Check it out. I'm sure you'll find it... explosive!
When we named the dog, we were living in Shrewsbury, MO. Shrewsbury was a lovely town. I'm glad I lived there. The people were fantastic (except the creep who lived across the street, but never mind him).
But, well, I'm not saying there's a lack of diversity in Shrewsbury, but let's just say that if they brought back the Jim Crow laws, Shrewsbury would have a "White" water fountain and a "Whiter" water fountain.
Our new neighborhood, on the other hand, has a different demographic mix altogether. Well, one morning when I was walking the dog, the little guy was being uncooperative. I said, "Toby, let's get moving here!", right as one of my new neighors was walking by. One of the "diverse" ones, to use the euphemism. He gave me something of a disgusted look, and asked incredulously, "You named your dog Toby?"
I didn't think too much about it, and maybe I was being paranoid, but I seemed to be getting weird looks about the dog's name. Then when I was talking to my buddy Wayne about coming by the house for the wedding, he mentioned that when he would be refusing, out of principle, to refer to my dog by his slave name.
And I had one of those realizations that almost knocked me over. I remembered that scene from Roots. The scene below, to be specific.
(Note: this scene is very hard to take. Oh, and you might have to log in to see it, but please do it.)
So, for all anyone in the neighborhood knows, I've named my dog after the symbol of Kunta Kinte surrendering his dignity, the sign that The Man had finally beaten him.
Let it suffice to say, that's not the case. We just named him Toby because he looks like a Toby to us. And the name's stuck. So about all I can think is to just not announce his name loudly in public.
Funny how life works, isn't it?
The wedding was absolutely everything I could have hoped for. It was so awesome that, well, you ever had one of those moment in your life where you sort of felt like a spectator? Like you felt like "This couldn't possibly be happening to me, because it's too happy."
If you haven't, you're totally missing out.
So the wedding ceremony was fabulous. The bride was looking especially radiant. The church was beautiful. The ceremony was in Latin, using the usus antiquior, the Tridentine mass, or whatever it's called these days. I continue to appreciate the old mass the more familiar I get with it. My favorite part was when we were invited past the rail (yes! They have a rail!) to kneel by the altar for a blessing. And I discovered, to my suprise, that I'm actually starting to pick up some Latin! I actually understood most of it. Well, about half of it.
The reception at the Palm House in lovely Tower Grove Park about a block away from the new house was also fantastic. The food was delicious. The incidental non-dance music was excellent. The photographer took some good pictures and managed not to be obtrusive. There was lots of drinking but no fist fights. My niece was about the most adorable flower girl in the history of weddings. She almost stole the show from me! That's how adorable she was!
So now it's on to married life. And if the begining of something has any bearing on how things are going to be in the future, married life should be awesome as well.
I could go on and on, but I think I'll leave it at that. Pictures soon! The lovely blushing bride was especially lovely that day.
I got another anouncement. I've gotten into the fast-paced, exciting world of podcasting. This seems like a natural progression. I first started putting music together in the early 90's, on cassette tape. Then I started using mp3's instead of CD's, burning CD-R's. And now this.
The first one is now available. You can find it here:
http://salivatingdog.com/podcast
As I mention in there, I'm doing themes. If anyone has a suggestion, feel free to drop me a line. Which you can do at 
.
Enjoy!
We had picked out a name for the puppy, actually. Since the three of us had gotten all hooked on Battlestar Galactica, we thought it would be pretty cool to name the puppy Gaius, after our favorite character. Or, it could also be a reference to one of my favorite dictators.
Well, when we got the little guy, we discovered that the name just didn't work. Not so much because we'd fallen out of love for the name, just that the little guy didn't look like a Gaius. Sherry thought he looked like a "Toby". Jacob was set on the name "Mr. Pugglesworth", in reference to Dr. Evil's cat. And I wanted to call him Chopper, in reference to the grizzly Eric Bana film of the same name. Or maybe in reference to the book Cujo, that being Cujo's original name.
In any case, I clearly wasn't going to get any takers on my name, so I let it drop. I was warming up to the name Toby when I noticed somethign that should have been more obvious, but for some reason wasn't: Toby was a first name, and Mr. Pugglesworth was a last name. So our compromise was to give the puppy the full name of Toby Pugglesworth.
A younger, more cynical version of me would probably have vomited a bit in his mouth to know that in the future, he would not only have a dog named "Toby Pugglesworth", but would think it's a really good name.
So, what's been going on with me lately? Tons of stuff. So much, in fact, I'll drop them one post at a time until I've unwound the many numerous things that have been going on with this guy.
The biggest news: we added another person to the family. Specifically a small four-legged dog-type person.
See, the lovely Fiancée and the Cub had been eying the Puggle, which is half pug, half beagle and all cute.
Now, I'd been adiment that if we're going to get a dog, we aren't going to get one until Easter. If someone (i.e. this guy here) is going to have to go outside fifteen times a day to let the puppy go tinkle, I'd rather it not be five degrees outside with sleet whipping past my head at 70 miles an hour.
Well, sometime before Christmas, the Fiancée was talking to her dad, who breeds dogs. Just out of curiosity (or so she claims) she asked if he knew someone who breeds puggles. Dog breeders comprise a fairly small community, and he'd be able to mention someone reputable.
Instead he said, "Well, I have two of them out in the puppy room right now. A boy and a girl. Why, did you want one?"
He made us a very good deal on the boy puppy. Especially when you actually saw the little guy. I mean, have you ever seen anything cuter than that?
So my days of living it up, sleeping until 8 or 9 in the morning on Saturdays are over and done. Again.
It's not without its benefits, though. The puppy gets cuter every day, which I just wouldn't have thought would be possible. It gets less googly-eyed, and seems less shocked and horrified at the world (an expression you see quite a bit in the pictures). And he's more frisky and rambunctious every day. I'm all in favor of the puppy being wild and crazy. You know, unless it's bigger than 20 lbs. Anything less, I think I can handle.
So that's been dominating the household. It's brightened everyone's life, in my opinion. And there will be more pictures later, if anyone still cares. I suspect someone else's dog is like someone else's dreams: way more interesting for the one than the other.
In the meantime, it's way past beditme for me. More news tomorrow!
The update for the last month: I have officially passed the "30 lbs lost" mark. I'm a mere five pounds more than I was on my very first driver's license in high school, and at that time, the heaviest thing I'd lifted was the alto sax (i.e. I hadn't done a lick of weight training, and was all flab).
I mention this not to toot my own horn (well, that's part of it, but not the whole story), but as a lead-in to this one about why people overeat. And there's some tips as to how to stop:
Sit next to the person you think will be the slowest eater when you go to a restaurant, and be the last one to start eating. Plate high-calorie foods in the kitchen but serve vegetables family style. Never eat directly from a package. Wrap tempting food in foil so you don’t see it. At a buffet put only two items on your plate at a time.All of it make sense to me.
Here's the great Brian Sack, talking about a week in Garfield:
WEDNESDAYRead the whole thing. Since the funny ones were all R-rated and therefore didn't get posted here.Summary:
Jon reports to Garfield that Liz laughed at his jokes all night. When he is greeted by silence, he inquires as to whether it is wrong to question Liz's sense of humor. Garfield suggests that it is not, implying that Jon's sense of humor is not good. The comedy factor is significantly increased by Jon's polka-dot bow tie.
Why this is funny:
We start by laughing at Jon's outrageous bow tie, then we find ourselves rooting for him. The child-like excitement of a 50-year old man gushing in front of his aged, snotty cat is endearing. When his enthusiasm is greeted by silence (a signature Garfield technique) Jon remembers he's not funny. This is reinforced by Garfield who, like Mo'Nique, is never afraid to tell it like it is. The humor is multiplied because Garfield is a little cat and Jon is a human who could conceivably have the snarky feline put to sleep.
Update from yesterday:
Okay, so on top of my new trim and svelt figure, I've also taken to doing something about the hair. Like using styling products. Not so much combing or anything, just getting some styling stuff, running it through my hair and hoping for the best.
Anyway, the gel stuff has a tendency to get gummed up in the Dolomite Ring. And since it's now easy to slip the thing off, apparently I took the little guy off and then didn't bother to put it back on.
I know how concerned everyone was about it, and I'm sorry for any anguish I may have subjected you all to.
Although I have decided it's time to retire the Dolomite Ring. We had some good times, but I think it's time to move on. To the aforementioned cooler ring that'll be here in about a year.
I didn't get a class ring. From high school or college. I just got a ring. Since, aside from Texas A&M grads, most people don't actually wear class rings. Or you might wear it for a year and then it goes in a box never to be seen again.
Instead of a class ring, I just got a ring. The Dolemite Ring, it's called. Looks not totally unlike a class ring, but it wasn't. Just a piece of onyx and gold. It's over 10 years old and styles change. I think it looks like something I might have stolen from the set of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, but whatever. It's part of my look.
Well, as I never shut up about, I've been losing weight lately. (27 lbs. so far, thank you very much.) In fact, I've been losing so much weight, the aforementioned Dolemite Ring was fitting very loosely. So loosely, in fact, that I looked down at my hand a few minutes ago, and realized that it wasn't there! It would seem that it had just plum fallen off!
So, that's today's tragedy. Granted, it's not too terribly much of a tragedy. For starters, with my new trim physique, I doubt people had been able to pry their eyes away from my body to notice my accessories. And in less than a year, I'll be getting a way cooler ring, and I'd probably be retiring the Dolomite Ring anyway.
But still!
As you've no doubt heard by now — you know, unless you've spent the last five years under a rock, in a cave, with your eyes shut and your fingers in your ears — hydrogenated fats (or "trans fat" as most people call them now) are really bad for you. Like they're the worst kinds of fat you can put in your system. (If you missed out on the terminology, this is why suddenly everyone was saying "Stop eating margerine. You're better off just sticking with butter.")
What you may or may not have heard is that it's not enough to just not use the hydrogenated fats. Some fats are highly unstable under heat and if you use them for cooking, they'll hydrogenate themselves, leaving you with exactly the same trans fats you'd get if you just had the hydrogenated corn oil.
The most stable fats, the ones least likely to oxidize, are saturated fats. Things like animal fats: lard, tallow, and butter. And of the vegetable fats, coconut oil is the highest in saturated fat, and therefore the most stable at high heats.
Okay, knowing all that, rewind about 10 or 15 years. What was the big public health nuisance? Movie popcorn. The flavor of the month for the nanny state types desperate to ruin everyone's fun was saturated fat. And you can imagine their horror when they discovered that movie theaters were cooking their popcorn with... coconut oil.
So the movie theaters capitulated, and they stopped using coconut oil and instead started using... hydrogenated corn oil. That's right. Switching to trans fats was considered the healthy alternative at the time.
So how long do you think until someone launches a campaign against movie popcorn to get the trans fats out of it? I wonder what they'll switch to?
And how long it'll take to switch from that to something else? My guess is in 10 years they'll switch back to coconut oil. Which everyone says was way tastier than the corn oil they're using now.
This is Andrew Robb, the Australian government's multicultural spokesman, to a group of imams.
"We live in a world of terrorism where evil acts are being regularly perpetrated in the name of your faith. And because it is your faith that is being invoked as justification for these evil acts, it is your problem."Whole story can be found here, if you're curious.
Why can't we get guys like him in this country?
QOTD #2:
Given that skinny women are hopelessly manipulated by the fashion industry, and that obese women are hopelessly manipulated by the food industry, I propose the following magic-bullet legislation:That whole story is here.The government buy every obese person subscriptions to the top fashion magazines; meanwhile every skinny person should be forced to sit through a dozen McDonalds, sugary cereal, and Hostess cupcake commercials.
In six months, we'll all wear the same size, and everyone will finally be equal.
I watched the game at the sports bar around the corner with my uncle. The Sooners are on fire. A.D. Peterson just picks apart the defense, for a touchdown, putting the Sooners up by 13. My uncle says, "I'm out of here. If we lose this game, I don't want to see it."
I liked his thinking, but there was still 6 minutes left, so I thought I'd at least watch the next drive. Three-and-out. So I left, went home, content in the knowledge that we had nothing to worry about. 3 and 0, baby!
Well, I think everyone knows how that story ends.
Moral of the story: There's always enough time for the Sooners to blow the lead. Assume nothing!
