Gray Wolf Productions

Tag: puppy

  • When It Is Hot, Hot, Hot

  • On Day 11 I Ask: Don’t You Wish You Had The Energy Your Puppy Has?

  • My 2nd Udemy Course Is The 1st One Done

    stop stressing about stressOver a year ago, I started to put together an online class about Nutrition.

    I told Udemy it could be ready in 6 weeks. I was a seasoned college professor and thought I could quickly put together the syllabus and start filling in the “lecture” content and do the videos. HA!

    My first setback was when I discovered that my old Sony camcorder was not “good enough” anymore as it didn’t do HD recording.

    So I had to figure how else was I going to do the video since the courses have to be video. I tried different things and kind of just gave up for a while because nothing was working.

    Then I got a new [and much needed] computer with a good camera and microphone. But first I had to learn the new operating system as I went from a very old Mac to the newest one.

    After fiddling with lights, etc. my decision was to do an “easy” PowerPoint presentation with voice over. Alas, it turns out there’s a glitch in the newest version of PowerPoint for Mac so that when you record a voice over on PowerPoint it won’t save the narration.

    Having already bought Keynote – I decided – “okay I guess it’s time to learn Keynote” [but I didn’t really want to do that.] Luckily, someone teaching on Udemy did a course on Keynote and I learned how to use it and started back to work on the Nutrition course.

    In the middle of all of this – and teaching an online course for a local college – I finally found the Lab puppy I had been looking for. Which, if you have ever done puppy things, meant house training, taking care of, and all those other puppy events.

     [I look back now and wonder how did I ever manage to do the puppy stuff again. It had been many years since I had a puppy as the last dog I had was adopted when he was three.]

    Working away at the course and other life stuff, my hard drive crashed. Yes it was a relatively new computer, only a few months old, and all was under warranty. It is a laptop – but getting it fixed meant having to keep going back to the Apple Store because there were constant glitches that prevented my being able to get online. And I really needed to be online because I had to download my storage from the cloud backup.

    Finally, the entire operating system had to be re-downloaded and re-installed.

    And in the midst of all of this, it turns out I had a puppy who did not like being left home alone – so each time I had to run down to the Apple Store I had to get a puppy sitter. Luckily my neighbors could keep her a few times, and a good friend of mine was in town visiting her son and she had the time to come over and puppy sit. I am so thankful for good friends…

    During this time, the course on Nutrition kept growing because I realized I had more to say than I originally planned. And honestly, by then I got sick of the whole process because that course reminded me of the problems with the puppy and the computer.

    And, because it was again  nearing that time of year, I had to get ready to teach my other online class for the local college.  I decided instead to do a very short Udemy course on stress.  [Gee – I wonder where that topic came from.]

    Even though it was to be a short course and it basically is, I do not have a linear brain and it’s very hard for me to follow a template or a pattern so formatting the course sections took longer then it would for most others.

    And middle of all of this, I upgraded to the Mavericks operating system. And that meant there were updates to most everything on my computer including Keynote. ARGHHHHHHHHH

    I’m not even getting into weather related issues, my ability to procrastinate, or the death of a friend….

    To make this rather long story much shorter, I basically decided I was just going to finish this thing, publish it, and see what happens!

    I was literally getting sick and tired of working with Keynote, fiddling with having to make things kind of similar from lecture to lecture, and all of that – so I recorded stopped fiddling, recorded the slides with voiceover, exported into QuickTime, uploaded the files to Udemy, finished all the other little thingies like descriptions and all that and hit publish – basically without really reviewing the whole thing because I was that sick of it.

    But it’s done…and I feel a sense of relief….

    I had taken my own advice to Stop Stressing About Stress

    And maybe, just maybe, I can get back to the 1st course, the one on Nutrition…..

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Tova Goes To School

    Yellow Lab puppy

    Tova and I started the first of six weeks of doggy class the other day.

    We were the only ones in the class and that was nice for the start, but next week there will be other people and dogs which will be better.

    I have taken dog classes with other dogs but Tova had never been to one and I needed a refresher too.

    We had to wait until it wasn’t so hot out because hot is not to my liking. Turned out, it was not to her liking either.

    The instructor is a good trainer and Tova responded well. So well that there was an immediate major difference in her behavior at class and at home. She seems to know that we’re learning and working – and she loves to do her “work.” She IS a lab and labs are working dogs.

    And before the class began, we had been working at home where I say to her: “let’s go to work” and she goes into her “I know we’re going to do sit, down, and stay.” And I’ll get treats of course….for a while.

    Updates as we progress….

     

  • Puppies, Exercise, and Eating

    walkingSome self reflections…

    When I let my hair grow, I decided that long hair went with better health [less weight, more flexibility, etc.]

    Why? Just one of my quirks.

    I’ve always exercised but not always that regularly…it’s been a stop and go thing for me… little moderation…

    Then I got my puppy and that was after two years of not having a dog – so there was a lot of walking once she got all her grown-up shots.

    But given my knowledge of exercise and bodies I knew that walking tightens muscles.

    Most exercise tightens muscles.

    So I started doing yoga again but like usual –  sporadically. I have some old tapes I put in my VCR player and do different yoga programs.

    I started off with two or three times a week and then it was every other day and I felt good.  Along with the longer dog walks this was feeling healthy.

    But there was still the weight issue. I was not at a weight that I thought I needed to be at for no other reason just that as I’ve gotten older I’ve shrunk and I figured you know carrying the same weight around on the shorter body was not good – and then there was the long hair.

    So for some reason I decided to pay attention to some of the things I write about nutrition and realized I had to stop eating bread and drinking milk.

    So – I cut out most wheat and I started using to almond milk for my coffee. I didn’t stop eating cheese or yogurt but I cut back on those as well.

    And upped the yoga to at least 15-20 minutes A DAY – every day!

    Guess what?

    The weight and the inches went off! And went off quickly.

    My guess is that “modern” wheat has stuff in it that keeps bodies from losing weight and inches. Ditto milk.

    I’m not sure of my science on this, but as I’ve said – food is no longer food and maybe we do have to stop and take a serious look at what we put in our bodies.

    I am also working on a nutrition course for Udemy and if you sign up below, I will send you a major discount coupon for the course once it is done…






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  • Technology, Stress, and Backup Plans

    OY OY OY

    • My computer stopped working.
    • The hard drive crashed.
    • I have all my work on it.
    • I am totally stressed out.

    What do I do to survive all this stress?

     ###########

    We now live in a high-tech culture.

    Technology is part of our everyday lives.

     our worl is technology

    • We use computers.
    • We have Wi-Fi all over the place!
    • We have iPads and tablets.
    • We have iPhones and smart phones.

    Many of us work online, bank and pay bills online, communicate online, and generally love the technology available to us.

    That is until it does not work.

    ISPs stop working, or work so slowly that they are useless.

    Programs don’t do what we thought they should do.

    And then there is the:

    “OMG – my hard drive crashed!”

    Any of the above issues, especially the last one, can lead to stress – so we have to figure out how to cope with that stress – preferably planning for it ahead of time.

    Why? Because technology issues are a part of our lives.

    Having had many hard drives crash over the years, you’d think I’d have learned to back up but I never did. I only made copies of some of my writings.

    But the last time I bought a computer, I bought a Mac laptop. Laptops are more prone to issues because they can get dropped, they can get stolen and they can get things bumped into them, etc.

    Especially if you have pets.

    When I got the new computer, I actually bought a years worth of a backup plan called Crashplan. When you buy such a plan, it is with the hope that you never ever have to use it and see if it really works.

    So when my “OMG the hard drive crashed” happened, I was sort of stress-ready.

    Having read good things about Crashplan, a bulk of my stress was alleviated because I knew that all of what had been on my computer was somewhere up there in the “cloud.” [Fingers crossed.]

    yoga

     

    But a dead hard drive is still stressful. So to get more calmed down, I did some yoga and meditating. I also took my puppy on a few walks and talked to my son and a friend…. And vocalizing the stress helped.

    It all came down to this…I kept telling myself that there really was nothing else for me to do…the worst-case scenario was that I’d have to start all that work all over again.

    The ending?

    I picked up the computer and started the restore process.

    A few glitches and errors on my part and it was working – slowly [ISP issues] – but working.

    Then many [many, many] hours later, the message was on my screen that my restore was done.

    Everything was restored to where it had been…amazing technology!

    All in the clouds……cloud storage

    That I was tired for a few days after this was a signal that I had been more stressed than I thought….so more yoga, more puppy walks, and more relaxing in the sun was called for….

    Lessons learned…you need:

    • back up plans
    • yoga
    • healthy eating
    • great tech support
    • great customer service
    • patience

     

    Thoughts? Comments?

     

    Thank you…

     

     

     

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