It appears that we have acquired semi-partial ownership of a dog. Dave mentioned to me before that there’s a brown lab that sometimes shows up at the house, and if it’s cold and/or rainy, he lets her in to hang out for a while. Apparently that was the case at about 5 a.m. this morning; I vaguely remember him telling me that the dog was here, but I was half-asleep at the time. When I went downstairs at 8:30 a.m., she was sleeping in the living room. (The cats, meanwhile, were keeping a safe distance upstairs.) She’s very sweet and friendly, but I noticed there was an I.D. tag on her collar. It says her name is Rose, and there was a phone number. So I called the number, got the answering machine, and left a message basically saying that I hope they aren’t worried about Rose, but she’s at our house, left our number, and that we’d like to know where she lives so we can take her home. I didn’t say, “And you should build a freaking fence,” even though that’s what I was thinking. I gave Rose a turkey dog, which she gobbled down in about 1/2 a second, and then I put her outside so I could make breakfast. She has since wandered off – hopefully she’s gone home, but who knows.

In other news, the job drama continues. It occurred to me that I’ve never mentioned the name of my company on here, so I’d probably be safe to talk about what’s going on. In short: They wanted me to go to California every week for 3 months. I don’t know if y’all remember how depressed I got when I did that last summer, but it was awful. I really don’t want to do it again. Nevermind the fact that I’m in the middle of a move, and if I’m gone 5 days a week, all I want to do on the weekends is collapse, and there’s no way I’ll have the energy to pack. It’s more about the fact that I hate traveling for work, I hate airports/flying, and I’m getting settled into this new life routine here with Dave, and I don’t want to get immediately yanked out of it. And 3 months? Is a damn long time. Plus, who knows if the project will end up getting extended longer than that, or if I’ll immediately get put on a different project that requires me to fly somewhere else every week, etc. So Dave & I talked about it and we decided that I should quit, and we could get by on one income for a while. (Which is very scary for me, since I’m not used to being dependent on anyone.) I told this to my career manager, and he’s going to see if I can possibly get a spot in the company’s internal IT group, which would keep me based in Seattle, rather than being a consultant for the western region. Meanwhile, I’m on the job hunt, just in case. So even though it’ll most likely work out fine no matter what happens, it’s still a very stressful in-between time right now.

Also, I have a Microsoft certification exam tomorrow. This is the re-take of the exam that I flunked 6 months ago. I usually re-take them immediately, while the material is still fresh in my mind. But at the time, I was planning to go to Atlanta to say good-bye to my cousin, who died a week later, and somehow studying just managed to slip off of my to-do list. But I’m doing it now. So Friday around 2:30 p.m. Pacific time, send lots of smart vibes in my direction. Much appreciated.

As for last night’s Project Runway, there’s a great recap of it over on Catoptric, so I’ll defer to that rather than repeat what’s already been said.