A Little O'This, A Little O'That

Another shot of Dinah Moe on the agility course at York Days.

Ahhhh, Sunday mornings. I've always enjoyed being able to kick back on Sunday mornings and just take my own sweet time. Back in the olden days, I'd spend my time over the Sunday paper and a pot of coffee, either here or out at some little breakfast place in the area. These days, we no longer get a Sunday paper and I have rally-roo classes on Sundays during the season while Greg works at church... but on Sundays like these when absolutely nothing else is going on, it's just nice to stretch, pour another hot cuppa, and soak in the quiet.

In a little while, I'll need to dive into the small but important pile of Corresponding Secretary tasks on my desk: sending out welcome letters and packets to the new BCCA members and shipping off brochures and applications to people who have requested them.

Although I've only held the office for a short while now, I can already understand the idea that the Corresponding Secretary's work is never done. Around the first of the month, reports are due to the Board and the newsletter editor, and invariably there's a trickle of last-minute requests on the last day of the preceding month and on the first day. Since deadlines are my life, this makes me a little crazy -- but it happens with every professional deadline I've ever faced, too. Just a fact of life...

For the First Time in Ages....

Knitting news! I never did find another ball of that Gigli ribbon yarn, but I have some in another color. I'll probably have to cheat and add some of the new color on each end, then make it look as though I planned it.

Maybe I just needed a little vacation from knitting... I don't know. Anyway, the desire to knit socks has suddenly returned. Before my hair appointment yesterday, I popped into the Yarn Sellar just to say hello and have a look around. The friendly knitter who works there on weekends (and whose name I've spaced completely!) knits sock models for the shop and is as much of a sock-o-maniac as I am. She helped me adopt a pair of skeins of red Happy Feet yarn and some more Brittany Birch shorties (which now come 6 to a pack instead of 5 -- woohoo!).

I'm trying to finish up Jody's second Trekking sock before her husband comes out here for a sheep-herding clinic in October. Considering I've had these on the needles for over a year and it really only takes me a couple of weeks to make a pair of socks, what are the chances I'll be done by the time he's ready to fly home??

Of course, something has to give in one place for there to be time in another. I've spent minimal time in Second Life this week, which might explain why I've been able to get so many other things done.

Work That's Actually Play

I finished one Web site last week, for the Vacationland Dog Club. Eventually a club member will take this over, but I'm making the updates at the moment. FYI, for my POC friends and other local dog-club readers: the 2008 edition of Meet the Breeds is taking place in Scarborough in September, as part of Responsible Dog Ownership Day festivities happening around Maine. Here's the announcement. I'll be doing the CGC testing there.

I have three other sites in the works, one of which is a paying gig. One's a barter gig for a friend, and the other one's the site for the 2009 BCCA National Specialty. I've had that site in the work pipeline for a while now. The joy of working with CSS and XHTML is that you can code up the content even when you still can't visualize how you want the final result to look. That helps me feel productive even though I'm having trouble making up my mind.

Because I'm a visual thinker, I still have a little bit of a mental disconnect between the CSS coding and what I want the finished site to look like. It helps to have Dreamweaver so I can continually check my progress, but I'd be blind and lost without it. I understand the code well enough. I just haven't reached the stage where I can see the code's results in my mind.

Could use some more paying gigs these days. I'll just have to make time to go looking for them.