Yeah, we've been pretty bad about posting lately, our apologies to the loyal readers of Tom 'n Kate. Let's see, it's been a pretty busy work week for both of us, and actually Kate is working on a big report for work across from me as I type here, and we both worked on Saturday too. My excuse is that we're preparing to put our telescope into a vacuum chamber for 2 weeks or so, and consequently are in a rush to get a lot of things done before it's put in the chamber and we aren't able to work on it for a while, not to mention making sure we don't spill liquid nitrogen all over the thing when it's in there.
Banjo is making great strides! He's more comfortable around home and especially around us - he clearly likes being where the action is, but is happy to hang out on the couch or lay on the floor too. He's getting pretty good at walks, that is, he's not tugging on the leash much and stays on the left side pretty well. Hasn't really barked much at all, and we have been working on "come," "off" [the couch/bed/bathroom floor], "sit/stay," and "heel" while walking. He has a ways to go of course, but it has only been 2 weeks.
We went on a late-afternoon hike in the Fremont Older Open Space Preserve on Saturday, which is the closest one to us and conveniently is one of the few that allows dogs. He seemed to love it and it was a nice hike up a big hill then back down. Unfortunately, after we got home we found about 6 ticks on him. Hmmmm... Well, I guess the tick/flea medicine is supposed to kill them, but just makes me a little nervous about the seemingly high likelihood that we will miss a few ticks here and there and they would become a problem.
Car rides, which were once terrifying, are now merely troublesome. We took him to the dog park today, and he tried out both the "big dog" and the "small dog" sides. It might take a few times before he really figures out how to romp around with the other dogs, but he did fine and got to sniff a cornucopia of dog butts.
Oh! On the toy front, Banjo's favorite toys seem to have become 1) Tom's leather slippers, 2) The purple hedgehog squeaky toy (picture soon), 3) Tom's socks, 4) Any blanket that Kate is currently wrapped up in, and 5) his snowman Kong (probably because it is often filled with peanut butter and kibbles). So we're making progress there, especially with his recent complete desctruction of the hedgehog. I guess it was fun to gnaw on.
That's a lot of dog news. Other things of note:
- My car mysteriously got an annoyingly large scrape/dent on the back fender sometime within the past 2 days. Rrrrhghgh. Oh well, cosmetic.
- We have decided that Stella Artois is a delicious beer.
- Still not much snow at all in the Sierra Nevada, hopefully we'll get some more soon. Glad we got a couple trips in early.
- Looking forward to the UNC/Dook game on Wednesday, should be interesting considering each team has lost their last game (or 2 if you're Duke).
- Only 56 days until opening day!
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