Weekly Round Up: Christmas in July

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads plus puppy and werk talk.  Let's start with a dose of cute.  The reason why Doggo is tearing into Santa Claus in July is that the pet store had Christmas toys on sale for a steal.  She already "opened" the present, but Santa is holding strong.

July 4th & Dawg Recap

Talk about your dog days of summer!  The entire family AND DOGS went to SIL#3's house for a few parties over the holiday weekend.  We've taken Doggo there a few times to hang out with SIL#3 and her dog, but this was our first big party, so we weren't sure how she would do.  We only live 10 minutes away from the party, so we figured we'd bring her with us and take her home if things didn't work out.

She did just fine  She is still skittish around strangers, but she accepted treats and let a few people pet her.  She loves other dogs, and the other dogs in the family like their new cousin,

Once the fireworks started we brought the dogs into the house and hung out with them, so it was a nice little side party.   As far as fireworks go, the first one that she heard was the end of the world, but after a few days of booms she had much less of a reaction.

One question that people kept asking at the party is if she is full grown.  It's anyone's guess.  As best we know she's about a year old now.  When we first got her she gained weight rapidly, but she's been holding steady at 40 pounds for the past two months.  Her DNA test predicted an adult weight of 46 pounds, so my guess is that she'll get a bit bigger but not much.  It seems like she's going to stay small, or as Hubs calls her "fun sized".

Eats

I still don't have anything wildly exciting to tell you about food, but I can make up for it with stories of the dog in the kitchen.  Probably the best thing that I made while the fam was away at Boy Scout Camp was Recipe Tin Eats Bibimbap - tofu, veggies, rice, and yummy sauce.

Doggo kept me company while I was prepped this.  She loves carrots, so obviously I gave her some carrot pieces, but when I accidentally dropped a piece of raw tofu on the floor, I was shocked that she gobbled it right up and then she went on a counter surfing mission for more.  I lured her away and asked her to sit (pro tip: you can't tell a dog not to do a negative, you have to distract them by asking for a positive and then supposedly some day they will only do the positive things...I'll keep you posted) and then googled "can dogs eat tofu" (lol my search history since we got her is pretty much exclusively "can dogs eat..." and sure enough tofu is fine for dogs as long as they're not eating so much of it that they're not eating their regular food.  She was also very interested in the gochujang paste and soy sauce, but I managed to keep her away from those.  Anyway, I got a good laugh that I was having to chase my carnivore dog away from a plant based dinner.

Workouts

In addition to the usual fare of weights and 30/3/12 treadmill workouts, I've taken up another quest for the summer.  There is a 100 mile hike and bike trail close-ish to me, and I'm in the process of riding the whole thing.  My max biking distance is only 10-15 miles, so I'm doing it in small segments (5 to 7 miles out and then back) and picking it up and the next point each time.  I started about 20 miles from the north end, and I'm one ride away from reaching the top.  After that I'll go back to where I started and work my way south.  I think there's also an east-west trail, so that could be next.

I'm starting to get squirrley on the treadmill, so I took a tip from Jenny and I've done a couple of outdoor power walks this week.  Hmm...am I possibly interested in doing some running again?  Or biking?  Stay tuned.

Watching

Hubs was looking for something silly to watch last weekend.  I rolled my eyes when he suggested Dodgeball.  I'd never seen it, but c'mon I knew it would just be stupid.  But stepson #2 was interested and the trailer didn't look that bad...

So chalk this up to another "movie that I thought would be terrible that I never wanted to watch and then I watched it and was delighted to find out that it was actually a good movie".  Dodgeball was a delightful surprise.

Reading

Lotsa books, mixed results.

Speaking of the unreasonable prejudices that I sometimes come up with, until recently I had only read one Taylor Jenkins Reid book, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.  My reason for not wanting to read anything else of hers was that it was so good that I felt that nothing else could live up to it.

TJR has written a lot of books, but the one that seems to make people say "hey" is After I Do, which sounded like a very simple story about a couple who decides to separate for a year to see if they're happier apart.  Nicole is literally the one billionth person who said "hey", and I finally listened.  And what I'm telling you is that yes it's a simple story but a delightful one.  But now my hatches are battened down again and I can't possibly ever read another TJR because there is no way that it will live up to Seven Husbands or After I Do.

Next up: DNF 1 of 2.  I was so excited to tear into Private Equity by Carrie Sun.  A work memoir!!!  It started with a nice juicy story about being in the hospital from overwork and the doctor telling her that she might not survive, but then she naturally went back to the beginning and I lost interest.  I couldn't stand her boss from the get-go, and I felt like I wouldn't enjoy hearing how things went downhill, so I bailed a few hours into the audio book.

And then DNF 2 of 2.  I'd started Within Arm's Reach by Ann Napolitano but after a good long while I'd barely made a dent in it.  My Libby hold was going to expire so I put my Kindle in airplane mode so that I could keep reading, and that's when I realized hey I'm really not that into this book.

What next?  Back to the Linda Castillo Amish murder mysteries!  The Dead Will Tell is book #6 in the series, and I keep feeling that the current book that I'm reading is "the best".  And in the meantime a couple of hot new books have come in, so there's a 100% chance that my Kindle will be going back on airplane mode.

Werk!

Everything is still good at the new job, but they are still sooooooo sloooooow at turning work over to me.  I've got enough of a toehold, and hey if other folks want to keep doing the tasks that they haven't given to me, I guess there's no reason why I should mind.

Meanwhile at the old job...they finally found a replacement for me!  "New Me" started this week.  Guess who makes more money, her or me?  Her of course!  I noticed that she doesn't have stock options, so my guess is that she turned down equity in favor of more cash - and that is something that I can respect.

I'm not crying because in addition to the extra hours that I've squeezed out of the old jobby job the timing worked out so that I met vesting dates for both the old equity plan and the new one.  In English that means another $7k in cash next year plus more stock that either will or won't be worth more down the road.  It's nice work if you can get it.

That's a wrap for now!  The bloggy blogging might continue to be irregular until the old job wraps up but I'm here and plugging away the best that I can.

Dawg folks - how does your dog do with fireworks?  Does anyone else out there have a pet who eats tofu?