Good week so far

At the risk of jinxing it...

Sunday - Hubby and I went to a BBQ for families of incoming freshman for college. We even though Anthony is in Taiwan, and had a lovely time. People were great, kids were polite, the games of volleyball was quite competitive. An excellent day.

Monday - All my kids at the jail passed their CGC tests! 100% pass rate, first attempt for each, I'm very proud of them. The past couple of months I have been working inside the maximum security facility, a population I haven't worked with before. All are felony-level offenders, now learning all-positive dog training methods. And they're doing great.

Monday night we got a brutal thunderstorm, a free-standing pot outside had over 3" of rain in it Tuesday morning. But the storm finally broke the back of the heat we've been having.

Tuesday - Got a nice e-mail update from Anthony on his far eastern adventures, here's an excerpt:

i think the last thing i mentioned was the barbeque this past weekend. well, turns out it wasn't actually a barbeque (at least not in the usual sense of the word); rather, it was more of a picnic. only, it wasn't just albert, his mom, aunt, uncle, and me--as i discovered once we got there, we were tagging along with a group of people who were doing this as part of their preparation for climbing the tallest mountain in taiwan. oh, i guess i forgot to mention: we were hiking up to a waterfall, where we would then make lunch. which meant two things: first, we were going to have to carry all of the food we were going to make; second, that i would be carrying a disproportionate amount of stuff. so, after assuming my role as pack mule, we hiked for roughly 45 minutes through tropical rainforest. that is to say, take the usual heat and humidity one finds in taiwan, and then make it about ten times stuffier--absolutely no hope of a cooling breeze. at least it looked really pretty?

anyway, we eventually got there (i want to emphasize the word "eventually" because it took about twice as long to get there as it should have. guess i'm spoiled hiking with New Mexico family) and it turned out to be well worth the trek. granted, it was kinda like the waterfall in canada we went to in that there were lots of people on slippery rocks where they probably shouldn't have been (i think it was sunshine falls or something like that?) but the waterfall itself was incredible. just waves of cool water cascading down that dropped the temperature about 15 degrees and created a nice cool breeze. made me wish i had a camera :-/ regardless, we spent about 2 hours just hanging out there, eating and relaxing, before we hiked back to the parking lot, where we sat around for another half hour or so drinking tea and talking. oh, which reminds me. remember that last email i sent you where i was complaining about taiwanese and how it makes my brain hurt? well, these people spoke in taiwanese at least 50% of the time, which meant i usually had no idea what was going on. fortunately, when they were talking to directly to me, they just used mandarin.

Tuesday afternoon I took my car into the shop; it had been running very poorly at low RPM's. They had it all fixed for just a few hundred dollars, so now I'm set for my trip to Colorado in 10 days. And finally overnight it was in the mid-50's - now THAT's what it's supposed to be!

Wednesday - Had a new client whose Jack Russell Terriers are from an ethical breeder and gave my first 20% discount. The client was happy and the dogs were lovely - just what I would expect.

Tomorrow is Thursday, I'm spending the day with my Dad. Friday has a morning appointment, and Saturday we're all off to see the new Harry Potter movie.

Barring a catastrophe, this entire week is turning out to be a great one.