Don't you hate those blog entires where the first thing you see is an apology from the author for being absent for so long?  Well, brace yourself, because you're about to get one from me.

As you may have noticed, I have not posted in a while.  A long while.  Sorry about that.  A combination of stresses has added up to keep from from writing, not only in this blog, but pretty much at all, for the last few weeks.

Work, I won't talk about.  We all know how that goes. The most important stress right now is our new dog, Finnegan.

Not that Finnegan himself is any trouble.  We adopted him from the pound on a week and a half ago.  He's a West Highland White Terrier, and he's the sweetest, best behaved dog I've ever owned.  No, the problem isn't Finnegan himself.  (Finnegan, BTW, is a name we picked out ourselves, because it is Irish and means "little white-haired one," which he pretty much is.)

The problem is that during his stay at the pound, Finnegan picked up some sort of illness.  Initially the vet thought Kennel Cough, which isn't such a big deal, but now, a week after his first visit, the vet thinks perhaps it is instead Canine Distemper.

That's bad.  Canine Distemper is something that, from my understanding, has no treatment and is usually fatal.  Everything the vet has said seems to support this.  He sent in swabs for lab work on Sunday, and figures by Wednesday or Thursday we should know something.

So I'm stumbling along at work, but not much good for anything else.  If you have any spare good thoughts, please send them Finnegan's way.

Thanks.