The Rookie

This is Junket. She's a 12 year old sheep dog.

Um, let me make that clearer. She's the SHEEP'S dog. She grew up with the sheep, lives with the sheep, eats and sleeps with the sheep. She thinks she is a sheep. However, she still barks like a dog, (a big, angry dog) whenever a coyote or other stranger tries to enter the sheep pasture. Which is the whole point.

This is Churchy, a one year old Maremma sheep guardian dog. Churchy will take over for Junket someday in the big pasture.

But first she needs to learn some manners, like not jumping on the sheep or up on the gate when you're about to open it.

Right now Churchy spends a lot of time in a pen with half a dozen easy-going ewes, which is where the rookies learn proper sheep etiquette. Eventually, though, she'll be the dog in sheep's clothing who'll surprise a coyote crossing the big pasture late some night.

Six hundred and seventy five souls

I've spent the last two days paying my respects to 675 people I never knew and am  not related to.

The project was simple enough. Map all the headstones in an old burial ground on Cape Cod. Positional accuracy required - six inches, plus or minus. The technology is straight forward. Rent a $5300 Global Positioning Satellite receiver with a $2500 high sensitivity antenna, stand in front of each stone and listen to the GPS receiver as it acquires the signal from the satellites orbiting 12,550 miles above - "beep, beep, beep". Once the signal is acquired, wait  for the satellites to move enough to refine their triangulation on your position. The satellites are moving at 9000 miles per hour, so 30 seconds is usually sufficient. Record the number of the headstone. Move to the next one.

Thirty seconds is not enough time to do much of anything.  So you read the stones and wonder about the people below you. What does Hannah Agry, died on Nov 19, 1792, in her 27th year think of the short, bearded fellow with the odd, beeping yellow box standing above her? Is she amused? Angry? Is Rebecca H., wife of Josiah Melcher, happy to be getting some attention 164 years after her passing? Or is she not thinking at all because she simply turned to dust long ago and that was that. Repeat 675 times.

It's Been a Wonderful 8 Years

Except now...

...I have...

...a really bad...

...hangover.