The saga of the yellow dog continues. The kids have come a very long way with her. Until a few months ago both were pretty much afraid of any dog beyond the sister-in-law’s elderly dachshund. The daughter is still a bit intimidated by her as she sprints about and threatens to jump (a habit which has been vigorously discouraged), but the boy has fallen completely for her. They wrestle on a daily basis until he comes in covered with saliva and smelling of dog. She responds well to him as long as I am absent. Because I spent time with her early on, she responds preferentially to me, but I suspect that as he spends time with her she’ll come to favor him or at least respond equally to both of us.

She consumes terrifying quantities of food. I wouldn’t mind this too much except that she converts the food into equal quantities of ordure.

I have been considering taking her up to the cabin with the boy and I, but the thought of the three of us spending two and a half hours in my little vehicle is daunting. She’d probably go off the deep end after the first half hour or so. Then there’s the food conversion issue…

I’ve heard, too, that dogs draw bears, and we’ve plenty of them up there. I remember once sitting in the cabin while a bear paced on the front porch. He finally got bored, flung the trashcans around and headed off for more profitable adventure.

Forcing issues at work and loving it. I’ve gotten into a fun situation and I really don’t give a damn about anyone’s feelings right now. I’ve been tasked to provide automation to an area where the people are experiencing repetitive motion injuries. The woman in charge of the area is apparently miffed that she’s not doing it. Tough. She’s had years to do it. Now she’s taken to not responding to my e-mails, I guess to demonstrate her pique. But I get receipts from the system, so I know that she reads them. So I’ve gone ahead and set up a demo with a sales rep and rather imperiously informed her that she may bring her fat ass to the demo if she so desires. It’s gonna happen with or without her. Tough shit. Don’t really care if she hates me or not. It's not like she'd put out for me anyway.