The Zoo...

Becca's Home for Wayward strays has inherited Gavin and Jen's two dogs (Roxy and Zoya) for the weekend. Five young adult dogs in our house. Crazy you say? Completely! Tomorrow, sigh, we're taking Dixie back to the shelter permanently. Its so sad. I don't know how I am going to close that gate on her and not cry. She's a foster dog and was never supposed to stay with us permanently, we hoped to have her out when her puppies were grown, and we kept her another full month hoping to find a home for her. The shelter people seem confident that she will find a home eventually (hopefully before they run out of space and put her to sleep). But she's such a happy, loving dog, and she loves people so much, she's going to be lonely and stressed in the shelter. I wish I could keep her for longer, but Cari is leaving for the year and Kennda is gone for a month at a time, stopping in only for a few days between trips - alone it will be a handful to just take care of Bennet and Apache, I can't take on Dixie too.

Working late...

The last couple of months have been fairly (extremely) slow for me at work, to the point of depressing. Yesterday afternoon I got to do some last minute AND important work that kept me here late. But it was ok. Because I felt like I was actually contributing. Let's just say there's been a lot of downtime lately.

And next week, on Monday and Tuesday, I'm going to be at an AIAA Conference. Its my first non-student oriented conference. Sarah and I are presenting a paper on Monday afternoon. I know I used to be a very good debater/public speaker, but such things fade with complete and total lack of practice, and frankly, I'm just darned nervous about presenting too a bunch of old men with PhD's, which pretty much sums up one of these conferences. I know, I know I'll do fine. But I'm still nervous.

Good help...

I feel like such a snob when I say "Good help is hard to find", but I'm in desparate need of a cleaning person. Someone suggested that maybe I could breakdown and *gasp* clean the house for myself. No way jose! Its hard enough for me to keep up with everything else I have to worry about (and I mean, let's face it, my life isn't that chaotic, but it certainly feels like it) - why deal with three people's worth of mess too!? Anyway, I think I've found a new cleaning lady, I checked her references, and she sounds good.