Continuing the trend of naming amphibians after their transport containers, the tiny chorus froglet has been named "Guava Splash Electrolyte" (Guava Splash was the flavor of knock-off gatorade we had a bottle from, and Electrolyte just seems cute for such a small creature.)

The other amphibians have included "Broccoli Cheddar Bomb," the late fire-bellied toad, who was given to me in a soup container, and of course "Summer 'Berry Mad' Refresher" who came home in a Starbucks Summer Berry Refresher cup (but looked real mad about it.)

Mostly I just keep calling him Tiny Frog, though.

("He" is arbitrary - the sexes look pretty much identical until males develop a vocal sac to start calling.)


Transferred to a better habitat than a knock-off gatorade bottle.


Exploring.

I had to pretty immediately adjust the setup and move the pond, since he promptly wedged himself between the pond and the side of the terrarium. It's now a bit farther from the edge. His favorite spot is still huddling under the lip of the pond in the upper left corner, though.


A very cute picture Alex took last week, climbing the plant.

He's been eating fruit flies dusted with a vitamin powder. They're definitely the right size for such a tiny little frog, but man are they a pain to deal with! It was a relief when he started eating them, though.

He's also gotten a few very small caterpillars from my mom's garden. He is much more enthusiastic about those than the fruit flies! (My mom doesn't use any sorts of pesticides, so I feel safe feeding things from her garden. Things from around the apartment or anything, not so much.)

I am hoping he will thrive, and am relieved that he's eating reliably. I'll be glad if I can get him big enough to do crickets instead of fruit flies, ha.

The whole dog show up in Greeley, where Bella ran a FastCAT on Thursday, ran from Thursday through the weekend.

Since she'd had a chance to rest for a couple of days, Alex decided to take her back today.


She did it!



Her first time was really good. Her second one wasn't great, but Alex said she was slowing down at the end of it. It was a hot day again, so not terribly surprising. He said they had some kiddie pools set up on the "go" line for the dogs to cool off in, but even so.

She was certainly completely full of energy again by the time I got home from work, lol.

This week, a fancy sea slug sticker. This one was from the Tidal Treasures series by Aspenhearted.

This was a pretty good week. My days off were nice, with a good pair of hikes. I also got a decent amount of reading done, though not really as much as I wanted. Still no writing, and still needing to figure out how to find more time to devote to it. Did okay on goals for the week, minus the same stuff I never seem to get to. Definite money struggle this week, which will carry into next, but hey, we've still got a roof and food, so that's the thing that matters. Mildly frustrating end to the week with the truck battery failing, but it luckily worked out.

Goals for the week:

• I did read more of Uprooted
• I did not get my writing intro done
• I did not work on my idea inventory
• I did not update my reading page
• We did go get crickets
• We spent time outside
• I did catch up on DW (though now I need to catch up even more...)
• We did pay rent (though frustratingly they later messaged Alex, telling him it had not been paid... though a couple days later said that oops, yes, the account is current.)

Tracked habits:

• Work - 5/7
• Household Maintenance - 6/7
• Physical Activity - 3/7
• Wrote 500/1000+ Words - 0/7
• Wrote on 2nd+ Draft - 0/7
• Meta Work - 4/7
• Personal Writing - 6/7
• Other Creative Things - 3/7
• Reading - 7/7 - mostly reading Uprooted, though Alex and I read a bit of Duma Key, and I read a small bit of my ebook side read
• Attention to Media - 7/7 - Sunday had storm chase videos in the background as well as some travel videos; Monday storm chase and exploration videos in background, and listened to a couple eps of Re: Dracula; Tuesday was storm chase and paranormal videos; Wednesday we watched horror movie Finders Keepers which was very bad, then Twisters which I did like; Thursday had coverage of a fire in CA on in the background, and listened to a Re: Dracula ep and quite a bit of music; Friday had news coverage of a shooting in GA in the background for a while, watched an episode of Alone, and listened to Re: Dracula; Saturday listened to Re: Dracula, and later had exploration and travel vids in the background while I listened to music.
• Video Games - 0/7
• Social Interaction - 6/7

Total words written: 0

Kind of an oof of a day.

I was already a little annoyed with how I anticipated the day to go... Our office was essentially double booked, with a class and a test happening at the same time. The tests would normally happen in the classroom, but can't do that if a class is happening, which means those students have to test in the lobby, which is a lot louder and more crowded and not a great testing environment. When I was doing some prep for that yesterday, my manager acted a bit surprised pikachu about it, and mildly complained that the person who schedules the classes should have noticed and prevented that from happening...
... Except I pointed it out to my manager back in June that we were double-booked for this date. At the time no one had signed up for the test, so I asked if we should request it be removed. I got a kind of snarky response about "I'm not sure why you're even worrying about something months away when no one is even signed up for it, it might not even fill. There's no reason to be worried about it."
(I didn't say anything about that, because for the most part things have been pretty chill with my manager recently, and I don't want to cause tension. It ended up not being a huge deal, but still... I tried to prevent this!)

But then when we got in the truck... it wouldn't start. Not even a sad click. Just nothin'. *sigh*

So I called my mom, and she came to the rescue with her little portable jump start pack...

Except it also wouldn't work. We did get *one* tiny partial turn-over, but it drained the whole pack and didn't quite get started.

*sigh again*

So mom rescue x2: she took me to work, while Alex took the jump pack in to charge back up.

I got to work just as people were starting to arrive for the class, so I don't feel *too* terrible. Still, I was about 45 minutes late, which I hate.

Mom rescue x3: she went back and she and Alex did get the truck jumped, then went to go get a new battery.

She had to help us do this not that long ago. I looked back here, and we replaced our battery back in March of last year. So it lasted less than a year and a half, opposed to the 3-5 years that they're expected to last. Though I know we did buy the cheapest battery option available last time, and driving in hot weather is one of the things most likely to wear it down, and this summer has been very hot. (Not a ton of days topping 100, but lots of sustained periods in the upper 90s.) But still!

Turned out when they went to get a new battery, the employee of the auto parts place came out to look at it, and said "well, the battery you have is the wrong size. It's way too small!"

*sigh again*

So maybe it's good that we got a year+ out of a battery that wasn't large enough for the vehicle?

We now allegedly have a correctly-sized battery, and not the cheapest available. This one even actually comes with a warranty. Hopefully we won't be doing this in another year and a half. Wouldn't have been able to get it without mom's help, so very grateful, even though I wish I didn't have to keep asking for help.

-

Tomorrow I'm going over to Taylor's to hang out for a couple nights. Looking forward to it!

I mentioned it briefly in my roundup of last week, but never actually posted about it, but...

Bella got two more AKC titles!

She got the first level of the CGC, the "Canine Good Citizen" test, which tests a mix of temperament and training, seeing if the dog behaves politely and obediently, even around unfamiliar people and dogs.

And then, because the CGC counts for a full half of the other test, she also got the first level of "Trick Dog," which really is just... stupid pet tricks, lol.

There are higher levels of both tests, but she now has the lowest levels of both. With a little work, I think she'll be able to get the higher CGC tests completed. Not sure if we'll have her go any farther with trick dog. She absolutely knows plenty of stupid pet tricks, but I don't think she knows *all* the ones they ask for, and we don't really have a reason to teach her those *except* to possibly do those tests.

Some of the upper level CGC tasks are more challenging, but those skills are actually useful to have even outside the test, unlike training to do silly tricks, haha.

The tests were last... Thursday, I think, so I was at work and didn't get to go, but Alex said she did pretty much perfectly on both! I didn't doubt she *could*, but was a little afraid she'd be too excited and flub some of her leash manners or something. She did great!

I was hoping to have ribbons to show off her new titles, but she didn't get any. ;_; Alex isn't sure if the evaluator just forgot, or if she didn't have any. (Though Bella has a FastCAT next week with the same organization that the evaluator is with, so he will ask then. We're hoping to put together a display for all her ribbons, even though I know it's silly, so I'd like to have them if we can!)


The beaft.