I'm feeling a little sad right now. Beth just took Alice to the vet, and she has cancer.



Alice is almost 17 years old. Beth found her under a hedge as a kitten. She wouldn't come out for ages, and then she would hide for days until Beth coaxed her out. For years, she treated me like an inconvenient piece of furniture until one day she decided I was OK. Now the cat will fuss me when I'm fussing her (rubbing her head against my hand, twirling her tail around my fingers when I'm stroking her).

I know cats have the life expectancy they have. It doesn't make it any easier. And I'm being the strong one here: Beth is distraught.

I'm posting more and more on Facebook now. My sisters have been on it for months and they insisted I join. So I did. And it's really nice to have all manner of family and friends keep in touch. It's nice. I think I already said it was nice.

So if I don't post on here a lot, it's because I'm killing time with semi-regular updates on Facebook.

I just came in from outside with my telescope. The light pollution's too much to see things pointed north right now. The baseball field at the bottom of the hill has a huge spotlight shining right up the hill... I don't know what the purpose of the light is: there won't be any games played there for six months, there's not much foot traffic down there when it's dark, and it's strange that they have that much light leakage all the way up the hill. And cars come up the hill on a regular basis, which is understandable because it's a Saturday night. So I settled for looking at the Pleiades. With the naked eye, it looks like a smudge in the sky, but with a telescope you get to see hundreds of stars.

There's something very relaxing about standing in the dark and watching the stars. The light takes years to reach us, so in effect we're seeing them as they were, not as they are now. Of all the directions the light from those stars could have travelled, we get to see the photons that just happened to have been sent in our direction, and they arrived here when it was dark enough for us to see them. A chance in a billion, but it happens every night.

Listen: Out There In The Universe - Spacetribe ... Castles In The Sky - Ian Van Dahl featuring Marsha.

Over the past week, we took the dogs swimming...



...and we also went to an Oktoberfest. No video or pics of that, so here's a picture of some Germans drinking far too much.



Oh, and in just over a week's time I'll be returning to expand my computer knowledge. I'm taking classes in the Java programming language at the University.

And I'm playing far too much QuakeLive online than is good for me. But it's free, which is good, and there's nothing like having computer opponents run into a carefully planned ambush.

Listen: Bulletproof - La Roux ... Swimming - The Terrordactyls ... Java - Nestor Torres.

I completely forgot to update my work status. Four weeks after finishing with the State, I'm working in the private sector again.

Now: you know the routine. I don't post about work. Mainly because it's boring, but partly because it's bad form. Consider it an etiquette thing. I like wha I'm doing, and the job occasionally requires my Photoshop and InDesign skills, which is a bonus for me because I love that stuff.

One thing I will say is that there's a guy there by the name of Corey that is the spitting image of a young Barack Obama. Seriously. You be the judge.



Obviously he looks more like Obama than Ted Kennedy.

He even occasionally wears a Chicago White Sox hat. This is the actual President, obviously.



So I did this, just for a laugh (and to see how long it takes him to notice).



Listen: El President - Drugstore & Thom Yorke ... Cleveland Rocks - Presidents Of The USA ... Ill In The Head - The Dead Kennedys.

This is a video about Madison. She's four years old, we've had her in the house for half a week now, and she's adorable.



And now, a load of songs with Madison somewhere in the title or artist name.

Listen: Walking Down Madison - Kirsty MacColl ... Don't Call Me Baby - Madison Avenue ... Enjoy The Silence (Touring the Angel - 2005/2006 Madison Square Garden Version) - Depeche Mode.

Another six months, another blog entry.

I'm out of work again (I guess that's why they called the position I started 'intermittent'), but I gave it my best. There's no such thing as a job for life anymore, so I'm told. That means the work search begins again. Like I said in the last post, I don't really mention work much in my blog entries, and with good reason. Who wants to read someone's blog if they're talking about how many people thanked them in one day, or how many people cried on the 'phone in one day (yes, that was something I had to deal with in the job I had)?

But Shawn, I hear you ask, what has happened since you posted at the end of last year?

Jackpot passed his test to become a therapy dog. We took him on the St. Patrick's Day Parade, and he looks cute in green. he goes on a therapy visit this weekend.



We recently went for a week in the Washington DC area. It rained, a lot, which seems to be the pattern for this spring. And here's the video.



...and we have a new deck. We saved a few years so that we could pay for it out of pocket. And seeing as it's so nice, here's the free plug. Azek vinyl decking, using something called ProCell. It's nice stuff.



Listen : Panic Switch - Silversun Pickups ... Life In Technicolor II - Coldplay ... Not Fair - Lily Allen.