There's not much joy in the House of Neale tonight. Or in the House of Romines or the House of Joseph. I got a call this afternoon that a close family member passed away unexpectedly this afternoon. My wife and I are in a deep state of mourning, and my parents are beside themselves with grief.

K.C. Lou Romines, my parent's beloved Catahoula, died as a result of complications from surgery this afternoon. She was just six years old.

When my wife and I decided to adopt a dog for our family, we searched high and low and found a person in Lubbock who had bred his pureblood Catahoula with his purebred Rhodesian Ridgeback so he could have some additional ranching dogs. We first met Rhoda when she was 3 weeks old and hadn't even opened her eyes yet. We fell in love on the spot, and came back four weeks later to pick her up. The trick was, the man who sold her to us left town, so my parents had to pick her up before he left and kept here until we got into town. That was when they met K.C.

When we arrived at my folks' place in Lubbock that weekend, Rhoda was already there and playing. But my stepdad was gone when we arrived even though we were expecting to meet him there, too. Shortly he came back with another puppy, the last one from the same litter. The two puppies, K.C. (short for Kati Catahoula) and Rhoda (short for Zydeco Rhoda) had grown up together in a family, and K.C. was the last puppy of the litter, as yet unclaimed. Ken fell hard for her and went back to get her after he had picked up Rhoda for us.

Except for their color difference, Rhoda has red merle with brindle and K.C. had blue merle with brindle, and that K.C. was a little larger than Rhoda, you really couldn't tell the two dogs apart when they were young. As they got older, the Rhodesian Ridgeback in K.C. began to become more prominent. She developed a barreled chest and had a pronounced ridge on her back when she got excited. Rhoda looks just like a purebred Catahoula and I'm sure we could pass her off as purebred, so long as we didn't breed her (don't worry, she's spayed). But the big difference was noticed when they were about 6 months old and my folks brought K.C. to town to visit her sister.

K.C. had some trouble in the car on the way out here, and she was still showing some signs of discomfort several hours after they arrived, so Ken took her to our local Vet to have her checked out. The X-rays revealed the bad news - K.C. had full onset hip displaysia. Her hip joints were almost completely eroded. This is a condition that usually affects dogs when they are older, but with K.C., she was born with the condition.

For five years, K.C. was on medication to help ease the pain when she walked and played. My folks kept her weight low to ease the pressure on her hips. In the year before her fifth birthday, though, the pain was more than what the medication could alleviate, and her condition just worsened. So my folks took the plunge and had the worst of her two hip joints rebuilt in surgery. The operation was a difficult one, and the recovery was even more difficult. When we went down to visit last Thanksgiving (2003), she was able to put weight on her leg, but she was still hobbling and needed lots of care and attention.

By the time we went back in April for my brother's wedding, K.C. was moving around like she'd never had a problem with that hip. Her recovery was a huge success, so much so that my parents decided they would have the same procedure done on her other hip once she regained her strength fully on the already-repaired one.

In May, they took her in for the surgery, but her pre-op bloodwork showed that she had low-grade tick fever, and they identified it in time that it could be treated with antibiotics. They expected a full recovery, and she did. Two weeks ago, when the bloodwork came back clean, they scheduled her for surgery on Monday, June 28, 2004.

After the surgery, which was much less involved than the first and would have a much shorter recovery time, the vet decided to keep K.C. and extra day as there was some draining from the wound that they didn't like and her energy level wasn't that great. My folks checked in on her this morning, and the vet reported that she was much more energetic this morning, she ate a hearty meal this morning, and was showing her true personality. They expected to be able to release her to come home this afternoon.

When Ken called late this afternoon to find out when they could come pick her up, the vet broke the news that over the course of the afternoon, K.C. became listless, lost her energy, and unexpectedly died. As of yet, they do now know if there was internal bleeding from the incisions that did not clot properly or if a blood clot broke loose and caused a stroke or what the exact cause of death was. But the end result was the same. K.C. Lou Romines underwent surgery to improve her quality of life, but ended up passing from this world to the next.

This has been a very difficult 2 years for our animal family members. We lost three of our cats within a year's time, one got out and was killed by a neighborhood dog, one died of old age, and one died of a seizure. One of my mother's cats got out of the house and ran off. Along with the other tragedies we're facing in our people family (my step-sister's illness, the death of immediate family members of close friends, and a lifelong friend's lymphoma diagnosis), this loss could not have come at a worse time. We will be planning an appropriate tribute to K.C. and the joy that she brought to our lives.

If you knew K.C., or if you have a close pet or have lost a close pet, please keep our family in your prayers. And please say a special prayer for K.C., that she has found an endless field where she can run and jump as much as she wishes without any pain or discomfort.

"I'm bad, I'm nationwide." - ZZ Top

"Me too." - Eriq Neale

Yep, I just got confirmation that Green Chili Burp and the Aftertaste is available on multiple music download sites right now for your musical pleasure. Even if you don't have or use iTunes (which you should), you can stream or download Green Chili music from a number of sources. Here's just a few:

BuyMusic.com - a subsidiary of Buy.com
NetMusic.com
Napster - the original and sometimes hated music service is now legit
Viztas

That should keep you busy for a while...

I had to do an emergency load of laundry last night because I didn't have any shorts to wear to work today.

Just thought you'd like to know...

As part of my ongoing efforts to get my pedophobia under control, I've been trying to spend more time with our neighbors across the street and their 2+ year old son. We met them just over 2 years ago when he was still an infant, and while some would say that watching him develop over the ensuing time is a special joy, I'm just glad I can say that I still speak with them and haven't tried to kill myself or anyone else after seeing the little guy. I am becoming more comfortable around him, probably because he's still young enough that he doesn't care a hill of beans about me and is content to live in his own little world.

But I have been getting some entertainment out of him. Especially as he is learning to talk.

I'm talking about more than the typical (or so I'm told) language development process where he learns some words with others that don't go together (his mother is "Mommy", his father is "Mommy Daddy" and my wife is "Mommy Daddy Anna" to him). No, I'm enjoying the fact that he's still getting his head around how to pronounce some words, or even letters. "Please" still comes out as "mease", and I can't even begin to describe the sound he makes when he's talking about crickets. But the best part for me has been the letters "W" and "F".

And it's not that he can't get them right. He can. Some of the time. "Wow" comes out as "Fow" more often than not. But it's not uncommon for him to be looking in his bucket of crickets and worms and snails (all sleeping, of course), and utter "Wow. Fow." in the same breath.

But I missed the best one of all, and I would give anything if I could find a way to download my wife's memory of this into my own brain so I could see it first hand. He has some toy dinosaurs (small enough to fit in his hands, not in his mouth) that he plays with on the driveway. He organizes them into like groups, puts them into lines, and takes them for walks. And he tells the air what the dinosaurs are doing at any given moment. One afternoon while my wife was over for a visit, he was getting the dinosaurs ready for their walk. He picked up two dinos and started walking them along the concrete, saying "Walk. Fauk. Walk. Fauk." under his breath the whole time. It took a moment for the words to sink in with the two ladies (say the phrase over and over out loud in baby voice and you'll see what I mean) and they started looking around to make sure no one else was in earshot. His mother quickly came to her defense, saying that she doesn't use words like that around him, so he didn't pick it up from her.

But that wasn't the best part. This is why I wish I had been present, even though I probably would have died from lack of oxygen from laughing so hard. You see, he picked up two of the dinosaurs and started banging them together in front of him, and he lost the use of the "W" at the same time. So while he's banging the toys together, he's saying "Fauk. Fauk. Fauk. Fauk. Fauk."

I can't wait to teach him how to say "Fuddruckers."

So I did at least make a minimal update to Musical Mondays this week, even if it wasn't on Monday. As I referred to in that post, I've been busy crammin' instead of jammin' so there's been very little music happening in the studio, and even less happening in this blog.

Fear not, dear readers, for I have not forgotten you. All both of you or more.

Anna and I met me mum and sis for dinner last night. Sis is very excited about the new camera phone she got. I'm still confused by the whole camera/phone combo thing. Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever come up with the idea myself. I just can't see myself ever saying, "You know, I'm tired of sitting around waiting on a phone call. If I only had a camera, I could take some silly pictures while I'm waiting for the world's most annoying ring sound to alert me." Those telecom/wireless folks must be getting desperate to find new sales. I mean, sure, it's cool to be able to attach a picture to a caller number so that you can see the face of the person you really don't want to talk to right now. And I guess there's some geek factor involved in being able to send pictures from your phone to someone else's phone. But it's not like you're going to get something you can frame on your wall or put in your scrapbook, is it?

Maybe that's the appeal, though. A low-tech, low-cost way to improve your geek factor. Come on, if people had been sending pictures back and forth to each other with a mobile phone 10 years ago, they would have been scorned publicly while their pocket protectors were stolen and their taped-up glasses were broken yet again. But now it seems to be cool to have techno toys.

Good lord. Could it be that geek is chic?

Whoops, I've got to run. My PocketPC Phone isn't working right - somehow it doesn't recognize that I've removed the earpiece so it's not playing any sounds through its internal speaker while I'm streaming movie trailers across the wireless internet.

In the same vein as the last post, recently in the men's room closest to my cube, someone taped a handwritten sign on one of the fixures. That in itself is not that unusual, but this particular sign in this particular location has me befuddled. It is very deliberately taped to the soap dispenser on one of the sinks. The in-counter soap dispenser. One that cannot be moved. The sign reads:

"Please put back in same location after use."

Ummm...

A few days ago, I was speaking with a gentleman in England (just south of London) and we worked for several hours trying to identify and resolve the problem he was having. As is the case on these long calls, at least one of the two parties involved needs to take care of some personal matters, and then comes the awkward communication. When in this situation, I will find a time where a task will take a few minutes to complete, and I will ask the party on the other end if I can step away from the phone for a minute. Usually, this is met with a probably understanding mumble of assent, I put my phone on mute, and take care of business. I'm usually not surprised or taken aback when a customer issues a similar sentiment, and acquiesce readily. This particular customer caught me a little off guard when he issued the edict "Please excuse me, I need to go to the toilet."

I don't know what it was in particular, but that made me very uncomfortable.

When a customer tells me he or she needs to got to the restroom, no problem. But this specific phrase really bugged me. Of course, I didn't mention anything about it to the customer, I just let the awkward moment pass and went on with the call as though nothing had happened. But now, every time one of my customers excuses himself or herself, I think back on the English gentleman and his turn of the phrase. And I'm still uncomfortable.

That got me thinking about euphemisms. They are phrases that are used to describe something in terms that don't really relate to the thing described. We use a lot of euphemisms to describe bodily functions such as "going to the toilet." I can only guess that we've developed these phrases to avoid the discomfort we might otherwise feel.

In just a few moments, I was able to come up with a number of euphamisms I had heard for this particular activity. I present this list (minus the really grotesque ones) and a few comments for your perusal. If you know of others I have not listed, please let me know (except the grotesque ones).

- Going to the loo
- Take a bio-break
- Take a leak
- Take a dump (shouldn't that be leave a dump? hm)
- Hit the John
- Visit the Head
- Relieve yourself
- Go potty
- Take a piss
- Urinate
- Defecate
- Empty the bladder
- Have a BM
- Go behind the tree
- Go pee-pee
- Make water
- Go wee-wee
- Make a piddle
- Take a powder
- Visit the boy's/girl's/men's/women's/ladies' room

See? That only made you a little uncomfortable, right?

My personal choice is a combination of the last item listed above and the current profession I'm in. Right now, I'd visit the little support engineer's room. At my last job, I'd visit the the little manager's room. In another lifetime, it'd be the little music leader's room. You get the idea.

Yes, yes, yes, I know. I've been horribly delinquent in getting the next post finished. Heck, I even completely missed a post to Musical Mondays this week (don't bother to go if you've already been - there's been nothing new for a month). I'm still adapting to the new schedule we're all under thanks to the joyful time known as summer, even though people in Texas and Arizona might not think it so swell due to the heat. Since Anna is at home for the next 8 weeks (now 7), I haven't adjusted my schedule to make the "me time" I need for posting and music. Heck, I haven't even picked up my guitar in 3 weeks!

However, my time has been spent in the pursuit of important things. Most notably, my goal of achieving my MCSE certification is well within reach as I'm now over halfway there. In the past month, I've passed 4 of the 7 certification exams I need to be able to officially add those initials to the end of my name. Two of the last three are going to be real bears, but I hope within the next couple of months to have those nailed down, too.

Have I mentioned that I've also been averaging 50 hours/week the last 3 weeks at work?

Anyway, I'm also fighting off the dread of being "average" all my life. I've heard this referred to as the "Is this all there is?" syndrome. You know, the feeling (well, if you're over, say, 26 years old you might) that you've achieved the highest level of achievement that you can achieve. Part of that stems from my knowledge that before the end of the year I'll be think in the job hunt again, and I'm not looking forward to that. Part of it is that even though I'm wanting to do so, I really haven't broken out of my musical mundaneness yet. Part of it is probably just general malaise.

But that got me thinking. Is there an actual phobia related to mediocrity? So I turned to my good friend Google and proceeded to find out. Wow. What I didn't find was a term that described this, but a whole bunch of links dealing with fear of the mediocre. Yowza. I've apparently got a lot of reading to do. So I won't share that with you, but I will link to a couple of sites that I found interesting on my search for the term.

Finding Phobias - Not the greatest site in terms of overall completeness of terms, but has a nice, simple interface and good, concise term descriptions.

MSN Encarta - Quiz - Phobias Quiz: How Much Do You Know About Fear? - An online quiz to test your knowledge of phobic terms

Have fun entertaining yourself at the expense of my social disorders!