yo...spadework!

...on two fronts has showed results.

First is extracting little animals from the local zoo, for rehab and release. OK, extract means that they give them to me, not that I lead commando raids over the walls at night. And it's only the ones they don't want anyway, so nothing exciting like the polar bears or others that I'd love to see released. Will save zoo-rant for another time - suffice it to say that (as with most things) I'm in two minds about whether they are good or not. So after about two weeks of innocently dropping hints and nuclear missile-strength stories in the ears of the zoo-hospital staff as well as enlisting my rehab-boss's aid, I got to fetch a meerkat, a banded mongoose (pic above, from wikipedia) and two 'padloper' tortoises - on the 'scarce' list in their natural habitat. All of which will be released as soon as possible. Cool thing was that when I took the whole bunch plus some little birds out to the centre, boss and I formed a new meerkat tribe out of the zoo "loser", two previously-pet females and a neutered pp male, and they settled in OK. There will still need to be at least one viable male added before the end of the year, but getting 4 of the little savages together without bloodshed is a good start. So we followed it up by introducing the mongoose to the other one at the centre, as they are also sociable animals, and - two for two...that also went well. I have a feeling that I also agreed to drive them about 500kms north to their putative release site next week...sucker.

Second spadework result is that late last night, the critical applications resource sent me a mail saying he's now available for the upgrade of my products, and let's move ass. Might have had something to do with scheduled meeting, because he had to have been assigned to this - which just reiterates that we should have had this meeting with the client two months ago. So now the big Q is whether between him, me and other DBA contractor, we can push, shove and otherwise mutilate this into happening before the change-freeze. And, of course, the Q for me is whether I really want to...knowing that if I do it will mean 6 weeks of bloody hell for me. Coupled with doing all-client standby will mean that by Nov I'll be suicidal, self-injuring, drinking litres of vodka, irritable as all fuck and all the other joyous responses to over-stress.

Actually, spade-work on a third front too. This one literally - the lavender bed to be has progressed substantially in the last two days, both horizontally (easy) and depth wise (micro-progress). And as a result of pick-wielding my wrists are in agony, while the small trowel work has given me a mostly skinless thumb. It hurts at the time, but that gets overridden by the obsession with seeing progress. It hurts a whole lot more a couple of hours later.

Weekend plans are mostly feeding 6 little birds every 2-3 hours, as well as washing two oil-soaked pigeons again (toothbrush and dishwashing liquid kind of micro-scrub), and meeting rehab-boss to buy tie-died t-shirts tomorrow. She needs the tree of life /Celtic knot one that I bought at the horse show I worked at two weeks ago for her b/f - I need more tie-died versions of anything. I have an inherent weakness for hippy-remnant clothing, especially when it is mixed with things like wolves and dragons. Even if the whole family celebrates every time one of them wears out from overuse.

Shit. For a day where I was lying in the bath crying for the first three hours of it, at least I got something done. Guess that is all I'm aiming for. Heading for the three year mark of this dip, and every day of it would be spent under the duvet or underground by choice. So I kind of have to hang onto every little bit that I get done. And every little bit of bad that gets put off until tomorrow....