The Change.org Animal Rights Gig, the AR Conference, and Other Changes and Updates

When was the last time I provided a random list of updates? At least a couple months, right?

• I spent roughly 4 incredible days at the the AR conference in D.C. between Thursday afternoon and midday Monday. I met some really lovely people I'm excited to have as new, like-minded friends; I soaked up a lot of new information and perspectives; I ate massive amounts of delicious vegan food; I cycled through feelings of fury and sadness and hopefulness and motivation and renewal; I marveled at the attendees' and speakers' diversity of ages and backgrounds and perspectives; and I was reminded why I believe and live as I do--and why all the nonhuman animals on this planet so desperately need us to speak up for them and put those words into action. I want to write more about the various conference experiences, but that will have to wait, as I try to catch up on work I was unable to complete while at the conference.

• Speaking of work on which I'm behind . . . As has been alluded to in some posts and comments, most recently when I shared with you my latest act of embarrassing myself, and as some (many? most?) people reading this already know, I was hired--or contracted, to be exact--last month to write the animal rights blog for Change.org. My blog, along with blogs on other issues by about a dozen other people (and not just any people, but really incredible, impressive people, as mentioned in that embarrassment post), will appear when the blog network launches sometime in September. The other bloggers and I are currently in the midst of writing assigned static content for our blogs. I'm excited and anxious and all sorts of things. The night after the AR conference concluded, I had the chance to meet three of these fantastic people, two of my fellow bloggers as well as our managing editor, and I found myself again in awe of the virtual company I'm keeping.
  

• As noted in the previous post, I've been doing the Twitter thing in the last couple weeks. If you're curious about what's been going on around here and how the conference went, you can glean at least a few details from my Twitter updates. To my surprise, I'm a bit fond of this microblogging thing.
  

• Mabel is still here and doing all right, though she had another vet visit today for some problems with her paws. The poor girl has been on antibiotics almost nonstop for a few months; I don't like that at all, but with various surgeries, surgery-related infections, and then other (painful) infections, it's been hard to know what else to do. In the pre-conference draft of this post (I composed almost all of this post over a week ago), I wrote this: "There's one person interested currently who might want and be able to adopt her in October, but I'm trying very hard not to get my hopes up about this. But she would be absolutely perfect for Mabel, I would trust her completely to give Mabel all she needs, and Brandi and I really like her, so keeping those hopes in check is a bit difficult." Umm...I did get my hopes up, and I stopped putting much effort into trying to find Mabel another home because of that. But it seems that this may not be very likely anymore. Muy, muy disappointed.
  

• I changed the domain name, hosting service, and look of my Web site last week, as well as a bit of the content. Don't get too excited--it's still a very basic, no-frills site, in part because that's how I like it and in part because I know next to nothing about building one of these things, but at least it's new and different and now much easier to change and update. The last one was a complete hack job that I created and edited in two different places, and I couldn't even make many changes to the links page; it was a mess. The photo there isn't the one I wanted to use (because I had to crop it so much to keep my sisters out of it), and I need to replace it, but I have to get a better, more appropriate photo taken first.
  

• My new glasses came in last week too. They have the approval of Brandi and my sisters because, they say, these are "trendier" than my old ones; they hated my old ones. It's unlikely that I would have bought these frames if I'd been picking them out completely on my own (I've never had bold or dark glasses before), but I allowed others to voice their opinions and listened. I'm getting used to them. I've had moments of loving them and moments of hating them. I'll post a photo of them soon, just as soon as I manage to be in a photo while wearing them--and while not looking awful.

• In the last couple months, I've developed a habit of yelling, "Chance Corgi Ernst!" across the yard when Chance is doing something she shouldn't (i.e., eating something she shouldn't). You think that's weird, don't you? I think it has a nice ring to it.