Update Time

What with teaching and skating and traveling and Thanksgiving-ing, I haven't been blogging.  So here's a brief update from the past week:

• Skating Tuesday and Wednesday (after Saturday's PW--Personal Worst--time trials) was OK.  Tuesday's endurance went better than Wednesday's intervals, but both were semi-OK.  Sort of. Conditions Wednesday were bad--63 degrees, which led to slow, frosty, hacked-up ice.  I don't do well mentally in such conditions because I don't know how much "slow" to ascribe to the conditions and how much to me--so I end up feeling like I was slow even if maybe I wasn't.  So we'll see how this week goes.  I've just adjusted the thyroid meds again, so the roller coaster continues.
• We went to the cabin for Thanksgiving, which was a blast.  Dinner was at my cousins' cabin--16 people.  Fortunately not all of the 11 dogs made an appearance.  Speaking of dogs, I decided, before the five-and-a-half hour car trip to the cabin, that it was time that Greasy Dog had a bath (she hasn't had one in, oh, four years.).  Since it was a bit chilly to do a full hose-and-shampoo job outside, and the Hubster wasn't thrilled with the idea of 75 pounds of hairy dog clogging up the shower drain, I decided to try a waterless dog shampoo--just spritz, towel dry, and voila! No more dog stink.  Nice in theory, and it actually worked pretty well, but I'd like to know who decided that it would be a good idea if this ...

         ...smelled like this...

Yes, the waterless dog shampoo is Blueberry Muffin scented.  I'm not sure I can describe the damp-blueberry-dog smell that continually wafted from the back seat on the drive up to the cabin, and I'm not sure I should try.

• Saturday night it snowed at the cabin, and I got the idea that the Hubster and the dog and I should go for a midnight stroll in the snow.  After a few mild complaints from hubby and hound, we all went out and had a wonderful time wandering through the snow in the dark.  We paused to take several pictures; the snow and some filtered moonlight made flashlights unnecessary, and the snow made flash pictures quite interesting.  Also, apparently Keira is actually laser-eye-devil-dog in disguise, as this photo reveals. 

And that's pretty much all the excitement at the Long Track Life lately.  Next up: four weeks of work and skating before the Christmas break.  Should be interesting!