Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Monthly Archives: January 2010


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Wanna play Frisbee?

Katie 2274 It’s sunny today and already 13 degrees out!  Can’t waste a perfectly beautiful Saturday.  So I asked …”Hey Katie…wanna play Frisbee?

Well, like any good young Sheltie she was immediately up for it.  She hopped around so much it was hard to put her leash on.  And once outside and off the leash…well…it was time for CRAZY DOG!  She could hardly stand it until I threw the frisbee the first time.  Then she ran as fast as she could, heading across the snow covered yard.  With the sun in her eyes she didn’t catch the frisbee, which caused her to growl at it.  But she brought it right back to me without her  “victory lap” that she  usually takes around me before she’ll hand it off.  This time she wanted me to throw it right away.  So I did.

Do you see her waaaaay out there?

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Here she comes!

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Throw it again Mom!  Throw it again!
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Silly girl.

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YES!

It’s 7 degrees out this morning.  But the sun is shining and in the front of the house there is little wind.  And Katie was going nuts inside.  So I got the board out and we started working on getting her to go UP the slope.  I started with it flat on the driveway, butted up against the front porch’s two steps.  No problem.  She’ll run back and forth all happy, eager for her treat.

I slipped one end up on the first step which is really low.  No problem, she runs back and forth, leaping up onto the porch and grinning.

I slipped the end up to the top step.  She ran down it just like always, turned around and ran back up it before she realized it was higher.  YEA!!! I gave her LOTS of treats.  She ran back down.  Got a treat.  Turned around and balked.  Silly girl.  You just did this!

Finally got her to go up half the board, jumping on from the middle…then a bit later she accidently ran up all of it, eager for the treat.  YEA!!!! I gave her LOTS of treats.  Then she balked again.

Sigh.

After much tempting she sort of just said “oh what the heck” and ran up the board, turned around and basically said:  “OK, is THAT WHAT YOU WANT MOM?!”  She got LOTS of treats.

Then we went inside before she had a chance to balk again.  And to warm up my fingers.  We’ll try again later this afternoon.  They expect we’ll get to a high of 17.  Heat wave.

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A busy week

Tuesday evening I attended my first in a series of Hatha yoga classes offered by a local community education program.  It is taught by a man who has a PhD in pharmacology!  He’s given up that career and now teaches yoga full time.  He was very accommodating to all of us newbies, telling us (appropriately) that it was all about the breath and not about how we did the poses.  Good thing.  However I often found myself holding my breath, and I’m pretty sure that wasn’t what was supposed to be happening!  I’ll work on it.  I didn’t think we had exerted ourselves too much, but two days later I could hardly move.  And I still can’t sit up after reclining on the sofa without pain.  Guess that’s the “core” he kept talking about!

Wednesday night Katie and I as well as her dad went to Agility class.  We’ve been working all week on “walk it walk it walk it!” across her board, first flat on the driveway, then elevated a bit on bricks and finally sloping down from our front porch.  She runs across her board, then turns and runs right back, looking for a treat, as long as it’s level.  And she’ll run down the sloping board all day, but wants nothing to do with walking up it!  At school this week they didn’t have the dog walk set up.  DRAT!  They did have the A-frame the and teeter set up, neither of which she initially wanted to deal with.  We did get her to “touch!” them and get a treat.  Eventually we used Marie’s idea of bringing the tall table over to the A-frame.  Katie jumped right up on the table,  and with a treat to entice her, stepped onto the A-frame and walked down half of it!  Later I got her to put all four feet on the bottom of the A-frame and streeeetch up to reach a treat.  But she didn’t like it. She likes to keep her back feet safely on the floor!   Finally at the end of the class her dad could pick her up and place her just below the tip of the A-Frame and, with me at the bottom holding chicken, she’d run down the slant.

Katie does everything fast.  Jumps, tunnel…and this week, the chute!  Who knew!  Last week we ran the chute with someone holding open the end, and to Katie it was just another tunnel.  This week they dropped the chute fabric on the dogs as they went through.  But Katie was always through the chute before the girl let go.  So after the second time like that they just left the fabric on the ground.  Katie never hesitated, bursting through the chute fabric looking for me and her treat.  I was so surprised, because she’s always balked at chute before.  But I was also very very proud of her.  One of the instructors asked if I had brought the same dog, because she was coming along so well.  This week the tunnel was set up at a 90 degree turn, but when we tried it the first time Katie was running so fast I don’t think she noticed the corner, and had no trouble with it all evening.   Until we did a series of 3 jumps then tire, THEN  had to turn 90 degrees, right at the ring fence, to  go into the tunnel.  I didn’t have enough room to get her going, and she walked into it, then turned around and walked out each time.  A couple of things might have caused that, the slowness of her entry, and the fact that it was the end of class and she had pretty much shut down.  So I didn’t worry about it.  Everything is fun in agility, and that’s the way I want to keep it for her.

Yesterday morning was our Obedience/Rally class.  This week the course was much more difficult, filled with things I had never seen before.  The instructor had thrown in a lot of excellent level stations.  We bumbled our way through it, but I’m not worried as I’m a long way from competing in excellent!  Katie did really well on most of her heeling and of course she was perfect on her sits and stays.  She was also perfect on her stand for exam, so I’m happy.  I need to get her registered to do a rally trial.

Last night I went to my first Spanish for Adults class.  I’ve always wanted to try to learn another language; I took 2 years of French in high school and was terrible at it.  Maybe it will work better as an adult, and with no grade!  But I don’t know.  Most of the other 7 adults in the class had someone in their family that spoke Spanish and they heard it spoken a lot.  I don’t, though I heard it at work quite a bit.  And it’s clear that I have to think about things a lot longer than they do.  And that I’ll probably have to work harder to get it.  But that’s not unusual, after going back to grad school at 50 I am used to being slightly behind and working harder to keep up.  Which means I need to get offline and start on my Spanish homework.  Can’t blame the dog for errors in this class!

My favorite sentence from last night?  “El perro es inteligente.”  The dog is intelligent.   Well…she is… but how did they know?

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Guess that hint of spring is over now

We’ve had pretty warm temps, in the high 30’s and low 40’s…once even into the high 40’s (!) for several days now.  Maybe a couple of weeks, but I’ve been too busy to notice.  It was just starting to sink in that it was nice outside and Katie and I should get ourselves over to the park.  But apparently yesterday was the last warm day.  Today was rather warm in the morning and it’s been downhill since.  This afternoon it started to snow, bigger and bigger flakes came down.

Katie and I went to check things out.  She was immediately attracted to the falling snow, trying to catch the snowflakes in her mouth.  Silly girl.  We go through this every time it starts to snow; I have to explain that she can’t catch all the falling snow, or eat all the drifts in her yard.  But still she tries.

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Talent

More than a week ago I was able to attend a collage concert in Ann Arbor; a concert that celebrated the entire Music and Theater departments at the University of Michigan.  Bits and pieces of all the works done in the departments were presented one after another with no applause between.  The lighting moved rapidly from place to place on the stage and always where the spotlight fell groups of artists or a single performer began to share their talents with us.   A concert band, jazz ensembles, a single cello player, a saxophone quartet, the cast of Evita, modern dancers, Shakespearean actors, the university symphony, a chamber choir, a group of woodwind players dressed in big hats and giant bow ties, three marimba players.  It went on and on yet it seemed to only last a moment.  A minute of this, three minutes of that, classical followed immediately by popular.  Talent flowing everywhere.

My favorites?  The slim woman who made magic while playing Rachmaninov on a grand piano.  The audience gave a collective sigh when she finished.  And for sheer fun, the four euphonium players who did a piece in the pitch black of a stage without light.  At first I, and probably everyone, thought the lighting people had made a mistake when music began and no light illuminated the players.  I worried that they had the beginning memorized but would have to wind down as the seconds passed and still no light appeared.  Eventually it became obvious this had been planned to be presented without light.  Still I couldn’t relax, worried that somehow this was not right! But before it ended I realized what a gift it was to listen to music in the dark with no distractions from sight.

This past weekend I had the opportunity to go back to Ann Arbor and listen to the Ann Arbor Symphony play.  It was the tenth anniversary of the symphony’s maestro and a celebration  of Mozart.  I learn something each time I attend an Ann Arbor Symphony performance.  I learned this week that Mozart wrote music for smaller numbers of musicians, so on this evening the symphony was much smaller, more intimate.  As usual they played wonderfully, from the first piece, Divertimento No. 1 for Strings in D Major, which was written when Mozart was sixteen to the third and last piece written, but not completed by Mozart because he died before it was finished, Requiem in D minor.

I have to say I enjoyed the first piece the most; it was light and airy and fun and I could envision a young Mozart throwing it together as a kid, proving his genius.  I also enjoyed the second movement of the second piece, Horn Concerto No. 3 in E-flat Major, a piece Mozart wrote for a friend who played French Horn.  The second movement is so melodic, and was done beautifully by the guest soloist Andrew Pelletier.   I was not looking forward to the Requiem, it’s not my favorite piece.  But I have to say I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the choir assembled for the performance.  Three choirs, all from high schools sang together.   I counted over 130 members and the sound just soared in the acoustically perfect Hill Auditorium.  The kids were amazing and the packed 5,000 seat auditorium was transfixed.

Two events filled with talent.  You have to have hope for the future when you are priviledged  to listen to such beauty.


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Tango…it takes two

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There are a gazillion million trillion dollars of beautiful (and some not so beautiful) cars at the North American Auto Show this week.  I took over 150 photos of many of them.  So how to choose what to show you today?  Well, only one intrigued me enough to take home the brochure.  And even though I know that the odds of me ever owning it are slim to none, let me show it to you anyway:

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It’s called the Tango; seats two people, one behind the other, (hence the “it takes two” theme), and fits into half a lane.  It’s billed as “the world’s fastest urban car” and it’s designed for commuting to work in an urban environment.  It is the oddest, cutest looking thing and caught my eye while we were downstairs watching people ride electric cars around a course lined with magnolia trees and daffodils in full bloom.  Sort of a garden/auto show event.

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The car is 8 feet 5 inches long, 39 inches wide and 60 inches tall.  It weighs 3,000 pounds and goes from zero to 60 in about 4 seconds.  It can accelerate from zero to over 130 mph in one gear. (Not that I ever envision going 130 mph in this or any other car!)  It’s range is 60 miles on inexpensive lead-acid batteries and up to 200 miles  with lithium-ion batteries.

Detroit Auto Show Jan 2010 157It’s built by Commuter Cars Corporation in Spokane Washington, and they are presently taking orders for kit cars to be delivered within six months.  Supposedly you will be able to assemble them in 8 hours.  Put tab A into slot B?  Somehow I can’t quite imagine building my own car out in the garage.

Corporate Disclaimer:  “Please check your state’s or country’s laws regarding registering kit cars for the road.”

A few other photos for your viewing pleasure, and to save you the trip to Detroit and the $12.00 admission:

There were the Smart cars…

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…and the old cars.

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The inexpensive cars…

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…and the really really really expensive cars.  (this was over $300,000!)

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Some wild colors…

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…and classic beauties.

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Hybrid cars…

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and gas guzlers.

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There were cars with lots of space…

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and some with no leg room at all!

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And here are a few things that I just found pretty:

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All in all it was a great afternoon filled with dreams and reality.  Not a bad combination these days.

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When is an auto show not an auto show?

Detroit Auto Show Jan 2010 003 Today we picked up husband’s uncle and  headed down to Detroit to wander the North American Auto Show.  We haven’t been in years.  After driving around looking for parking we finally parked along the waterfront in a ramp next door to General Motors’ Headquarters.  We were about 4 long blocks away from Cobo Hall which housed the auto show.  It was windy.  And really cold.  But whatever.  We zipped up our jackets and headed out.  About a block into our trek we noticed lots of people walking toward us.  Not surprising, it was already 2:30 in the afternoon, people would likely be finished with the show and heading back to their cars.  Then a young man asked us if we were going to the Auto Show.  Husband and I ignored him, figuring he wanted to sell us something.  Uncle responded yes we were.  “Well don’t bother walking all the way down there, it’s closed because there’s a fire.”  Really.  The next guy coming toward us is on his phone saying something about “it won’t open back up till 4:30, lots of smoke.”  Great.

We turned around and spent an hour or so wandering around the Renaissance Center, world headquarters to General Motors.  They had their own mini auto show in their lobby, with all of the vehicles they make displayed.  That was fun.    The picture at the top is just inside the front door looking up through the glass and out at the city.

Detroit Auto Show Jan 2010 019 Then we decided to take the People Mover around town and over to Greektown for something to eat.  And to waste some more time until we could attempt to get into the auto show.  We ate at a Greek restaurant of course, they had lamb, I had spinach pie and vegetables.  Yum!  We didn’t do much walking around as the wind was whistling and it was just so cold.    At 5 we took the People Mover back around to Cobo Hall and found ourselves in the midst of thousands of people milling around.  The doors to the show weren’t open yet, even at 5:30.

So we decided to head back home.  We’re going to get up early tomorrow, pick the uncle back up and head down to try again.  Maybe it will work out.  Maybe it will be another day of adventure.  Just never know.


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Agility update

Katie, her Daddy and I went to our second beginning agility class tonight.  Katie has been wound up like a top all day and I didn’t have high expectations for class.  I wasn’t wrong, at least at first.  They started out with the dogwalk and she was having none of that.  There were only three of in the class at first, and three instructors, so one of them took us aside and wanted to work with her on the wobble board.

This is when I had a memory flash of Dianna’s blog where she said she should have listened to herself rather than let an instructor tell her what to make Miley do on the table.  I know that the wobble board was what got Katie totally freaked out last week.  So when the instructor tonight suggested we use it to get Katie desensitized to the dogwalk I said NO.  I told her it had caused Katie to shut down last week.  So the very nice instructor went and got a blue board that sat flat on the floor and a lower table, and I worked with Katie to first touch and then get on those.  It took awhile and a lot of chicken, but eventually she would sit on the blue board, then on the low table.  By the end of the class she’d jump on the taller table.

She never did walk the dogwalk, but she’ll put her front feet on the yellow part.  And she’ll do the same for the A-frame.   She just won’t put her back feet on anything!   The teeter?  Well, she’ll quickly put ONE paw on it and then take it right back off then look to me for a treat.  She’s so funny!  I guess she’s right, she did touch it! LOL!

They also introduced a longer tunnel, the tire and the chute.  She loves tunnel and jumps and only balked at the tire a few times.  I think that was more me than her, she wasn’t always sure where she was supposed to jump with it.  I was worried that she wouldn’t do the chute, but she was on a roll running through stuff, so even when they dropped the chute on her she ran through.  I don’t think she’s ready to just charge through it without someone holding it open yet, but she sure didn’t show any fear.

In fact, I think she had a blast today.  We made sure to make it all fun and not force her to do anything.  We’re going to be working on our board in the driveway.  This past week I got her to walk it a couple times, mostly though she’d rather avoid it.  I did use Marie’s suggestion with the board that if she touched it I threw the treat away from the board to alleviate stress.  She doesn’t seem as afraid of it as she used to be.   If I can get her to run it regularly this week I’ll raise it up a tiny bit see how that goes.

Tomorrow is our rally class.  I used obedience/rally stuff tonight to warm Katie up and she was spot on.  Maybe tomorrow will be a great class too!  After that husband and I are going to the North American Auto Show.  We haven’t been in years.  Should be fun.

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