more death, more death, and Siberia

[Kragen Sitaker]

Beatrice's cat was found dead this morning.  His name was Eight.  He
was apparently curled up asleep outside her family house when he died.
He'd been sick for a long time; I spent a lot of time force-feeding
him Pet-Tinic and amoxicillin when we were house-sitting, and he
seemed to be getting better, but I guess he eventually got worse.  He
used to weigh 14 pounds; he weighed 7 when he died.  Beatrice and I
had just discussed the possibility of having to kill him last night.

Beatrice wrote:

    I am sorry to be the bearer of unfortunate news, but Eight died
    Sunday night.

    He was losing a lot of weight and for some reason was anemic and
    none of the medicines seemed to make that much of a difference.
    Aaron and Melissa [the housesitters] have buried him in the garden
    in the pet cemetery and the next time I go out there I will pray
    over the grave...

    He was a fantastic, studly, pushy cat and I know that I will miss
    him, but now he is no longer in pain and is happy in the big
    catnip patch in the sky. ;-(

There was a huge fire in San Jose on Sunday.  Many buildings were
afire; six fire trucks were involved.

Much of Prague is still flooded.

The air here smells of smoke from burning wood.  The forests of Oregon
are on fire.  The smoke is visible --- it's like fog, but it isn't
cold, and it's a slightly browner color.  It hurt to breathe as I
drove Beatrice home from work Sunday night.

Beatrice and I went to Xander Blakely's book signing tonight, where we
saw my twin cousin Ben, Rohit, Adam, Xander (of course), his wife
Natasha, their baby Max, and KnowNow QA's Vladimir.  Adam gave me
advice about job-hunting, a process I think I will start in earnest
next week.

-- 
<kragen@pobox.com>       Kragen Sitaker     <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
Edsger Wybe Dijkstra died in August of 2002.  This is a terrible loss to the
whole world.  See http://advogato.org/person/raph/diary.html?start=252 and
http://www.kode-fu.com/geek/2002_08_04_archive.shtml