Why am I still up?

I have a JOB you know! And yet, it's after 11pm and I'm still up, blogging, of all things. I really need to go to bed!

So far, my job is pretty cool. I just need to learn to ignore these low confidence days. You gotta have more confidence when you're working a soft money job.

Everyone at this place is really friendly and outgoing, which makes me feel so welcome. Very different from the two jobs I had at Hell1 and Hell2 before I decided to go to graduate school. It's nice to feel welcome and valued. My boss is always saying "come on in here, you gotta meet Maria, she's great!"

This weekend we are going down to Philadelphia to visit a similar research institute, so MG and I are making a weekend of it. I love Philadelphia.

Reflections on sage

So, we spent 2 weeks driving around in the desert. And it smelled like sage and dust, which was totally awesome.

My first look at the Grand Canyon went something like this "wow I wish my Dad could see this, but he's blind and he will die having never seen it". And then I cried for a while. Now, some people cry at the awesomeness of the canyon, but me, I cried about the people I love who won't see it, or who never got to see it, like my mother in law. Then I named formations after them, like Cookie's Rock and Don's Wall.

After my maudlin display on the rim, which MaryGail missed because she was taking a million pictures of the actual canyon itself, we went for a lovely hike about a mile down the canyon on the Angel Fire trail or something like that. It was, for lack of a better word, awesome.

Okay, here are some better words to describe the desert in Arizona, Utah, and Nevada, and the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, and Zion National Park: amazing, astonishing, breathtaking, grand, impressive, magnificent, majestic, mind-blowing, moving, overwhelming, something else (really thesaurus.com, something else?), striking, stunning, stupefying, wonderful, wondrous. The places we visited were all of those things. And we have about 3,000 pictures to prove it.

Here we are in Carat's guest suite at the house. She is helping me read some student papers. She has met Stanley and Mickey through the door of the cat carrier and through the baby gate that is now installed in the doorway - with a 3-foot tall foam barrier above it to keep anyone from jumping over it. Not that anyone has even thought about jumping the gate. Frankly, Stanley seems to be terrified of Carat, who keeps staring him down!

Today Carat met our vet - she wasn't happy about it, but she has so far been willing to tolerate all the poking. She got a rabies shot, and some ointment for her itchy ear, which seems to have helped and should keep her comfortable until they can clean out her ears on Wednesday and remove the little polyp she has in her left ear. The vet said she would be sleepy from the shot, but maybe her other two Moms could tell us how we can tell the difference between usually sleepy Carat and sleepy from the shot Carat :-).

Man, Stanley HATES going to the vet!

So, today we took the two boys to the vet, for their annual physical - although technically they haven't been to the vet in several years, so it's hardly an annual physical - as part of getting ready for the introduction of their new roommate, Carat, into the household. Anyway, Stanley is a total cranky-pants after going to the vet, always has been, in fact, he's a total crankypants if anyone goes to the vet... just the smell of the vet on Mickey gets him all hissy and aggressive.

So, now they are all up to date on their shots. And, of course, because he's technically my cat, the vet thought he had a mass in his belly when she was giving him his exam. I say of course because with my history of cancer, mass is the magic word, as you can imagine. She says she's pretty sure it was just his colon, but wants us to bring him back in a few months for another exam anyway. For those of you who know me, or perhaps even just for those of you who are cancer survivors yourselves, you can imagine how quickly my mind went from mass to cancer to losing my little buddy - 0-65 in 5 seconds flat.

The vet also introduced us to this new stuff, called Feliway, which is a pherimone spray that's supposed to make cats happy in stressful situations. So... here's hoping it will help pacify Stanley and Mickey during their early encounters with Carat's presence in the house!

Carat and her Mommies arrive on Friday night, and Carat meets our vet on Saturday morning... I know, I know, you're thinking, THAT isn't going to help Stanley relax! But I think if we are going to have the stress of bringing her in the house, let's just get it all out of the way up front.

Anyway, we are excited about her joining our household, even though we have some concern about how Stanley will handle it. I am looking forward to have a girl kitty in the house again, and she has such a sweet face...