camp photos that I am planning on putting in a scrapbook. Well, I was in the closet when I caught a whiff of something. I wasn’t sure at first what it was since I was looking through some pretty old stuff and it kind of smelled funny anyway. Then I just had this feeling that I knew what it was. I had taken the baby gate to the guest room down so that the dogs wouldn’t stick their head over the gate and whine. Rosie has been known to stick her nose through one of the holes in the gate. I thought it would be easier to just let them in the room with me. Well, I came out of the closet and spotted it almost immediately. Guess I’m developing those mommy eyes, I’ve been told I am getting close to having a mommy voice when the pups get into trouble. So, I round the corner of the closet and come into the guest room and see not 1, not 2, but 4 puddles at the corner of the guest bed. At first, it did not register why there were so many puddles and why they were so small. And then it hit me… there were small puddles because it was dripping off of the quilt on the bed. Not only had the dog peed on the carpet, he had actually hiked his leg and peed all over the corner of the bed, soaking the quilt and bedskirt. I of course instantly knew who the only culprit could be. And there he was, about two feet away, laying on the floor looking up at me with the equivalent of a smile on the face of two-year old who has just done something wrong, and his tail was steadily wagging. I completely lost it! Of course, this obvious ploy for innocence was not working on me. I just looked at Dante for about 30 seconds, and then the words found me.

Now, during this entire ordeal, Jonathan is downstairs on the couch watching T.V. He has no idea what is going on, all he knows is that things were quite peaceful up until the moment he heard a string of explicatives interruped by “that dog”, “Dante”, “he’s just like a child”, and “are we sure we want kids?”. He yells upstairs to find out what is going on. I don’t really blame him, I wouldn’t have walked upstairs to me yelling and cussing without first assessing the situation and making sure the area was safe.

So now Jonathan has entered the picture and asked me what has happened. Of course, I don’t waste any time in telling him….a brief silence ensues….then, a burst of hysterical laughter that somehow continues for the next 15 minutes or so. He finally stops laughing long enough to walk up the stairs. There he finds me pointing at the corner of the bed and yelling in Dante’s general direction. And Dante just lays there quietly, wagging that stupid tail of his!!! So now, I have to strip the bed and wash the linens immediately. Otherwise things were going to get really smelly really quick. I send Jonathan to wash the linens, still laughing, while I continue to clean up what little bit managed to hit the floor. Then the nozzle on the cleaner quits working, which sends me into another fit, complete with a few more choice words.

And do you know what the worst part is? I can’t really be mad at the dog. Here are the reasons why:
1. I did not actually catch him in the act.
2. Too much time has passed for punishment to occur, he really wouldn’t understand what he was getting punished for.
3. He was just doing what comes naturally to a dog, marking his territory.
4. I was trying to work up a good mad so I wouldn’t die laughing…I mean the whole situation what absolutely hilarious.

So, the mess is cleaned up, Dante is probably forever traumatized by my irratic behaviour, Rosie is just there, the quilt and bedskirt are sitting in the dryer, Jonathan is waiting on me to finish this post so that he can post his version of the story, and I am still trying not to laugh about it…and failing miserably.

That is all.

Have a good day

The link is fixed now!!!!

Oops!! Technical Difficulties….again!! I now know that the link is not right, so, please be patient. I will get it corrected as soon as I can.

Sorry it has taken me so long to get this up. Again, it’s been waiting but I haven’t been able to post it because of technical difficulties. Anyway, let me know what you guys think.

My receipt number is f2a1b850dfe0

My Personal Dna Report

You gotta check out this critter! It’s amazing.

Animal is covered in blond hairlike strands

Okay, I finally managed to get this thing posted. I’ve been trying to get it up for over a week now. I have a few others in the works too, so be ready for ‘em! We’ve made some changes and I haven’t been able to make this quite look the way it should, but my loving husband has fixed things for me so that I can post again. YEAH

I took the two question quiz Jessica did. Here are my results. Let me know what you think