Time - 10:56am Eastern Daylight Time
Temperature: 39 degrees F (4C)
Conditions: Clear with few high clouds
Forecast: Sunny today and tomorrow. Highs in the 50s, lows in the 20s.
Above: The Flower Girls take a short break while running at Chickamauga Battlefield last weekend. Below: Steve's team at the Battlefield
Greetings everyone! I am very pleased to report that it is finally cold! Ish. I mean, cold by GA standards, not by MN standards.
This morning it was 30 degrees F when I took the Flower Girls for a nice run. I cannot express how happy I am with those two. They make the perfect scooter team right now and, different as they are personality-wise, when they run they are perfectly in sync. Susan is turning into a wonderful little leader. More and more she reminds me of her mother, Inga.
Bonnie is finishing up her heat cycle, which went very smoothly (and means I shouldn't have to deal with it until Spring!). No stray dogs showed up and, since we have no other intact dogs, things were actually pretty calm. Bonnie was perhaps a bit more vocal and decided she was in love with Wilson. Wilson was bewildered by the whole thing (and he usually wears an expression of "huh?" in the best of times) and didn't really return her affections.
A week ago I decided to go for a run at the Berry campus. I can run for a short distance straight from the house (which I do many mornings) but we are in the midst of hunting season so I'm not comfortable taking any of the longer (and nicer) trails. So I ran at Berry. My plan was to go between two and four miles. Simple enough.
We ended up running eight miles.
I guess I was just caught up in watching my enthusiastic little dogs. I hadn't realized that we had run as far as we had until I came to the four-mile mark. And then, of course, we had to turn around and run back to the Shuttlecraft.
Then, the next day, I got up early again and went back up to the Battlefield to meet up with Steve, Deborah, Dave and the other dogs again. We ran about seven miles on the Battlefield trails. It's such a great place to run and we had a blast.
At both Berry and the Battlefield we encountered lots and lots of deer. Good "on-by" training. :) I am thrilled with how the girls are taking commands though.
Calypso will soon be ready to start doing a little more although we are going to have to start gradually. She and I did go on a nice 4-mile hike with Deborah and Anya, so she is getting stronger.
Moving onto other things, I have never watched much TV these past two years. I usually watch TV show seasons on DVD on my computer, which means there are no commercials. However, I am watching a show on Friday nights and I just have to comment on TV advertisements.
First off: AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO NOTICES HOW INANE THESE ADS ARE AND DEMEANING TO THE HUMAN RACE?????
Let's recap. The majority of ads are for candy, cell phones, mascara and some lipstick called "Bite Me" or something. And there's one (I'm not even sure what it's for) that has real people interacting with talking plastic store models who are all fawning over some guy who they think is hot. I. Hate. That. Ad.
And you would not BELIEVE the cell phone ads. They make me *almost* as mad.
Maybe I shouldn't be surprised but, after NOT watching TV (except on DVD) for as long as I have, it's like stepping into Stupidland. Fortunately the actual show is intelligent.
That aside, it's November now (duh) and November is National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo). I've always wanted to do that but, though I will continue writing stuff, I somehow doubt that with training, school and several little projects that I have going on, that I'll be able to write an entire novel in a month. But maybe I'll try to finish my Yellowstone story (which STILL has no title).
I am not one of those people who gets depressed because it's Fall. I've had some difficult times during Fall in the past but that was due to outside issues, not the time of year. I LOVE the changing Seasons and the the colorful leaves on some trees and the burnt-looking leaves on the others. It's kind of a damp cold but I'm loving it!
Yesterday evening I saw a weather report that the Smokies were supposed to get snow. Quite a bit at the higher elevations. So immediately plans of packing up the Shuttlecraft with huskies and a sled began running through my brain. But this morning I checked the reports and they'd only gotten two inches.
So I didn't go anywhere.
Oh! And we had this season's first fire in the woodstove this weekend! Yay!
Alright, I shall close for now.
More later, including my clever plan to turn irritation into productivity!
Cheers!
A
