I can’t say that this post will relate to employment in any way, but I’ll try…

Thus far today I’ve done very little work myself, instead spending most of my time gathering fishing equipment, putting some 6-lb. test on my girlfriend’s light-action fishing rod, packing a bag and doing some laundry. That’s “kind of” working, but not really. More like preparation for a three-night getaway to nearby “Wild and Wonderful” West Virginia (from experience, I can say this is actually a very appropriate description). Otherwise, I’ve spoken to our attorney about alleged trademark infringement (fun!), answered some e-mails and now I’m writing this post. All in all, a pretty strenuous Friday, right?

But there is something weird that just happened and I feel the need to write about it. Plus, my dog was working, so there’s yet another tie-in to the whole employment thing we’ve got going on here at Insourced. Anyway, there are now pygmy goats in my neighborhood (or maybe they’re just baby goats…I don’t know, but what I do know is that they’re “new”). My girlfriend thinks these are adorably cute to the “nth” degree and, I admit, she’s actually correct in this assessment. They wander in groups of four (usually) around the semi-rural roads around my house, moving from their owner’s yard to mine and a few other neighbors’. When anyone gets too close they scurry off as one in some direction, presumably towards their actual home.

Well, today, out of the corner of my eye, I caught some movement on my front porch (my home office looks out the front of the house) and thought that perhaps it was a neighborhood dog or cat (we have plenty of those too). Anyway, I went to look out the front door to see and realized, a bit too late, that two of the goats were on the front porch. Where their two other brethren were I can’t say, but it is the first time I’ve seen them in anything but a group of four. Of course, Roxie, the miniature pinscher who presumes to rule the wildlife here in Shangra-La with an iron paw, darted out the door at speeds I thought her incapable of achieving, not even bothering to bark in her dogged (no pun intended) pursuit of her fellow four-legged friends. Whether she was looking to enforce some esoteric MinPin rule or merely wanted to play with the little guys is unknown to me but, surprisingly, after not catching the freakishly fast-moving little goats, she actually came back home without me having to look for her…this, in itself, is a minor miracle as Roxie and her ilk tend to be wanderers and rather stubborn…much like her “Mom” on that latter point.

Anyway, we joke that Roxie is “always working” here because she monitors the comings and goings of animals, people and cars with such absolute vigilance that if she could reason at a higher level and communicate with us I’m sure she could detail the movements of all animals in the region and present those movements to us with bar graphs indicating migratory patterns and feeding times. Seriously, the dog is THAT obssessive compulsive.

Now that you think I live in the middle of an animal preserve or on a farm (it’s neither, I assure you - the “town” I live in is an odd semi-rural area that’s about a mile from classic suburbia in one direction and about 3 miles from what is actually a semi-urban area in the other direction), let me sum up:

• I’m going fishing this weekend
• Pygmy goats and MinPins are cute
• My dog Roxie is a little bit crazy, but she works hard
• West Virginia really is a sportsman’s paradise
• The Insourced blog continuously drifts away from its purported “employment tilt” when Mick and I find something amusing, but we’ll always come back to the main focus eventually (we promise).

Tags: weekend fishing, working hard

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