Long time no see

Okay, if you haven't heard from me in awhile, it's because I am writing! Writing, writing, writing! I've finished revising my book Spirit Reader. Then I put all my creative effort into creating a couple of Powerpoint presentations for a convention (at least 80 hours) and when that was done, I threw myself into preparing for the Fall term at CNM. Whew!

I have two online classes (fortunately, both are using the same shell) but on a new program -- Blackboard -- which ate up WebCT. AND because of the conference (MERLOT -- which has nothing to do with wine; it's Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching) I'm working on setting up a wiki for my face-to-face classes to use for group work, and I'm trying out Survey Monkey -- a free survey site my students can use for their research. By the way, why don't you pop on over and take my short survey?

Okay, gotta go. My puppy's at my knees, chomping on tennis ball, asking me to play fetch.

Incriminating Evidence

Because Shiloh and Tanker tend to get into trouble (chewing everything in sight) when left alone in the house all day long, we have been leaving them outside. Last Monday, Presidents' Day, was a holiday for me, so I was the last person to leave the house. I had a chiropractor appointment in the late afternoon. Because it was going to be a light day of work, Shelli had taken Tanker with her. I knew Shiloh wasn't going to like being left outside alone, but I figured it would only be a couple of hours and I'd be home.

Well, it turned out that I was more like four hours getting back home. I called and called for Shiloh before going inside. Then as I walked inside, she greeted me from the living room!

Oh, my gosh, I thought. Someone had come back home and let Shiloh back in and left. But calling Boone and Shelli, I found that neither of them had been home. And certainly Mike, who has two jobs, hadn't gotten home yet.

How could she have gotten in? She could have made such a fuss with her barking, I thought, that our neighbors came over and let her in. Eh, not likely. One of Boone's friends had left his cell phone charger here the night before. Maybe he had come over and just picked up the charger and, in the process, let Shiloh in. That, too, not likely.

I'd left the "cat door" open for the cats to be able to go out and come in. But the cat door is in the kitchen window above the sink. The cats have to leap to a huge stump we have placed on a box to be able to reach the window. Maybe Shiloh got in that way. But I didn't think it was likely. She didn't climb a lot and was afraid to jump down from my chair seat!

Well, today, Shelli caught her in the act. Look at these pictures.

Shiloh

My puppy Shiloh is so funny. I've been training her to "sit." Now she'll just run up to me and sit and look at me expectantly. So I've had to go to great lengths to make sure and give her the command when I want to, and not when she's already sitting.

When Tanker is chewing on something, Shiloh will drape herself over his head and try to take away whatever he's chewing on from above! And Tanker just goes right on chewing with Shiloh on top of his head, kind of like a Shiloh-hat. I'll try to get a picture of it.

Now that she's gotten really leggy, she's figured out she can put her front legs up on tables and get things. Yesterday, she stripped two plants down to the soil. That wasn't so funny.

When she runs, her ears flop. She's all puppy. She's almost four months old, so will be all puppy for awhile.