Skipping to say: An American U student did a short documentary piece on our search for Sassafras: [link] Give him some hits!

Whenever I've seen the "and me" correction called out in fic, it's always been an erroneous correction. Tsk, tsk.

It can't be easy to train a dog not to follow you directly up or down a flight of stairs.

It isn't too difficult if there is a sight line.

It is a matter of teaching self-control and the 'wait' or stay command.

I live on the second floor and Bartleby has two commands for exiting the house. "go pee" means that he can rush down the stairs in front of me to go into the yard. 'go outside' means he must stop on the landing, lie down and wait for me to go downstairs and get his equipment together.

It's funny that, if I say the wrong command for a given behavior, he will correct me.

There have been times when we've gone for a short walk that I didn't intend because I messed up and don't want to confuse him.

Jewelry made from pieces of Barbie dolls: [link]

I don't know what was up with Frankie this morning. He very rarely humps, and it's almost always boy dogs (and I correct him immediately and put him in 'timeout' if it keeps happening). Today he would not stop humping Josie, the sweet Dobie we see at the park sometimes! Embarrassing and puzzling.

So I more or less almost accidentally killed my brother yesterday. I feel terrible about it, but it really was not my fault. Here's what happened:

I was with my brothers and some of their friends at Mt. Attitash in New Hampshire, going down their Alpine Slide, which is basically one of the most fantastic things in the universe, and the closest I am ever going to get to being on the Olympic luge team. There are two tracks down, both the same, but hey really ought to divide them into "people who go fast" and "people who do not". Usually the little kids who go down the mountain at a mile an hour are just annoying, because it makes it far less exiting for you, but yesterday this one little girl, probably about eight or nine, turned a corner and just stopped. She decided she was scared, or something. It seems like her parents had gone down before her (probably didn't want to get stuck behind their slow child, I see people do it all the time) and so she was by herself. So she caused a line of people, full stopped, just around a corner. My brother was in front of me, and he was of course also stopped at this point, but he was three people back in line, just enough that by the time I turned the corner, going a million miles an hour, because this stuff is not cheap and I am making the most of my money, there was no time to stop. I pulled back on the break as hard as I could, but I slammed into my brother's sled so hard it flew out from under him and he got banged up on the track pretty bad. He's completely fine, but STILL. He got a couple nasty cuts and was generally in pain for most of the day. I'm just glad it was my brother I crashed into and not some six year old.

The next time we went down, a little girl got us stuck in a line of eleven people all putzing down the track together. That time I had to use the break and my feet on the sides of the track to stop myself in time. Incredibly frustrating! This is on a ride where it is absolutely spaced out enough that if you are keeping any kind of decent speed, you shouldn't ever run into anybody. ELEVEN PEOPLE.

Of course I understand people being cautious on the ride, it really is sort of dangerous and if you go too fast you WILL fall off the track. For us the sense of impending doom has always been part of the appeal. So I know I shouldn't be angry at little kids who are just afraid and cautious, but stopping on the track is DANGEROUS. I did finally get one unimpeded ride down at the end of the day, and it was glorious.

That really seems like a poorly managed track, zuisa, that they'd even allow people to stop in the middle, or let people go when there's stoppage. Just seems stupid, frustrating and dangerous.

Yikes.

Darby has to be coaxed down the stairs to begin with (I think they once looked at her funny) so one at a time is not an option. Plus, if I let her rush down on her own, that means someone else on the stairs gets surprised by unaccompanied dog heading toward them. That seems sub-optimal.

They don't allow stopping, but if you do stop there's really no way to know. It's been there since the 70s and I don't think updated too much. It's also absolutely in the middle of nowhere (we left Boston at 7:00 AM) and didn't get there until 11:45, and... yeah.

Feel compelled to share some of my dreams: I was living in a house of royalty in China (I know I know). The palace was some sort of Mecca for tourists and the roamed around freely inmost areas. The royalty was hated by the government and one night forces stormed the palace. We all struggled to get the tourists out so we could better secure the building and hide the heirs, ofwhich I was one!?!?!? Therewas a bit about chewing up truffle broth and then spitting it into a bowl for the king/emperor also.

There was also a dream where I was competeing in some sort ofphysical competition with all these kids and I was passing myself off as a 20 somethings. We were on teams at first and then were thrown into one massive race against everyone. The course went through terrian, buildings, and obstacle courses.

In otherwords, crazy.