Today we did laundry and cleaned out the van first thing. We’re getting ready to go camping for a couple of weeks and the van needed a good cleaning first. But it eneded up taking the whole morning instead of just the two hours we’d expected. Of course, the rest of the day followed suit.

I’d volunteered for a psych study I thought payed $60 for four hours of testing, but at the end of the session today I found out it was only $30. Then we went to the boulder on the Galligator to do some climbing but there was some yuppy family there with a crazy dog. We tried to wait them out but they just wouldn’t leave. Their dog, a huge husky/german sheperd cross kept running up to the people and dogs who passed by and jumping on them. But the owners were oblivious. Then, the stupidest cat in the world made an appearance. It ran out of the grass on the path, right in front of the obnoxious off leash dog , who chased it up the trail at us. Needless to say this got Scherzo riled. So we headed to the library.

The study had gone long, and it took a while to walk back to the library with Scherz all jazzed from the cat, so it was closed by the time we got there. Which meant no time to write today. We went to run some small errands and drove back to the climbing rock, hoping to climb a bit then do some come training with the dog. But of course as soon as we got in the middle of the field where the rock is, an onslaught of off leash excited dogs began to parade through. We found an out of the way place to sit where they hopefully wouldn’t be able to harass our dog as they passed. We were sitting here in the grass off the trail a ways, clicking Scherzo for laying and looking at us when the dogs screamed by when a guy on bike rode past, shouting “come on java, come on mocha!” again and again. I’ve learned by now that when a person is yelling incessantly for a dog who isn’t in sight, bad things are about to happen. As soon as the guy on the bike is nearly out of sight, his two dogs come jogging up. They headed straight for us, but thanks to Sarroar’s blocking skills they were deflected before Scherz even stood up.

We realized the dog parade was not going to stop and headed downtown for coffee and to try and get some work done on the sites before the day was lost. But the computer was out of battery and the only coffee shop open only had two spots to plug into and they were both being used. We gave up and went back to the van just in time for some drunk who’d parked his motorcycle behind the van to start it up burn his back tire until it was flat, kicking up a toxic fog that apparently impressed his stupid friends. Dioxins, yum.