P.S. Add this one to the list of things Cleo is afraid of, too.
Also, my exercise ball…
Cleo’s Fear of Boxes
So our most recent learning about our dear, little puppy is that simply put – she’s deathly afraid of cardboard boxes.
Not like her fear of beach balls, where she growled a lot, but eventually worked up the courage to take one down, but more like dashing to the other side of the room and whimpering like there’s no tomorrow!
We learned of this in actually trying to do her a favor – after catching her gnawing on one of the random moving boxes that hasn’t yet been unpacked, Sara thought that she’d be nice and get Cleo her very own box that she could chew and bite and tear to pieces to her heart’s content. As it turned out, though, not only did she run away when said box was delivered in front of her for her chewing pleasure, but a few minutes later she fled frantically for safety when I apparently “traumatized” her by tossing the box in her general direction…
Exhibit A: scared puppy
Exhibit B: empty box
That said, despite terrifying our beloved puppy, there were in fact two positives to come from this event!
- she doesn’t chew on boxes anymore!
- at least for the time being, simple pieces of cardboard seem to serve well as a barrier for what rooms we want to keep her out of…
In a world where previously this adorable, little puppy had made a habit of peeing in my office until magically several boxes appeared along the perimeter, I consider this a win-win!
Zombie Victory!!!
After a rather unexpected battle with a rather large (and robotic!) zombie, apparently I beat Plants vs. Zombies today!
Words cannot describe my reaction to this epic reward…
P.S. I need a new iPhone game to play.
Super Mario 3DS
This looks kinda cool, although the graphics pretty closely resemble what they’ve already been doing with the Super Mario Galaxy series, so I’m not really sure how “innovative” it is. Maybe it looks totally different in actual 3D on the DS?
So Peaceful … When She’s Asleep
Yeah – there’s no way she’d let me get away with taking this one if she wasn’t sound asleep…
Thin Post : Don’t Look at It!
So I’ve kind of been taking a new, anti-scale approach to weight loss after my latest victory leap. And it sounds a bit odd, but just go with me here for a second…
First and foremost, I still firmly believe that weighing in too often can be demoralizing because it’s hard for me to stick with it every day when I see -1, +2, -1.5, +1, etc… I personally don’t handle the fluctuations well, and especially when doing the WiiFit where they’re at the very beginning of every workout, I got to feeling like sometimes they would even set sort of a negative tone for the entire session if the results show that despite busting my ass for 45 minutes the previous day, my weight still went up slightly.
I mean, I know that it very well might’ve, but don’t tell me about it!
The other angle at least for the present time is that frankly, I’m far too busy and stressed with other projects that I’m working on right now to waste time worrying about fluctuations, or even keeping a regular workout schedule, to some extent! Granted, I know that consistency is pretty important to these efforts, but being as swamped as I am and trying to meet a new deadline of the end of June, I need to be able to give myself the wiggle room to say, “Not tonight – I need to write…” and still have that be ok. And sure, it may slow down my overall progress a bit, but I guess this is where we have to balance priorities and I think as long as I don’t gain a ton of weight in retaliation for being so stressed out, I can live with getting a little lax in certain areas of the weight loss regiment for the time being.
So simply put, my new scale schedule is roughly twice a week – once during the weekend and once mid-week, and I’m also giving myself the freedom to be a little more liberal with those if I do have a bad calorie day and eat some stuff that I’m not supposed to. Right now I need to see positive numbers whenever I step on that scale, and although I know it kind of sounds like I may be shielding myself from reality, the other priorities that I’m trying to focus on right now make that ok in my book.
It’s Crazy, Little Puppy Time!
So today was Sara’s first day back at work after taking two weeks off, meaning that it was my first full day watching the puppy all by myself. Surprisingly, she’s actually been behaving quite well – at least after a good couple hours of tiring her out, anyways. It’s amazing how easily distracted she gets when faced with two balls to fetch at the same time!
Obligatory pics, albeit not all of them necessarily from this afternoon…
Chaos Follow-Up
Would you believe that over the weekend, this guy had the nerve to call me and tell me how upset he is about the situation?!
He started off somewhat sincere, stating that he felt bad about the situation and would be willing to pay for the necklaces himself to prove to me what kind of a guy he is.
Also, he swears that neither of them did it.
Also also, I don’t think he knows that their value was almost 5x what he got paid for the job.
He still wants to do the job on my roof…
…but he’s really upset about this because now the guy who he was working with thinks he’s a thief…
…and he expects me to “make this right” and clear his name because “he didn’t steal anything”…
…and he threatens to call me incessantly until I do.
Mind you, this was all left on my voicemail – I didn’t talk to the guy, nor do I have any intention of ever talking to him again. I did save the voicemail, though, just in case others show up and I need to pass them along…
The quandaries on my mind:
- Even if you didn’t steal anything, why in the world would you want to continue working for somebody who has accused you of being a thief?!
- Even if he didn’t steal anything, why in the world would I want to let this dude back in my house after knowing what kind of a criminal record he has???
- What kind of an idiot calls and leaves threatening apology voicemails for somebody who’s already called the cops on you once?!?!?!
My sister in law just mentioned that she was able to get a partial insurance claim for the loss. Why can’t this thing just die now???
more D&D pics from the Nentir Vale…
Just a couple of random pics from my last couple of campaign sessions – two weeks prior had us battling a bevy of ogres that were standing between us and a nasty lamia’s plot to distrupt trade in Sigil, The Center of All Things, while last night’s session saw an even more epic feat as my original character – you know, the one who died back in January – made a surprising comeback that I don’t think anyone around the table saw coming!
Where will our story take us next?! I don’t know, but it’s sure getting good!
A One-Way Trip to Mars…
I was reading a blog post the other day that talked about the concept of colonizing the red planet and one point stood out in particular to me – that 1,000 people from all walks of life had volunteered to take the one-way trip to further mankind’s exploration of our solar system.
Talk about a once in a lifetime opportunity!
…but I just don’t think that I could do it myself…
I mean, as much of a space fan that I am and how absolutely cool it would be to not only see another planet but also walk on its surface and eventually live there, I’ve kind of become accustomed to life here on Earth and I simply don’t think that I’d have the guts to give it all up for that type of adventure! Come to think of it, I’m not entirely sure that I would be able to handle just taking a ride to the International Space Station if for some bizarre reason I actually got the chance. I’ve seen too many science fiction movies and there’s just too many things that could go wrong.
Still, I do hope that eventually colonization of Mars does become a reality and I think it’s very cool for those other people who would be willing to take that kind of giant leap into the unknown in the name of science. To think that roughly 35 years ago, the very first Mars rover landed on the surface and not only have there also been 4 other rovers taking photos and collecting samples across the surface ever since, but you and I don’t even have to work for NASA anymore to have access to their findings because we can pull up Google Mars and explore all sorts of different kinds of maps right from our home computers!
So it’s comforting to see that despite ridiculous budget cuts and privatization efforts by our government who don’t see the priority in space exploration that their predecessors saw, luckily there are still plenty of folks out there who are extremely passionate about this cause and that one way or another, mankind’s conquest of the stars will continue. Will there actually be people living on Mars within my lifetime, or even my children’s lifetime???
Who knows – maybe one of my grandchildren or something will end up being an explorer!