Things that are making me happy
1. Penguicon. It was awesome! Jer was right on the money when he asked if I needed staff. Next year, I should find other minions staff so that I have more time to actually go do stuff. And maybe go to a room party. Year 5 (for me) should be the year that I go to my first room party. I'd have gone to the Uno de Mayo party this year if I hadn't been so tired.
2. Dog Training. Beef is coming along so well! In the past few weeks, he's started picking up the "hush" command, though I sometimes need to say it a number of times before he listens. On the whole, he is barking a lot less at other dogs than previously, and I'm hopeful that he'll continue to make progress in this area. Overall, he picks up on new commands quite quickly - "down" being the sole exception. Of course, he may have been more motivated this week as I baked some chicken to use as rewards during class. It was odd to be buying meat for him, seeing as I haven't eaten any myself since surgery last month.
3. Garden. Today I got rocks to put into the front herb/berry garden. I have a sufficient number of berry bushes that I can no longer refer to the front yard as merely an herb garden. Two raspberry & two blackberry bushes are there from prior years. To that, I'll be adding two blueberry bushes, a black raspberry bush, and a yellow raspberry bush. I should also transplant the gooseberry bush from the side yard at some point.
In addition, I made a trellis in the raised garden in the back for my peas to climb. It's nothing fancy - just sticks that I've found on the ground in the backyard after storms. I've also gotten spinach, broccoli, and artichoke plants to put in the ground.
4. Mowing the lawn. Seriously! Now it's small enough for me to mow with my push mower in about 10 minutes!
5. Road trips. I realize that I need to go exploring more. There's still loads of places in this state that I've never been, and some I've been but would like to see again. I'm considering a road trip to the other side of the state tomorrow, with Beef as my companion road tripper. (Partly, I just want to stay here and work on the garden, but I figure that can hold until evenings this week.)
I'll make up a lunch box with chopped up veggies and pita (found some nice asparagus at the Farmers' Market today), put together a bag with dog stuff, and we should be set to drive over to Holland to see what's left of the tulips.
6. Ubuntu. I can easily recall that it's "Lynx", but I can't remember the adjective that precedes it, so I always think of it as "Lusty Lynx". Upgrading was fairly painless, except that my Flash install is hosed. I'm planning to do a fresh install anyway, but was pleasantly surprised that the upgrade went so smoothly.