I was eating french toast for breakfast this morning, and I only got three bites into it when, as I swallowed a bite, I felt and heard something snap or pop inside my throat. The pain was excruciating. I'd had a mild sore throat for the past week, probably due to allergies, but I've never felt anything like this. It hurt to swallow, talk, and move my head. I called my doctor's office and they told me to come in immediately. The doctor thinks that my hyoid bone popped out of place in part due to swelling from a throat infection caused by post-nasal drip from my allergies. He said it should fix itself within a week or so, but that's not very reassuring to me. He gave me an antibiotic to take care of the infection, but I'm on my own as far as relieving the pain. I'm currently taking 800mg ibuprofen every six hours, but the pain relief only seems to last about three hours. Hopefully this doesn't put a damper on my weekend plans.

My garden is going better this year than it ever has in past years, probably due in part to using the new tiller, and actually weeding it occasionally. Still, a couple of the cucumber plants died completely and the rest are doing very poorly. One watermelon died and the other one is simply not growing (but it's still green), and my yellow squash are growing way too slowly. At least we'll have plenty of tomatoes and corn this year--dozens of tomato fruits and many ears of corn have already appeared. The jalapeños and bell peppers weren't growing for a long time, but they've finally gotten bigger and if I'm lucky I'll have some peppers by October. Fat lot of good they'll do me then when the tomatoes are all gone.

I put new shocks on the front of my truck the other day and they didn't seem to help with the front-end bouncing up and down when I come to a sudden stop. One of the old shocks was obviously shot (no gas pressure inside, and leaking a lot of hydraulic fluid). I'm not sure that there are any other possible causes for the continued bouncing, unless the shocks that I got were bad, but that's very unlikely. With that heavy diesel engine in front, I'm lucky I don't catch air from the spring rebound.

Traci is up in Joe's Valley for the weekend, so the boys and I are going to do some geocaching this evening, and we may even work on Torrey's dog house tomorrow. At the back of the house there's a closet that is built out past the foundation by about two feet, and the area underneath the overhang is the ideal size for a dog house plus some extra tool storage. I've got the ground underneath dug out, framed, and ready to pour concrete, and when that's done I'll frame in the walls and put up insulation and siding. The dog doesn't spend a lot of time outdoors, but on the rare occasion when we have to leave town and can't bring her along, she'll need some sort of shelter.

I'd planned on doing a lot of geocaching this evening on my way home from the veterinarian in Payson (getting Torrey's second batch of shots), but a friend from South Jordan was in Price so I hurried home from the vet to have dinner at Grogg's instead. Dinner with friends trumps geocaching anyday.

Tomorrow is Traci's birthday, so we're going out to dinner again and a movie afterwards. Saturday is Bradley's birthday party (he turns 4 on Tuesday), and Sunday is Father's Day, so it's undoubtedly going to be a busy yet unproductive weekend. I'm thinking about going for a drive on Sunday--there's this rock sitting out in the desert somewhere, and if I find it I'll win a 200' canyoneering rope worth about $140. It'd definitely be worth the fuel I burn getting there, and I'm very confident that I've figured out the GPS coordinates to within 200' or so of the exact spot. But then if I get the rope, I'll have to buy a harness, carabiners, webbing, a descender, and a few other miscellaneous items so that I can actually use the rope. ;) I'm sure Traci won't mind if I take up a new hobby...

Well, the last week or so I've done a bit of fixing little odds and ends around the house, and a lot of dog training. Torrey is still not 100% house trained, but she's probably still doing better than my almost-4-year-old son. :D When I brought her home from the animal shelter, I learned within two minutes of driving away that she gets car sick pretty badly. She drools excessively and usually vomits, among other things. I've spent some time each day for the past week trying to get her used to riding in the truck. At first I just tried going for a drive with her, but that always ended badly. Then I started over much more slowly, beginning with just sitting in the truck while it was parked in the driveway. I think today we might even get so far as to drive around the block. I'm hoping that by this weekend she'll be ready for a short trip out of town and a little hike.