First off, let me catch my breath for a second. Phew! I feel like I have been running non-stop since coming back from my sister’s graduation. I started my new job the day after we got back, that has been interesting and very, very exhausting. I feel like I have been run ragged. Not that the job is very hard, but I have had a ton of meetings and more meetings after each meeting. I was in training all day yesterday with Ryan from Space150. I have a much better handle on Microsoft Content Management Server which means that I will finally start to do my job. I also had a meeting with my boss about how we can launch a viewbook with a micro-site, which might involve a blog or two. I put together all my research about blogs this morning, breaking it down by service, cost, etc. It should be interesting to start launching blogs at a school that is really behind making the web their marketing vehicle. Let me think. What else has happened… Oh yeah! We got a new cat. Slideshow His name is Magnus, because he’s huge, he’s a massive cat, compared to the other cats that I have had. I’m sure he’ll be the feature of many a’ blog post. I also went to a Norfolk Tides baseball game. A buddy of mine got tickets to a box from work, so we had a great view. Sky box #9, with free food. It truly is the only way to watch baseball. The Tides lost, but the evening was still enjoyable. I really need to get it together with my camera and a video camera so I can post this stuff online… add that to my list.

When I last updated about fitblogging/fatblogging, I was way under. I let that go to my head and I managed not to lose a single pound, or half pound, or tenth of a pound. I am still at the same weight and while I’m a little disappointed, I’m not too upset as a whole.

The thing that was weird about today was that we lost our cat today. Not in the “oh no, he got outside and ran away”, but in the way where he has joined the great scratching post in the sky. Floyd has been sick for a while, three months now, and while he showed some improvement over the course, on the whole it was really just a steady decline. He had lost over 40% of his body weight, consisting of little more than flesh and bones, he could eat or drink with bringing it up shortly after consumption and the vets were no where closer to finding out what was wrong with him.

Esther and I were faced with a choice, costly test that may or may not get us answers to what’s wrong, or take away Floyd’s suffering, which there was plenty of.

So on the whole, the past year has been one of loss. First we lost Esther’s dad, then my pet rat, and now our first pet together, Floyd. It has been very hard to maintain my Buddhist outlook on life, partly because there is no god to be angry with, partly because it all come back to attachment, which leads to suffering; how can you perceive death with out attachment? Apparently, that means I should meditate more.

Floyd, I miss you.

Floyd is back from the vet. He’s doing much better, but is not quite a 100%. He still has to go back to the vet and they have no idea about what is going on with him. Ugh.

Floyd is sick. He’s been sick for a couple of days and he seems to be getting sicker and sicker. Esther has taken him to the vet. I hope he’s okay.

Update

Esther called me from the vet. The diagnosis, while vague, is not good.

The vet doesn’t know what’s going on with him and needs to run some tests, which aren’t cheap. Does that make me a bad pet owner to think about the cost of tests? Esther’s call was fairly gloom and doom, but I told her that we at least need to find out what’s up with him and if after the first round of diagnostics they don’t know whats wrong, we’ll have to have a serious talk.

This really sucks!

First John, then Data, now Floyd. We are having a very crappy 6 months!!!

Oscar, our dog, has taken to hopping up on the bed at night when we sleep.

Most nights it isn’t to bad, but last night was interesting. He was cuddled up to me all night long, but then early in the morning he had moved into a position that wouldn’t let me move or cover up. I decided that he must be cold. I tried to coax him into moving but that was hard to do. When Oscar is asleep, he really doesn’t want to move. I finally did get him to move, but he essentially ended up under the covers, with me spooning him.

Needless to say, it was a little odd.

This week was really rough.

Wednesday after a long staff retreat, Esther and I learned that her dad has cancer. He had a scare about a year ago. Melanoma on a butt cheek. It was operated on and we thought everything was great. He even went in for a 6 month scan which showed nothing.

He has had an abnormal bump in his groin, but we all thought it was a hernia or some other common ailment. Luckily he is proactive about his health. He went to the doctors and they did a scan. He got his results on Tuesday and told Esther, who told me on Wednesday.

Esther hasn’t been taking it well. Wednesday night we were both a wreck. John and Marina came by and we talked about what would happen. John has an appointment with an oncologist on the 26th of this month. We talked about how we are going to help with the treatment and how Esther and I will be working with them to take care of the yard and any other things that need to be done around the house. I told John that I want to go with him to his appointments. I want to be his advocate and I know that he or Esther or Marina wouldn’t be able to seperate the emotions enough to ask the tough and serious questions. I also told him that I wanted to take him to and from his chemo, if that’s needed. I know the way he thinks, and he wouldn’t want his wife or daughter seeing him weak.

Needless to say Wednesday nights sleep was horrible.

Thursday brought a long planning meeting at work which was good, but my concentration was not there. I know I was helping the group, but I know I would have been more effective had I been rested.

Thursday night was wild. Oscar had 5 seizures in the course of the night, most of which involved him losing control of this bowels. It was not a fun night. I had to clean up a lot of dog poo and it felt like it was happening every 2 hours.

That lead to Friday. Again with less than optimal sleep, I went to work. Esther was taking the dog to the vet and she called me during a very important meeting with an Apple rep. She was in tears and said that the vet had mentioned that maybe putting Oscar down was the best for him. She was going to set it up for Saturday. The hardest thing was that I wanted to cry but I was in the middle of the hallway at work and had to go back into this Apple meeting, so I had to choke back tears. ARGH.

What compounded this situation was that a major project (a 40 page, 4 color book) was sent back by the client saying they wanted a complete reprint by Monday. First off the goal of a reprint by Monday was insane and completely not possible. Second the changes that they wanted should have been caught during the editing process. They should have been caught before the editing process, when the text was coming into their office, but that’s another problem completely. So we, me along with the boss and a co-worker, busted our butts to get the project turned around. The edits all got made, but I don’t think that its going to get printed by Wednesday (the new deadline). The changes that were to be made were really not anything that required a reprint, so it added to an already stressful day.

Other projects that had to be finished on Friday were a theatre card and a mock-up for a newspaper glossy ad. The meeting was about podcasting. We had a rep from Apple come in and demo iTunes U to us. iTunes U will be an awesome platform for us to use. The rep answered alot of our questions and also sparked a lot of creative thinking. It was a good meeting overall.

I’m thinking that I need to talk to the boss about reconfiguring my position to allow me to focus on “new media” advertising for the University. I don’t know what she will think about it, but I think that if I can get out of the hassles of design and move more towards digital produciton (podcasts, vidcasts, blog and web integration) that would make me really happy.

Will recharge this weekend. Will keep updates on John coming.

Tags: work, podcast, “itunes U”, “bad day”, jered, jeredb, jeredb.com