Janet's Blog

Jackson spotted them first, or maybe, he smelled them. Anyway, he alerted me to the deer's presence, just a few feet away, on the other side of the ditch. I had driven about a mile from home, past the landfill, to the small parking area next to the bike path that skirts the east side of the National Park land. We had left the house a little later than I planned, so the sun had disappeared behind the Monument before we started walking on the path. It was a beautiful, still evening, right at dusk. I was hoping the light would hold out until we made it back to the car. I was hoping, too, to spot some wildlife of the four-legged kind--I can do without rattlesnakes, thank you very much! The lingering sunset, on the north edge of Scotts Bluff. We met a couple of other walkers on the path, with their black lab, but otherwise, Jackson and I had the path to ourselves. I snapped way too many sunset pictures. On the way back, we crossed over to the alley that borders the bike path, to get jus...

It was probably a year ago when Bill brought me a free Fitbit that he picked up at a convention. A Fitbit is an exercise tracker, in bracelet form, that works with your computer to keep track of the number of steps walked in a day, how much sleep you get, how long you exercise, and how many calories you burn. Some models of the Fitbit do even more, but mine, as a freebie, is the most basic "Flex" model. My new Fitbit sat in its box, on my nightstand, for several months before I asked Bill to help me set it up. (He reads fine print better than I do.) I had already been using the built-in health app on my phone to keep track of my steps, but it was only useful to let me know how far I went when I was purposefully walking for exercise, since I don't typically carry my phone around at home. Someone has arbitrarily decided that 10,000 steps a day is a good goal for most healthy people. I don't know how many steps I accumulated when I was teaching preschool, but I suspe...