*I can’t believe i did not use any pictures of Fox in the story. It was the immediate bond and friendship between Fox and Lucas that brought my friends and I together.
Writing, editing, selecting pics, working on the layouts, and releasing this story over the past week has given me even more time to consider things. I don’t really have any sweeping conclusions, but there are a few things that come up that we might file in the Lessons Learned folder.
Change the things you can. Part of the reason i was able to not pass my frustration on to the dogs and the crazy lady was that i did have a grasp on how much of this scenario was not only my fault but my creation. I failed to tighten Mickey’s collar. I should have already purchased a better leash for training Mickey. I should have used the extra 6′ straight leash that i keep in the back of my car and not messed with the retracty leash. I should never have brought them to this place. There are lots of other places i could have taken them (like to the other end of their normal Holmes Run route). Whenever i get mad at something like this, a scene from Half Baked (scene probably not suitable for all viewers) comes to the front of my mind and helps me smile, relax, and deal. It is a quick subtle moment, but jumped off the screen at me from the first viewing.
Thurgood: So, you wanna get together?
Mary Jane: Okay. Sure. When?
Thurgood: How ’bout right now? Just meet me at the place you dropped us off at.
Mary Jane: Okay. Can you give me half an hour?
Thurgood: Yeah, half an hour’s cool.
Mary Jane: Great.
Thurgood: All right. Okay.
Mary Jane: I’ll see you there.
Thurgood: (voiceover – internal narration) The date couldn’t have come at a worse time.
end scene
I did this to myself. There is no point in getting mad at the dogs. There is a little point, but no purpose or benefit to getting mad at the crazy lady. There is not even a point in getting mad with myself. Keep the good parts and try to learn from the rest.
*It has been 6 or 7 days since the incidents described and we have made more progress. I checked the maps and found a better place to park to access the Shark Walk Trail without having to use the pool parking lot. I quit using the retracy leash and am using my spare 6′ straight leash on Mickey. If i need three leashes, M+M get the straight leashes and i put Lucas on the retracty thing, and everything is working out nicely.
I gave the boys a few nights off of the rigid schedule. They continue to perform well. Last night i took all three dogs on a shortened version of the nightly training walk and all three boys walked calmly in single file off leash all the way from the beach back to the house. There were so good i wanted to slaughter them a goat.
__
Any thoughts on the serialized release of this story vs. releasing it all at once as one long tale?
I did enjoy serializing it. While i wrote the whole thing at one time (August 27th), looking for how and where to chop it up (since it was not originally written as a serial), thinking about the layouts and which and how many pics to include, all gave me a chance to think more about how this information is presented. It also gave me a new window to view my own words. As stand alone chapters, each piece actually had its own character and central motif. Without doing it this way, there would have been far fewer pictures.
Thanks for reading. I may do a few more of my highly rigid reader polls to see what you folks might be interested in reading about next.
Stephen King is coming up soon.
I am taking notes (not meticulous) on a Buffy re-watch and will want to write about that.
I am excited about several current and pending tech issues and will write more on that. (Despite first appearances, i think iCloud is actually going to solve many of my problems!)
I don’t think any of the iCloud promo stuff will give you the level of detail that you will find here. I know, not a one-click solution. But downloading the podcast of this beats all the streaming versions i did find links to. I am directing you to the WWDC 2011, first video at the top of the list. Much of what i am excited about (including and beyond iCloud) is in this presentation.
(Free Tip: Watching the World Wide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) every year is part of how i stay tech savvy. I started doing this in 2006, a few years before transitioning to Apple, and just dreamed and drooled over better made products and hardware and software that has actually been designed to work together.)
I am still toying with creating some kind of “Things i like” feature to collect lists and brief descriptions of podcasts, tech tricks, books and more.
There are some related brief essays about how i/we use/consume media.
And i am open to suggestions of other things not yet mentioned…