Earning his keep

Our dog Tyson has a thing for paper and tissues. I'm not sure what it is, but he loves to raid the wastepaper basket when we're forgetful enough to leave the bathroom door open. I can't even count the number of used Kleenexes he has eaten in his lifespan!

This being the case, Tyson is very active on walks after a fair bit of snow has melted away, uncovering various paper-litter type treasures. As we walk down the street he and I both keep a keen eye out for any potential targets - he tries to make a dive for them and my job is to pre-empt him either verbally by giving the command "off" or my tugging on his leash. When I fail and he has gotten ahold of his bounty, *sometimes* I can get him to spit it out by saying "out", but if it's particularly good, it's basically a lost cause at this point and I just tell him that he's a "bad dog".

The other evening we were out for our evening walk, which just happened to be after a major thaw. As usual Tyson was snuffling the ground for interesting treats and I saw that he was fiddling around with what looked like a piece of paper. I said "out" and he dropped it (mustn't have been particularly tasty). I stepped closer to inspect what he had been intrigued with and it was a $20 bill! One good thing about Tyson is that he is half golden retriever, so he is very gentle with his mouth. The bill was in perfect condition (save for being a completely soaked, so we pocketed it and brought it home to dry out).

Good doggy!

Does Newman deliver our mail?

Christopher has this theory about our mail delivery person. He thinks they take 1 day a week off - usually Wednesdays.

On any standard mail-delivery day we typically get something delivered to our mailbox. It's true that most pieces of mail we receive are junk mail, but it's still mail nonetheless. However we have been noticing that sometimes a day will go by where I don't see the mail delivery truck at all from my office window, the dog doesn't bark at the mailman making a delivery to our house or either of the houses next to us, and we don't receive any mail.

And then the next day we notice a few extra pieces of mail in our box, as if 2 days worth of mail is now being delivered at once. Of course this is just speculation on our part, but it is suspicious. I guess I could ask our neighbors if they also did not receive any mail on the same day.

I don't know why we care so much, it's not like we ever receive anything all that important via mail. I guess we are just fascinated that someone could be so bold as to skip out on an entire day's work. And if our mail delivery person is playing hooky, I hope they are at least doing something fun!

I just realized...

that at this stage in my pregnancy, 26 weeks along, that I weigh the same as I did by the time I finished my MBA.

Wow. Can you say "emotional eater"?

It was definitely a stressful year and with all the assignments/tests/readings the excuses for not exercising were plentiful. I know that I have the bad habit of soothing myself with "treats" and boy did I need them that year!

Anyways, after I graduated the weight just came right off so I was lucky. I don't even think I even had to consciously try - I just fell back into my old eating and exercise habits and things returned to normal. I think most of it was gone by the end of the summer. Let's hope that losing this baby weight goes the same way!

Getting Rid of Stuff + Free Stuff + Helping Others

It doesn't take much to make me happy during these cold and dreary January days. The highlight of my day was a trip to Pollo Tropical to exchange Christopher's clunky old pre-paid cell phone for two free sandwiches as part of their Helping Handhelds Campaign.

The combination of three things I love:

• getting rid of old stuff that we don't use anymore - and I don't mean tossing it into a landfill
• getting free stuff - especially free 'stuff' that can be consumed and doesn't end up as stuff that I will eventually have the burden of getting rid of at some future date
• helping others :)