ellsworthlink.net

Poor Sweet Nala

Apparently we are bad cat parents because we don’t brush Nala and Tundra’s teeth. Although I am sure you will find that hardly anyone brushes their cat’s teeth. Cats are not the most cooperative of creatures, and putting objects or fingers into their mouths is really pretty much next to impossible and kind of dumb.

Well, somehow Nala managed to develop periodontal disease or some such thing and her teeth were so bad that the vet had to clean them and actually extract 2. At the same time the vet said he could “pop” off the cyst on Nala’s shoulder that is probably benign, but rather large.

So, in Nala went for surgery and a teeth cleaning. The teeth cleaning was pretty much a non event, but the surgery, oh boy.

(If talk of surgery, stiches, blood bothers you, you may not want to continue on.)

They shaved the hair off half of Nala’s side and made a pretty big incision. She had some bleeding right when the vet finished up, so she ended up with a pretty big bruise as well.

To prevent Nala from picking at the stiches we had two choices. An Elizabethan collar or a onesie (that babies wear).

Well, we tried the onesie. We tried cutting some of it off because she kept stepping on the part that was hanging down and walking right out of it. We tried tightening it, but it restricted her walking. No matter what, she looked pretty darn cute in it.

Sadly, she has been forced to wear the collar when we aren’t able to keep constant watch over her. At first she was pretty mad at us about it, but seems to have somewhat gotten used to it.

Even with both the collar and onesie, she still managed to pull out a bunch of stiches. At the rate she is going, we won’t need to go back to the vet for removal because she will have taken care of it for him.

Now we are just wondering how long it will take to grow the hair back!

Continue reading...

Blizzard Part Deux

(1) (2)
(3) (4)

There certainly was a lot of snow. Having been away from the stuff for so long in San Francisco, I think about half this much would have looked like a blizzard to us, but the official tally was 13 inches in Central Park by 7am this morning, and no matter how you look at it—that is a lot of snow!

Deb and I went to see Sideways today (great film!) and snapped some pictures on the way. We had actually tried to see the movie last night about 10:30pm, but the theatres were closing early!

In any event: (1) Deb in front of one of the many (at least one per block) piles of snow on 8th Avenue; (2) the bulldozers they had clearing the streets; (3) the sidewalks re-discovered under the snow down in the Fashion District; and (4) cabbies driving as crazily as they always do—imposing mountains of snow or not. I actually was too slow on the draw (cold hands) to get pictures of the dump trucks taking the snow out to wherever it is they dump it in the river.

Interesting to see the city cleaning up the mess. They seem to have it down!

Continue reading...

Blizzard!!!

At about 11am this morning the weather was cold but the skies were clear. At about 11:30am we were in the midst of a blizzard. You can read all about it on cnn.com.

Matt and I decided we should go for a walk to run a few errands: stock up on food, pick up a few items at Home Depot, etc. As we were walking the snow fall was so strong that we could only see about a block ahead of us at a time.

They were expecting 10 inches to dump on New York City and I am pretty sure we are well on our way towards that.

Winter has officially arrived!

Continue reading...

2 Hour Lines and Numerous Trips to the DMV

My last day at Event 360 was on Wednesday so I am officially full time working towards my new career as a nurse. As everyone knows I was hoping to start taking classes as soon as January 27th, next Thursday. Well, after spending an entire day trying to get all of my paperwork in order so that I could register I ultimately determined that the classes I wanted to take were all full. This is particularly sad because I waited in several long lines, including a particularly painful 2 hour line, to find out I wasn’t going to be able to get into the classes I want.

Then today I went to the DMV for the 3rd time. The first time was to get my NY State driver’s license. The second time was to try and register the car, but some of my paperwork was out of date. The third time (today) was to try and register the car with current paperwork but it turned out I needed a copy of Matt’s driver’s license. So I am the lucky devil that gets to go back to the DMV for a fourth time! Good thing I don’t have a full time job anymore, I would never get this car registered…

Well, I better get started on resume updating and essay application writing.

Continue reading...

Always Listen to Mother

Though I’m not sure this is what she meant when she told me to “be careful about the ‘executive—wow’ thing,” it turns out she was right…

It is arguably inauspicious to have Dow Jones stock fall 1.3% the day the DJIS Expands Its Sales Team press release hits the wire. But it did kind of make me laugh as I was looking at it on Ameritrade.

Oh well. Better luck next release.

Continue reading...

Just Do It

I finally got my new State of New York driver’s license (notice I’m not showing the front of that new license—it is impressively bad), which I guess we were supposed to get within 30 days of moving here. I won’t tell if you don’t. Anyway, I signed up as an Organ Donor. Just wanted you all to know that. Not to be morbid, but to be prudent. They tell you to let everyone know. If you haven’t decided to be a donor, take our your license and do it. And let people know.

On the plus side, today was the first day all year I left work before 6pm.

Continue reading...

Dow Jones Announces Executives

Dow Jones Integrated Solutions names executives

Does that mean I am technically an “executive” now? Wow.

–UPDATED–

Here’s a PDF of the actual press release as it was posted on our internal website DowJones.net.

–SECOND UPDATE–

The official Dow Jones press release as posted on the external website–and the press release you can find on PR Wire.

Continue reading...

Real Question

In late 2004, I received the “Dear President Bush” version of the email letter you can see at Snopes.com—which is a site you should all check out when you get one of those annoying email forwards.

The email gives you a chuckle, but it did surface a question I’ve had bouncing around in my head since I started hearing Conservatives coming out of the woodwork denouncing Gay marriage not as an issue of Civil Rights and equality but of Biblically-based morality. Snopes summarizes the Dear President Bush letter as asking the question “if homosexuality is wrong because it goes against God’s law as outlined in the Bible, why aren’t any number of activities now viewed as innocuous but once regarded as unacceptable also offenses against God’s law?”

I’d ask the question a different way: How is using the Bible “today” to denounce Gay Marriage any different than using the Bible “yesterday” to defend Slavery?

I’ll admit to not having done an exhaustive amount of research on the issue, but it seems there are a lot of parallels between the two. And the parallels do not speak well of the “anti-marriage” camp. In the mid- and late-19th century, Southern churches preached that slavery was condoned by the Bible and, in fact, slave-owners were helping the heathen slave to find salvation by “gettin’ them some religion” on the plantations. (Nevermind that the slaves often co-opted religious music—gospel music and spirituals, anyone?—to the more political/practical quest for freedom and survival against the de-humanizing conditions.) Today we’ve got Red State churches preaching that Gay Marriage is an affront to God’s will and allowing it would end the sanctity of marriage as we know it (despite the fact that the Red States have a higher divorce rate than Blue States with their more “enlightened” or “liberal” view of Gay Marriage).

I wasn’t around—thank God (and I mean that un-ironically)—when Slavery (in this country) was the norm and was being challenged in a somewhat similar fashion to the way restrictions against Gay Marriage, while currently the norm, are also being challenged. In typical 20/20 hind-sight, it seems morally obvious that the institution of slavery would end. But history is written by the victors and the North won that lil’ Civil War. That, not a change in the Bible, is what seemed to change this nation’s moral compass. Which is to say society changed, and its interpretations of the Bible changed. It seems we find ourselves in the middle of another such inflection point, non? An inflection point where—like with slavery, like with women’s right to a certain extent—we as a society decide whether to enfranchise another group as we strive to “love our neighbors as ourselves” rather than using whatever excuses (including, primarily it seems, religious-based ones) our societal homophobia demands to oppress a group?

I understand the concern that re-interpreting the Bible leads to a worry that we’re pursuing a morally convenient Christianity. But that hearkens back to the original question… How is the issue of slavery different from the issue of homosexuality (and various other issues) when it comes to the Bible? Why is it okay to overlook passages in the Old and New Testaments about slavery and not okay to overlook passages condemning homosexuality?

I think the question has weighed particularly heavily on me in my own faith journey because I can be off-put by groups of people espousing one thing and acting in a way I find unreconcilable with that espousal. Christianity’s Golden Rule, after all, is to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus taught inclusion and made a habit of reaching out to the “socially undesirable.” How, then, can his followers spit such vitriole at a group of people just asking to have the same rights as everyone else?

I just don’t get it…

Continue reading...