This morning did not get off to a good start. To begin with, Philip got me up about an earlier than expected. Thus I was up before Grandma. She was still in bed when I called Syd to ask if she was coming. She wasn't, having work today, so I went back and had breakfast. We seem to have gotten an extra paper, too, but that's only weird. It was later, after Grandma had gotten up, that there were real problems: she went into the bathroom and started having a spurting nosebleed. Philip got her back to bed with a roll of toilet paper to blot her nose, and I cleaned up the bathroom and started making phone calls. Summit Home Health Care told me to call the doctor, as he had to tell them before they could do anything. So, as instructed, I left a message. Then Grandma had me call Syd, and she and Ralph came over while I was getting dressed. They kicked me out to walk to the dog, and when I got back at nine-fifteen Philip had taken Grandma to the emergency room.

There followed a quiet afternoon of taking phone calls, and reading (or computing) in between. There was a call from Carole, Uncle Chuck, and Linda from the home nurse supply place, which last came just as I heard them getting into the garage. Grandma was very unsteady, so we got her to her room, and then fed her, and then she went to bed. Later in the afternoon she called a conference; its conclusion was that we'll continue here until next week. I had wondered if this would happen, back when I was beginning to get into going-home mode. Oh well. At least now I have a chance at going to the barbecue tomorrow night.

It was nice and cool when we larked; down on the road I even wondered if I would want a sweater, but I knew I'd warm up. I did, but not much--it was comfortably cool the entire time. The trail was pretty busy. We ran into the Serious Conversation couple at the beginning of the trail, then went without meeting anyone until the turn under the trees just before the pond. There we ran into about five young men/older teens. One was carrying a guitar case. The happily conversing knot reformed into a polite single file to let me pass; come to think of it, it was rather as if the teacher had come in. Hm. I got clear of them and stopped to whistle for Lark; her arrival was signaled by a startled shout behind me before she came tearing down the path. I wish very much I'd seen it when she erupted from the underbrush right next to someone. I can imagine it, but I wish I'd seen it. With our company reunited we advanced to deal with the couple ahead of us, (presumably dating) teenagers. The boy was bent over something, a cellphone, perhaps, as he walked along; the girl accompanied him silently. I don't think they noticed us once: we never passed them, as they passed our turnoff before I had to modify my pace to stay behind, and they never looked back. Probably they attributed my whistle to the boys. After those two we saw no one, but we could hear the boys' rowdy conversation all the way to the Heller Center, where it sounded as though they were in the summer house-thingy-building. I did not stay to investigate, as it was very nearly full dark.

After we got home I wrestled with the computer for a bit, then gave up on the agonizingly slow internet and went to make a float. Philip caught me on my way to the kitchen and dragged me down to the sitting room to, he said, exercise. There was a four-minute song, and we were to exercise until the end of the song. We started with pushups, standing up and raising our arms after each one. I think we made it to fifteen, with Philip waiting as I lagged. After that was crunches, touching elbows to opposite knees until my abs were jelly. Finally, to fill the time until the song ended, we did bridges. This is Philip's name for getting into the pushup stance and going down on elbows, with forearms planted on the floor. I think he interlaced his fingers, but I just made fists. I gritted my teeth and held it until the song ended, when I collapsed. Lark was so worried that the traditional post-torment snuggle ended with her on my stomach. She can just about deal with pushups and situps, those being more or less familiar, but anything else is most worrisome.

After that we made floats and watched Castle episode 3, which had for its theme teenagers in (or making) trouble. The downfall of our high-school mastermind was pretty lame. I'm still trying to determine whether it was so on purpose--he was a pretty obnoxious kid.

I finished Candide after that; the ending was pretty good--rather better than anything I'd expected. Started Waverley, then went to bed.

Golden, dachshund, goldendoodle, golden/german shepherd, short black poodly creature

Sid came over after breakfast to talk to Grandma. She's taking us to the doctor's office this afternoon--somehow I'm going, I'm not sure why. It was nine-forty when Lark and I headed out. It was pretty nice out. It was kinda funny--when I hit the dam, and went onto it to cross, there was a woman with a Golden coming on one side, and a man with a boy and a dachshund going on the other side. We met the three boys just before the big dip in the path, where water runs when there's enough. The man said "hi," the boy--about Isaac's age, I think--told me they had a dog with them too, and he was the short one, and Reggie the dachshund tried to mount Lark. She didn't disembowel him, so I guess she liked him. I said "excuse me," "I see," and "Lark!" in that order. Then we ran for a bit. The other option was to stay with them, and, while interesting, it's a bit more complicated than just leaving them behind. My body took the running rather well, I thought. Anyway, we met the woman with the Golden again in the road, and she told me she'd seen what she thought was a snake, up in the middle of the road, and so had turned back. I thanked her for the warning, and we exchanged a few remarks on snakes in general. She doesn't like 'em. So we kept going, and sure enough, up on the slope before the next patch of shade there was a sort of log shape in the middle of the road. It looked a bit like a dried stalk of mullen, and I thought, "Was that what she was talking about?" Lark promptly trotted up to sniff it, and as promptly bounced back, as the snake hissed and drew its head back. As its tail began to buzz, I called Lark, my voice, after the first shriek, only a little frantic. She looked at me, looked back at the interesting creature making such an odd sound in the middle of the road, looked back at me, and then trotted regretfully over. I leashed her, telling her what a good dog she was, and we made a careful circuit, going off the road a bit, as the dratted snake had a commanding position in the center of the road. I did not unclip the dog until we were inside the house. Lesson no. 1: I do not like poisonous snakes. Lesson no. 2: If Lark is ever bitten, it will be on the nose. Lesson no. 3: Just because you dream your dog is eaten by coyotes does not mean she will be bitten by snakes. Or at least not the very next morning. I noticed even my subconscious couldn't imagine such an eventuality, though.

Sid took Grandma to the doctor's office after lunch. I spent some time on the comp, then crashed. Grandma woke me at about four-fifteen to get ready to go to the ball game. I was ready to go, having walked the dog, eaten, and changed, by five, the estimated time of departure. Ralph came this time--he's allowed to drive, now. I hadn't known, though if I'd thought about it I suppose I would've. Anyway, it was a decent game, I guess. The Dodgers creamed us. It was the same place as last time, so there were a lot of dogs again, starting with two beagle puppies in the parking lot--terribly adorable, they were. Then there were a Goldendoodle, which I visited, and a boxer, which I did not, in the audience. Oh, and those two beautiful Danes went past again. After that was a huge brindle mastiff--it was a perfect setup for Sid's joke, actually, where you go up to the guy in the park with the dog and go "Oooh, handsome," or something like that, and when he's accepting this as a compliment of his dog, you go, "The dog's not bad either." I, of course, am not about to get up the nerve to do this in a million years (Sid says she can't remember if she did this when she was younger or not), much less to run up to a shirtless guy in the park and say it. Fun to think about, though. Hm, what else? Oh, yeah, there was a man walking a pair that may have been an Aussie and a rat terrier. Not sure, though. Aussie mix, maybe--it had a conspicuous tail, for one.....

We larked again after I got home, about eight. We met the couple with the leashed barkers almost first thing, coming up the Nevada road; they reeled their dogs in and kindly waited for us to get to our turn. I got in a breed query, and got an answer on the brown one, at least: golden/German shepherd. Wow. Never would have thought it. Right color, though, I guess. It was actually a really nice walk, after my knee stopped hurting; a certain prancing someone whanged it with a stick before we even made the gate. For symmetry, I guess. The other one's flashier, with the scabbed scrape, but it was hurting at walks for days after I knocked it going after her on a runaway night. Feh. My left stopped hurting after awhile, though, so I could enjoy the walk and wonder whether we'd make it back before full dark. We did, but the sun was no more than a pale orange glow behind the mountains, fading through pink to blue. A buck was standing at the fence between Heller land and the driveway parallel to the road; I think we'd interrupted his feeding, though when I caught his eye he was simply standing, watching us. Lark, of course, noticed nothing, though he stood there until I could no longer see him.

Fifteen pushups, twenty situps. I could probably up the number of pushups now, but I don't have the energy.

Golden retriever

Well, after I'd gone to sleep with a headache at about ten-thirty, in the middle of No Wind of Blame, and woke up to shower at about four a.m., Mom let me go back to bed with my cold after I made coffee. I got up about nine, in the end, and Diane came about nine-thirty. Fedex came at nine-forty-five; Mom signed for the package, since I'm not going to open the door to someone I don't know in my bathrobe. After dressing, I read No Wind of Blame until Mom kicked me outside to dig thistles before lunch. I got eight, and finished my book before lunch. The ending was rather unexpected, for while I figured out who the murderer was before Inspector Hemingway did, it took me a good two-thirds of the book to even suspect how the couples would come out. While the subordinate pairing was relatively typical, at least at first glance, the heroine was most unusual.

After lunch I went on to reread Arabella, discovering in the process that the first six pages are missing. Well, there are advantages to reading something multiple times; but I think if I ever do order Devil's Cub, I'll get another copy of Arabella while I'm at it. I could put up with the missing pages, but besides that the spine is in a sad condition, and in general the book is rather battered.

Our walk was more taxing than I anticipated. It began with a slight limp for Lark, which intensified as we approached the Heller dig. I asked to borrow the tweezers again, and the professora made me free of the medkit. Everybody was kinda busy, although I did have a little company initially. By the time I had extracted several spines, including a deeply embedded one that may even have justified the limp, everyone was gone. This was, to a certain extent, explained by the large group of well-dressed older people listening to the professora near the cars as we were heading out. Lark limped all the way around the loop. We met a few people: an older couple, including an enthusiastic lady who said that Lark was so sweet, was she rescued? well since she's so sweet, I thought she had been--obscure logic, but I appreciated the sentiment; an older gentleman with a polite golden retriever, who sedately exchanged courtesies with Lark, and followed his master when I told him to "go on;" and a girl with a bike, coming from the direction of the pond, and seen struggling up the road from Nevada when we were almost home. By that time Lark and I were both pretty tired, from the combination of the heat and her limp. You may well ask how the limp tired me, but as I took her up and carried her for several short periods, it really does follow.

We made it home alive, however, about three-thirty or so. I sat down to do some writing, and then Owen called. Mom talked to him for a bit, and then handed him over to me. He was in a somewhat petulant mood, trying to convince me of all I'm missing by staying here. I reacted unsatisfactorily, I'm afraid, which somewhat supported his claim that they'd be perfectly happy as long as Mom brought Lark home with her. I pointed out that while they wouldn't be able to give her as much exercise as she now requires, I would be in serious trouble physically if I weren't exercising her. It didn't seem to make much difference. All in all, I was rather obnoxiously cheery, which is always fun to pull when Owen's being difficult, but he got some small revenge when I said I had to go to the store with Mom. "Reeeeeeally." I hung up.

So then Mom and I went shopping. I stocked up a bit on Pocky, since I have to send a couple of boxes home to the boys, so that now they know what they're missing there. She seems to have some dinner plans, which is nice, although I'm not sure what she's planned after the salad nicoise. I read Arabella in the car, aloud on the way home.

Hm, Doug's asking me about getting a copy of Windows XP out of Philip again. Although it was Peter last time. I did tell Phil, but....I can't guarantee any results.....so good luck, guys.

Wheeeee, cake! Mom bought an angelfood cake, and she dolled it up for dessert tonight! The icing base was whipped cream, spread on the outside and between the layers. The she drizzled chocolate on the top and down the sides, and topped it with raspberries. It was beautiful, and absolutely delicious. Grandma suggested, afterwards, I take some next door. Ralph met me, and as close as he can get to Gollum without a conscious imitation, he went. It was hilarious. He says he'll take a picture and then put it in the fridge, so Sid knows he hasn't tampered with it. I was laughing all the way home, until Lark met me with a ball. Then I switched into Huntress Mode to play.

Having finished Arabella, I'm now reading Shards of Honor, delighted to have a copy of my own.