I saved a toad, sunk a boat, and injured a dog.

I think when you add all those things up, I lose. But I'll tell you the stories anyway.

The Toad
Two days ago, I was emptying the pool skimmer baskets and there was a toad (not a frog) in one of the baskets. He probably hadn't been in there long, because he was still pretty energetic. So when I reached in to pull out the basket, he grabbed onto the edge of it and jumped out. Well, to save my life (actually, to save his life), I couldn't find him. It looked like he had headed back out into the big pool from the little skimmer pit, but I couldn't find him anywhere in the pool. I put my face down as close to the water as I could get it to look in the little passageway between the two, but still no toad. Maybe, says I, he ended up back in the bucket and is hiding in the leaves. So I went ahead and took out the basket to dump the leaves, but I didn't see him. I was confused, and mostly hoping that he didn't get sucked into the cleaning system while I had the basket out.

Then yesterday I went out to empty the baskets again, and there he was. I thought he was dead. He was all curled up in a little ball with his eyes closed, just bumping around the skimmer area. Well shoot. But when I reached in to get the basket, he showed some signs of life. He opened his eyes, wiggled around a little bit. So I took him to a slightly damp spot where I thought he would be happy and dumped him out. He landed on his back, but didn't move. Didn't move. Didn't move. And then he did! He flipped himself over and took a little weak hop or two.

About 5 minutes later, I was headed off to the gym. I stopped to check on him, and he was gone. Hopefully he'll make it and live out his little toady life to its fullest.

The Boat
Today was not a good day at practice. It was really foggy, and it was the worst kind - it got foggier as the morning progressed, and it kept moving around the lake. It was clear in the cove the first lap around, but by the time I got back there a second time, it was fog-filled.

Right at the very beginning of practice, one of my novice coxswains ran her boat into the shore. Should I have been watching her more closely? Yes. But was it dark and foggy? Yes. Is that an excuse? Probably not. But when I have two boats of novices out, I can only pay attention to one at a time, especially when they won't stay close together!

So she put a pretty serious scratch in the bottom of the boat, so much so that the boat was taking on lots of water and they had to row straight back to the dock. And it took us 14 people to lift the water-filled boat over our heads. And we were all drenched.

R, the head coach, said he has the stuff to fix it and it shouldn't be too difficult. But still, the boat will be out of commission for a while, because it has to totally dry out before we can do anything, which will take a while because the insides were all full of water. Then we have to put on the carbon fiber and fiberglass, and secure/waterproof that with resin. (The boat actually has kevlar in the shell too, but we don't have any of that.) Then we have to let the resin dry. Then it has to be sanded and painted. And we have to let the paint dry. And you know what they say about that....

The Injured Dog
It appears that Radar is injured. He woke up at 2:45 in the morning yelping like crazy. Then he stopped and put his head down and didn't respond. I thought he died. That was scary. But I got up and turned on the light, and he was awake and alive and got mad at me when I stopped petting him, which seemed pretty normal, so I went back to bed. He looked okay at 5:00 this morning - went downstairs to go outside and was excited to get a cookie and go into his kennel.

But then when I got home from practice and let him out of the kennel, I was petting him and he yelped again! But he didn't appear to have any trouble getting up or down the stairs, and was excited as usual to go outside. I poked around on him to see if I could find where he was hurt, but he didn't indicate pain at all. No more yelping. So I'm not sure what to make of all this :-/