Man, where did today go? I was so busy at work that before I knew it it was almost 3:00 and I hadn’t eaten lunch. Normally that’s no big deal, but I was hungry today. I was just swamped with a few lengthy calls and a lot of work to do. I’m not complaining- the day went by very quickly. It’s only that I was astonished with the speed with which the day progressed.
On top of that, Amanda called at 4:00 and told me she was on the way home. Sometimes Tribute lets them off an hour early on Fridays, so I thought that was the case even though today is a Thursday. But the reason she was coming home was that she wasn’t feeling well. Nothing major- she just felt hot and generally sick, but Amanda isn’t the type to leave work without cause.
She got home a little before 4:30 and I worked until, I don’t know, 5:30 or 6:00. I thought about going to the gym, but I like to be back around 7:00 for Amanda, so I didn’t go. Of course Amanda suggested again that I go before work, and that is a good idea. The thing is to do that I’d have to go to bed earlier, but the reason I stay up late is for my me time. I usually get up between 8:00 and 8:30, work from 9:00 to 5:00 or, quite often, as late as 6:00 (and sometimes even later). Then I might go to the gym, usually for about an hour and a half, but that time, while dedicated to improving myself, is still not something I consider me time. I get satisfaction out of it, but it isn’t something I do just for fun, or even just for me for that matter. Then I come home and spend time with Amanda until she goes to bed at 10:00. After that I can have some me time.
In that me time, I want to do things I like to do. Lately it’s play Halo 3 on Xbox Live with Michael and some other guys. But sometimes it’s reading a book, or watching the shows that I like that Amanda doesn’t watch, or working on a website; whatever. I guess it’s basically hobby/unwind/do whatever I feel like time.
And that’s why I haven’t been going to the gym in the mornings. Maybe I’ll give it a try at some point though. I really do need to be more consistent about it though. I was doing so good with it until I got sick. That’s the thing about doing things like going to the gym. You can be in a good groove with it and then one thing happens to make you get out of that groove then all of the sudden you have a hard time getting back into it. At least I do.
So we caught up on some TV then watched our Thursday Night NBC lineup. I think the only shows we were able to catch up on before the live TV came on were Ghost Hunters and Pushing Daisies. We could have probably gotten through one more show, but Harvey peed in the orange room. He’s got this one spot in front of the door where he’s gone three times. It’s so frustrating. We’re just going to have to focus more on his crate training. I thought we were doing okay with it. I mean every time we let him out of the crate he goes directly outside. It’s just that he doesn’t always pee when he does (he had just been outside a few minutes before the afore-mentioned instance) and during the day I’m too busy to watch him and make sure he goes before letting him back in.
We’re also thinking of taking Harvey to obedience classes since we have no idea how big he’ll get.
The other pets are doing pretty well with Harvey. Cobb won’t exactly snuggle up to him, but he doesn’t hiss and run away from him anymore and Harvey doesn’t chase Cobb. Bruce and Harvey play together pretty well. It’s amazing to see Bruce, so much smaller than Harvey, play so rough. Bruce will chomp on Harvey’s muzzle and just clamp down on his mouth. Sometimes he even pulls at Harvey’s mouth. Bruce did have a scratch on his chest that scabbed over. I guess Harvey must have raked his claws across Bruce one good time. Even hough Bruce sometimes get annoyed at him, they’re getting along pretty well. Bruce will even bait Harvey into chasing him sometimes.
Oh yeah, Harvey had a sizable tick on his chest today. I got it off no problem (growing up playing in the woods I’ve pulled plenty off myself), but I had to have Amanda hold him. He kept trying to look me in the face which made it hard for me to get a good view of the tick.
I did play some Halo 3 tonight. Nobody was on at first so I just played a few Lone Wolf (free-for-all) games. I actually did really well for the first few of them. I even won one game by quite a bit and got all the top post-game honors. Then I had a few games where I did crappy and came in last. Since nobody I knew was on yet after playing a bit by myself I decided to catch up on some of my shows. Michael called me during Kid Nation to see if I was getting back on so I told him I would after the show was over. Like earlier, we won a number of games and then I started stinking. In one of the last games I only got two kills. It was pathetic.
On Kid Nation they held elections for their town council. One girl (Lauren, Laurel?), the red head who’s obviously from Boston or somewhere thereabouts, went uncontested. I thought Ajay, the kid of Indian heritage (India Indian, not Native) would get voted out because the girl who ran against him was, I thought, pretty popular and well-liked, plus his team finished last in the week’s challenge. Mike, the boyscout, was totally ousted. He only got one vote and that was from himself. I felt bad for him. Of the council members he’s probably the best actual leader. I don’t think he actually did anything wrong, but he was a bit high on himself. Not in an in your face kind of way, but I don’t know, he seemed like a goody goody that knows he’s a goody goody. Does that make sense? And then Taylor, the cute little pageant girl from Georgia who never made her team do any real work, who let them sleep when they were supposed to be up making breakfast for everyone else, she got outed by a kid named Zach. Just about everyone in all the districts was ready to see her replaced, with the exception of the young girls in her district. All that, and Greg, the biggest kid, the one who was a bit wild and somewhat bullyish at first, won the $20,000 gold star, which he said would insure that he would now go on to college after he graduated high school. While he had his bad side, they also showed him as a good, helpful workhorse. I figured he’d get it at some point.
Amanda bought a Steve Fee CD this weekend at church. He and his band are the ones that came in and played a few weeks ago. I like a lot of his songs that we sing at church and thought their performance was really good. The CD lacks the energy of the live performance, but I like the songs well enough still, and they have become the first Christian rock band in my iTunes (and therefore on my iPhone). Congratulations, Steve Fee, on this prestigious distinction.
Zach Dotsey