And in Other Other News

Thanks everyone for your good wishes for David. The CT scan was basically unremarkable, and he seems to be on the mend, albeit slowly. Whether the mystery will be solved or not remains to be seen.

David's health ended up overshadowing another bit of sad news on the farm; Paula called us last weekend to let us know that Malaga, the last of the pygmy goats, had passed away. You may remember that his failing health was what prompted me to bring home Angus and Shaun-Fergus a couple months ago, so it really didn't come as any great surprise. He had actually done fairly well, though, and was in pretty good spirits despite his arthritis up until his last few days. Had he made it to spring, he would have been 14 years old, which is beyond ancient in goat years.

He apparently passed away sometime in the night or early morning of last Friday-Saturday. Paula had to get up extra early to go to a Maine Alpaca Association meeting, so Wendy was the one who found him in the barn and covered him with a blanket until Paula got home. Paula told us, though, that when she got home the blanket had been pulled off and Angus had curled up on the blanket right next to Malaga with his head resting on Malaga's chest. The sheepie boys had really bonded with the old goat over the past couple of months and had been seen curled up with him in the barn at night. Seems Angus felt that he needed to keep vigil over his old friend one last time.

Knitting Semi-News

No photos to share, primarily because I started working a couple of days ago on a top-secret-hush-hush project. All I will say is that it's something of a variation on a published pattern, fruity beverages might have been involved, and short rows have definitely been knat (been knatted? knut?). Fear not, as all shall be revealed in the fullness of time. The work of the last couple of days, though, has put a bit of strain on my hands and forearms, so I'll be taking a break from it for a few days to let things settle down.

Firewalled

This might be one of the last posts I write from the workplace. Last week, a pair of terminals in the clinic (not ones that *I* typically use for teh intarwebs, I might point out) fell victim to a previously unknown and fairly nasty worm. So now the Mother of All Firewalls is about to be installed to keep us from going to pretty much any site aside from a handful that we need access to for work.

Of course, that probably means we're also going to get locked out of a lot of sites that are useful but infrequently visited, like websites for veterinary schools if we need to contact a specialty laboratory or a teaching hospital about a case. And although those situations don't come along often, I can see us being hampered considerably when, say, we need to track down a phone number outside of our area. I suppose we can always call directory assistance in those instances, but it'll end up costing the clinic more money.

I do spend a lot of time online, but I can always knit, or read, or study, or do something else. I'm more concerned about what will happen when I start classes again in the spring. Since I spend more of my waking hours here than at home and since I generally spend more time here than anyone else on staff, this could potentially damage my ability to keep up with my studies if the powers that be don't make allowances. Seeing as I've been asking for a password for two years to access the wireless hub from my own laptop, so I can do schoolwork without having to use work computers (which should, in theory, expose the clinic network to less risk, since it would mean one less avenue for malware to pass to the network), I'm not sure what to expect.

Anyway, there may not be any more work pics for a good while, and since this post is short on images as it is, I offer you this little bit of silliness. Enjoy.