While Allie may look like an Australian cattle dog, it is becoming clear to me that she is, at heart, a bird dog.  Today she flushed a turkey for me and then later showed up with a young turkey in her mouth (about the size of a Cornish game hen).  I have no idea where the baby turkey came from or if she found it living or dead.  What I do know is ( Read more... )

Our health insurance provided the college employees with MovBands, which are inferior knock-offs of the fitbit.  Our HR office issued a challenge for both May and June.  In May, every one who averaged 3 miles per day for a set part of the month (May 1 -28; a total of 84 miles) was awarded a $5 Subway gift card.  There were 36 people who completed ( Read more... )

I log my biking miles on a website called MapMyRide.  I discovered it when I wanted a way to compare the elevation maps published for certain organized rides with the rides I do around Marietta, to accurately anticipate how hilly, or not, the organized ride would be.  Since my smartphone came into my life, I have been using the app, mostly because ( Read more... )

Yesterday ended the 26th annual Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure (GOBA), a week-long tour by bicycle of small-town Ohio.  This year, my third year riding GOBA, we visited Mansfield, Orrville (home of Smuckers), Coschocton, Mount Vernon, Bucyrus (invented to be a contraction of beautiful and Cyrus, alluding to Persia, and back to Mansfield.  This year ( Read more... )

So I changed wireless carriers a month and a half ago, upgrading to a smartphone in the process.  Despite what some of my friends think, I have wanted a smartphone for a long while now - I just did not want to pay an exorbitant amount for data when 95% of the time that I would want to do anything that requires data, I have access to WiFi.  I wanted ( Read more... )

Today Claire competed in her first AKC rally obedience trial.  She made a number of new friends, with her big eyes and perky ears and expressive face.  I even had a lovely conversation with some one who asked to take Claire's picture, saying that Claire was the spitting image of her friend's dog who passed away.  Claire thoroughly enjoyed herself, ( Read more... )

I nominated my student for an undergraduate research award from the Entomological Society of America and she won!  She gets to present her research at the national conference, all expenses paid, in November.  The criteria for the award included merit of the research and the student's educational outreach and dedication to the field of entomology.  ( Read more... )

Claire-dog is thirteen and to celebrate, I took her on what will probably be her last longish hike.  A few years ago, when I started taking her to Dr. Lori Lutz, Lori questioned my assessment of Claire, because not being able to hike 11 miles is not "slowing down" for most dogs.  Now Lori knows me and Claire better so she knows that cutting back to ( Read more... )

Having a young dog in the house is such fun; I had nearly forgotten all the goofy, weird stuff they do.  Last night, Al tried to pull the empty dog food bag through the dog door onto the deck.  I assume she was doing this because she knew that she should not be chewing on the bag and was trying to get it outside so as to not get in trouble; since ( Read more... )

Saturday I took all three dogs over to the training facility to work on obedience and agility.  I switched out between the three, spending only about 5-10 minutes at a time with each dog while the others were in crates.  We worked for about 2 hours total, at which point every one except Yuki was tired.  Although I had Claire there to do obedience ( Read more... )