Totally Awkward Tuesday!

It's Totally Awkward Tuesday again! If you don't know how it works, go visit Tova!

My story for this week actually happened a few weeks while I was housesitting. The owner of the dog had me over to the house on two separate occasions the week before the housesitting actually started and gave me extensive directions for her dog's care. The dog, who was actually really sweet, is named Katie and is an older dog, but she seemed easy enough to care for. The owner instructed me that she did have an electric fence installed, but that the neighbors and their dogs would be out of town that week, and since they were the only reason that Katie ever ran out of the yard, having her electric collar on would not be necessary while I was there.

So, I arrived Friday afternoon and let Katie out, sans collar, as instructed. While we were outside, the other neighbor came over wondering if I could let her dogs out while she would be gone the next day, which I agreed to do. She asked me to come over so she could give me a key and show me what to do for her dogs. So, we go over and she explains what to do, and after no more than three minutes, I leave to go back over to where Katie is. Well, instead of finding Katie anxiously awaiting my arrival, I find a panicked neighbor lady has driven up and is screaming for Katie's owner. When she finally breaks for air, I explained that I was housesitting and her owner was out of town.

"Katie is down the street!" she yelled, still panicked. "The neighbors are with her, you have to go get her right now!"

So I'm thinking, oh great, the dog that supposedly never runs away is off like a shot as soon as I take charge. Thankfully the nice neighbor who had been distracting me from watching Katie in the first place (I'm currently housesitting her dogs actually) hopped in the car with me to go find Katie down the street. We drive up and are greeted by a whole throng of overly-concerned, retiree neighbors who immediately display their disapproval of that fact that I came so close to losing the dog and trying to hide their rejoicing that something actually semi-exciting happening in the neighborhood for once. Since I'm young, and actually reasonably responsible, I'm always frustrated by older adults who think "those crazy teenagers are up to no good," which was obviously the mindset here. One lady even had the nerve to ask if I was the one in charge of watching the dog and when I answered that I was, she replied "well, where were ya?!"

Thankfully, I quickly retrieved Katie, put the collar back on, and didn't have another problem the rest of the week. And when her owner returned, she apologized for ever telling me to leave the collar off in the first place. Take that, meddling neighbors...

In other news, in preparation for heading off to Liberty in the fall, I had to take an online computer assessment before my classes start. I did it a couple days ago, assuming that it would be really easy and that I'd pass with flying colors, since I consider myself to be pretty computer-literate. Well, apparently, I'm not up to Liberty's standards! I didn't completely fail or anything like that, but I definitely didn't pass (75% or higher). I'm slightly ashamed, but not too much, since, in my defense, they asked some of the most obscure questions about Microsoft Word that anyone could ever come up with. (Example: How do you make formatting marks visible? First of all, what exactly qualifies as a formatting mark? And secondly, why are they invisible to begin with? Anyway, apparently they're those backwards P's that symbolize a new paragraph. I'd have a much easier chance of passing an html proficiency test, I guess) So, quick poll, who thinks that it's a good sign that I'm failing tests before classes even start? ;)