Feeling bummed, mellow & curious

I had a good/bad weekend.

Good, because I spent all day Saturday helping to do landscaping in front of my local library. The other volunteers were great, and now I can say "hey, I planted that shrub!" every time I check out a book. Plus, I got to learn some neighborhood history from some of the locals who stopped by.

Bad, because my dad's blood counts are not so good. Red and white. And, even though he will probably be okay, I hate cancer. Still, we knew it would probably come back (his kind almost always does, but it's rarely fatal).

Bad, because my power went out on Saturday night. One more hour and I would have been asleep (removing roots from the ground is tiring). It was especially freaky since, during the earlier volunteer work, I saw some of the not-so-nice parts of my neighborhood. No fun to think about in the pitch black dark.

Good, because Toby-the-dog was there to comfort me.

Oh, and today, at work, I found out that my department is being reorganized. No idea how. Might be a good thing. Might be a bad thing. Not sure what to think. I'm still adjusting - I haven't even been here for 3 months yet!

But my condo is *almost* done. Only took them 2 months after closing.

Enough being sad. My dog has a funny habit. About an hour after he eats, he flips his dish over. He will nose it around until it flips. Since both the bowl and the tile are ceramic, this makes quite a bit of noise. He won't let me see him do it, but I have caught him with the bowl standing on its side. Is my dog obsessive compulsive?

Mirror attacks puppy

Toby learned an early fascination with the tall mirror in my bedroom just a few days after we moved into my condo. And, since he follows me wherever I go when I'm home, he gets to play with it any time I go in my room. But, a few days ago, the mirror attacked him. I'm not sure how it happened, all I know is that Toby screamed (yes, my dog can scream), the mirror wound up on the floor, and Toby wound up under the couch in the living room.

I thought this incident might keep Toby out of my room, or at least end his fascination with the mirror. But no. Toby decided to go to war with the mirror. Barking at it and stalking it every chance he got. I think he's formed some kind of truce with the mirror at this point, but he's still got his eye on it. He even forgets to follow me out of the room sometimes.

Good news - they may FINALLY finish my condo. I sent an "extremely frustrated" e-mail to the real estate agent, and enlisted the help of the other agent durring the weekly open house for the building. The next Monday, I had shelves in my closet, hardware on my cabinets, and no more gaps under my doors. They did a walkthrough with me on Wednesday to verify what still needs to be done and promissed another next week to stay on things. I'm feeling hopefull for the first time in weeks.

My sister called me last weekend with a strange question. Did I realize that a formerly kidnapped journalist (currently writing her story in the CS Monitor) was not just from AA, but also the daughter of our high school English teacher, Mrs. C? I followed the story last winter, but I missed our teacher on CNN (as did my sister) and never made the connection from the names and geography. Mrs. C was a truly excellent English teacher - she helped organize the Humanities program at PCEP, a class that is probably the reason I just *had* to study abroad during college. You know a class is good when you get home from school, list the five things that you have to do as homework, realize that they are all for the same class, and are still glad to be in the class. And, we got to read Hamlet.

Work is starting to pickup, which is excellent. I saw a local production of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged. The show was pretty good, though I'd still like to see the original in London (not sure if it's still on stage there, or for that matter, when I'll be back over there). Disturbingly, the smirkiest & most pretentious of the characters in the show looked just like a smirky, pretentious computer geek from SI. Any guess on who I mean?