In Which My Dog Fell Off a Boat
This past weekend was a long weekend in Canada - Victoria Day. Because my wife has been traveling so much lately, and has a lot of things on the slate in upcoming weekends in June, we took advantage of a relatively empty weekend in our schedule to take a trip to visit her parents and have the opportunity to get out of the city and relax at home.
Home for her has become a second home for me. It's relaxing and I have a genuinely great time while I'm there and we've made many happy memories there (for one - it's where we were married).
I've thought about my smart watch a lot recently, and made some decisions in how I want to use it for the foreseeable future; one decision I made on the weekend was that I was going to just...turn it off. It wasn't a "conscious" decision per se, it happened kind of naturally. I didn't want to wear the watch while driving (to avoid distraction) on Friday night, so I took it off. I put it back on Friday evening in the hotel to record my sleep, but took it off again before we got on the road Saturday morning.
But when I took it off Saturday morning, I turned it off completely. The initial reason I did this was to avoid getting the notification on my phone that I've disconnected from my watch every time I moved away from it on road stops. Get it once when I turn it off, swipe it away. But after we got to our destination, I left it in my bag. I had my handy Timex1 so I was well aware of the time. I didn't care so much about notifications, because the person I would most want to talk to via messaging is my wife, and we were going to be together the entire weekend.
So it stayed in my bag. I didn't even turn it on for recording my sleep; normally I make sure to wear it on weekends so that my alarm would get me up in time for pills (which, like Brendon, I appreciate for the silent vibration on the wrist). I just set an alarm on my Timex - the beeping might be annoying, but it turns out that it is just as effective.
My Dog Goes Overboard
We didn't end up getting up to much on Saturday, other than relax; not that doing nothing is bad of course. But Sunday my father-in-law took us out for a boat ride. Most times we take fishing rods with us, but this trip was going to be for sight-seeing, taking us somewhere we haven't been before.
It was a perfect day for it too. Lots of sun2, but also a bit of cloud cover to protect us a little bit. Not too hot, either. The sights were amazing.
One of the hazards when boating in small bodies of water are shoals. It's easy to hit rock if you're not careful, but it can also happen even if you are being careful. Well guess what? We hit rock!
Thankfully we didn't damage the boat or the propeller as we were going at a safe speed attempting to avoid rocks. But my dog did not escape unscathed. She loves the boat and often stands at the very front. That's where she was standing when we hit the rock. You can probably guess what happened next.
As soon as we hit the rock, she was knocked overboard. Unfortunately my wife was the only one to actually witness the not-so-graceful fall over the side, but I immediately saw our poor canine swimming toward the rock to try to touch ground. She's a good swimmer, but she was probably shocked by being thrown in so was not too happy about it.
She wasn't wearing her life jacket so we needed to pull her out - and she utterly despises being lifted.3 This time though she sank her claws into my arm as I scooped her out of the water, hanging on for what - to her - probably seemed like dear life.
In the end, no harm, no foul, and she eagerly returned to her perch at the front of the boat. Either she has a short memory, or she didn't mind the plunge so much. Then again, this is the same dog that fell through the ice on a mild February day when we were looking at our wedding venue a few years back. She's not the brightest dog in the pack, sometimes.
So, a short trip, but a great one, with an amazing new memory to go with it. My wife was very grateful for the trip home, and we hope that we can get back sometime soon.
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