Roxy training diary month 41
October 2006

     
     
     

Oct 31.  Poor Dylan.

Yesterday morning, we found a torn nail that had been bothering him, and was probably the source of his poopy agility runs.  So, yesterday afternoon, it was off to Dr. Nebeker, who took a hemostat to the broken nail and made it into an exposed nail.  While that heals, it still hurts Dyllie a bit, so he tends to lick at it.

Rosemary got him a new-style Elizabethan collar which is actually inflatable, and which Dylan may tolerate better.  I told Rosemary we need to figure out a way to make that into a costume; maybe petals to make him into a sunflower.  Feel free to make suggestions.

We're not the only ones who torture our dogs by dressing them up for Halloween.

     

Oct 30.  Roxy and Annie returned to the scene of Roxy's crime, the North Ogden Aquatic Center where she gave the term "Canine Kerplunk" a new and disgusting meaning. 

This time, the event was a Halloween "Trunk or Treat" for the dogs in the aquatic center parking lot.  (The aquatic center itself has remained closed since Roxy's oops.  Coincidence?  I'll let you be the judge.)

The photographer actually appeared at our door tonight (Nov. 6) with apologies for the "poor quality" of the photos.  I think they're fantastic.

     

Oct 29.  Regular readers of the RoxyLog have been nagging me for some time to post some updates.  I finally got around to a bunch of accumulated stuff last night and tonight, and I post it here asking for your forbearance.  Those who know me well know I have a very good excuse for not posting.

The big news today was Roxy's sixth Novice Agility leg.  We took advantage of the change to standard time and got an early start on the road to Rigby, Idaho, waking at 5 am and in the van headed north by 5:30 am. 

Her Jumpers run was pretty awful, and I had to pull her off the course.  Dylan knocked a bar in Jumpers, so for the morning, we had one E and one F.

In Standard, Dylan ran first and messed up the weaves, so that was another E for the family.  Roxy, on the other hand, had some difficulty with the weaves, spending a good 10-15 seconds there, but finally got her act together and posted a really fabulous run.  The other dog in our class E'd, so we got a green (qualifying) ribbon, blue ribbon for first place, and a toy that looks like a space alien.  (Or perhaps like James Carville after a very bad meal.  You be the judge.) 

As a result, Roxy got to ride in the Crate of Honor next to the seats in the front of the van, where she could have her ears rubbed while I drove.  That's Annie's usual place, and Annie was indignant. 

After getting her title (third leg) in February, and a fourth leg at the next trial, Roxy went on an extended tailspin.  She improved some over Labor Day weekend and this was the best we've seen since then.

 

Roxy's Sixth Novice Agility Leg

     

Castle Valley, view from near mile 8 of race

Oct 22.  Saturday, October 21 was my 48th birthday, and I celebrated by working a shift at Weight Watchers in Layton and then driving down to Moab so I could run in the "Other Half" half-marathon.  My training had been going really well, and so I was hopeful that I could break a 2:00 time. 

Alas, as I planned this I had not fully considered the implications of this elevation profile.  Wow, that hill was incredibly steep, and came at the end of a series of shorter, but longer, hills that just wiped me out. 

However, as you can see here, there are beautiful views of the LaSal Mountains and Castle Valley.

Jim is finished.

Red rock canyons of the Colorado River near Moab

They had portapotties at each even-numbered milepost.  I had to make a couple of comfort stops; at mile 6, I waited in line for a while but someone was having serious trouble and didn't seem to want to give up his seat.  At mile 8, I still had to wait in line but at least I got in.  I probably wasted 5 minutes that way.

After all was said and done, I posted a time of 2:24:23 (11:01 minutes/mile), which put me 581 out of 763 overall and 57/60 among males 40-49.  Not one of my best efforts, but I got it done and I was relatively happy and uninjured at the end. 

 

The first big hill, happy feet still

Take that, Steve Hart!

The "official" pictures are now posted here.
     
Oct 20.  Roxy's sister Rivet sends greetings from a vacation trip to Utah.  It looks like Rivet and I are visiting the same places.

Rivet Says Hi

     
Oct 15-18.  I spent three days in Chicago at the Campus Compact 20th Anniversary Celebration.   There were a couple of beautiful half-days in there between cold, rain and ick, so I took those opportunities to go for runs (about 5-6 miles each day) along the lakefront and to take in the gorgeous scenery that Chicago has to offer.  The first run, I went from my hotel downtown at Harrison and Canal to the lakefront, and from there to the Navy Pier.  The second day, the run was from downtown and south along the lakefront, past the Field Museum and Shedd Aquarium, past the Adler Planetarium and down to Northerly Island.
     
Oct 13-14.  We spent two days in Boise, Idaho at an agility trial.  I can't say Roxy did great, but it was a good experience for her and I got a chance to do a training run in preparation for my half-marathon on Oct 22.  

     
Oct 10.  Rosemary found this tasty menu item in today's Ogden Standard-Examiner.

     

Yiddish in Action

“He handed me his card and said I should call him.  Now it was summertime, I’m a shvitzer not a schmoozer, and I wasn’t emotionally prepared to talk to the mayor of Emerald City."

— Dan Fogler, character actor,

on meeting his agent for the first time

Oct 8.  Regular readers of the RoxyLog (of which there are five, but I often jokingly say "three") will have noticed a lack of updates since Sept 10.

Why is that, you ask?  Well, mostly because I've been busy, but also because I got caught up in computer issues with my new Dell XPS 400 desktop, which I started up on Sept 6.

It began crashing randomly.  I spent hours and hours in a chat room with random Indian technicians, trying to fix the problem.

Finally, the decision was made (well, not by me) to completely reformat the hard drive.  Oh.

After having done that, I was pretty sure that it had been a software issue in the first place, since all the diagnostics pointed away from a hardware issue.  So, that slowed things down, as I started to load on programs one per day.

That approach bore fruit, however, when the darn computer started crashing again.

I backtracked, and lo and behold, the software which seems to be causing the problem: WS_FTP.  Well, you can maintain websites without an FTP program, but it ain't easy.

“I took that role because I thought it made me sound like a porn star.”

— Fogler on his role as a crime-busting table tennis champ in the upcoming movie Balls of Fury

So, I've uninstalled WS_FTP and switched over to CuteFTP in the hopes the problem won't recur.

In the meantime, Contribute (which I use to edit the website) waited until last to get loaded.  All that took time, and so now Contribute is back.  That process was not without its problems; I kept getting a funky error message when trying to set up the connection to edit the RoxyLog, and finally had to go in using CuteFTP (ha!) and delete a file in the _mm directory that Macromedia calls

cthub[random string].csi

What an aptly-named file!  I felt like I was on an episode of CSI.

Today's New York Times has some great quotes from the up-and-coming character actor Dan Fogler.  One is such perfect Yiddish that I had to share it.

     

Oct 1.  We spent much of the weekend in Pocatello, at an AKC trial there. 

Roxy is still having issues with ring nerves.  It doesn't seem to be resolving.

She does, however, know how to do the weave poles, as she amply demonstrated in this photo, taken by the excellent Shannon Paulsen.

Dylan qualified both days in Standard and JWW, finishing his NAP and NJP titles. He also won a silly purple dinosaur.  Photos to follow

Jim and Roxy

Rosemary and Dylan

 

Previous RoxyLogs
     
2003 2004 2005   
The Pre-RoxyLog Days RoxyLog January 2005 (month 20)
RoxyLog February 2005 (month 21)
RoxyLog March 2005 (month 22)
RoxyLog April 2005 (month 23)
RoxyLog May 2005 (month 24)
RoxyLog June 2005 (month 25)
RoxyLog July 2005 (month 26)
RoxyLog August 2005 (month 27)
RoxyLog September 2005 (month 28)
RoxyLog October 2005 (month 29)
RoxyLog November 2005 (month 30)
RoxyLog December 2005 (month 31)
     
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RoxyLog February 2006 (month 33)
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RoxyLog April 2006 (month 35)
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RoxyLog August 2006 (month 39)
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RoxyLog September 2006 (month 40)
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