Okay, Rosie and Jasper didn’t win a real prize, but the other day when we were hiking a guy ran past us and said they get the prize for being the best behaved dogs on the trail. 🙂 When people run by us, I tell the dogs to move to the side of the trail and wait. Being border collies, they wait obsessively – especially Rosie, who puts on her ‘work face’ and stares at me with a ridiculous amount of concentration. It helps that I’m usually holding a pine cone or two when this happens. The dogs aren’t perfectly behaved, but they are actually really, really good. We only have the occasional mishap, and those usually involve situations like where Jasper’s pine cone is on the ground next to him, and Rosie makes a dash to steal it.

I’ve been super busy, and haven’t gotten much writing done in the past few days between being out of town and prepping for a very fun party – but my next three evenings are free, and I have grand plans!

Here are my updates on new things I’ve learned and experienced in the past week. 🙂

Learnings

In doing research for an upcoming story, I learned that there’s a jet-powered hoverboard in existence! The Flyboard Air has six 250-horsepower turbo engines powered by jet fuel, which the rider carries in a backpack. And it really flies!!!

I personally wouldn’t be comfortable carrying a backpack filled with jet fuel, but I’d probably be terrible at controlling a hoverboard anyway. 🙂

I researched jet packs as well, and learned that they too exist – I just think the hoverboard idea looks more fun. I haven’t yet figured out exactly how all this will manifest in my story. I put together the outline, and will see what happens once I start writing.

Experiencings

I had some friends over for brunch on Sunday, and it was so wonderful to have a pretty backyard to entertain in!

I bought this house seventeen years ago, and while the yard was okay for most of those years, it was nowhere near as welcoming as it is now. Plus it was slowly degenerating over time. I got too busy to pull weeds in the garden…the sprinklers stopped working…patches of dirt appeared in the lawn because the sprinklers weren’t working in spots… It was a mess!

Here’s a photo of Rosie in the hole she and Jasper dug under our yew at the same party last summer. If you look closely you’ll see there’s no grass, just dirt. That’s because our entire yard was scraped last summer except for three trees. We have all new topsoil, grass, and of course all the bushes and flowers and the rest of the trees were planted either last September or this summer. Now it’s so pretty and cozy we’ve spent much more time than normal in our yard over the summer.

And yes, Rosie and Jasper continue to re-dig their hole – and we continue to fill it back in so they can dig it again. 🙂

No writing snippet this week because I haven’t worked on any stories recently. I did put together an outline for my next story, so I know what I’m going to write (unless the story changes once I start writing…which does happen…). I also just got an invitation this evening to participate in a new anthology, so I’ve added another story to my very long to-do list. 🙂