This AP article tells the sad story of a woman whose dogs escaped from her back yard a couple of weeks ago.

Niki Karanastasis was ecstatic when she found Bella at the Humane Society, but she was devastated to learn that her 2-year-old dog had been adopted by a new owner just hours earlier.

Humane Society officials said their hands are tied because they’re required to put stray dogs up for adoption five days after they’re picked up if they don’t have ID tags. Tagged animals are held for 10 days, but Bella didn’t have one.

She offered to buy the other party a new dog, but was turned down. The AP article doesn’t identify the person who adopted the dog, which I think is too bad. It would be easier to shame this person into releasing the dog back to its rightful owner if her name was known.

Posting from work, that is. Though I suppose technically I’m on a break.

I’m going to be very busy when I get home tonight—publishing tomorrow’s site and doing a build so QA has something to test while I’m still asleep tomorrow morning.

My transfer from “seasonal” to “regular” employee at B&N; was effective today, along with a smallish raise. The district to which my store belongs is trying to increase their membership conversion rate, and as my numbers beat anyone else in the store by a mile I was asked to take a new position as trainer for membership sales. They’re still working out the details of this progam but it sounds intruiging.

If I could make a living doing this I’d be very happy.

A little lower, please … ahh! Two denizens of the Budakeszi game park near Budapest, Hungary, rub each other the right way.


From the Day in Pictures, of course.

I know I’ve been negligent in posting here over the past … month, and I apologize. In case you’re interested, here’s an abridged list of what I have going on in my life right now:

1. Work [yes, still]
2. Work [did so well through December that they asked me to stay on--two weeknights and one weekend day]
3. Work [Publisher for January in addition to the usual System Engineer and Administrator duties]
4. I’m a Director of my Homeowners Association, and am (slowly) working on establishing a Web presence for the Association. Monthly meetings with irregular conferences in between.
5. and I’m sure there are a few
6. more
7. things I’ve temporarily forgotten.

I do this all the time–take on too much and get overwhelmed. The real problem comes when I have so many things competing for my attention and respond by completely closing myself away and ignoring all of them.

Updating my Web site falls somewhere in there as well, so without meaning to proffer excuses, you can see why updates here have been few, far between, and mostly lacking in content.

In better news, though, Jennifer and I are taking a cruise at the end of this month, to belately celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary. Applications are now being accepted for the temporary position of cat-sitter.