The dogs and I had our first campout toward the end of April. We tried out our new tent, which has a clear plastic top so that you can watch the rain.
While our night of camping worked out great (light mist, comfy and cozy), the following day did not. I left the tent up, thinking we might camp out the next night (we didn't). The next day, it rained much harder, all day, and the tent became a swimming pool.
And then, it became an ice rink. I had to leave it up to try and get it to dry out, but then the temperature the next night dropped to 25 degrees.
It was seriously bad enough that I had to use eight big bath towels to soak up the water once it thawed, and the towels were soaked and had to be hung over the fence to drip.
I have NEVER had a tent leak that bad in my life. Yes, it would be a good tent for seeing the rain...up close and personal. I could have gotten the same result with our usual tent by just leaving the rain fly off. That tent has a screen top that would have held out the rain just about as well as the new tent.
So, until I do some research on the best products for stopping the leaks, we will backyard camp in our old tent. I can't really complain too much about the new tent, because as far as tents go, it was incredibly inexpensive.
It says it sleeps 4 to 6, which I think EVERY tent exaggerates. But it's a pop-up, easy set-up style (poles are built in) and has a bathtub floor (all the better for keeping the water that gets in from leaking back out, in this case, lol). And it has the cool skylight feature. All in a tent that cost under $100.
If I can get it to stop leaking, it could be an excellent tent. If not, then it will be a good playhouse for the pups.
This month's writing update.
I'm still working on editing a couple of stories from February's flash fiction.
May is Story-A-Day May, and I'm going to participate to try to keep the writing momentum going. I really doubt I'm going to succeed at writing a story every day (or even getting a good start on a story every day), so I've set my sights on writing a story MOST days.
I'll be happy if I end up with a dozen story starts at the end of the month. But if I end up hitting it every day, like I did with the Flash Fiction challenge, then so much the better!
What I'm reading this month.
My reading goals completely fell by the wayside last month.
I haven't made it to a book club meeting (ANY book club; and there are several!) since that first one back in...February? March? I didn't even make it to the other book club (at the GF Public Library) that was going to discuss Watership Down. Tragic, since I was really looking forward to it, but I just completely missed the date.
I started reading Wandering Stars, by Tommy Orange, but I haven't been able to get into it yet.
One of the other book clubs is discussing Never Whistle at Night, edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr., so I'm going to "put a pin in" Wandering Stars and read that instead.
I've just got to remember to create a calendar notice on my phone so I don't miss the book club this time!
What I'm learning this month/class report.
I'm starting to get worried about my fall university class. I've been hearing rumors that classes have filled up quickly and that people are clamoring for more sections to be added.
But my online class is two combined classes, a 460 and a 560, with a class capacity of 40 between both...
And I'm one of the eight people signed up!
Eight people have signed up for 460, and no one has signed up for 560. So now I'm worried the class is going to be cancelled, which could be a big problem.
If I were a full-time student, an elective class being cancelled wouldn't be the end of the world. But since I only take one class a semester, a cancelled class has to be replaced, or else I once again have to "withdraw" from school (like I did for the Spring semester when I opted out of my internship).
And circling back to the beginning of this little story, classes have filled up quickly. So it's not going to be easy to make a last-minute replacement if my class is cancelled. So this could be another bummer of a semester.
Most of my other "classes" are the same. I'm still doing Duolingo/Skill Success/Dreaming in Spanish for Spanish.
I'm still learning Java through Udemy, and full-stack developer through Codecademy (I am LOVING Javascript).
I've kind of lost my enthusiasm and slowed my pace on the HTML/CSS course through Free Code Camp. I was really cruising along and enjoying it, until I got to the first exam (HTML exam) and saw that the courses are unfinished (and the exam doesn't exist, yet).
I'm going to keep working through the course, as it is a good way to keep my HTML/CSS skills sharp, but it's a little disappointing to find out it is an incomplete course.
And, of course, I am continuing my meditation courses. I'm taking a course at Udemy called, "The Complete Mindfulness & Meditation Training (MBSR+MBCT)."
I'm also doing a meditation course through an app called "Serenity," but it only lets you do one learning session per week unless you upgrade to a subscription, so I'm progressing through that one quite slowly. Not that I don't think the app is worth a subscription, but it falls under the umbrella of my "I'm already way oversubscribed to too many things" pet peeve.
This month's playlist. The ten songs I'm listening to on repeat.
This month's pondering or rant.
Microchipping our dogs has been a rollercoaster.
TL;DR? Keep your pet safe. Get your pet chipped, and be sure the chip is registered.
The first time we ever had a dog chipped, it was Honey Booboo, and she was chipped at a free clinic event at a car dealership (it's not as sketchy as it sounds, lol). If I remember correctly, the registration was included.
And that's a key takeaway from this story: the two are completely separate. You can have your dog chipped, but that doesn't mean diddly until the chip is registered with a registry company, usually at additional cost.
When we got Murphy back in 2019, his breeder had already chipped him and done the first year of registration (more on that momentarily). Up until that point, I hadn't realized that there were different registries! So I did a little web surfing and registered both Murphy and Booboo's chips with a few different companies. Sure, it ends up costing a little more, but I figured the more places they were registered with, the better. Especially since registeries sometimes go out of business. That happened with the registry, "Save This Life."
I didn't sign Booboo up with Murphy's original registry, HomeAgain, and I'm glad I didn't. We had been renewing every year, and it turns out that renewing is actually a waste of money. That yearly renewal fee is some sort of a service upgrade. You can just sign up and pay the original fee, and your pet's info is entered into and stays in the database. You don't have to pay the annual fee to keep your pet in the database. Merck was actually in a lawsuit over it, with consumers saying they felt mislead.
When Bruce came along, his breeder chipped him, but didn't register the chip. That was when I first learned that the two processes could be entirely separate (since Booboo and Murphy both had their initial chip registration included).
In spite of knowing that chipping and registration were separate processes, when Penelope came along, I dropped the ball. She was already chipped and came with an AKC Reunite Tag. So I assumed her chip was already registered, and, maybe since I was too wrapped up in my grief over the loss of Booboo, I never looked into it.
About a week before Penny's first birthday, when one of the chip places sent me a reminder to check/update Bruce's records in their database, I decided to use the AAHA microchip registery lookup database to see which databases the dogs are registered in and make sure they all match.
Imagine my surprise when Penny's chip couldn't be found.
This really gave me a lot of feels. For the last year, if Penny had gotten lost during camping, during our walks, during a vet visit, during a mishap at home (like when the section of fence blew down), she would have just been flat out lost. Her chip was unregistered. And it's not even as if someone could look her up by her tag numbers, because we only just started making her wear her collar in the last few months (she HATES collars). So my little princess would have been lost, probably for good.
Hubby got Penny for me because I was completely devastated after the loss of Booboo. I can't imagine how my mental health would have been impacted if I had lost my "grief support dog" due to a chip mishap.
So, I fixed the error and registered her chip with the AKC, and then went ahead and made sure she and Bruce were also registered with all the same registries as Murphy.
But of course, that's not the end of the story. I realized we hadn't had chips scanned in a while. Not all vets do it as part of the yearly checkup. Since Bruce had a vet appointment a few days after we discovered the Penny problem, I asked hubby to have the vet scan Bruce at his appointment.
No chip.
Hubby said they scanned every inch of Bruce twice and found nothing. I saw the breeder put the chip in him, right in front of me, so I don't know if they messed up and forgot to load the chip in the applicator, or if Bruce's chip somehow migrated to where the scanner can't find it (or out of his body!).
Whatever happened, this is even more scary than Penny because Bruce is so high-strung and reactive. For who knows how long, if he had taken off out of fear or in pursuit of a rabbit (you know how he is about THAT!), he could have been lost forever. And he's one of those shy-dogs who would not come up to strangers and let himself get "rescued."
By this point, I was over the bleeping chip stuff. I had Bruce re-chipped, in spite of it all, and had to go update his chip number in the databases (all but one, which it looks like will require starting from scratch and paying another fee since they don't let you change the chip number).
The good news is that Murphy and Penelope were scanned at their April appointments, and their chips were fine.
All of this is to say, I feel like this whole chip stuff is way overcomplicated. All we pet owners want is for our pet to be safe and to be returned to us in case of mishap. And instead, we've got confusing sign-ups (my pet is chipped, but is she registered?), multiple companies to sign up with (and you feel like you have to go with multiple companies, and pay multiple fees, just in case one goes out of business), misleading terms of service that may make you think you have to do an annual fee, and chips that malfunction or "disappear."
It's a lot of stress, and if you get any part of it wrong, it can turn an already devastating situation even worse. It just seems like it all should be easier.
That's it for this month. Until next month, Stay Spooky, my friends!
~~Here be monsters . . . and corgis.~~