We had a couple of days of anxiety this week. Henry was eating less and less and then he stopped. At first it seemed to be a sort of dachshund stubbornness in the sense that he knew I absolute had to run out the door and didn’t have time to play the breakfast game. But then he stopped eating his dinner and the final worrying sign, his tortilla. At the same time, right before I am due to present, Kate calls from the woods and asks if I know that George has a bulge on his leg that is the size of half of a tennis ball? NO, of course I don’t!

Fast forward through a great deal of stress about the boys dying and trying to figure out how I can get them to the vet before the weekend. I couldn’t but GG volunteered to take them late Friday afternoon. Well, George’s growth was much, much smaller than the size of a half tennis ball and the vet took two samples from it and said “Fat deposit. Don’t worry about it unless it grows”. As for Henry, he got a full check up and they sent his blood to the lab. He got a shot for nausea and by the time they walked home, he was ready to eat.

Oy. This didn’t do much for my tolerance threshold. I found myself being even more to the point than normal. However, if this is a culture that really values directness, then I guess they will have to live with it 😉

I gave my lecture to the computer science students this week at the university. We started the two hour session with their statements on the objectivity and scientific neutrality of algorithmes and data. Let’s just say we didn’t end the session with those same statements 😉 I enjoyed doing it. There’s a big part of me that likes to entertain.  I know, you’re probably saying “Duh… really??”:)

The next day I gave a less technical version (and an hour shorter) of the talk to an audience composed of NGOs. Heh, it’s fair to say that I ruffled some feathers.

Last night was the monthly social evening that I host for the meetup. This time we held it at Cafe Hermes which isn’t precisely an LGBT cafe but definitely an inclusive place. I think we will go there again. They were happy to have 15 women and apparently throughout the month they host other LGBT groups. As a plus, they also have karoake! I used last night to make connections to some of the women who work for other tech giants. Actually, it was much more of me telling them that I need help to build out this digital inclusion work and who in their company is busy with it? Those are the people I need them to connect me to. It landed with varying degrees of success. 🙂 I guess you could say that if I had to pick an image that represents what I have been doing this week, it would be of a porcupine!

The weekend is way too short. Our second house that we bid on and didn’t get has now gone on the market. In the meantime, one that was way out of our range has had a significant price drop so that it might now be a possibility. We’re going to try and see it after making sure that the price drop was not an error! I think I would like to know that we are actually making progress on that point. It will be good to have a place where I don’t have to worry about the neighbors hearing the dogs bark, etc.