Pictureless Sunday

Hello, blogees!

Yes, it's been a long time since I blogged. I was on vacation, sue me. Wait, don't sue me. You'd have to garnish my wages, I have nothing in reserve.

I've been traveling a little, staying at home a little, not doing all those things I promised to do while I was off, and - oh. And Oktoberfesting.

Mr M and I took a trip over last weekend. It started in Bowling Green, OH, to the campus of Bowling Green State University, where he marched in the alumni band at BGSU's homecoming football game. That was an interesting day. A bit of waiting around for me while he did all the requisite practices and such, but still fun. BGSU has a great marching band, and it was fun watching Mr M in his element. Well, he wouldn't agree with that, he said it was his last-ever marching experience, but I thought he did fine.

We didn't stay for much of the actual game, Mr M's part came in the pre-game, and it was a long day, and cold? My God, it was cold. And I'd forgotten that in a place with no mountains, the cold wind tends to cut you off at the knees.

However, Mr M and I did get lovely orange BGSU windbreakers out of the day, which of course was great for me. You know, the whole Chicago Symphony Windbreaker Debacle and all.

From the game we headed back to Cleveland, the Land of Cleves, to spend a day or two. It was there I saw the Giant Rubber Stamp. I saw the GRS on our first trip to Cleveland a few years ago, but I wanted to go back and give it its due. Which I did, in a video that I put up on my Facebook page. However, I realized that not all of you are on Facebook, so I'll try to get it up as a Comfy Chair Movie.

Got back home, then Tuesday was my first class at the Hi D Ho Academy, where my little Milo will be taking classes. Tuesday was a parents-only night, where we all met each other and learned a little about what we'll be doing in upcoming classes. We also had homework, trying get our dogs to:

Lure: holding a treat and moving our dogs to where we want them.
Sit: using that treat to get our dogs to sit.
Down: then getting them in a lying position from the sitting position.
Target: holding out a hand and getting our dogs to touch their noses to our palms.
Attention: saying our dogs names and getting them to make eye contact with us.

A large list, I'd say. But Milo's been doing very well in all those areas except the "attention" one. I think he has ADD.

With Oktoberfest coming on Friday, I was worried about leaving Milo to his own devices again (remember last time when he climbed his gate), so on Thursday I carted him to my cousin Jacob's. See, she has her own pound puppy (well, he's not so much a puppy) named Lincoln that she adopted back in January. She offered to keep Milo on a couple of my Friday nights on the mountain, and I wanted to make sure Milo and Lincoln got along. So we went for a play date.

Milo and Lincoln got on like a house afire. Jacob has a nice fenced-in back yard, and they played and ran and chased each other for a few hours. Nary a cross word (or bark). It was hilarious watching Lincoln the giant baby and Milo, the little guy, playing. Lincoln is an absolute sweetheart of a doggie. And so Friday night was set, and I had a sitter for Oktoberfest.

Then two nights of fun and frivolity on the mountain this weekend, our old buddy SaraBeth sat in with us. She was visiting from her new home in Michigan. It was an odd weekend, to be sure (other random people sitting in with the band), but still pretty fun. Another oddity, on Friday it was about 80 degrees at start time (and 100 in the barn), Saturday, about 5o, and even less when it was over. We'll see if the big drop in temperature takes a toll on my system.

And then back home today. And all the normalcies. Trash night, then a regular work week tomorrow. My vacation went by way too fast.

Happy week.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* By the way, we'll have to do some scheduling changes in the coming weeks. I'll still try to put up acrochallenges on Monday nights, but now that Tuesdays are Hi D Ho nights instead of Blog in Earnest nights, you'll all have 48 hours to acro instead of 24. So that should work out well, right?