Lately I’ve been getting up when Amanda’s alarm goes off to let the dogs out and feed them.  Amanda likes to sit in bed for a while after it goes off, whereas about 90% of the time (probably more) when the alarm goes off I get up right away.  The problem is that Harvey now gets so excited when the alarm goes off (I guess because it means he gets to go outside and then comes the food!) that if you sit in bed he’ll jump all over you and paw at you and lick you anyway, so there’s no real point in sitting in bed because you’re not going to get any rest.

Anyway, once the dogs are fed Harvey stays in his crate for a while and Bruce, who usually eats at his own pace, will get back in bed.  This morning Amanda decided she’d let Harvey out of his crate, so he jumped on the bed, which is fine.  He went to lie at the foot of the bed, and then he started licking himself.  The only way to describe the way Harvey licks himself is with the word “voraciously.”  It’s loud and wet and just sounds nasty.  So I kicked at him a few times until he stopped.  Then he decided to scratch an itch, and when he did that he shook the whole bed.  A few more pokes and prods with my foot and he stopped and I went back to sleep, waking up briefly to tell Amanda good bye and give her a kiss.

Shortly after she left I heard a racket downstairs.  Harvey isn’t very gracious when it comes to eating (sort of like his licking) so I heard him going to town on Bruce’s food.  I should have just let it go, but I jumped out of bed and rushed downstairs.  I didn’t even have to fuss at him- he just crouched down and looked up at me with those big sad sorry brown eyes.

I stayed decently busy at work today.  I ended the day talking to Scott about ways to oncrease recurring income and therefore make more money for the business, for him and for myself.

After work Amanda fixed spaghetti and we went over to Nick and Amy Warkentien’s house to watch The Office.  Of course, we got there at about 6:00, leaving quite a bit of time until The Office came on, so we spent some time eating then, at Nick’s suggestion, playing Settlers of Catan.  I think he wanted revenge.

Long story short, I stole the game again, although it wasn’t nearly as dramatic as the last time.  Nick was close to winning, but on my last go I stole the Longest Road card from him by connecting two segments of my road and adding another one to the end of it then flipping over a Victory Point card.  Sadly for Nick, who reportedly has yet to win a game of Catan, my stealing his Longest Road took him from first place to last place.  I think Amy was in second and Amanda in third.  Sorry (again), Nick!

Nick posted a comment on the previous thread about my epic Settlers of Catan victory over him while I was typing this.

So then we sat around and discussed baby names for Baby Boy Warkentien until The Office was about half over so we could skip the commercials.  It was a pretty strong episode, with Michael hooking up with Holly and Jim getting worried about Pam’s late night partying.  I’m of a mind that all the clues they’re throwing out about Jim and Pam growing distant are red herrings, or at least I hope they are, although I’ve heard rumors that Jenna Fischer, Pam, will be leaving the show.

After that we watch the Saturday Night Live Thursday Night Weekend Update.  It wasn’t as good as past ones.

This may become a regular thing, having dinner with Nick and Amy on Thurdays then watching The Office.

Zach Dotsey