it’s five o’clock somewhere

Geez, after the last couple of weeks, I need quite a few of these.  Good thing this is my own homemade concoction and there’s plenty more where this one came from.

On Friday the 19th, we found out that the brand campaign for Insider had been killed for next year.  The product owners didn’t want us promoting it in any significant way until they make it "world class."  This makes logical sense, of course, but it’s really tough to swallow since I was hired to work on campaigns for Insider and ESPN.com and both of them have been shelved for the foreseeable future.

The following Tuesday, an earthquake rocks western Virginia and the entire east coast.  No idea where that even came from, but a day was spent making sure all of our loved ones were OK and just reveling in the surreal aftermath of an earthquake on this side of the country (one that could be felt from Virginia all the way up to Canada – how crazy is that?).

Then I left for Florida on Thursday, and Irene hit New York on Sunday.  We spent the next two days stuck in Florida looking at pictures of floods on the Internet from the towns surrounding our house on Long Island, and one just three blocks over from us.  There were pictures of canals and streets – and you couldn’t tell which was the canal and which was the street.  Thankfully, we finally reached a neighbor who walked over to our house and generously inspected it for us.  Seems like all is well there, and we’ll find out for sure tonight when we finally make it back home.

But one absolutelywonderfulamazing thing that came from Irene is that it saved RugRat’s life.  We’d left him at the house alone because he’s fine for up to a week by himself – just leave the litter, lots of food, and plenty of water, and he’s good.  But we sent Steven (Bill’s brother) over to pick him up in case the house flooded or a tree fell onto the house.  And when he got home with him, he noticed he was acting really weird, so he took him to the vet.  Turns out the poor little guy had a bladder stone stuck in his little penis and he couldn’t pee at all.  His bladder was completely full (this was Saturday, I think – and we’re still not home yet), and if Steven hadn’t gotten him to the vet, he would have died.

And I think I would have died if we’d come home and found him at the house.  It just kills me that there was even a chance that could have happened.  Luckily, he’s safe with Steven right now and we’re just hoping he doesn’t need surgery.  But he’ll be just fine even if he does.

I feel like I’ve been in a whirlwind the last 10 days or so… can’t wait to relax this weekend and hopefully do a lot of nothing.  I leave you with some pictures from FL that I edited last night…pretty excited to learn more about digitally editing photos so that I’m all ready when we go on our honeymoon!
 
[Charlotte]