Meet Dexter...

Okay so it's been almost two weeks and I've been pretty busy.
Quick rundown: we found out we had a gas leak at our house.
The original owners of our hose teed off a gas line that ran to a floor heater in the garage. That's where the leak was, and why we didn't smell it. We wondered why we were having $100 gas bills during warm months....Josh smokes, and he'd been in and out of the garage working on his motorcycle. Luckily he always opened the garage up and pulled his motorcycle out before working on it. It's a weird feeling knowing your garage and your husband could have blown up. I could complain about the cost of getting it all fixed but it basically comes down to this:

Total amount unneccesarily paid to the Gas Company: $315
Tools, parts and gas caps: $50
Plumber: $300
City Inspector: $175
Our garage not blowing up: Priceless

I had taken the afternoon off from work to help Josh fix the gas leak, and heard a desparate meowing coming from the other side of the garage. I followed it around and found one of Not-Martha's new kittens crying and clawing at the side of the neighbor's garage. Not-Martha is a neighborhood stray that looks like Martha the Cat but is in fact not Martha. Not-Martha had three kittens that were about 4 weeks old, and they were all very skittish. I'd noticed the day before that there were only two kittens with Not-Martha, and now here was this one. It's eyes were completely crusted over and swollen shut. It looked so bad that I thought maybe it had lost it's eyes altogether. His little tongue was hanging out, and he was completely infested with fleas. It was the most pitiful little thing I'd ever seen! So I wrapped him up in a towel and drove to the vet. $100 later, I had a new indoor cat! He had a respiratory infection, and the fleas were killing him. The vet said "If" he made it, to bring him back in two weeks. This coming Thursday will be two weeks and Dexter is a beautiful, feisty little kitten!

This is Dexter the second day after I found him.

His face looks a little greasy because I'd just put medicine in his eyes. It's been difficult to get a recent picture of him because he rarely sits still. Frankie the Dog is getting used to him. We were a little worried about how they would get along until the day I found Dexter sitting in Frankie's food bowl and Frankie eating around him. Frankie's a good ol' boy! Here's a few more pictures, the most recent at the bottom.

A Big Day

Well, I'm having a mini celebration this evening, and by mini I mean me since Josh is working tonight. I am very excited to say that my prof and I finished our paper and submitted it to ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) this afternoon! I've been working on this material since January and I have a real sense of accomplishment this evening. I've especially been working on my portion of the paper since the semester ended, and have spent hours at school over this past weekend. I celebrated by going to the gym. I got home and wondered for just a second about what I would do this evening, then remembered I have all the necessary ingredients to make a raspberry martini.

So now I wait until July 28th, when we find out if our paper is to be published. Regardless, this has been an experience of a lifetime, and the highlight of my undergraduate academic career. We're going to start on a new angle of the research on Friday, which hopefully will result in a published paper as well.

For now, I'm going to take a long hot shower and relax for the rest of the evening....or actually, I'll probably start looking over the proofs for the next research project.

Have a lovely evening!

Needing to vent a little...

I'm a little frustrated this evening. First of all, I'm out of Black Cherry creamer, and I don't feel like having vanilla.

What do you do when the only person capable of standing in the way of something IS doing ALL they can to stand in the way of EVERYTHING? How do you get someone off their soapbox when it IS actually their soapbox to stand on? An organization I have come to love very much is in a great deal of trouble. I have sadly come to realize just how arrogant and condescending this certain person is. I am in a position to make some changes and to get people motivated to take some initiatives, but unfortunately, this person is beginning to set up road blocks to everything we're trying to accomplish. This person, for some reason, thinks we haven't proven that we're good enough to accomplish some things we're really excited about doing. Personally, I think he's afraid of us actually succeeding. If he doesn't want to have some faith in us, then he can remove himself from the situation, and let us deal with the ups and downs ourselves. I am not afraid to give this my very best shot. I am afraid of what will happen to our organization if this person doesn't stop sabotaging us and himself. I'm afraid this is going to be a difficult road, and I'm not willing to accept failure as a possible outcome...but with as many good people as we have willing to work together, we won't fail.

Lord, give me strength to face the challenges presented to me with a strong and driven heart, and a focused and knowledgable mind. Help me to become the leader you need me to be.