The Road Home

One year with Emmett

On April 8, 2018, I flew to Portland Oregon, rented a car and drove to Corvallis to meet Emmett.

On April 9, 2018, we flew home to Montana. Emmett was in a carrier at my feet under the seat in front of me. He did great. If you are a new blog reader, use the calendar and click on April 2018 to view those posts.

So.

One year with Emmett! It has been a year of fun, love, some frustration (puppy!! and my training mistakes and all of us adjusting :) ) … BUT the main thing is that the fambly Summers – we are a house of JOY.

About 3 weeks in with Emmett, I posted this puppy schedule:

It notes that 9:00 a.m. was “go to work” time.

I wrote down approximately what we do now:

Below: a screen shot of the activity tracking for Emmett

Ha!! 9:00 is go to work time *hopefully* … I am actually a “eat when I’m hungry”, “sleep when I’m tired” person and my work accommodates that as we typically do not have work meetings (internet) before 11:00 a.m. my time. Still, the above is pretty close to most day’s routine.

But, despite the time similarities, it feels more relaxed than the 3 week puppy schedule with nearly constant vigilance or crate/pen during the potty training stage. Thankfully, Emmett was very easy on that score and we were good to go at 16 weeks.

And sleeping. Emmett is a champion sleeper! At the start, he slept in a crate next to me:

Sometimes he would stir and whine a bit, but my hand on the crate and he went back to sleep. If he seemed restless, we went out and he would piddle, then immediately be happy to return to his crate and go back to sleep. I got off light on the sleep routine!

My late May, we traded crate for the pen at the end of the bed:

We would have a bit of a snuggle on my bed and then: “time for bed” and he happily entered the pen, I gave some treats and he settled for the night.

Early November: Emmett COULD get out of the pen but mostly did not. I was tired of the pen.

Dog bed, at the foot of my bed and Emmett transitioned with no problem. Hoo-RAH!!

Meanwhile, Auggie and Emmett … so much fun watching them together.

Above is one of my favorites: “Walk this way!”

Tied for second place … Their body language is priceless!

So much fun and JOY this past year.

And I hope for many more.

My boys. My heart and joy. What a year!

March: Meteorological Spring :)

So.

March. Meteorological Spring. Did anyone tell Mother Nature?

This morning, March 3, started at -14F.

Right.

Still, we had an unusually mild and snow free early Winter. REAL Winter did not arrive until nearly the end of January. But then it came and it has stayed.

HOO-RAH! Not only did we get a good amount of snow but it has stayed mostly below freezing so the snow we got is in great condition. The thaw thing that often happens leads to treacherous walking conditions. We have had some “bad driving days” mostly due to wind and blowing snow.

At my house, there is currently 2 feet of settled snow. I haven’t made my usual “duck, duck goose paths” as Emmett is capable of negotiating the deep stuff and LOVES it. We walk along the game trails so do have some trodden paths which I’ve widened and compacted via snowshoeing. I shovel the walk to the garage, a path to the firewood, a path around the house. The driveway and turnaround I’ve been able to clear with the snow thrower plus 1 plow hire and 1 neighbor help of the end of driveway/country plow detritus clearing.

There was a 10 day time frame with enough snow nearly every day that required something and I WILL admit to getting tired of that almost daily routine. Caveat … the snow clearing PLUS the Emmett walking/playing in deep snow is almost over the top for me :) …. but FUN!! ***work might have suffered a little …

Emmett was 1 year old on February 12: officially a dog! Unofficially, there is still a lot of puppy in his sweet self :)

As noted in many previous posts, my Instagram (see feed at right) tells our daily story … and the Instagram Story feature includes a lot of minutiae. I LOVE the Instagram Story ability, but if you want access, you do need to have an Instagram Account: your account can be private and you need never post 1 thing, but you do need to have an account and then follow me to see the stories. That’s where we will mostly be.

My Technical Comeuppance

I’ve made my living for the past 33.5 years as a computer programmer: self-employed. My education did not include computer programming except for some very basic courses … 42 years ago!

I am self-taught and continually self educated, but thankfully I work with a great team of 3 others and one in particular, we’ll call him “R” is definitely a technical whiz. I am a decent programmer, have learned and relearned and since every 2 or 3 years, we must jump to the next level, I imagine this is my life. I happen to love it even though when things “change”, I initially believe that I will NEVER get it. But, so far, I do – YEA!

The facets of programming and computer system maintenance and the use of smart phones, tablets and wearables … I do not claim to be an expert in all. I often say that my knowledge is fairly narrow. I know a lot about the language and paradigm I work in: C#, typescript/javascript, html … all under a VisualStudio umbrella. My photography hobby led me to learn Photoshop (minimally … maybe medium-ly) and because there is some need for lightweight graphics in my work, that knowledge has come in handy. Word, Excel, Outlook … all used personally as well as professionally. If I have anything really tricky system wise, I rely on a local company that does that vs slogging through it on my own and possibly making a mess of things.

Three years ago, I switched from a Windows phone to an iPhone. Two years ago I switched from a Windows tablet to an iPad. About 4 months ago I added an Apple Watch. The Apple devices work well with my Windows laptop. We are a happy blended “family” :).

I think of myself as a “power user” of my devices. Ok, “power user – lite” … still, I use them and have “apps” that help me do things efficiently.

So.

Several weeks ago, in an effort to improve the specification of tasks in my work group, I offered to act as a kind of secretary to spec out in a rough design, certain tasks for our group. In group meetings, we discuss how forms and views should be laid out and sometimes what we “hear” does not correspond to what was wanted. I suggested that even some “scribbles” of the layout would be helpful.

For my first go, I did just that: paper and pen!! And I took a photo and shared that, got an ok and added to our group task software.

As I was working with “the boss” on this first round, he asked: “What app are you using?” I laughed and said pen and paper…

Later, I remembered the question and got to wondering … was there an app for this. Probably there WAS an app for this.

So, I searched and was absolutely astonished at what I found. The video below is 4 years old. She has a newer video with iPad and Apple Pencil, but what got me was her explanation of why she used an iPad and “ePencil” for taking notes in school.

I shared the above video, plus several others with all of the programming team. Most of the videos I found were from Med School students. The math, the science … OMG! … and then they took time to share how they took notes and studied. Color me appalled at my laziness :) in keeping up with this part of technology.

R, took off with the links sent and sent me a note that he started using his 2012 iPad for a project and that the note taking helped a lot.

Then he shared this:

In addition to being the team guru, he is a home schooling dad who is learning Latin along with his 13 year old daughter. Hoo … I say HOO-RAH!

Meanwhile, I slogged along with combining screen shots and notes in OneNote on my iPad Pro 9.7 with Apple Pencil. Fun as well as useful. The ability to erase vs crossing out with pen and paper makes for better “scribbles”. The ability to easily change color and thickness helps also. Our task specification definitely improved and we worker bees are happier and I think more productive: WIN-WIN!

In addition to work, I am slowly moving away from paper and toward an all digital environment for scratchpad notes and lists. BUT – thanks to my recently acquired knowledge, the digital environment includes handwritten notes on my iPad with Apple Pencil.

Above: Two applications open in order to calculate ratio of my standard bread recipe with a flour mix from another recipe… Normally, I would do this on a notepad and then maybe or maybe not remember to add the calcs in my recipe page…

The handwritten thing is important. There is a lot of evidence regarding brain exercise via handwriting. As a child of the pre-personal computer era and even though my writing leaves something to be desired … I can make it legible if I take my time … I know that I retain what I handwrite in a different way than I retain what I type.

I am so thrilled to have discovered a way to use technology in a different way. A way that adds to the ease of keeping track of information, while utilizing all of the technological tools that make it easy to find things and more fully using the devices available.

Power User … not quite, but good grief … despite my dismay at my ignorance, I am thrilled to have learned something.

Mid January 2019

Last Saturday, January 12, 2019, Emmett was 11 months old!

In 3 weeks and a couple of days he will be a year old. Time flies. AND it is SO.MUCH.FUN. !!!

This is a “go to place” shot. The morning play was getting a bit much so I did my sing-song attention noise: “hoody, hoody, hoody” and then in a happy voice: “Emmett, go to place” and he did. The little sofa is “place”.

Auggie settles near by and treats are dispensed all around!

Friday, after a week of gray … sunshine!

Mountain tops visible on the afternoon walk.

And then a mini-winter storm.

Home.

Sticks, always sticks!

Emmett: 11 months old!

Saturday doughnut: sour cream old fashioned with chocolate frosting … yes, homemade!

Mid January 2019

Back to it

I’m writing this on Sunday evening, the last night of my 14 day holiday break.

It has been a wonderful, refreshing time away from the normal work schedule. I actually didn’t work except for answering some emails and a bit over 1/2 day on Friday due to a minor emergency … but that was good as I was somewhat forced to hop to and my head is “back in the game”. I haven’t taken this much time off – as in completely off – in many years.

Even though I get outside as much as possible normally, we got out even more the last 2 weeks. The weather was all over the place, but not much snow and as we had a melt down this past week, the drive is a sheet of ice, but the yard and woods are nearly bare – walking and playing has been good!

I had time to get to know my new bit of tech fun: a wearable … series 4 Apple Watch.

All sorts of info at a glance! After trying several watch faces, I settled on what they call Infograph. It has the most “complications” of any current face. Complications are the editable quick app items on the face. I have Sunrise/Sunset, Weather, Digital time, Activity, Date, Heart Rate, Timer and Battery as my selections … all of the apps I use most.

One I use a LOT is the timer.

I use this for cooking and baking instead of the oven timer. The oven timer goes off and chimes until I get to it. If I’m indisposed or outside or in a meeting … kind of obnoxious. The phone timer is easy to reset, add a minute or keep an eye on if I am outside. There are a number of presets as well as you can set a specific time. I often use the timer as a 10 minute warning before a meeting. That allows me to enjoy outside time or inside play and training or whatever without being concerned about watching the clock.

The Activity app. I spent some time over my break learning about not only the Activity app, but how it worked with the Health app and Fall detection. I find all of it amazing technology. There is an internal accelerometer and a gyroscope that are part of the technology for all of the “movement” functionality.

The Health App screen consolidates activity, ECG, Heart monitoring and Fall detection history … PLUS allows you to enter other things: for example blood pressure, oxygen and a whole screen full of pertinent items. And everything can be exported to a PDF to send to clinic and/or physician.

But, back to Activity. Apple calls it “Close the Rings”. You set goals for Moving (outer red), Exercise (middle green) and Standing (inner aqua). Additionally, the app details give calories burned (active and non-active), steps and several graphs showing the times of activity. But the visual of the rings is a quick and easy way to see how I’m doing through the day without getting involved in details. I had a fitness band device several years ago and besides being not that comfortable to wear, I found myself getting a bit too obsessed about the details. The “close the rings” visual works better for me. The watch itself – I hardly know I’m wearing it: light and comfortable. I have the 44m – the largest and no complaints about how it sits on my wrist.

When I had the previous wearable, I DID like that I could see messages and emails easily without digging out my phone: outside and especially in Winter when my phone was in an inside pocket and wearing gloves, etc. And in the dark outside! I was happy to have that functionality back with this watch. The convenience of seeing if a message, notification or email is something that requires immediate action is wonderful. And while I would not try to respond from the watch normally, there are some quick response items selectable from a menu: Yes, No, Sure, Thanks, Ok. As a consultant, it is one more tool that allows me flexibility in what hours I spend at my desk while still being “available”.

Some of the messages when out and about are notifications from Emmett’s “wearable” device! If you’ve followed the blog for years, you will know that I used a GPS device with Bear and now the latest version with Emmett.

It is called Whistle and in addition to GPS tracking, alerts for “away from home”, low battery … it has an Activity tracker :)!

So. Absolutely no excuse(s) for either Emmett or me not getting our exercise!! Whistle is getting close to adding some other things like temperature. That is important to me, especially when we get back to rving. It has always been a worry if I had to leave Bear and Auggie in the motorhome on a hot day. I leave the generator running and AC on but if there is a failure, the motorhome heats up fast … not as bad as a car, but worse than a house. The temperature functionality will be one more useful thing to give me peace of mind.

But, the GPS and the App and the Watch:

Above shot of the watch is the type of message I get when we are walking. Although you can shut off messaging for walks and outings, I do not. I want the device giving me info in the hopefully, unlikely event, that Emmett and I are separated.

If that did happen, I am able to activate tracking on my phone and see where Emmett is in relation to me:

Darn cool!! This part gets better and better and faster as time goes on – better devices, more high speed cell coverage – progress. I want training and our relationship to be the first defense, but this kind of backup is priceless to me.

Yoga via the internet!! I do have a Yoga DVD that I like. It has some 15-30 minute things like: Yoga break from the computer. But my favorite is via YouTube: Yoga with Adriene

Adriene has a calm and peaceful demeanor, and she always stresses awareness and intention vs perfection in position. Adriene’s dog Benji is always in the background. Starting January 1, a series of 30 days titled: Dedicate. I am doing the 30 days.

With Emmett… (sharing the mat!)

And Auggie!

When I started Day 1, Emmett was pretty sure that it was play time since I was on the floor. I stayed quiet, followed as I was able and he eventually settled … on the mat! So I worked around him.

He is getting the idea and settles faster every day. I am thrilled to have both him and Auggie near.

Sunday.

Back to work tomorrow. A Winter Weather advisory is in effect from 8:00 p.m. this evening (1 hour from now) until 5:00 p.m. tomorrow. Mostly for the morning commute which thankfully, I do not have to make.

But, the weather did inspire me to take a quick run for a few items.

Beautiful.

Back to it tomorrow!

2019: 365 new opportunities

I’ve seen the phrase/quote/cartoon: “What will 2019 bring us?” … “365 opportunities”. And a tagline attached: “You own your happiness”.

Part of me wants to say “Enough said !!!” We’ll see how much I have to say, though :).

For me, this is about both perspective and being aware of what I want and don’t want in my life. Naturally, not everything is controllable, but there is a lot that I can control … or maybe better words are that there a lot of things I am able to make a choice about.

I’ve made many choices about where I live, how I live, how I spend my time. There are consequences to all of those choices and for the most part, I’ve always been clear on what those are and accepted them. I am a glass half full person and even during challenging times, I tend toward the positive. Part of this is a lot of life experience in the good things that I’ve experienced during the difficult times.

It is almost a year since I let Bear go. Last Christmas and New Year’s … I knew his time was short and also that if not for my “work at home situation”, I might have had to make the decision earlier. But I had the luxury to wait until it was clear that his ratio of joy to discomfort was heavy on the discomfort side and it was time to let him go.

This Christmas, I had the joy of Emmett’s first Christmas combined with the antics of Auggie. My little Christmas tree hit the floor once and there was a second episode of Auggie batting some decorations TO Emmett or AT Emmett … not clear which, but they both seemed to be having a good time. Ultimately, all items were rescued with no damage.

Meanwhile, post-Christmas, as we approached the New Year … “365 Opportunities” started appearing. Additionally, a food blogger I follow, wrote a New Year’s post ending with: “So tell me … Did you learn how to cook anything new this year?” Well, YES!! So much fun to answer as well as read others’ responses.

My new cooking things: upping my sourdough game to include sweet things (donuts, sweet rolls). I made graham crackers for the first time. I continue to use the Instant Pot electric pressure cooker more and more: this year it was “layered” items (eggs and potatoes, rice and beans).

Thinking about what new things I learned to cook got me thinking about other new things I learned.

My work as a computer programmer absolutely requires constant learning. There are forever new problems to be solved in new ways and I LOVE that aspect of my work.

As I looked to Emmett’s arrival and knew I was going to teach and train with positive reinforcement/clicker training methods, I dove into books and YouTube and everything I could find to get prepared. I continue to learn more every day. For me, it is not only fun, but requires some agile thinking and planning to “try” to teach what I want him to learn vs accidentally teaching something I didn’t quite mean for him to learn. Fortunately, we all seem to have a sense of humor!

Photography. Hah! This kind of morphs with technology in general. And Smartphones.

I was a Blackberry user from the get go … the first kind of smart phone. The email push technology allowed me, as a consultant, to be available when I was not sitting in front of my computer.

And then, my first “touch” phone – an Android Thunderbolt.

A Windows Phone and although not the first phone with a camera, it was the start of using a phone as camera more often.

And in mid 2016 an iPhone. I bought the iPhone 6s Plus as a backup to my Windows Phone. I had abandoned a land line several years prior and then, as I was in my 60’s … thought that maybe I should have a back up option for emergencies. I decided to try the iPhone out of curiosity. Turns out, I LOVED it and it worked better with my Windows Computer than my Windows Phone.

Fast forward … an iPad replaced a Windows Tablet. I swapped the phone numbers for my Windows phone with my iPhone, making the iPhone my primary.

*****a bit of infomercial here. It is sometimes “popular” to vilify smart phones based on how some people use them. Any technological device is a just that … a device aka a tool. It is inherent on the owner of the tool to use that tool wisely. The tool is not responsible for irresponsible use by the tool’s owner. If “we” believe ourselves to be so weak and/or uneducated so as to use a tool badly, well… ***** and back to our regularly scheduled programming!

2018 Black Friday … I traded the 6S Plus for a XS Max AND a series 4 Apple Watch – LOTS of incentives – YEA! I was in the middle of a work “crisis” with no time to really “learn” either. But, the transition and setup went so well, it was not an issue: turn them on, access my wifi and let them set themselves up. There were a few times with the watch where I took a few minutes and “googled” a how to. But, by my Christmas “break”, I was pretty comfortable with both devices and considering I had only some background learning … good grief!

Part of my incentive to upgrade was the XS Max camera. I’d been using the 6S Plus and Instagram and LOVING the photos from the phone as well as the instant posting on Instagram. I loved the paradigm so much that my DSLR sat home a lot. The phone, albeit a largish phone, in my pocket vs the large camera … more and more photos from the phone. The XS Max … light years ahead, slightly larger screen in a slightly smaller unit and no regrets about the upgrade.

BUT, the primary point is … the learning of NEW things.

I love my grandmother Ruth (5/1910 – 11/1996). But as she aged, she often said “Not at this stage of the game”. It made me sad. I VOWED that I would NEVER say such a thing or stop being willing to learn and use new things.

Just this past week, I read an article about seniors and technology. I am 63. In most circumstances, I am considered “a senior”. Anyway, the article “spoke” about “seniors” having the $$ for devices as well as the benefit some of the devices have for seniors.

Well :)

The article detailed some benefits of the series 4 Apple Watch: ECG (1 lead EKG), Fall detection. Oh, yes! I have both set up and they were both part of my upgrade decision.

So.

Cheers to 2019.

Cheers to 365 opportunities to learn new things, to experience new Joy, to LIVE.