Under âRegretsâ, Iâm sad to report that after six weeks of trying to integrate Poindexter into the family I had to concede that he will be best homed as an âonlyâ cat. I tried all the tricks of the trade I know except for Prozac. If I have to drug an animal to make him happy, then he isnât happy. He was a late neuter (neutered at 10 months of age, just before I adopted him) and I wonder if that was part of the problem. Even through a screen, heâd get anxious and frustrated when he saw one of the other cats, and the few times I tried to do in-room introductions he would run at the other cat, pounce on it, and grab it by the nape of the neck. Aggression? Learned sexual behavior? I honestly donât know. He is great with people, but when it got to the point that I had to keep him harnessed and leashed if he came out of the foster room I realized that he wasnât going to work out. I visited him today the pet center where heâs up for adoption, and heâs thriving on all the attention visitors give him. I donât think itâll be too long until he gets the right home.
Under âBucket Listâ, made it down to D.C. last Saturday for the March for Science. It rained most of the time, with a particularly hard rain coming down during part of the march itself, but in a way I think that made things better. The people at the march werenât there for the party â they were there to make a statement regarding support for the sciences. I wonât say that there was no partisanship involved (at one point I was marching next to a woman carrying a âFuck Trumpâ poster) (couldnât tell if that was pro-Trump or anti-Trump sentiment, actually), but for most marchers the message was to fund EPA, fund NIH, support peer review papers and eschew opinion as data. The signs were clever (Girls Just Want to Have Funding for Their Research; Society Should Worry When Geeks have to Demonstrate; Grab Them By The Hypothesis), the marchers well behaved, and the rhetoric kept to a minimum. It was the first time Iâve ever participated in a national protest. At sixty, all I can say is better late than never.
Under âWorkâ, I think Iâm finally realizing that there is no such thing as a good job. I thought Iâd finally found my niche, doing work I am good at and that I think is valuable while earning decent money. Turns out that I thought wrong, or at least partly wrong. All of my reasons to love my job still exist, but bosses who have never done your job and will never understand what your job entails can ruin even the best position. Without too many details, I have been informed that we need to up our auditing and oversight of the establishment Iâm stationed at by 2.5 hours a day. That exceeds the number of hours theyâre in operation on most days. I have never fabricated a report in my life, but it would appear that I may have to rethink that approach if I am to satisfy impossible whims.