Animal Issues

First up, "The Wabbits".

My wife decided that having them in the yard was just too much of a temptation for our curious senior dogs (who love to chase bunnies) so she scooped the half dozen babies and took them to animal control. My wife then proceeded to fill the hole with fresh dirt. The mother came by that night and looked for them. We knew this because the hole had been emptied. Momma misses her babies, I guess.

Next up, our newest Golden mix (the Irish Setter / Golden Retriever that I call my Golden Irish) has melanoma (Skin Cancer). We rescued her from a shelter and do not know her exact age. She is at least eight but I think she is closer to 10 due to the amount of grey she is getting around her face. We took her to the vet who removed one of the masses (she has a couple that w have found) and had the pathology done. While he did not think it was cancer when he saw it, the report shows otherwise. The mass was on her left front paw and was causing great pain when she tried to walk on it. The wound is healing now (we had to take her back to get staples put on the incision because the glue/stitches did not hold) but if the mass comes back, the vet has to be more aggressive, meaning My Golden Irish will lose a big part of one of her paw pads.

The Golden Irish is relatively new to our family...about a year or so and I have grown really attached to her due to her sweet disposition. She does not have the stamina to hang with me on geocaching hikes (she can go about 2 miles before tuckering out and I tend to go 5+ when I am out), so I am not sure how much fun she would be on those. That was one thing I wanted to be able to do with our next dog, geocache.

I am hoping the surgery will take care of the melanoma on her (both grows are on her paw pads, the second one has not grown any). God can do anything but I also know that he uses every situation to teach us something that we need to learn.

The pic is of The Golden Irish wearing my boonie hat while we vacationed at the beach. Her paw was really beginning to bother her so we had to walk her on the softer sand when possible.

Wabbits!

My wife and I discovered a small nest of six rabbits in the back yard. The dogs were at first afraid of them but now that they know what they are, they won't leave them alone. We have only seen the momma once and that was at night. Not sure what to do about them. Call me a wuss but I just don't want to kill them outright but they will become a nuisance later on.

Back from Vacation

My wife and I, along with our two Golden mixes got back from our yearly vacation in Florida last night. It is about a 15 hour drive (not counting stops) so we broke it up over two days to make it a little less painless. We had a great time and we both were able to relax a bit.

The realization that I had to go back to work hit me on the way back and I was dreading what I would see when I got back. I had only 253 new e-mails from work...not bad really since that is only about 40 mails a day. I am not looking forward to playing catch-up but I am not going to stress about it.

The beach house we rented was pretty nice overall. It was older and the beds were not very comfortable at all but it had wireless internet, new appliances, a washer/dryer and was closer to the beach than the place we normally rented. Our newest dog had trouble with the stairs and she also has a problem with her foot that is keeping her from walking properly (some weird growth is on her paw...the vet will look at it this week)

I have my work cut out for me this week since I have three lawns to cut before it rains again. I need to start them tonight. Hopefully I can knock out two of the three lawns this evening. The grass is not overly high, but it is very thick which can be harder to cut than tall grass.

Attached is a sand castle that someone built. It is small but interesting.


Wiki articles on where we stayed:

St. George Island
St. George Island Bridge
St. George Island Home Page

Why?

Why is it that when you are trying to wrap things up so you can take some time off that more and more things get thrown at you? In the past four days I have had more project managers come to me literally demanding that I my team work on things for them, even though the team is stretched very thin. Most of these are projects that are due in less than 30 days (the PM's have known about them for months) and just the standard process to complete these projects (with all the checks and balances) will take longer than 30 days.

Crazy.

Work

I had an interesting thing happen at work a few days ago.

My boss and I went up to the visitors area to greet two visiting employees from Sweden (on male, one female). When we spotted each other, we said hello ("Hej" in Swedish) and exchanged pleasantries. Then the during out greeting, the female comes over and hugs me. That threw me for a loop. She never hugged my boss, she just said hello to him. Oddly enough he never really paid attention that this woman whom we just me for the first time, gave me a hug but not him. Not sure if I am the hug-able type or I reminder her of he grandfather. I have been dealing with the Swedes for over 15 years and have never had one hug me, male or female.

Anyway, I just had to tell my wife so she could get a laugh out of it.