I was busy most of the day. In the morning I took Jackie to her (last!) physical therapy appointment, and in the afternoon I had my usual Thursday visit with some former co-workers. But in the early evening (after fourth dog walk) I sat down and wrote a few hundred words. I’ve also updated the progress tracker in the sidebar. (And, if you’re reading it, wrote this brief post on my day’s progress.)
Three things I should do soon (they’re on my schedule for “before November 1st”): Write a logline, short synopsis, and long synopsis for the story. I don’t know that I need to do all three, but I should definitely do some thinking about what the story is about before I spend much more time writing.
Probably just the sort of thinking to do tomorrow while walking the dog.
Today was something of a trial run at what I’m hoping to do during NaNo 2.0. I did first dog walk, ate breakfast, and did second dog walk. Then I sat down and banged out a few hundred words on my new novel. Then I did my morning exercises, followed by a workout.
Going forward, I’m hoping to be able to spend some of the afternoon and evening writing as well. At least, that’s the plan I’m hoping to follow all November.
Today we spent a big chunk of the afternoon enrolling in new Medicare Advantage plans, because the insurance company that we’ve been using for nearly 20 years is closing up shop. We had been very happy with our old health insurance. We’re approaching this new plan with a degree of trepidation. The signup was a one-time thing, and the fact that I had to spend my afternoon that way doesn’t mean that I’ll be unable to write future afternoons. I hope.
Now it’s evening, and I got a tiny bit more writing done.
All told my day’s writing came to 879 words. That comes to only about half of the 1667 I’ll have to average to get 50,000 words by the end of November. But that’s okay. I’m just getting started.
The workout was my first workout in more than a month—since Jackie had her surgery, and I got very busy. (There were only a couple of weeks when I was nearly a full-time caregiver, but even after that period was over, it turned out that just the odd hour here and there taking Jackie to physical therapy and such put a hole in the day that was hard to work around.)
Every time before, when we were ready for lunch after visiting the Art Institute, the Berghoff had a line, but this time not, so here we are. Both of us are drinking their session ale, called Globetrotter. Good. Refreshing. Jackie likes it better than All Day IPA.
Jackie and I are in Chicago for the weekend, staying in the Palmer House. We came to attend the opening of a tapestry exhibit at an art center in the West Loop, put on by the American Tapestry Association. The exhibit includes a piece by one of Jackie’s teachers, So Jackie particularly wanted to see it.
Jackie looking at a different tapestry, this one showing a woman with a dinosaur
After a period where I was being a bit casual about them, for the past few months I’ve been doing pretty well at getting my workouts in, and I didn’t want to let that go, so I went to the fitness center here at the Palmer House. It’s pretty good!
I cranked through a slightly reduced version of my usual morning exercises, then went to the main room of the fitness center for the workout proper. They had an adequate set of kettlebells, so I did two exercises with those:
With a 35 lb (16 kg) kettlebell I did 10 x 20 swings emom
With a 20 lb (9 kg) kettlebell I did 4 x 5/5 clean&press reverse ladder
Then I found a barbell and loaded it up with a pair of 45 lb plates and did 2 x 5 deadlifts. I’m super out-of-practice with deadlifts, and would not have wanted to do more weight or more reps, but that much was okay.
Having done the tapestry thing, we’re looking to do some other Chicago stuff. Probably the Art Institute. Maybe one of the boat tours where they talk about the architecture. Maybe the Field Museum. Maybe something else! We’ll just see.
Some time ago I made a mistake. Ashley was out on the patio, and didn’t want to come in, but I needed to leave. So I bribed her back in with a treat. This turned her into a monster. Knowing that she could get a treat for coming back in, she started resisting ever coming back in without a treat.
Breaking her of that behavior by just not giving her treats to come back in would probably have worked eventually, but it seemed like a lot of difficult work.
So I came up with an alternative that has worked pretty well.
What I do now is never bribe her back in with a treat, but if she comes in when I tell her to—if she does what I want without resistance—once a day I’ll reward her with a Greenie (one of her favorite treats). (My wife does the same, so Ashley gets two Greenies most days.)
This puts us very much on the right side of behavioral conditioning. Since it’s an intermittent reward, it’s powerfully effective. And as long as we’re pretty good about only giving her the treat when she does exactly the right thing, she’ll start doing exactly the right thing every time, in hopes of getting the rare reward.
As I say, it has worked pretty well. There are a couple of things that aren’t quite perfect.
First, since she has learned that what she needs to do is go out and come back in again, she has started asking to be let out and then coming right back in again, hoping for a treat. We can deal with that simply by not giving her a treat when that’s what she’s done.
Second, and this is more a source of amusement than an actual problem, when the weather is bad and she doesn’t want to go out, she’ll go to the door, wait for me to open it, refuse to go out, wait for me to close the door, and then sit down to get her treat. I can totally understand her logic here: Isn’t just not going out the same as going out and coming right back in again?
She’s a good dog.
Anyway, shared in case other people are trying to cure their dog of demanding a bribe to do the right thing. Wait for your dog to “do the right thing” on its own, then give it a treat very occasionally. The dog will catch on pretty quickly.
On Jackie’s last visit to see our friend Rosie, they visited a Navajo trading post, and Jackie bought a Navajo blanket. This morning we got it hung up in the living room.
This is directly over my living room chair, a spot where I’ve long resisted hanging framed pictures, out of an irrational fear that they might fall on my head. With a small blanket, I figure it’s no big deal.
Jackie has a Big Grove old fashioned, which she says is very good. I have the Destilh ILL-IPA. I haven’t had one since they closed their local restaurant early in the pandemic.
