Tending to Business, plus Miss Ava

In addition to playing with baby Korey on Saturday, we also got custody of Ava the golden doodle for this week, while Barb is in New York on business. This photo actually dates to July, when Matt and Doug were in town for a short visit. Matt got Ava to pose for him while he tried out his new digital SLR. (Click on the photo to enlarge it. I uploaded it small to save MB in my photo account.) This week we are coaching Ava on some obedience skills that Barb has started, and we are also hoping to surprise Barb with a new trick or two when she comes home on Friday. Clue: Ava appears to be a southpaw, but I think most dogs are.

Yesterday we had a lot of rain, 1.3 inches and counting in two cloudbursts. I drove around one in the morning for a routine medical checkup, and we just sat sullenly at home during the second one, although it finally let up so we could go to...wait for it...WATER Exercise! Today was Car Day. We had a diagnostics, oil change, and required safety and emissions inspections done on Gracie the Van. We bought Gracie two years ago, on August 14, 2007. Doesn't seem that long ago. Anyway, Gracie passed and after I stood in line for a while at the License Office, we have new plates good until 2011. We have a couple of driving trips planned, so it was good to get this done before the old ones expired at the end of the month. (My checkup went fine, too. I have better bone density than a 25-year-old. Maybe I should forget about dieting and keep on eating cheese, drinking milk and snacking on ice cream after all! But exercise, especially walking, gets a lot of the credit, too.)

Tomorrow I have a computer class at St. Louis County Library HQ in using Footnote and HeritageQuest, two programs that help you trace your ancestors. Last Thursday I went to one about Ancestry's library edition. All of these programs are available through the county library for free (our tax dollars at work, and we approve), so I'm taking the classes so I can use them more effectively. Last week I was surprised to find out that my paternal grandfather doesn't show up in the 1930 census! That was a shock, since I already have an idea of where he and his wife, as well as my father and his siblings, were living at the time. But the teacher explained that if no one was home when the census taker came, sometimes they weren't counted as there wasn't a coordinated plan to go back. I found my maternal grandparents and my mother, though, just where I thought they would be. Now my challenge is to find people in earlier years, and track their migrations from state to state, starting with 1790.

Tomorrow we are supposed to have another Big Rain, but we'll see. I'll check in with a storm and library update, as well as some new yard pictures. Signs of early fall are starting to appear!