Number of meetings I attended today: 2
Number of meetings I attended during which my fly was down: 2

I was in such a hurry to get into those meetings there was no time for zippers. I’m hopeful that my shirt was long enough so that when I was sitting down, no one could tell what the deal was down there on my pants-front. Oh, well.

Well, work is still going well, and I have no complaints. They’re keeping me busy. The people are very cool. I found out the company is about 80% women. One of the large meetings this morning was standing-room only, with only 5 men in attendance. I don’t think I’ve worked anywhere with this type of ratio before, but I can say this: it was also an efficient and productive meeting. I hate to be sexist and make an assumption that it was because women were running the thing, but I have to wonder. There was also freedom to laugh and crack jokes, and I noticed several of the women having short side-conversations with one another as the meeting went on. An hour went by very quickly. In comparison, at my previous job: meetings were almost always run by men because there were very few women in management there, and our meetings went on forever and I would cross out my notes a few times during the course of the meeting because no one could decide on anything. Blah. I’m glad to be gone.

In other news: Indy has Valley Fever. He got it from inhaling the Valley Fever spores in the dry soil at some point. He does like to dig small holes in the corners of the yard, and often came in the house with dirt on his nose, so it’s no surprise to me that he’d catch this disease, really. Luckily, right now he is doing very well on the medication we have to give him, and I think he has a great shot at making a full recovery.

Let me back up a bit. I took Indy to the vet about three weeks ago to finally have his right rear leg checked out. He wasn’t able to put weight on the leg, and would often run on three legs. For awhile, we just wrote it off because he’s such an active dog and he constantly twists and contorts his body into the strangest positions when he sleeps. We figured he would pull a muscle and then, after awhile when his leg would go back down to the ground again, we thought he had worked out the kinks. However, as time went on, he was not using that leg more and more, and finally one night he spun out in the living room and as he fell, he twisted in a bad way and was crying and yelping in pain. Two days later, after his leg had been up for two straight days and he was spending more time on his dog bed than usual, I took him in to see what was going on.

They thought it was a knee injury—something with a ligament. They kept him for the day and did x-rays to see if that was the problem. I hoped not, because I was told surgery to repair that knee ligament could be as high as $5,000. The vet called me and told me something unexpected: Indy had two large growths on the bones in the bad leg. It was one of two things: cancer, or Valley Fever.

We did the Valley Fever test first, rather than a biopsy, and I was pretty relieved to hear he was positive for VF. I was trying not to think of what it would mean if he turned out to have bone cancer. Apparently, in the advanced stages of VF, dogs often develop masses and growths in their bones. With people, it mostly invades your lungs only. I’m so glad we caught the VF now, because it could have led to seizures and death if he didn’t begin treatment. Like I mentioned above, he’s taking medication and so far is not showing any signs of the side effects, other than a slight slowing-down of his activity…which is really NOT a bad thing. He’ll have to stay on the meds for at least 6 months to a year. We’re just happy to have him healthy—the $24 a month for the pills he has to take is just nothing.

What I have noticed since all this happened and he began medication is, he seems to be a lot more obedient and the little pissing-incidents are not nearly as frequent. In fact, he only had one incident and that was on the first day he began the medication. I really have to wonder if he was misbehaving because he didn’t feel well. I feel a little bad about punishing him if that was the case, but yeah…how the hell could we have known? Either way, it’s so much better now around our house. I even attempted the very beginnings of Frisbee training (thanks to the information Jen shared with me!) this past weekend. He doesn’t get it yet, but I think he will.

And that is what is going on.

I think I might begin writing about random things again. My first idea is to write about owls, and what I think of them. So maybe I’ll get on that next.