In Which We Did Nothing In Particular, And Did It Very Well

8 August 2005

It was a good weekend in Omaha. We did approximately nothing -- watched some movies, read, talked, played with Ista. My folks had already met her, but my grands had not, and they were fabulous with her. My grandfather lies on the floor and makes duck noises at her, or just strokes her fur and talks to her in a soft voice. My grandmother immediately volunteers any time someone needs to take the puppy for some reason. I kept saying, "It's such a shame no one in this family likes puppies."

Ista's behavior has improved noticeably, although she still has her brat modes, especially in the late afternoon/early evening. The biggest improvement to my quality of life right now is that the fence people finished the fence much earlier than they'd promised: they had only promised that they would start sometime this week, and in fact they both started and finished last week. So now she can run around without us having to run with her, and I can let her out instead of taking her out. She sometimes still really wants me to go out with her, but even then it's a big difference: standing holding the leash and wandering the yard with her versus standing on the deck with a magazine and edging indoors if she's having a good time and not paying attention. We'll still take her for walks and all, but the intensive togetherness every time she needed out was...the sort of thing that's best when short-lived, I guess.

I wasn't sure how she'd handle being in an unfamiliar house -- mostly I wasn't sure whether the concept that we don't want poodle piddle on any carpet had gotten across, or whether she was thinking of it as our carpet -- but it went beautifully, no accidents. Yay.

In non-dog-related news -- is there still non-dog-related news? -- I've been doing more mop-up revisions to Thermionic Night, and I cracked open Sampo and read the first chapter and a half with red pen in hand. It did not, in fact, suck pond scum, to borrow my mother's phrase. It may not remain the first chapter and a half, but it was not so wretched that I shrieked and woke the puppy (see?) and slashed through entire pages with red doom. I'll be fine if I have to do that later -- happens every book, more or less, and I suspect this book will be more rather than less -- but when you have six hundred some pages ahead of you, having the first twelve turn out moderately bearable is heartening.

And I'm reading The Thirteen-Gun Salute. Really I'm reading lots of things that aren't by Patrick O'Brian, but if I talk about them at all, it's over on lj, mostly these days. I just always seem to be reading an O'Brian again when it's time to write another journal entry. None of my birthday presents were O'Brians, but they shouldn't be, because I have a clear and unimpeded source of borrowing, and we can hope to collect them later, possibly used in some cases, so having other things for birthdayness is good. Like The Working Brain: An Introduction to Neuropsychology. I was psyched about that one. Ahem. That is.

I think that caliber of pun indicates that I need to go to bed.

Back to Novel Gazing.

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