Friday, January 23, 2009

The new puppy and other developments

Well, it's been a long time coming: a new member of the family. Considering I never envisaged myself having a terrier, nor, indeed, a male dog, I am quite surprised at how far I've fallen for this dear little dog named Pepper, called Peppie. Inasmuch as the loved dog has many names, he is also called a number of other names, including Pep, puppy, Mr P and raggedy dog. He looks a bit like a rug, with soft wavy fur the colours of wood ash – fawn, charcoal, apricot, grey, white and wheaten – and is descended from a proud heritage that includes Australian Silky, poodle, Shih-Tzu and Maltese, so he is quite little (at six months) and not likely to grow much bigger.

We got him from good friends: Affrica, her former partner Shona and their daughter Ruby had little Pep from a tiny puppy, but Shona is very ill and, having two dogs already, they realised they would have to give him up. Luckily they thought of us, and so there we are: grandmothers. :o)

I've taken a number of pix of the little fella, but he is so bouncy and Tigger-ish that it's hard to get a good shot of him other than when he's asleep.

And now, in other news: we had a splendid storm the other night – not so splendid for people who lost roofs and trees, and the ceiling in my room is leaking which is a pain in the bum, but it was rather beautiful and speckie, so I took some photos.

And of course, January is bushfire month. This January 18 was the sixth anniversary of the Canberra Firestorm, and C, P and I went down to the Bushfire Memorial. It was a beautiful, tranquil evening, just on sunset. I was amazed and delighted at how the memorial planting has developed and grown. It has become a truly worthy memorial, and will only get more lovely as time goes on. Peppie thought it was pretty good, and defended us noisily from the other visitors who had chosen the cool of the evening to see the memorial.

This is the one problem with young Peppie: he is inclined to take loud offense at any untoward sound, person, car, motorbike etc that dares to impinge upon his very sharp hearing. I think a few sessions with the Bark Buster people is called for. Oddly (in view of dear old Jessie's extravagantly noisy welcomes), he doesn't bark when one of us returns from being out – which is not to say he doesn't go mental with delight, he just doesn't bark madly. It's a relief, I must say.

Meanwhile, in other news, C is pressing on splendidly with her PhD, so now there are two in the (extended) family doing PhDs. I am SO jealous.

The sad news is that our wonderful, bon vivant neighbours, Jenny and Graham Scott-Bohanna, are leaving us for a new life in Melbourne. It's such a blow. We will miss them terribly, but we've had some wonderful times lately with them, for example when they stayed with us down the coast earlier this month. We had New Year together and of course had a feast on the deck. Ah, me, when will we meet there again, I wonder...

The dear old thing is losing marbles day by day, but still enjoys dinner with us on Sundays. Her grasp of recent and distant memory is increasingly feeble. She is mixing up Kit with her brother Peter, and Daddy with her father. But she can sing, and remember songs from her childhood and youth. We often have a sing at dinner and her voice (though astonishingly deep) is as true as true.

Coming back to the present, for me, I finished up my summer term today with concluding marking and submitting results. It's a big relief, I can tell you. Now I start to prepare for the units I am to teach in first semester. I'm looking forward to the new version of PR Theory, now called Principles of PR. The other part of my work is at Masters level, Marketing Communication Theory, which is also very interesting. I'd like to have had time to re-jig it but the summer term teaching put paid to that, so I'll use what I did last year for both f2f and online versions of the unit.

1 comment:

Kez said...

Gorgeous pics Susan. Oh yeah - Peppie is pretty gorgeous too. X K