I’ve been scootering for a year and a half now. And now have 4 cats instead of 3. I’ve survived interesting times with my biz. My family and friends are doing pretty well. Fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers and nephews and nieces are all good. Yay!

New books have been read, new songs heard and sung. New places visited and old ones were re-visited.

The only new years resolution I may attempt is to try to be better about writing here. I’ve really let this slide in the last 6 months. And I do know that the only way to get better at writing is to sit down and apply fingers to key board. It’s time to do that now.

I do want to thank everyone who checks in here and follows me on twitter. Y’all are a wonderful group of people and I really appreciate you. Even when I’m being silly or stupid or geeky, you still want to see what I’m nattering on about. Thank you.

Happy New Year, Y’all! As I said earlier on twitter, may the best day of this year be worse than the worst day of the next year!

Forty years ago I was a little over 2 years old. I’d love to say that “I remember the landing” but I don’t. I think I remember being inside that night and that I saw Neil Armstrong take those steps, but that may be a conflation of memories of other broadcasts.

No matter. That moment is indelibly etched in my head. I’m not the son of a son of a sailor. I’m a child of NASA. My dad was working for NASA at that time. My younger sister and I were both born in Rockledge while Dad worked at the Cape. He was an engineer working on ways to go even further into space than the moon. I have vague memories of the apartment and the tv with the black and white images of the lunar lander.

My dad was younger than I am now, and only a few years out of school. He worked on space travel until 1970, then work took him elsewhere. Even though he never worked for the space industry afterwards, he has always been interested in the space program.

I wanted to be an astronaut. But after seeing my father’s gypsy ways in engineering, that approach never appealed to me. I didn’t have a calling to engineering, and in college I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do when I grew up. Instead I’m moving more away from the sciences and further into the arts. But I will always have a calling to the sky and space.

As I said on twitter earlier “The Eagle has landed. Even 40 yrs later I have goosebumps, tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat.”

So this morning DH and & took her to the vet for the last time. We both have been crying on and off since Wednesday. This little kitty has been a big part of our lives for a long time. She’s been a sweet and loyal companion. One of the hardest parts was getting out of bed this morning. I wanted to stay in bed and pretend that nothing had changed and Delenn was fine. But that’s not true, and wasn’t ever going to be true. So We both got up and moving. We found her hiding under the couch downstairs and brought her back upstairs. She allowed me to hold her on my lap for a bit, then got a little bit of water and wandered slowly back to her nest upstairs. I had a bit of yogurt, and Delenn had some too.

After the vet’s offices opened, I called to see about bringing her in. We got it set up and then got it together to go. The hardest part was pulling Delenn from her nest and getting her set in the towel for the trip. She didn’t fight it at all. I had promised her that she wouldn’t hurt any more, and I wasn’t going to break that promise. We got to the vet’ s office and Delenn perked up a bit again, nosing around the counter and the office cats, checking out the chocolates on the counter too. I told her that if she wanted one, she was welcome to it. She wasn’t that interested in the chocolates, and checked out a few more things and cats around the way. But the vet’s tech came around and had the room ready soon, and we went back there. They had a towel down, but I put our towel down over it for her. Delenn settled down on the table and you could see very rib and both sets of hips. The vet made sure we all knew where the tissues were, since we were leaking at the eyes and sniffling. They used gas to let her go to sleep, then gave her the injection. She went quickly.

She’s been buried, and is now no longer hurting. We will miss her.

She’s down to 3.5 pounds. And has a mass in her abdominal cavity. And is frail enough that there is no way for her to have surgery to remove it. We knew she had lost weight, but didn’t realize it had gotten down so far.

I’ve spent most of the afternoon here. Its where she seems to be most comfortable. And she’s spent hours lying next to me when I’ve been sick, so its the least I can do. She had a little bit of chicken, and we shared some ice cream, and we’ve both had a little bit of water. I’ve been crying on and off all afternoon. Delenn is napping now, and doesn’t seem to be in real pain.

She’s been here with us for 11, almost 12 years. She came to us from the Humane Society. She was around a year old, and had been surrendered by her previous owner. There were lots of bouncy kittens there, but we decided to look for an older cat. She had just come out of quarantine, and was out on the floor for folks to see. She claimed us then. She’s taught me a lot about being a cat owner/owned by a cat. Some fun, some not quite so fun, but all the time I wouldn’t anything in the world for it. We’ve made some midnight runs to the animal emergency room, but she’s been a good sport and has done well by it, other than serenading us with her displeasure as she was on the way there.

Once I have a few pics up online, I’ll add them to this so you can see what a beauty she is.

Mom got her cast off and now is wearing an ankle brace. She’s very happy to be able to wear shoes and drive herself around now!

Now I’m sitting here at home, watching the 9:30PM news and listening to the gunfire in the ‘hood. Its New Year’s Eve! We have to pull out the guns and shoot them! bleh. dumbasses. Quite the glamorous life, innit? After being sick, I probably won’t make it to midnight. Oh well.

If I had been industrious, I’d have a list of books I’ve read this past year, and a good set of resolutions for next year. The Terminal already asked about resolutions, and I had some good ones. One of my Christmas presents was a MSF class. I do want to ride my scooter more! My biz was good this past year, and I hope that it goes better next year. Its a chancy thing in the new economy, but I’m not backing down and I already have bookings for 2009. I’m going to try to post more here in ‘09, but I won’t guarantee it.

Thank you to all of you who do come here and hang out occasionally. I do appreciate you all. I wish us a joyous and prosperous New Year!

DH started with this cold on Tuesday, having a bad time with it on Wednesday, and dealing with the aftermath on Thursday and today. I started having a scratchy throat on Wednesday, yesterday was the acknowledgement that yes, I do have a freaking cold and today has not been fun. I didn’t go to a Christmas party last night that I had been looking forward to since I was feeling like crap and didn’t want to give this to anyone else.

Stupid rhinovirus. Go away, now!

Now I’ll believe that we’ll get an accumulation of up to one inch tomorrow. Not. It’s been over 60 degrees for the last 2 days. There’s no way its going to do anything other than fall and melt, if it snows at all.