Halo came into heat. This is actually good timing since we have a show in a week and a half any my dogs run in a 2-dog event together. Having her in heat at the time would really suck, especially since both are ranked in the Top Ten for that event and this is the last of the season.
Halo has discovered Jelly Belly jelly beans. She will do tricks for them, including standing on her hind legs and dancing. We ate enough to make ourselves sick the other night. I regret nothing.
I am behind on my test reports for Backpack Gear Test due to some health concerns that take precedence. I had two of the three written and ready for html formatting and upload and the third mostly completed. Somehow I lost two of them. Just gone. They didn’t save and they didn’t even have an auto-save as if my program had crashed. If you have any familiarity with the memory problems that go along with seizures (and anti-epileptics) you can probably imagine how stressed this makes me.
We’re busy at work, which is awesome. We’re snowed in (sort of), which is not so awesome. The cold is way worse than the snow, at least for me. I can’t get the dogs out of the house for more than a few minutes, even with jackets. I keep saying that I’ll get them warmer coats for next year. Next year comes and goes without warmer coats. Time to start picking up pop cans, right? One bonus of being stuck inside is at least now I can catch up on some back burner items for work, including reading some great training books.
Speaking of books, I recently finished both AWOL on the Appalachian Trail
and Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail
. I highly recommend both and will be posting my take on them in separate posts.
I have about a dozen or so outdoor adventure books (backpacking, antarctic exploration, cycling, kayaking, etc), easily the same for canine physical conditioning and behavior training, plus two or three dozen science books, a handful on business, and some science fiction to work through. At one book a week I think I could make it through my entire backlog of reading in about a year. Oy. I decided I need to get sick or hurt again* just to catch up on reading, writing, unpacking from the move, and knitting. I also now understand why my dad would take a week off of work each year just to catch up on household projects.
*This happens often enough that I get things from friends and relatives with the note “This is for the next time you’re laid up.” It’s nice for catching up on sitting-down things, but not actually recommended.