Another surprising day

Warning, tech-speak ahead: The system server, not the proxy server, is down. This means that we can't access the catalog, or check books in or out, or catalog, or much of anything else. We are supposed to be back to functionality by sometime tomorrow, if the new server arrives at system HQ and if they can get it installed and working.

In the meantime, there are an awful lot of people sitting around on their thumbs. I can't get started on our data-mapping for the merger because I need access to the current database to answer a few questions before I do anything.

We also had a short-term power failure in the building today, blowing up what work we were able to accomplish in Word or online.

The other drama of the day was that I drove home at lunchtime, packed Cinnamon into The Hospital Box--where he has spent a great deal of time over the last few months, every time he had a seizure--and drove him to the vet. Yesterday, we found that his functional eye had glued itself shut. We were able to pry it open, but between the lameness, the twisting-up of his body, the inability to eat or drink properly, and then the loss of his last eye, Beast and I hit the point of no return.

When I went back to the vet's around 5:30, Cinnamon was still in the same box, only now he was beyond all the effects of whatever unnamed brain or neurological tumor he'd developed. We will have a little funeral for him tomorrow night, after it stops raining long enough to dig a deep-enough grave in our yard for him. Sparky was quite upset; he's already gone through the death of one pet, only three years ago. He's angry at something he loved being taken from him, at the whole fact that Cinnamon got so sick, at the sheer injustice of death and suffering.

He went to bed early, and Beast and I have spent the hour since then watching Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" on The Science Channel. It's surprisingly gripping, in spite of being 30 years old. I guess they've updated some of the graphics, but the major stuff is the same as it was when I was a teenager.

Tomorrow will be less interesting--I hope--than today has been.