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She’s about eight years old so I hope we have bought her several more good years. Now that she’s eating some solid food, she’s pooping. In fact, we caught the dog eating out of the litter box this morning. :eww:

On Thursday evening, before my last post, we brought her out to the backyard and let her enjoy the sunset and the evening breeze. Even though the feedings had been so uncomfortable and even painful for her at first, she still curled up in my arms and dozed. It had been such a horrible week of...

I never thought I’d be happy to see my cat pee all over the inside of her carrier (and on my good dishcloth from Sur la Table), but I was glad. I’d been worried that there was a problem with her bladder because I hadn’t seen any new clumps in the litter box all day long. It turns out that her...

The cat didn't eat a thing on Monday morning. Fortunately, a slot opened up and I took her in. They did some blood work and it's definitely an issue with her liver. They put in a feeding tube so she can at least get food and water. I couldn't start feeding her until later tonight but she got a...

A couple weeks ago, the cat had her annual wellness exam. She seemed all right, although there was some inflammation on one of her gums. The vets recommended blood work and a dental cleaning sometime in the future. I had planned on bringing her in sometime later this month. Not a big deal. For...

One of the cat’s favorite positions when I’m watching TV.

Tennessee is just two generations removed from Jim Crow, and five generations removed from slavery. It shows.

Yup, that was Stanford. And professors were advised to not say "user" because it might trigger recovering drug addicts. Try teaching a computer science class without that word.

That's not even Goosebumps-level terror.

I understood what he meant. I was an Aggie Ally when I was a grad student and I remember going over the most peculiar pronouns. My thought was, "there are actually people who go by these?" But you know what really grinds my gears? Trigger warnings. They have gotten ridiculous. I'm not even sure...

I don't think there will be a single happy person at Cracker Barrel tonight. I wonder if there has been a pair of extra-small handcuffs sitting a desk drawer since 2016.

The last time the housing market was like this, the real estate bubble burst. We have some more braking mechanisms now but I think years of house-flipping and post-pandemic scarcity will catch up to the market soon.

My rent in Cypress (nice neighborhood just northwest of Houston) was $1800 for a 2 bed/2 bath with attached garage and pet deposit back in 2019. That same apartment would be $2500 now. If you watch those house hunters shows on HGTV, you can see the difference between pre-pandemic and...

My wife teaches at a Title I elementary school. So many of the kids are chronically absent. When they do show up, they're ill. When the school tries calling the parents they either get no response at all or a perpetually overstressed, unhealthy, overburdened single parent who is juggling three...

I always give them a chance to explain themselves. If it turns out they just didn’t cite their source, then it is indeed a teachable moment and we go over what citations are. Then I adjust their grade because it was an honest mistake. And on the other end of the spectrum you have the students...

Three-quarters of high school seniors can't write. I mean, they can read but they don't know how to form a proper paper. Most of my freshmen also hate to read anything longer than a Yelp review. I blame smart phones and shitty parenting. I provide a rubric, a list of writing tips, and a link to...

I'm grading my students' papers right now, and I've observed that plagiarism has gotten much worse since the pandemic. Furthermore, the students are completely shameless about it. When I catch them they brush it off with, "I was in a rush and copied something down. That counts, right?" Or...

When my then fiancee had brain surgery, her insurance covered most of it and the hospital put her on a reasonable payment plan for the rest. We were only engaged at the time so she was responsible for her own medical bills. Now that we're married I don't mind pitching in. I wouldn't be much of a...

Was he wearing one of those "tough guy" t-shirts? You know, the ones with screaming eagles on them and some threatening message such as "stomp my flag, I eat your ass."

I remember National Geographic running a series of articles on the Tulsa Massacre a couple of years ago. It was to commemorate the centennial of that event. Amid the discussion was a small but vocal number of folks who kept making comments like, "why are you writing stories like this? You're...