Catching Up

Abby is doing much better. She’s eating on her own and seems to have recovered.

The cruise to Hawaii was excellent. In brief, we hit Hilo where we rented a car and checked out the Volcano National Park and then Rainbow Falls. In Kona, we went on a terrific snorkeling excursion and even saw some whales on the way. In Maui, we drove the Road to Hana on the first day and then on the second day we found a beach and lounged/rented boogie boards. In Kauai, we did a kayaking/hiking excursion and got to swim and sit in a waterfall. (It was cold, but it was a fun experience). Overall, I would rate the Pride of America highly. I did give them a lengthy list of suggestions on the feedback card, but nothing really that major. It was a nice ship and the crew was really great.

I started my first class for my Finance Masters last week. It seems like it will be a good class. My first impression of the instructor was good and the syllabus didn’t look to frightening.

We had a fun weekend and saw a couple shows. Saturday we took my parents to the movie “Walk the Line”. I thought it was good. Sunday, Gary and I went to the play/musical “Sex and the Second City”. It was entertaining and funny, but I wouldn’t go so far as to rave about it.

Hmmm.... interesting

Here’s an interesting angle for an alternative to online dating… I got this in my email today:

"Are You Invited?
The Beautiful Room is Dallas’ most exclusive, social experience. The Beautiful Room Party is an event brought to you by The Beautiful Room, which will bring together Dallas’ most attractive people in one place to socialize and mingle in a unique setting on Saturday, January 21, 2006. The Beautiful Room Party is an exclusive event and is by invitation only.

To be considered for invitation, please go to: http://www.thebeautifulroom.com/qualify"

To qualify you have to submit pictures. “The qualification board is composed of three people who will base their decisions solely on the photographs you provide”.

I think I’ll submit a few really non-beautiful people for consideration just for fun. Ha ha.

Hair Debacle

Should I have realized I was in trouble when the girl doing my hair had a Mohawk? Perhaps.

I’ve had parts of my hair dyed three times in the last two days. The good news is that 1) I do now find it to be of acceptable quality to be seen and 2) I had plenty of time in the salon to finish reading Harry Potter (the 1st one), which I got for Christmas.

The bad news was 1) I wasted a total of about 5 hours in the salon and 2) she dropped a gob of dye on my book. That was bad enough but then to make it even worse, it got all over my jeans because I didn’t realize she had dropped it. :-(

Advice: 1) Don’t get your hair done by someone with a Mohawk and too many piercings to count, 2) Wear grubby clothes to the salon that you don’t care about, and 3) take a magazine rather than a book that you specifically asked your family to buy you in hardcover because you intended on keeping it long term.

Abby Update

Abby is doing better. We are “force feeding” her (with a syringe) three times a day. She’s been eating a small amount on her own. She seems to be happy and in good spirits. Gary took her to a specialist today that could run more sophisticated tests on her. His opinion is that the condition is reversible as long as we can keep her nutritional intake up.

Gary and I are headed to Hawaii on Saturday for a week, so my parents (in town anyway) will be housesitting for us and taking over cat care. We hate to leave her since this will likely stress her out, but hey… non-refundable tickets to Hawaii, ya know? :-)

Seriously, we are optimistic that she will be fine. Even if she doesn’t make progress on eating on her own, the syringe feedings should do the trick.

More Serious Kitty Check In

It appears the stress has taken a more serious toll on Abby recently. She was hospitalized this week. We had noticed a decrease in weight and food consumption and figured it was due to stress. That became even more serious in the last few days. When Gary left for his trip to Rhode Island, we think she pretty much completely quit eating. I was able to hand feed her a little bit, but she basically wasn’t eating. We took her to the vet on Tuesday and they kept her overnight to give her fluids. She was eating a little bit at the vet and they are giving her an appetite stimulant. The lack of eating has caused some liver problems. We brought her home for the evening last night, but she didn’t eat anything the whole time she was at the house. She’s going back to the vet to have more fluids today. We are hoping to get her eating again and hoping that will kick-start her liver functions back to normal… really hoping she hasn’t done permanent damage to her liver.

Christmas 2005

Christmas 2005
Originally uploaded by rkbk03.

Here's a family picture from last night.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Prep

I'm happy to say that I'm almost finished Christmas shopping. I believe I have 2-3 items left to pick up, which shouldn't take too long...the Christmas cards have been mailed... everything I've already bought has been wrapped and put under the tree. I think I'm almost ready.

Now it's time for Christmas cookie baking. :-)

I'm also happy to hear that the weather is expected to be very nice this weekend.

Winter Weather

I think my parents brought the cold weather with them. :-)

They arrived here Saturday, so at least they got to enjoy one really nice day before the weather turned to more of what they are used to. The scary thing is that even this weather is nicer than what they would be dealing with in ND. The good news is it will be back to the 50's by the weekend.

We usually only get one or two episodes like this per year and I'm very glad to have the ability to work from home this year. I left work early yesterday before the roads got bad and I'm working from home today also. It's very nice to have the choice to not go out.

22% Yankee

Holy Crap! I've been in Dallas for too long. According to this test, I'm only 22% yankee.

For what it's worth, my answers were:

A-B-A-B-B
B-A-C-C-A
A-A-A-A-C
A-A-A-A-B

< Update >
I've been informed that, on this particular test, a low score means I'm more of a yankee. My score makes much more sense now.

And ... I managed to score a 79% on their spelling test. The quiz contained commonly confused and misspelled words. It was quite difficult, I thought.

Good News

Good news... Gary got a new job.

Better news... He's taking time off between jobs and we booked a Hawaiian cruise during that time.

Woohoo - can't wait. :-)

Kitties

Well for an update...

They are getting along ok, but not great. There is still a lot of hissing and growling going on.

I'm not sure who is winning between Molly and Isabel. They seem to be equally matched and I have spotted both of them chasing the other. I never really see who starts it.

For Molly and Abby, Molly is often doing the chasing but they keep their distance more because Abby is definitely doing the most growling. The good news is, it appears Abby is losing weight from all that being chased and going up/down stairs. She has been much more active and playful than I have ever seen her. Gary actually had her jumping up and batting at a cat toy... I've never seen her do that. :-)

They are definitely all enjoying all of the attention and company.

Kitty Check In 2

I'm working from home today, so Abby has really enjoyed the company. She's been on the couch with me most of the day. She's still growling at Molly whenever she sees her.

Today Molly and Isabel were chasing in a bad way. I'm not sure who was chasing who or what exactly happened, but I heard some mean screaming (in cat language) at each other. I yelled at them and they ran in opposite directions as they came down the stairs. :-(

Thankfully I wasn't on a conference call or something at the time. :-)

They seem to be fine now so I'm not sure what that was all about.

Last Chapter

After getting the school and tuition reimbursement folks on a 3-way call yesterday, I decided to give up. I just wasn't getting anywhere.

Last night I went ahead and applied and put the fee on my credit card.

Wouldn't you just know it... today I got an email from the tuition reimbursement people that although they normally require fees to be associated with a class for approval, they have gone ahead and approved this for me.

Now, I'll see if the nice folks at the school will reverse the charge on my credit card and accept the payment from the tuition people. The school was much more reasonable to deal with yesterday, so I think that may work out fine.

That thing I do

My company issued a press release today, announcing a line of wireless and wireline softswitches that will be marketed in the US. Almost makes me well up with pride and burst into the official company song.

Anyway, I mention it not because I get a commission on each item sold (though maybe I'll drop that little idea in the suggestion box), but because friends, relatives, and coworkers (go figure!) sometimes ask me what I do at work. Well, here it is: I help figure out how to make these things work here in the states.

You see, telecom gear talks different languages (or at least dialects) depending on where you are in the world. There's a whole maze of regional standards to navigate. Then there are the regulatory considerations. Each country tells us how to do things like 911 and wiretapping a bit differently. Finally, we need to iron out various stuff with the customers themselves. For example, our equipment needs to generate billing records just so, so it can be easily fed into their accounting systems and you get your bill at the end of the month.

We're a little informal about job titles around here, but this would generally fall into the category of "systems engineer" or maybe even "systems analyst." I figure out what the thing's supposed to do (requirements analysis) and then tell the engineers (requirements specification). Then, the engineers ignore me (design and implementation) and, lastly, I beat them with a stick until it works (quality assurance).

So that's it in a nutshell. Not so complicated after all, huh?

Oh ... and did you notice the title of the article? "Samsung unveils plans." It sounds kinda ominous, doesn't it? As in, "Samsung unveils plans ... to rule the WORLD!! muahahaha!!!"

Hmmm ... another idea for the suggestion box.

The Saga Continues

Would you believe... the tuition reimbursement people have now denied my application because "any fees need to be associated with a class". I ask you... how can an application fee, which the policy clearly says it covers, be associated with a class??? UGGHHHHH! Getting angrier...

Not Sure It's Worth It...

My employer provides tuition assistance and I recently decided to take advantage of that by going back to school to work on an M.S. in Finance. However, I almost decided not to go back because while working on my M.B.A. (which I finished in 2003), I had nothing but problems with the whole tuition reimbursement process. However, I decided it would be a shame to pass up the opportunity solely because I don’t like dealing with them. Today, I’m re-thinking…. Ugggghhhhh.

So… they cover application fees and I submitted the paperwork for the application fee on 11/1. First of all, they told me it takes 2-3 weeks. It’s due 11/15, so I don’t have that long. When I talked to someone though, he was nice enough to tell me that although they say to allow 2-3 weeks, it was currently averaging 3-5 days, so I should be fine.

They reviewed the application on 11/4. That was good, but unfortunately, they marked it “incomplete” and asked me to re-submit. The comments say the dates were missing… which they weren’t!!?? So, I re-submitted and sent along an email asking them to tell me specifically what was missing. Their response (which I just received today): “The dates were missing, but it looks like they are there now, so we will review and get you a response in 2-3 weeks”. Although I know they are really only taking 3-5 days right now… the point is they screwed up… I have no idea what they were looking at the first time… and the 11/15 date is fast approaching. So irritating!!

Kitty Check In

It appears that Molly and Isabel may be starting to play a little bit. They are chasing each other around and we *think* it’s in a good way. :-)

New Roommates

Gary and the kitties made the big move this weekend. Abby and Isabel are slightly upset and confused after having been uprooted from their home and moved to a strange place… with another cat. (eek!) They are even hissing at *each other*.

We did really enjoy the first night with Abby and Isabel each on opposite sides of the bed growling (sarcasm). Gary gave them a good talking to about the manners of joining us on the bed only to sit there and growl. Low and behold, it must have worked because last night was better.

Overall though it’s gone fairly well. We think they’ll “work things out” and be able to live together. Molly seems more interested in them than upset by them… but then she doesn’t have to also get used to a new environment, so I guess it’s expected that she would not be as bothered.

As for the rest of the move, I felt like we accomplished a lot. We packed and moved several loads while sorting things for a garage sale. Gary got the PC’s hooked up after a couple trips to Fry’s. So far there’s enough space although the pantry was a challenge already and we haven’t brought all the food from his place yet. Of course we are talking about someone that has three different jars of bay leaves!!?? So there may be some opportunity for reduction. :-)

Halloween Pic

Gary Rachelle Halloween
Originally uploaded by rkbk03.

Here's a pic of Gary and me from Halloween.

Excuse me...

Molly Halloween
Originally uploaded by rkbk03.

I don't think she likes the witch... what do you think? (The witch is kind of in "her" spot).