A Blessing and a Curse

Working Late
Originally uploaded by dcumminsusa

I am fortunate that I have manager that allows me to work from home even though that is not the standard practice of my employer. I have been working from home for nearly three months straight now.

It's been really nice, I'm always home when the Girlfriend gets home. No commute to deal with (although my normal commute is about 10 minutes) and I have no dress code to adhere to.

However, there are a lot of people in my department that assume that when someone is "working from home" what that really means they will answer an email every few hours to give an appearance they are working, but they are really taking the day off.

I, on the other hand, have been over-working myself while working at home. One reason is to counter-act the above assumption. I get an email, I reply ASAP. The phone rings, I answer it.

However the real reason for my long hours is part lack of discipline and partly the nature of my current project. It's too easy when I get up in the morning to turn on the laptop and start answering emails while the coffee is brewing.

I'm also working on a global team; literally. Two of us are in New Mexico, another three are in Arizona, another one in Oregon, and another one in Israel. You expand my immediate circle by one more order of magnitude and suddenly Malaysia comes into play. In order to make sure the guy in Israel is feeling like part of the team, mornings work best to work with him (time difference is 8 hours ahead). The folks in Malaysia are 14 hours ahead, sooo that means at around 5pm my time... they are just starting their work day. Emails come pouring in and phone conversations start up.I have meetings and phone calls with them until about 8 or 9pm every night. This makes for a 12 to 13 hour work day.

I have also found that by working at home I have less interruptions, i.e. less breaks and that I miss queues for things like... lunch. I can often be working and realize it's 2 or 3pm and I have not eaten since breakfast.

I'm planning on returning to the office again real soon so I can take it easy again.

All this work is really getting in my way of playing around on Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and the rest of the InterWebs.

Heeling Us Until The End

2009 has been a different year so far to say the least. First let me see if I can get anyone reading this to a basic level of understanding. Regardless of how you, the reader may feel, The Girlfriend and I love our dogs. We do not have children; we have dog-children. Our dogs go everywhere with us and are loved more than probably many children in the world are loved. I know a lot of people don't understand this and simply look their dogs as... dogs.



She had Scout and Bandit when we first started dating. If Scout and Bandit not taken a liking to me the first time I came to her house; The Girlfriend and I would probably not continued to date. For the longest time we joked that if it came down to me or the dogs, I would be the first to go. Over the years we have adopted two more dogs to bring our pack to four. Four is the maximum number of dogs allowed by law in my hometown.

We have a much larger devotion to our animals than most; we know this.

Bandit has been sick for almost 4 months now. He can no longer walk or stand. We carry him outside and lie him on the grass to use the bathroom. We carry him from room to room as we move about the house. We bring his food to him, instead of him coming to it. He can no longer reach the water bowl on his own, so we water him with a big syringe He is on more medications than most would think to provide their pet.

Through all of Bandit's inabilities, he has continued to do what cattle dogs do best; he is making sure the herd stays close together. The last four months has been about "We."

I had several ways in which I wanted to articulate the way we had become closer. However, after plodding through several of them and deleting all of them; I have realized my ineptitude for describing how things have changed.

Bandit's illness has caused a lot of emotional highs and lows in the last few months and we have been riding that roller coaster together. Sometimes only one of us in the lead car and the other in a trailing car. Other times we are sitting side by side; holding hands and holding on tightly; sometimes laughing and sometimes screaming.

All of this because of a little dog. Our little dog.

Screw it... I re-written most of this blog post about four times now...

We are going to miss you Bandit. I'm going to miss you. Our home will soon feel very different. I worry how your mom is going handle it. She has surprised me several times in the last few months; but this will be one of the hardest things she is going to have to experience.

Thanks accepting me into your home. Thanks for giving me your approval six years ago when we first met.

I was told, "It not fair we out live our pets, when most of the time they are a better person than we are and they are the ones who deserve to live a longer life."