BumbleDad

Had a bit of a work emergency last night, so my normal evening time with the family was abbreviated.

The power to my building, and to the building next door, went out at exactly 5pm.  So I sent everyone home and then waited around in my office for it to come back on.  Fortunately I have pretty large office windows, so I didn’t have to sit in the dark to do so.

The view from my office, Hokusai‘d via Prism

90 minutes later, the temperature was steadily making its way up to a thermal equilibrium of 94°, and we still had no juice.  So I packed it up and headed home for dinner.

By doing so I got to spend a couple hours with Jen and Daphne, all while keeping a weather eye on the “outage tracker” on our power company’s website.  At about 9pm the little red exclamation point over our office went away, signaling that power to that location had been restored.   So, once my girls were both on their way to bed, I quietly slipped into the car and drove back to the office to set about bringing things online again.

A long drive when you don’t know what’s waiting when you get there…

Fortunately, this ended up being a relatively error-free process.  There were a couple hiccups here and there, but nothing too drastic.  A printer straggled off the network at some point in the night, but it was (reluctantly) herded back into the pen this morning.

The whole thing was a reminder of a very distinctive part of my job.   I am on-call 24/365 to ensure that our office functions with zero defects.  (Well, with as few defects as possible anyway…)
This is the reason that I get to have mornings with Daphne, some extra half-days off here and there, and keep a comparatively flexible work schedule.  Because I never know when I’m going to have to stop whatever I’m doing and race to my office to solve problems.

It’s okay Daddy; I’ve got this one.

Let me get this booted up and I’ll RDP into the network.

Hmm, I’m getting zero ping responses from the firewall.

I’ll run a tracert to see where the problem is.

There.  All fixed.  Let’s go read “Wheels on the Bus.” 

Nights like last night are when I earn that time.

And I’m completely okay with that trade.

j.s.

In case you couldn’t guess it from the above image (and I sure couldn’t), my Loot Crate this month was “Anti-Hero” themed.

“No beatings for Lobo in black box, yes?”

“All right chums, let’s do this!”

Fruit of the Loom now, huh?

Yes.  I do like me some Archer.  Off to a fantastic start.

*record player needle screech*

Socks.  Bloody socks.  And not in the pejorative British sense.  Or in the Curt Schilling sense.

Maybe I’m just old, but I really don’t get the allure of these vinyl “toys.”

 Wait, Harley Quinn has a dog?

I’ll give you a bank…

 A BANK OF DOOM! 

Yeah, aside from the Archer shirt (and some lovely shots of my gnawed up thumb), that was yet another bust from the folk at Loot Crate.

*sigh*

j.s.

My daughter has become the beard police.

Today’s morning started out as most do.  At about 7:45 Daphne started making “SQUEEEE!” noises and kicking at the slats of her crib, which is her gentle way of letting me know that she’s ready to get up and that right now.

So I went upstairs and opened the door to her room, and was immediately blindsided by an olfactory clubbing.  It seems she pooped at some point in the night, and the air hung laden with the dense stench of a long-befouled Pamper.

So we changed that one out, (and I made a mental note to remove the poop snake from the Diaper Genie this evening), and then came back downstairs for our daily cuddle time and YouTubing.

She flailed around on the bed for a bit, but then abruptly stopped…  And became very focused on my chin.

“Hey, what’s that?”

“What’s on your face?”

At which point she started pulling on my chin whiskers…

“Are…are those things attached to you???”

And then she recoiled in horror when she realized that these were, in fact, little…tiny…hairs.  Growin’ out my face.

“GAH!”

“That’s disgusting!”

“This hand will never be clean again.”

“You need to do something about that, old man.  Maybe see a doctor or something.”

Now in her defense, I did need a bit of a trim/shave.  But it isn’t like I’d gone hobocore or anything.  And I certainly didn’t deserve being looked at like I’d sprouted tiny lepers out of my face.  Especially from someone who required me to clean noxious milk sludge off her butt not 10 minutes earlier.

Anyway, I touched things up a bit before getting in the shower.  Hopefully this will meet her exacting standards.

There.

Is that better, little girl?

Sheesh…

j.s.

Hi.

So the weekend was good and relatively relaxing, all things considered.

I played a little WoW on Saturday, and some of the people I used to play with back in the day have returned in preparation for the expansion.  So it was nice to catch up with them.
WoW friends are a little like real life friends, except that I’ve never actually seen them, we only talk while we’re killing giant monsters, and I have no idea what their real names are, instead referring to them as their character’s name.  (Like “Coober” or “Lorenthia.”)

Okay so they’re not at all like RL friends.  It was still fun to catch up with them.

Then BumbleDay came.

And while Daphne was in a great mood for most of the day (she did wake up on the cranky side, but the world was aglow with sunshine and rainbows once I provided her an apple juice ba-ba), it turned out that Alex was not.

Admittedly, there has always been a strained relationship between our dogs and our daughter.

“Alexxx…”

First there’s Jib.  Who hasn’t a single aggressive bone in his body unless you’re threatening one of us.

“It’s okay! Jib is watching. Everything’s peachy!”

Jib’s big problem is that he’s, well, BIG.  So he’ll often inadvertently body check the poor little girl on his way by and knock her over.  Not anyone’s fault per se, so it’s hard to get upset.
Jib’s tail also happens to be exactly face-height for Daphne, so you have to be careful that she’s not behind him when you tell him what a good boy he is, lest Daphne get a vicious whipping about the head and neck. But Jib is fine.  More often than not he just wants to sniff her.

Then there’s Alex.

Alex who, as I’ve mentioned before, is certifiably insane.

However, he can also be (and is quite often), an incredibly sweet and cuddly dog.

But on this Sunday?  Not so much.

He was sitting on a chair upstairs while we were all in the game room and I guess Daphne got too close to him, and/or he was in a pissy mood, because before I knew it he growled and lunged up at her, snapping at her face.

Now at the time I couldn’t tell if he’d actually bitten her or not (Daphne did start screaming, thus I was prepared for the worst), so I leapt up and went into full-on attack mode.  At which point he decided to bow up, and the fight was on.

Several spanks to the midsection (hard enough to display disapproval but not hard enough to actually hurt him) and he scrambled away and dove under my desk to hide.  He got one more whap while he was under there, but given that he’d just cornered himself I stopped and began staring him down.  Because despite how angry I was, any further smacks would not have been meaningful.

We stayed there for about 5 minutes.  Me glaring at him, not breaking eye contact.  Him glaring back, occasionally looking away in sulking deference.

Then I looked down, and noticed that there were three pools of blood that were spreading around my hand.

I guess at some point in our little skirmish he actually bit me, and I was gushing blood all over the carpet.  It bled for the entire day yesterday, and was still bleeding this morning when I got in the shower.

 This is what my thumb looked like today, before I covered it up.

And now of course I’m left wondering…what if that had been Daphne’s face?

So I’ve determined that this was Alex’s only chance at redemption.  We fought about it, and as such I have unquestionably communicated that this is NOT something that he is allowed to do.  He must not ever snap at her.  (Growling is both communicative and contextual, and something that we can work with.  Biting is not.)

And as much as I absolutely hate the prospect of being that guy (the guy who gets rid of a dog because he has a child), that is unquestionably where we’re going if something like that happens again.

Now, some of you might not know me very well, and you might be preparing to launch into Righteous Internet Mode about this.  But you’ll have to trust me that I am extremely aware of the responsibilities of pet ownership. I love my dogs like family, because they are my family.  I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars on their well-being and medical care, and I take great pains to ensure they live happy and healthy puppy lives.

I’d take the Puppsi Challenge against any other dog owner in the world and be pretty confident about coming out on top.

But!

It is more irresponsible of me to risk my little girl being bitten/maimed than it is to get rid of a dog that exhibits clear, repeated, and highly unpredictable signs of aggression without provocation.

I ‘effing hate that truth, but it is a truth nonetheless.  And it is the unfortunate place that we find ourselves in.

The best outcome here is that he learned his lesson yesterday and won’t ever do it again.  If so, I consider leaking out a half-pint of blood over 24 hours to be a fine trade-off to being able to keep Alex around.

Let’s hope so.

j.s.

Hiya.

Just a couple things before I pull the cord and startup this here weekend…

First, a beautiful new Overwatch movie dropped.  And it’s for one of my favorite characters in the game, Bastion.

Seriously, that music is amazing…

Poor Bastion doesn’t have a very competitive list of abilities (having zero mobility in “turret mode” is a more than serious drawback), and so I don’t get to play him that often.  But it’s nice to see him and Ganymede (that’s his bird’s name), frolicking in the forest, as opposed to mowing people down with a gatling gun.

In other Blizzard-related gaming news, I’ve gone back to playing a little World of Warcraft in preparation for the launch of “Legion” in 10 days.

It’s always weird when I fire WoW up after a lengthy hiatus.  It’s hard to describe to someone who doesn’t play a lot of these kinds of games, but the gameplay feels familiar and effortless.  There are no sensations of, “what the hell is that?” or “wait, how do I do this?”
I just know where everything is and how to get things done.

In an odd way, it feels a little like coming home.  I’m looking forward to doing some leveling in a couple Tuesdays time.

I am absolutely dying for some weekend-style food.  Russo’s Pizza has me by the collar and is screaming my name right now, but I’m not sure if I’m going to feel like going back out and getting it once I’m in for the night…

Let’s go find out!

See you Monday.

j.s.