Lots to talk about, since it's been three weeks since I last got up the gumption to post. Where did the time go, I again ask myself? Things were busy at work, so that wasn't a good time for making updates. At home Beth took a few days with the kids up to Storyland, so I was a swinging bachelor and had better things to do in an empty house than type. Then it got up to 95 degrees, and it was too hot in the guest room where the computer is to want to spend any time in there. And then we left for Illinois for 10 days, just returning this past Monday. But first let's get the hang of this new Blogger interface.



OK, that worked, hey this is pretty spiffy. If there was one annoying thing about Blogger, it was that I always had to remember to copy my text before publishing, because every so often it would hang up on me (and occasionally I would click on the wrong thing) and I'd lose my whole entry, which is not a pleasant feeling. If anything improves with this release, I hope it's that.



So the big news before our trip was that our cat, Aurora, died at the ripe old age of 13 or so. The last few weeks she'd been acting sort of weird, wasn't eating much, often seemed to be trying to go to the bathroom at random (without much success). So Beth wanted to take her to the vet, but she hadn't been to the vet in several years, and the one she used to go to was way up in Chelmsford and the one that was recommended to her in town wasn't there anymore. So she ended up at "Compassion" Veterinary Clinic. The name alone should be a tip-off to stay away, I would've looked for one called "Kevorkian Veterinary Clinic", but it's kind of like when you need your car fixed in a hurry and you have to go with whoever can take you and chances are you're going to get screwed.



So the vet took a look and drew some blood and said she'd need some pills and should be contained to one room. This was the day before Beth was taking the kids to Storyland, so she came home full of instructions for me, which I didn't want anything to do with. The whole point of her taking the kids away for a couple of days was so I could be free from responsibility, plus I don't even change the litterbox, I could hardly be trusted to shove a pill down the cat's throat twice a day. So she worked it out to have her boarded somewhere in town by a friend of her Mom's who knew Aurora and could handle the pills and all for a nominal charge, so everyone was happy. This was Tuesday morning, and by Wednesday, Aurora's condition had deteriorated to the point that they had her euthanized. The kids weren't too broken up by it ("can we get another one?" they asked about 10 seconds after getting the news). We agreed that we'd like to be pet-free for a while.



Jill is insanely jealous, as she's been hoping for Bubba's imminent demise for some time now, but he continues to thrive, and throws up on the carpeting just like Aurora would with breathtaking aplomb and elan. Mom thought Jill might try to smuggle him into our luggage, but we arrived home Bubba-less Monday night.



Aurora had her good points, best of which was her ability to tirelessly stalk mice until she'd end up carrying them around in her mouth. She didn't know what to do with them after that, so she'd put them down and try to catch them again, sometimes losing them in the process. So we'd try to trap them while they were still traumatized with the use of a plastic collander and a record album, then flush them down the loo, leaving Aurora trying to figure out where the heck they disappeared to. And she was more like a puppydog sometimes, following people around the house, hopping up on the lap of any cat-haters or cat-allergics that stopped by. But she was at her less endearing when throwing up everywhere, usually on the floor but sometimes on shoes, the furniture, the computer keyboard, etc. Once we had kids, Beth was less enamored of spending extra time cleaning up after the cat, too, so it was with mixed emotions that we received news of her demise. While we mourn her passing, I don't think that moving on will be much of a problem.