Photos

Back to work, and working dogs. It's over 95 degrees this day and yes, I got sunburned!










Devo playing in her pool.








Me relaxing in my backyard with "the puppies". The one in my lap is Enzo and Devo is in the doggy pool.









Jhaneen, Grant and Kerri.









Sue and I have this thing about taking our own picture by holding the camera in front of us and snapping the shot. We got Ron in on the fun and had a ball goofing around.








This was taken at our "farewell dinner" in Kew.

Back to Work

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday July 5,6,&7 – Hi Ho Hi Ho, it’s back to work I go! Yipee! I was really excited to get back to work. Everyone was happy to see me and lots of people immediately told me how much they enjoyed the blog which was very gratifying. Each day is fun because to run into yet another person who hasn’t seen me yet and I get the double take look, then a big “welcome back, how was it?” It certainly makes getting from point A to point B take longer than usual. The “how was it?” part is the hardest. How do you encapsulate 4 months of a whole different world in a few quick sentences? Some of my friends have even asked to see pictures which scares me as well. Are they crazy? Do they have any idea of how many photos Sue and I took? I’m sure I will end up giving one or more presentations about our adventures to my department and/or the whole company. My boss is currently at the NFB convention so I will get the details of what he would like when he returns next week. There is so much to cover!
I ended up rejoining the team I left back in March, which is great as I really enjoy working with them all. We have just one more month before we “go to class”. This means that my team will work with the students who come to receive a guide dog in August. We will match them up with dogs that they have trained and teach them to work with these dogs. It hasn’t yet been decided who will work with the 4 week class and who will work with the 3 week retrain class. Wouldn’t it be weird if someone coming into my class has been reading this blog? I guess a student came in last month who had been reading the blog and asked to meet me! Unfortunately I was still vacationing; it would have been fun to meet them.
My team put me to work the first day by giving me dogs to work, and we celebrated my return by going out to breakfast with the dogs. I do feel a bit lost at work as while I was gone we began a trial of schedule changes. I feel a little like a new employee asking “what do I do now?” Everyone assures me that they all still feel that way but it’s still strange.

Catching Up

Monday and Tuesday July 3rd and 4th – We spent the next two days doing laundry, unpacking, and visiting with friends. My house which looked spotless when we arrived home, still looks like it was hit by a cyclone and I have yet to find a place for all my souvenirs. I did manage to hit the gym a couple of times and my trainer has already started making me pay for taking the last couple of months easy. I have eaten some of my favorite foods, gone to some of my favorite restaurants, and reveled in my favorite TV shows that have been saved on TIVO. I caught up and finished the current season of “Gray’s Anatomy” and I am avidly watching the Tour De France which started on July 1st. I have put my bike back together but have not gone for a ride yet. My yard has outdone itself blooming and growing like crazy so I started doing a bit of yard work here and there as well. The weather continues to be gorgeous here with beautiful clear sunny days and temps anywhere from 75 in SF to 95 (35 Celsius) inland.
I am missing Sue a lot and we have been playing phone tag for the last several days. I can’t wait to talk to her!

Devo and Enzo

Sunday July 2nd – The weather here is quite warm at our house and down right hot (95 Fahrenheit 35 Celsius) in the valley where we had to go today. We drove out to my friend Cathy’s house today to pick up my “puppies”, Devo and Enzo. Even though they are both 5 years old they are always referred to as “the puppies”. They had been staying at home with Grant until he came over to Australia. At that time they went to stay at “Camp Cathy”. My friend Cathy runs a grooming shop and small boarding kennel on 160 acres. They LOVE going there as they get to take longs treks around the property and play with all Cathy’s dogs. We had another rapturous reunion and I had two more dogs glued to my side. After visiting for awhile we hooked up with a friend of my mom’s who took her out to Sacramento for the holiday weekend. Just a reminder for those of you non US citizens, July 4th is our Independence Day and a national holiday. Grant and I returned home where it was thankfully much cooler (75 degrees, 24 Celsius) as we live closed to the Bay and get a cooling ocean breeze.
That evening we were hanging out watching TV (with several hundred channels to choose from) when I suddenly realized with a start that it was 7:30pm and we hadn’t even fed the dogs dinner yet. The thing that threw me was it was still broad daylight! I had been used to it getting dark by 5:30 pm in Melbourne, it being winter there, and I hadn’t made the adjustment to summer daylight here.

Homeward Bound!

Friday July 8th - Have you missed me? Can you believe how long it has been since I posted? Yes, I realize I have been remiss, I promised to post for awhile longer after I returned home so let me make good on my promise now. It’s funny; originally this blog began as a way to keep my family, friends, and especially my coworkers up to date on what I was doing and obviously they already know what I am doing now that I am home. However, so many people who don’t know me in person discovered this blog and wanted me to tell a little about my “normal” life that I have decided to continue for a while longer. So I am posting the 1st thru the 7th right now, hope you enjoy!

Saturday July 1st - So, where did we leave off? Oh yeah, I’m going home! So Grant and I went to the airport with our ton of luggage hoping to get it all home without paying excess baggage fees. We flew on different airlines on the way home as Grant had found a good deal on Air New Zealand and I was on Qantas. To make a long story short we managed to avoid excess fees (barely). There was some bickering with Qantas about a mere .7 kilo which I had to put in my carryon, this turned out to be one tennis shoe and one sandal (I couldn’t find a matching pair). They also made me transfer stuff from one bag to another to balance them out and they both ended up at EXACTLY 32 kilos (the upper limit allowed). The flights home were long and boring and of course we didn’t get much sleep.
I arrived in San Francisco about an hour before Grant and my mom was eagerly waiting at baggage claim. It was great to see her even though I had been awake now for about 20 hours. We grabbed my bags and headed for my van, only to discover that in her excitement to see me my poor mom had gotten disoriented and couldn’t figure out which parking lot she parked in! So here I am pushing a trolley loaded with 74 kilos (163 pounds) of luggage all over the SF airport on very little sleep. I tried not to be too grumpy and my mom felt so bad! After about an hour we dragged all 74 kilos to where Grant was arriving, located him, left the bags and searched on foot for another ½ hour and finally found it! (Mom wants you all to know that she did write down the garage and level, but got the domestic and international terminals confused)
Oddly enough switching back to driving on the right side was really easy. I only had to chant to myself a couple of times, “stay to the right, stay to the right”.
We got home and my two old dogs Bandit (12yrs) and Cayenne (11yrs) who had been staying with my mom for the whole 4 months were ecstatic to see me. They bounced, and wiggled, and whined for a long time and followed me around for the rest of the day.
Grant and I managed to stay up until 9pm and had no trouble falling asleep and sleeping through the night.