Happy Thanksgiving

Letting go

The past few days have been, shall we say, tumultuous. Despite taking what I had every eason to believe were appropriate and sufficient precautions, my PC has been beset with 4 viruses over less than two months, each of which forced me to expend some cash to pay a pro to clean them up. Finally, last Wednesday, the boot file/sector got corrupted, leaving my computer and data dead in the water.

Enough already.

I decided to bag PC's and Windows forevermore and get a Mac -- specifically, an iMac. And I love it.

Unfortunately, in making the transition from PC to Mac, I lost some data, including years worth of emails and my virtual address book. At first, this seemed like a huge loss. Those emails included exchanges between Allie's breeder and me, enabling me to relive the whole history of how she came into my life eight years ago. There were plenty of other emails too: notes from my husband and daughter, email interviews, all kinds of history. I didn't refer to that history often, but I liked knowing it was there.

But now it's gone. There's no way of getting it back. I have to let it go.

I'm going to be doing a lot of letting go in the next few months: leaving my home of 20-plus years, watching my daughter graduate from college and make a life of her own, for starters. Further on down the line (I hope), I'll have to let go of Allie, too. What had been light-blonde patches on her face now are starting to look white. Thankfully, she still acts like a puppy while we go on walks; who'd have thought that I'd actually welcome her tendency to use her leash as a tug toy?

I guess life is a series of letting-go events. I've reconciled myself to some of those. I'm actually liking the look and feel of an email in-box that doesn't take forever to load up. I feel proud that I've raised a splendid daughter. I'm stoked about starting a new life chapter in a new place. But even those changes evoke bittersweet feelings. As for the Allie-related eventuality -- well, there's nothing sweet in contemplating that. When it comes to my golden girl, the sweetness is all in the present.

Like dogs? Like movies?

No, this is not a post waxing nostalgic about Lassie, Old Yeller, or other classic movies of the boy-loves-dog genre. Instead, I'm veering in a somewhat less reverent direction. Specifically, I invite you to check out the Empire Online Dogs Movie Poster Mash-up. It's totally irreverent, occasionally tasteless, and completely hilarious. My personal favorite is poster #5, which I wish I could post on the Northern Virginia Dog Blog. It certainly sends the right message.

(Pictured above: the movie that poster #5 refers to)