Miss Millie passed today

Millie passed this morning unexpectedly. 

She was 15.

Millie had a great wonderful purr.

Her purr put me to sleep many nights.

Sam misses her and keeps looking for her.

I miss her.

She had a great life.

Hail again

1. What a hail storm late this afternoon.  Lots of it and really noisy. 
2. 
   
3.  An hour after the storm moved on, there was still plenty left in the yard.
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5.  Thankfull I got the small stuff and not the baseball size!
6. 

Hail - Spring is here!

First hail storm of the year.  Pea sized.  Came in 2 waves, the first one was mild, but the second one was noisy, loud, hitting windows that never get rain and hit the back door on the patio - and that's in a spot that never gets rain but the wind was blowing like crazy.

Some places were getting golf ball size hail.  Yikes.

The kitties didn't like it. Millie wasn't sure if it was my fault so maybe she should bite me or maybe she should just cuddle for a minute or two.  Sam was staring out the back windows and backing up as though it was going to come inside. 

I sure wish my garage was big enough to get both vehicles in it.

Hope everyone else is safe and dry.

first batch of hail

Scary Texts

I had just left the train station when I got a text saying a Ft Worth policeman had been shot.  My nephew is a Ft Worth policeman and the text was from my sister.

Well, after almost driving off the road, I pulled over and read the texts.  I missed the first text which said he was ok. There were just enough texts that the first text saying he was ok scrolled up and I didn't see it.

Scary enough for me. 

More scary was that my nephew was in the same class as Matt and they had worked together. 

Matt has 2 little ones and now has 7 bullets shot at him.  One hit his vest, the others hit him.  

He will have lots of surgery and of course, tons of medical bills that won't be covered.

Please pray for him and his family. He sounds like he is a really nice guy. 

Income Taxes remind me of work darn it!

I work for a small size publicly traded company.  You know what I mean... SOX.  And audits.

But where I work, in IT, we are audited about 11 months out of the year.  Interim I, Interim II and Year-end (aka rollover) audits.  We are so lucky that our audits combine SOX, operational and any other kind of audit that our internal auditors desire...sigh. 

And of course, in my job description, audits fall under the last line that states '..and anything else we ask you do during the course of your activity..'.  Even during the week of Christmas, the auditors kept asking us to call in resources that were on vacation because they needed to look at something. For the past 3 weeks, it has been non-stop.  And I don't mean just me either, a co-worker, our boss and his boss along with the other IT senior leadership members.  And yes, people on vacation were called in to provide information. In fact, we had an auditor at 11:43pm request an immediate meeting with some of our infrastructure managers.  LOL   

I haven't had a day off in a while because weekends are just working days for auditors and that's how they collect their money.  Going down rabbit holes that we told them up front were wasted time (we haven't missed one yet). We are transparent and they like working with us, or so they say.  The external auditors even sent us a giant cookie when they thought they were done. 

So I am about to start working on my income taxes and all I can think of is work.  and auditors. and time lost for nothing. and in this electronic age should be much easier than it is.

sigh

see you when I get done.....

Update on Sam

Sam is doing much better. The tremors are gone and he can jump much better now. 

He actually got in the rocking chair by himself and he started talking when I mentioned breakfast. He hasn't done that for a while. He likes to oversee the breakfast and dinner preparations in case I forget something for either he or Millie.  

Millie has been much more active and took his place a few days in the kitchen. She didn't get up in the rocking chair but she did all the talking.  And she has decided that just because he is in my lap or on my leg doesn't mean she can't strut over and take his old spot on top of the recliner!  It's been funny to watch.