Over the hump

I can’t even believe it. I made it back to the office with time to spare before the meeting.

I totally fried my brain at the computer training though. Since I planned to miss the last “unit” in order to beat traffic (yay me!), after lunch I worked ahead in the chapter the instructor was on, while also doing some of the exercises from the chapter I was going to miss. By 2:30, I could no longer focus my eyes on the screen or even process whatever he was saying about character styles and font size and body text.

Good thing I have an instruction manual.

I was a little sketched out by my motel, even after I deliberately picked one that wasn’t described in online reviews as “sketchy.” I put the bar lock on the door, but I worried that someone could climb in through the window. And I had no Isis or Robbie to protect me. Better find something lying around the office I can use to bar the window.

Also, totally pathetic motel breakfast. No waffle maker or hot food at all. Cold cereal, oatmeal packets and plastic wrapped muffins and sweet rolls. Not that I don’t normally eat cold cereal for breakfast, but this eating area was even dirtier than mine! Dirty coffee cups all over the place. Bleh.

10:30 p.m. Update: Back in Fife motel room. I have a monopod bracing against the window. So I’m safe, as long as no one tries to break the window to get the monopod.

Isis on the web

I thought Isis took cute puppy pictures, but I had a hard time finding one that adequately showed her puppiness. Still, I sent one to the AKC and we appear on their site! (Count four over and six down, photo # 30 in the slideshow.)

I feel most unworthy as a photographer, since there’s no chance all those really cute puppies are actually cuter than my Isis. My excuse is that she outgrew the supercute puppy phase before I learned to work the good camera.

I’ve ordered another lens so at least her adolescence won’t be insufficiently documented.

Zen in the workplace

As usual, my mother has the answer to all my problems. (i.e. No. 1) Drive down to the training tonight and stay in a motel. After tomorrow night’s meeting, drive back down to motel. This allows me to sleep til a normal time in the mornings, and not fight the hellish morning traffic.

Here’s something hilarious: after all my efforts and stress about the display, I’ve been asked not to use it. My coworker thinks I should be mad, but whatever, I didn’t make the display so everyone would see it and say, “My, what a lovely display.” In the moment, I enjoyed making it. The goal at the time was to create a means of disseminating information. I’m sad that it won’t be used as a tool to educate people, but not mad that my work went to waste. I just have to find another way.

Adentures of Isis

There was a casualty of Isis’s free roam after all: she ate the eyeball off of one of my ladybug boots, which she had pulled into her crate.

We punished her by throwing her in a lake.

Oh, that I had my good camera with me. She hasn’t figured out how to actually swim, but she splashed around like nobody’s business.

First we worked her out with some dogs in the off-leash area. She’s so funny with other dogs. She no longer runs screaming, but boy does she run! No dog can catch her. Her ears lie flat back , she gets this wild look in her eyes, and she gallops around with all four legs off the ground at once.

When she meets a new dog, and she’s a little unsure, she pulls her head back and her ears go straight up, with the tips touching in the center!

Rhymes with Duress

I had this very unfamiliar feeling this morning, like I have so much to do that I don’t know where to start and I might not get it done.

I think it’s called stress.

Problem No. 1
I have a training 2 hours away (without traffic) until 4:30 Wednesday, followed by a meeting here that starts at 6 p.m. Then I need to drive a half-hour north to go home to sleep before driving back south for the second day of training that starts at 8:30 a.m.

Nothing to do about that one, I tried. Unless I sleep at a hotel rather than drive home Wednesday night. Which doesn’t solve the whole driving north in rush hour situation, so let’s move on.

Problem No. 2
My display for the 6 p.m. meeting looks like crap. Hand-stenciled letters and a handmade tri-fold foamboard aren’t going to cut it.

Problem No. 3
I haven’t asked my boss if I can take the days off for this road trip I’m planning and we have a major project that probably won’t be finished by June 29.

Like the level-headed human I usually am, I attacked Nos. 2 & 3. I bought the correct-sized tri-fold foamboard at Office Max, in navy. Printed out a new heading in 100-point font and gluesticked away. Looks way professional.

Then I asked for the time off. And got it. Which foreshadows my being overwhelmed next week, trying to get the project done. But we’ll worry about that next week.

Next, I made 25 copies of 14 pages of newspaper articles, and forgot to tell the copier to collate them. So I hand collated them. Because it’s still two days until the meeting, I did not stress about that at all.

Just because you’re obsessive compulsive

…doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go back and check.

Isis has gotten so good about going into her crate after our morning play sessions. Might have something to do with the peanut butter ears I stash in her Hide-a-Squirrel and Mystery of the Pyramids toys.

I wasn’t even on the freeway yet when I realized that I didn’t remember closing her crate door. That happened once before, but she wandered into the bathroom before I left.

I decided it was probably that “Did I lock my door” thing, when you do something so unconsciously you don’t remember doing it. And so what if I did leave it open? Rob’s mom would be by in a couple of hours and it would be interesting to see what Isis would do with all that freedom.

Sure enough, I got a call from Rob’s dad saying that I needed to call the house right away, the crate door was left open and “Isis was a bad girl.”

Oh nooooo, I thought, I am so stupid. She probably crapped all over the place. Or chewed through the computer and TV cords…

Actually, she had gotten a hold of a bag of shin guards, which had just been washed, but were still pretty stinky. She scattered them around the house, but did no damage to anything. I can just picture her, with a shin guard in her mouth, shaking the hell out of it, dropping it, and going for another. I’m told she also moved all of the toys out of her crate and into the computer room.

The kicker, though, is that she didn’t greet Rob’s mom at the door, but waited patiently in her crate until Grandma came in the kitchen.

Man, I bet Isis had the greatest morning.

Road Trip!

For our summer vacation the first week of July, we’ve decided to drive to L.A. With the dog. Rob wants to camp. Or sleep in the car. Fortunately, that’s at most two nights each direction, and we have a nice guest room waiting for us at my mom’s house.

I believe the children are our future

From the New York Times:

The lesson began with the striking of a Tibetan singing bowl to induce mindful awareness.

With the sound of their new school bell, the fifth graders at Piedmont Avenue Elementary School here closed their eyes and focused on their breathing, as they tried to imagine “loving kindness” on the playground.

…

This is what is known as mindfulness training, in which stress-reducing techniques drawn from Buddhist meditation are wedged between reading and spelling tests.

…

Asked their reactions to the sounds of the singing bowl, Yvette Solito, a third grader, wrote that it made her feel “calm, like something on Oprah.” Her classmate Corey Jackson wrote that “it feels like when a bird cracks open its shell.”