Why I Love Beagles....

especially Dogzilla. They are just so damn comical! This past Sunday, after dinner, Dad and I were sitting in the living room. I was sitting in the recliner and Dad was sitting in the other chair that faces the TV. This is the chair that Dogzilla lies in when it is just the two of them. Dogzilla comes trotting in from the kitchen and just stares at Dad, who is sitting in the chair reading. Dogzilla circles around the coffee table, and comes back to stare at Dad some more. With an expression of exasperation. He finally hops up on the couch, where he proceeds to make quite a show of trying to get comfortable, complete with the beagle version of huffing and puffing. This is already getting hysterical to watch, especially since my father is just sitting there reading, paying no attention to this show. Dogzilla hops down off the couch, stares some more, and then proceeds to start pawing at Dad. This goes on for a couple minutes until Dogzilla finally hops right up on Dad's lap and proceeds to try to sit next to Dad in the chair. This was an easier prospect in the days when Dogzilla was a slim 25 lb. hound, but it's like watching sardines trying to fit into a can at the dog's current shipping weight of nearly 40 lbs. Anyhow, he flops around for a while, with Dad trying to help him get into a lying position. There is more huffing and puffing on Dogzilla's part. Finally, Dad decided to go watch the Browns on the TV in his bedroom and take an afternoon nap. At which point, Dogzilla hopped up into the chair and took a nap for a couple hours. Just to prove his point. This was all funny enough to watch, but after a couple hours, Dogzilla got up, hopped out of the chair and stretched, and then headed into Dad's bedroom. Any other afternoon, and the hound would have followed Dad into the bedroom for napping, but he'd had a point to make, I guess. Anyhow, having made his point, he was ready to kiss and make up with "Daddy" by snuggling up to him once I hoisted his furry little behind up on the bed.

It got better the next afternoon, though. Dad went directly to the couch to sit and read, having learned his lesson and leaving Dogzilla's chair wide open. Of course, Dogzilla proceeded to hop up on the couch right next to Dad, put his head on Dad's knee and took a nap. No interest in the chair whatsoever. This is some of the funniest behavior Dogzilla has engaged in for a while. How can you NOT anthropomorphize behavior like that!

Where DOES the Time Go???

I see it has been forever and a day since I updated this thing. Sheesh. The good news, I suppose, is that no news is good news, really. Hasn't been much to write home about. Or here either.

It is finally, mercifully FALL in central Ohio. I was not happy about October being a high-usage month for the air-conditioning. It's made it hard to believe that it is actually November already because October was so unseasonably warm. But today is on the side of gray skies, cool temperatures and the kind of blustery weather that shakes the remaining leaves from the trees. Fortunately, I have nowhere to go and nowhere to be today. This past weekend was my scheduled weekend off, and I am usually off on Tuesdays, so I took Monday and Wednesday as personal days, since those need to be used or lost before the end of the year. I'm planning to use today to give the living room a good sorting out and put up my Christmas decorations.

Yes. Put up my Christmas decorations. This will be the last long stretch of time off for me until sometime around mid-January or early February, so I have to get done what I have to get done before Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving for the non-retail types out there). After Black Friday, I'll be running hard 8-9 hrs. a day, and I save my energy for that and doing the basics of daily life for the most part. Keeps me relatively healthy and sane, see? So I prefer to go into the holiday shopping season relatively neat and tidy, as it is much less work clearing the debris afterwards if I do.

Spent the weekend up at Dad's and took Monday up there, too. Dogzilla was thrilled to get to wake me up an extra day at an ungodly hour. Which was made more ungodly by changing the clocks back. Bless his furry little heart, but his tummy told him it was 3:30 and time for breakfast on Sunday morning. Except that we'd set the clocks back and it was only 2:30. I made him go lie back down for another hour. Which he did in surprisingly good fashion! It's tough to reset an old beagle's internal clock. Anyhow, the weather was the kind of weather that is cool/cold nights that go into sunny, breezy days with temperatures in the upper 40s/lower 50s; perfect for indulging a chubby hound's wishes for frequent trips outside to survey his domain. And eat deer poop. Sigh. It's a good thing he's still so cute and awfully sweet, as beagle-kind are wont to be. I did put up some new mini-blinds in Dad's room and wipe down the windows. Also vacuumed behind his bed and cleared out the mondo cob-webs that accumulate in 100+ y.o. farm houses.

I did a lot of reading. Dad gets National Geographic, Time, U.S. News and World Report, Cooks Country and Arthritis Today. I did a lot of just plain relaxing, too. It all got me set to refocus on my weight loss goals. I'm heading into the season of the year where I actually lose weight. I've been playing around with 5 lbs. or so, though. Mainly because fall tends to mean some heavier, more comfort type foods. I've slacked on portion control and things like fruits and veggies, too. More refined and processed carbs have made their way into my house. All in all, they are things that are easily enough fixed and tweaked. I'm substituting more whole grains for the refined ones. Doing things like whole grain breads for potato bread, sweet potatoes for white ones, whole grain pastas for white ones. Also adding more fruits and disposing of leftover Halloween candy. I'm setting a goal of eating fish at least twice a week, and I'm taking fish oil capsules daily, too. To help with portion control, I bought some salad plates that were on clearance at Bed, Bath and Beyond. I love my Fiestaware dinner plates and they are fine for the summer when you need them for large salads that involve lots of vegetables and leafy greens or big ol' ears of fresh sweet corn, but the darn things really are the size of small platters. Which is not so good when you begin to eat things that have more dense calories and need to be portion-controlled more stringently. Appropriate portions tend to look a little lost on those big ol' dinner plates. Hence, salad plates. Which will look heaping when filled with appropriate portions. I'm going for color when it comes to fruits and vegetables. Sweet potatoes, winter squash, beets, greens, apples, oranges, grapes and pears. Adding more beans to the mix, along with things like brown rice, whole wheat couscous, and buckwheat groats. Taking dairy back towards low-fat. Low-fat individual cottage cheese cups and yogurt cups. Limiting the amount of cheese. I'd rather have a smaller amount of the real deal than play with much of the low-fat cheeses. Skim milk mozzarella and ricotta okay. Even some of the two-percent cheeses are okay. Low-fat cream cheese is acceptable to me. But the rest of the no-fat, low-fat cheeses tend to have as much character as the plastic they resemble when melted. No thank you. I'm just going to be more judicious about the amounts of blue cheese, Parmesan and sharp cheddar I use.

I'm also going to incorporate the weights I've got at home into my week. I get lots of walking in at work, but it shouldn't be too painful to add in some strength training and core-conditioning with even the limited amount of equipment I've got at home. I have weights in 3, 5, 8 and 10 lb. increments. I have a body bar, a step and an exercise ball. There are some very good, relatively quick routines at about.com, too. Strength training is also, IMHO, one of those types of exercise and conditioning that has a noticeable impact in a relatively short time, too. I'm pretty sure that I can find 15-30 minutes 3 or 4 times a week for this, even allowing for crazy schedules and long hours. It's definitely doable.

In other stuff, the dreaded remodel is, at long last, FINALLY complete. Now we all just need to get back to keeping it all pretty, like normal. Most of us at work, at least those of us who've been around for a while, figure the holidays will seem like a breeze by comparison with the experience of the remodel. At least we'll know where stuff is and stuff won't be moving around on a daily basis.

I've started my holiday shopping and I should be able to wrap most of it up before Thanksgiving, too. Might just need to pick up a few small gifts for my co-workers. Fortunately, most of my family will be quite content with nice gift cards, that I can pick up at work. Best of all, everything will be paid for BEFORE Christmas. That's a nice feeling!

Well, really must go turn my attentions to the business of the day, which is cleaning house and decorating. Laundry will be tomorrow, before I head off to work at 2. Life is very, very good!