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Janet, not Diane
Thursday, June 29 2017
This morning, Gretchen and I drove down to a cat rescue place west of Newburgh to get the jump on adopting a black kitten named Diane (whom we would be renaming "Janet"). Though we wouldn't be allowed to take her home today, by paying her adoption fee, we'd be sure to get her in a couple weeks after she'd been spayed. The cat rescue place was a big old house with a room mostly full of tiny kittens. There were also a number of adults, including a black & white with a birth defect that kept her hind legs folded up under her body, forcing her to get around with her forelimbs on her knees. Diane was a tiny little black kitten with a white dot on her throat. All kittens are adorable, and it's hard to know which is the one for you. As the staffer pointed out, all kittens are crazy for part of the time and mellow for the rest, so it's easy to get the wrong impression for any particular one. If I'd had my druthers, I might've wanted the light grey tabby kitten with no white markings at all. But we'd come for a black kitten, and Diane was fine. She was part of a litter whose members included a Jack and a Little Diddy. The John Mellencamp references alone are enough reason to rename the new kitten Janet.
Initially the plan had been to swing by the Plaza Diner in New Paltz on the drive back north for an early lunch. But we were running late on this, the first full day of the new IT regime in the remote workplace, so I wanted us to get back. We almost got hit by a semi trailer swinging into our lane somewhere along the way, but somehow we made it home alive.
There were a lot of meetings in the remote workplace to hash out details. But the biggest single thing was a general transformation and liberalization of the task management system, which will allow our department to run itself. Essentially, the role of IT Director is being replaced by a combination of openness, trust, and automation. Things happened so quickly today that at times I felt a little left behind. But I tried to reign in whatever authoritarian impulses lurk within me to allow freedom and exuberance to get shit done. For now, this seems to be a wise policy. But it was exhausting, even if only by proxy. As the day was winding down, I took a much-needed bath. [REDACTED]
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