There was a lot of thunder and lightning last night around 2:00. This morning, whatever. The thunder was so loud it woke up both me and Amanda and a few times the lightning was so bright I could see it through my closed eyes. It’s been raining heavily and a lot lately. The ground would be nice and saturated right now if a hurricane decided to spring up for us.
The dog who played Eddie, the Jack Russell terrier from Frasier, died today at 16 years old. From MSN:
Eddie the Feisty Dog on ‘Frasier’ Dies
Jun 27, 4:44 PM EST
The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — The scrappy dog known as Eddie on TV’s “Frasier” has died. The 16-year-old Jack Russell terrier, whose real name was Moose, passed away of old age Thursday at the Los Angeles home of trainer Mathilde Halberg, Halberg told People magazine.
The canine character Eddie drove Kelsey Grammer’s lead character crazy for 10 years on the show.
It wasn’t all acting on Moose’s part, though. He was naturally “extremely mischievous,” Halberg said.
His contribution to the show’s and Grammer’s success was publicly noted by the actor when he accepted a 1994 Emmy for best actor in a comedy.
“Most important, Moose, this is for you,” Grammer added good naturedly.
Moose, who also played the older dog Skip in the 2000 film “My Dog Skip,” was retired in recent years.
Eddie, as I’ve heard, is the reason Amanda’s dad, Phil Mercer, wanted a Jack Russell, and so is why they have Paddy now. I didn’t know he’d also been Skip in My Dog Skip. Amanda’s wanted me to watch that for years now in hopes of showing me something that will make me cry. She thinks that particularly now that I have such an attachment to our dog, Bruce, that I’d empathize enough to show some emotion.
I’ve worked hard on convincing my wife that I’m dead inside. She’s seen me cry but twice in the time we’ve been together; once at our wedding and once at my grandfather’s funeral. My prediction is that, any other funerals aside, she won’t see me cry again until she births me a baby.
So the server went down again today, which was lots of fun. Still, having had the server down for a total of maybe two hours out of all the hours it’s been up and fine, I think we’re still in that 99% up-time that we’ve got guaranteed. It had something to do with the virtual memory, and I think our head programmer and server admin has got it figured out. Something to do, if what I heard was right, with something he was working on for a huge project for one of our clients.
I met with my boss, Scott Hendrix, to discuss another bit of reorganizing within the company. It’ll mean a shift in duties for me, and possibly less potential pay, but I think it’ll make getting bonuses much easier. I need to play with the numbers and think about it. I mean, it’ll probably happen one way or the other, and something needs to change so that I’m not doing quite so much, but I mainly just want to make sure I’ll still have as much opportunity as I’ve seen with the job since I’ve had it.
As things are now, I am the support department, I oversee all the design projects and I try to make sure sales leads are being followed up. When two aspects of the job are not too busy, things go fine, but if more than one aspect is cracking, I’m pulled in all sorts of different directions, I stress, and things aren’t done as efficiently. I have no problem (for the sake of my sanity of nothing else) with shuffling off some duties, particularly if it will help the company to grow. Like I said, I just want to make sure I’ve still got as much future as I have seen myself having before. I’m not overly worried about it, but I do have to remember to look out for myself a little too.
Money’s not been a huge thing to me. I mean, I need to have some and I’d like to make more of it, but there are plenty of times I’ve given a designer who I felt deserved it a little more time on a project, or given Josh a full bonus instead of splitting it if I didn’t feel I did enough to warrant my part. I try to be open and giving, and it’s relatively easy to be that way when I’m making a salary plus a bonus, but with the way things are now I have a potentially unlimited bonus, whereas with the new system there will be a cap. Of course, it’s not like the bonuses I’ve had were ever astronomical, but I’ve had some good ones.
Anyway, something to think and pray about. I’m fortunate enough to have a boss who is open to suggestions and whom I feel genuinely wants to make sure the employees he knows are working hard for him are taken care of.
Anyway, we got a lot of painting done tonight. Amanda was priming the medicine cabinet her dad had made for the downstairs bathroom when I arrived home with our dinner of Buffalo Wild Wings. After we ate and watched an episode of I Shouldn’t Be Alive (people who had a plane crash in the Kalahari) I got started on the upstairs bathroom, the final room in need of paint. Amanda finished her priming, took a break for that to dry and went to work on the actual painting. The priming of the bathroom took a little longer though, so we’ll have to actually paint it tomorrow.
Dad called to tell me that Baba and Pap, my Kentucky grandparents (actually, my only grandparents, now that I mention it, as I’m still not used to thinking of them that way) had asked them to ask us not to bring Bruce with us on the trip this year. This, I believe, stems from the way my cousin, David or Hank Dotsey, not sure if they ever decided on what to call him, reacted to Bruce on a visit two years ago. Dank, as he’s called, was terrified of Bruce and Bruce thought he was playing, so he would bark at him and chase him. Nobody else had any problem with him, and we don’t even know for sure if Uncle Bernie’s bothering to come for a visit while we’re all there in Lexington anyway.
At first the request didn’t much bother me. But then I got to thinking about it and we don’t really have anybody who can watch Bruce at this point. Normally we’d just drop him off at the Mercer’s, but nobody will be home during the day. Karen, Amanda’s mom, will actually be here in Wilmington, staying in our house, which would be fine expect she’s bringing about five friends and they won’t be hanging around the house anyway. On top of that, they’re leaving the house a couple days before we’re coming back, and while our friend Paul Ayars will be coming by to do the kitchen tiles and make sure the cat has food, he’s not going to be around near enough to take care of Bruce.
If we’d known earlier, like before Karen had made plans with a bunch of other people that centered around them all staying at our house for a few days, we could probably have done something about it. I’m just not sure what to do now except to call my grandparents tomorrow and talk to them about it.
Zach Dotsey