Aaaaand now it's February

I would say that I don't know where time goes, but I do. School. Work. Work travel. Last minute trip back to ND-MN. January flew by. Now it's the weekend between two work trips for me - both to Oregon - and we're packing and cleaning. Steve came down to Portland for a day to see me last week since it's so close. That was only the second time he's joined me for a work trip and it was fun.

One of the women at the meeting with me brought her new service-dog-in-training. The dog is Edie, a small, 9 mo. old black lab who will be her gluten-sniffing dog. She (the owner) is severely sensitive to gluten, and due to work she travels a lot, including field work at sea. Edie will eventually be able to identify minute traces of gluten in food and since she's small she can fly on big planes and tiny puddle jumpers, and since she's a water dog, she'll still be able to swim for exercise when out in the field for days at a time on the water.  But the best part is that she'll be at our 5x per year meetings and when the service vest comes off, she's just a dog who I can play with! She was incredible at the meeting - I can't believe that at 9 months old she was so quiet and unobtrusive under the table. It was really interesting to learn about the amount of training scent dogs like these need; Edie is just barely started on her training, but training started at ~9 weeks old! She came from a breeder-trainer in West Virginia who specializes in drug, bomb, and mine-sniffing dogs.  Since Steve came down to the meeting in Portland, he got to meet Edie too, and we all went for a walk together. We're going to need another dog again, someday. The picture is of Edie sitting at a meeting chair (which is not how things were during the meeting - we were just having fun after the meeting wrapped up for the week).

While in Portland we stopped at Powell's Books, which is the bestest, most amazing book store in the whole world. Steve bought a mug. it's black with eyeballs all over it, then when you fill it with something hot the black disappears are reveals an underwater scene with angler fish and squid and other critters...he's pretty delighted with it.  : ) I tried to post a video of it, but it's not loading properly.

Finally, we took the TRAIN to/from Portland. It was great, I wish I could just take the train everywhere. It was quiet, on time, inexpensive, and so much space inside. When have you ever been on a plane and been able to stretch your legs fully out in front of you?  It was great!  Sorry for the poor quality of pictures - I have only had my phone with me lately.