I'm so ready for the upcoming Road Trip™ with Amy. We leave from lovely Columbus Ohio on Tuesday night, with planned stops in Kansas, Denver and Reno. We have every Waffle House on the way mapped out, for pure eating satisfaction. It's shaping up to be dyn-o-mite!!

Late last night Alice threw up and promptly started having trouble breathing. We got her calmed down and brought her upstairs to bed so we could keep an eye on her. At 5:30 am she woke me up with her hacking, hacking that wouldn't go away so we took her to the emergency vet. After an hour on oxygen she was breathing easier and we moved her to our regular vet, who thinks that it was an isolated incident and she's doing fine now.

But I'm exhausted and glad that she's okay.

Someone said to me yesterday that he thought "dot coms have no substance," meaning that every business that's run through a website is somehow magically run by robots or somehow it all happens without people. When this guy asked me if I didn't think so, too (the robots is my addition, he did not say that), I couldn't agree. How could I, when I've spent most of my working life devoted to keeping someone's website running and making money.

Do people really perceive that websites largely run themselves? Is my perception of what the world thinks so jaded by working in this wacky web world that I don't know what people in other parts of the world think? I know that every feature, every little box on a website is more than just someone's idea, it's been through any number of designers, coders, producers, project managers, and QA (of course!) before making it to the site. That every little thing represents that collaborative effort and it's certainly not without substance.

This choice about Ellie's surgery or not weighs heavily, but just now, she wiped out once again coming up the stairs. If we can give her some time where she's comfortable and can get around better than she is now, well, I don't see how we could deny her that. I am hot on the trail of some less expensive doctors, though.

To thwart the cost of Ellie's possible upcoming surgery, I've jumped on the t-shirt and coffee mug bandwagon, with a little help from my mom's photogenic dog, Buddy.

Hol-eee shit! Our vet wants to de-bulk Ellie's tumor, which I'm starting to think is a good idea, but the price tag? $775. Fuck, what to do.

I decided that there were entirely too many photos of me on this page, so I've removed a couple. I'll put something interesting up there soon, not to worry!

Amy asked for some photos of my hair, so I made this little ditty.

I am seriously disturbed and intrigued by Maynard, a Disneyland entertainer.

I've been watching the progress on Disneyland's second park with great interest. So have MouseInfo.com and DCA central. They even have video taken from the monorail. The new park is going to be crowded as hell when it opens in February but I still want to be there.

I've started accumulating fine items for the upcoming Road Trip™, books on tape (anyone have any that they want to loan me?? Those fuckers are expensive!), excellent CDs and lovely trinkets. One week from now, we should be getting close to lovely Kansas. It doesn't get much better than that. We're going to drive through the night, arriving in western Kansas in time to eat and watch Survivor, then head to Denver, where we'll hang with Mr. Hot Shit™ for the night. After that, it's a long ass day to Reno, then a whopping 4 hours to my lovely abode. I can't wait!

It's true, I've been silent this week so far. I've been knee deep in a redesign at work, it finally went live last night after a great many struggles and long hours of deep concentration. I'm used to being part of a much larger webteam (at my current gig, I am the webteam) so it was weird, being the only one coding like mad. There's a camraderie in shared frustrations that was seriously lacking in this redesign. That is what happens when you go from a medium sized company to a pretty small one, but it was still weird. It just wasn't the same without Thoma dancing to Jimmy Smith on his desk while I kept shedding more and more clothing as the weekend went on.

That weekend was the first (but not the last) time I coded HTML in my sleep. Our boss had to go out of town so we put out all the fires in his absence. When he returned, he didn't think to ask us if we'd fixed anything and started responding to bug reports that were long fixed and closed. That's just the kind of stellar communication we had with him.

Anyway, my latest labor of web love is up and appears to be bug-free. That's really all I can ask for.

Agony makes for great writing.

While scrambling and trying to save a 10 year old beagle today, I came across this: Ten Good Reasons to Adopt an "Older" Dog.

Office politics, and politics in general have never worked for me. I'm no good at playing a game to make sure that the right people stay happy. I'd much rather say my peace instead of worrying that it might piss off this person or that person. Life would be so nice if people could just relax and realize that they have more power than they think they do—over the delete key, over answering the phone, over walking away from an uncomfortable situation.

The best quote (so far) from my mom about my upcoming Road Trip™ with Amy:
"I worry about the two of you in that little car"
My mom's a fantastic worrier, so I'm sure there are more little gems to come before we commence next Tuesday night.

In case I'm not the only one who feels passionately about saving older dogs, the Senior Dog Rescue is on the verge of shutting their doors because they're out of money.

I'm totally tired of being stressed but there's nothing about me that can make it okay to stop trying, to stop caring and wanting to do the best job possible. So I stress and eat lots of mints.

In a little over a week, Amy and I will head out on the open road, destination sunny California. Of course, since I already live here, it's more like taking the long way home, but it will certainly be a fab-u-lous time! We've plotted our trip based solely on Waffle Houses.

I'm a firm believer in Murphy's Law but really, why is it that when I'm totally swamped, everyone wants to visit with me? I'm thrilled that you had a nice weekend, but can't we talk later?