For some reason, this morning Frannie did not come into my room to alert me that it was time for her walk. So when I woke up to a quiet, seemingly empty house I drank my coffee and read the Kerrville paper, all 12 pages of it.  Well most of it, anyway.  I did skip the couple of pages devoted to sports, and only skimmed through the want ads to see what interesting entries I could find.  Not surprisingly, it didn't take long to finish.  

I figured I'd take a nice relaxing shower and be all ready for our exciting day when Marilyn and Frannie got back from their morning walk.  But I was only in there long enough to just get totally wet when Mr. Big Spider made his appearance. That chased me out of the shower ("using up" my dry towel) in search of a shoe to dispatch him. (No way I was going to get close to him with just a Kleenex in hand!) Why couldn't he have just stayed outside where he belonged? That would have made both of us much happier! I'm happy to report that the rest of my shower was much less stressful.

When Marilyn and Frannie appeared I asked how their walk was - and it turned out that they were just getting up! While it threw Marilyn's schedule 'all out of kilter', she admited that she did feel MUCH better after getting a really good sleep.  I let them go for their morning trek without me - I didn't want to get all hot and sweaty after my nice shower - so I still didn't get a peek at the newly discovered hummer nest.  But at least I did get all caught up on Words With Friends, e-mail, Facebook, etc., so it could be worse.... <g>

Turns out I missed out on all the excitement on their walk.  Like me, they had their own wildlife encounter this morning.  Down by the creek, Frannie (who virtually never barks - in fact I'm not sure I've even heard her do it yet) found something of interest to bark at.  Naturally this was the one morning Marilyn had forgotten to grab the leash "just in case", and Frannie insisted on running back to the same spot to further harass whatever critter (raccoon? possum?) she had found.  Most likely it was a mama protecting her nest, who made her intentions perfectly clear by nipping Frannie on the lip.

We got a big batch of gourmet Texas Taco Soup into the crock pot for dinner (everything from scratch - no packaged taco seasoning packets in this house!) and I helped with the time consuming job of stripping all the cilantro leaves from their stalks.  In my book you can never have too much cilantro (or garlic) though Marilyn did make a concession by seriously cutting back on her recipe's cayenne pepper.

But today's truly exciting news was that Marilyn figured out that we CAN make it to the Hill Country Quilt Guild's show, Dimensions in Quilting, on Friday after all, before we head to the airport in San Antonio (90 minutes from Kerrville.) Remember her friend Jana that we ran into at the quilt store on Monday? She's the contact person for the show!

Dog class (for rally) this afternoon was interesting to watch.  I got to meet Frannie's special friend Ricki and her "sister" Maggie (King Cavalier Spaniels) and Jetta, a schnauzer - sweet dogs all! During the session I got roped <g> into helping for the "stranger" part of the training.  Frannie has not been doing her homework the past couple of weeks (hey, she's been busy!) but managed not to disgrace herself.

On the drive over I had spotted a small herd of what I guessed (from their size) to be elk, but when we pulled over on the way home they turned out to be five male Red Deer.  Boy are they massive!  I snapped a number of pix - until my camera battery ran out.  So on the way home, when a couple lesser finches were feeding on a thistle right adjacent to the ranch road, I was unable to take advantage of that great photo op.  C'est la vie.  We sure did have a great view of them, though, which was certainly enjoyable.

After dinner we watched Animal House on TV. A classic.... Lol