Domestic Geek

Marcus just posted a pretty funny account of Skippy's Skunk Encounter from last week, including a couple of pictures of him during his tomato juice bath. Go check it out.

So, guess what Marcus and I have been dealing with the last hour and a half? Bathing the dog. Yep, Skippy managed to encounter a skunk outside. He was in and running around like crazy (like the toe bleeding episode) before Marcus realized what had happened. Now my whole frickin' house reeks. I went to the store for tomato juice and I guess the dog rubbed against me because I stunk up King Soopers. Oh, well. When I got home, Marcus had read on the Internet that tomato juice doesn't work. Yay. You're supposed to bathe them with a mixture of peroxide, baking soda and dish soap. I scrounged what little I had of those ingredients and we went to work. Poor dog is exhausted. Looks like this weekend he gets shaved. He was shedding really bad and now all that hair matted in the tub. What a mess!

So begins the perks of the new job:

I'm off today. For the whole day. WITH PAY!!! This doesn't even count as a sick day. How cool is that? My boss doesn't want his designers to burn out, so once every eight week cycle we're to take a day or two off to relieve the stress of getting the magazines to press. Each of us four designers is taking a different day this week. Mine was today. It's a good thing, too, after what happened yesterday.

When I let Skippy in from pottying when I got home from work yesterday, he proceeded to bleed all over my house. I panicked because I didn't know why he was bleeding. He wouldn't stop running because of the pain and I was freaking out thinking he was going to die from blood loss. I called Marcus to calm myself down because I was getting hysterical. I felt bad because I knew there was nothing he could do from work. I tried calling Dad as well, but he wasn't home. I finally cornered him back in the laundry room and held a towel around the foot I figured out was bleeding. I wasn't sure at first because all four paws were drenched in blood from running through it. I guess he lost a toenail, but I don't know where because I couldn't find it outside. Weird. At least he hadn't sliced it open. I was afraid we'd have to take him to the vet for stitches or something. After the bleeding let up, I went to the store to get Neosporin and bandages, but then he wouldn't let me wrap his foot. Dork. I spend an hour steam cleaning blood out of the carpets while Marcus mopped up what was on the linoleum.

Today I get to finish that task. I'm sure in the daylight I'll see blood that I missed, plus now my carpets have clean spots. I'd better get them all cleaned while the weather is mild.

First, though, I'm going to grab some breakfast and go read a couple of chapters in The Chronicles of Narnia. One and a half books left of the series left.

So, after a week of diarrhea and scaring the shit out of me because he wouldn't eat or drink, my old dog seems to be making a recovery. Don't count that 14½ year old dog out yet! No poo on the carpet in two days and he's eating soft food (and boiled hamburger per the vet's advice) and I found him drinking out of the toilet yesterday. He was actually bounding about when I got home from work. Whew.

I got picked for jury duty. I have to report tomorrow. Boooooo. It wouldn't be so bad except that I have to dress nice and I have to go downtown. Downtown Denver sucks. Parking is a nightmare down there. So, I have to get up extra early so I can get pizza work done and come home to make myself presentable to report at 8 am.

Guess I'll watch a little television and make it an early night (if the screaming children next door will stuff a sock in it).

I'm back. I had planned to return in a couple of weeks, but cut my hiatus short because I just had to share this little bit of news:

I got the following in my inbox early Tuesday morning and didn't think much of it. The art director was working on his resume on Monday and I chuckled to myself that maybe he was planning on leaving and I was going to get a promotion.



Well, guess what happened at work yesterday? I was given my two weeks notice that my job at the screenprinter is being eliminated. Sales are THAT BAD. When the art director broke the news, he informed me that he was looking for other work as well. I wonder if the company is finally going under. Anyway, as of November 1st, I am again underemployed. So much for leaving on my terms, eh? Oh, well. At least I got some art production experience under my belt. Like the horoscope said, I'll probably be better off because of it. We'll see.

Even though I was expecting something like this eventually, the shock didn't hit me until I was standing in the aisle at King Soopers. I suddenly went numb and would've started bawling had I not been in public. I had to fight the urge to buy every comfort food within the place. I had to remind myself that I had I finally fit into my smaller pants last week. I've been bike riding with Marcus every weekend since my birthday and I'm finally firming up. Did I really want to sabotage that? No. So, everything went back on the shelves except one bag of M&Ms. Yay, me! Besides, if I don't find other work soon, money will be really tight and I would have felt really shitty about blowing money on junk.

In other news, my poor old dog has had explosive diarrhea for the last three days. Even though I had planned on milking the screenprinter out of every dollar possible the next two weeks, I took today off to tend to him (and me since he's kept me up the last two nights). I'm not sure if the Immodium I gave him is working or not as I don't want to follow him outside in the rain to see if his poo is runny. The poor guy is exhausted, though. I feel so bad for him. I also hate cleaning up poop out of the carpet. How do you moms do it? I don't think I could deal with so much poop on a daily basis. You women are saints.

Well, other than that, my life has been the same the last few weeks. I've still been slowly going through my junk and throwing stuff out. Why do I own so much freakin' junk?

I was playing with the Google Maps API last week at work. I had planned on implementing it into the company website before I got the news I was canned. That thing is really cool. It's too bad there's no reason to put that on any of my personal sites, but it's still a cool thing to know. I wish my javascript skills were better. I'm sure I'd pick the scripting of it up a lot quicker if they were.

I'm also trying out a new font manager. I haven't had one since my free trial of Suitcase and Font Reserve ran out a looooong time ago. I found a post about it over at Mezzoblue. It's put out by the folks over at Linotype and it's called Font Explorer X. Supposedly a Windows version is in the works, as well. It's very iTunes-ish. I haven't had much time to mess with it, but I like what I see so far. I hate Suitcase with a passion and swore never to waste my money on it. Speaking of fonts, I wish foundries would lower the price for their fonts. Offer fonts for $.99 like the Apple store does music and see how many people would actually buy legal copies of fonts instead of pirating them. I bet the foundries would make more money. I know I would have less of a problem buying a font for a couple of bucks as opposed to $25 or more. It's working for iStockPhoto. Just a thought.

Speaking of iStockPhoto, I'm seriously considering getting myself on there as a contributor. I can do vector illustration just as well as anybody on there. It would never make me rich, but hey, everybody could use a little residual income here and there, eh?

Well, guess that's about it. I'm sure I'll have a lot of posts coming in the next two weeks because the screenprinter probably won't get a lot of work out of me. My motivation is totally shot. That's why I'm all for severence packages and being let go on the spot. Let's hope the next company that hires me can actually afford to provide the benefits that I was promised after 3 months.