LaughAtlantis

Or rather, so I begin. Blogathon 2006, 24 hours of blogging my little heart out in the hopes of making some money for charity, at the price of sleep. It's hard to know just exactly how to kick off this thing. It puts a hell of a lot of pressure on this morning's first post. I guess I should first note that if you donate five dollars or more, you can email me (joy@laughatlantis.com) and give me a suggestion for something to write about. It can be anything: a random word, a song lyric, a top ten list, a pet peeve, an interesting quote, anything. I will use it as inspiration to write. And come on, it's five dollars. You know you have five dollars lying around. Check your penny jar.

All right, I think I will lay out my goals for the day, just to see what I can accomplish in a 24-hour span. I want to clean my office, top to bottom. Currently I have four almost empty bookcases and perhaps two hundred books on the floor. My last reorganization attempt was somewhat of a disaster. I want to clean the spare bedroom a bit. From a convenience standpoint, the Blogathon isn't at a good time right now. My husband's friend Noel is coming from Ireland and he is staying with us for two nights. Luckily, Noel knows just how big a slob Rod is, so he probably won't be surprised by our less-than-immaculate house. Of course, Noel being here means that I will have to shower and get dressed at some point. This seems like a small point, but don't you think it would be comfier to sit around in pajamas for 24 hours? Anyway, I also want to do some laundry - okay, a LOT of laundry. And I want to pinpoint some exact things that I want to see/do while I'm in Scotland next month. (Suggestions are welcome.)

My phone has just rung. My good friends Jenney and TC were checking up on me. They - and I, for that matter - thought this thing started at eight. Chatting with them has made me send this entry six minutes late. Clearly I am destined for failure and it's all their fault.

See you in a half hour.

When you were little, one of the the coolest things you could with a quarter was to buy stuff out of the supermarket vending machines - the crappy little things that are on the way out of most supermarkets. Most of it was candy - you had gumballs, off-brand Good 'n' Plentys, stale M&Ms, etc. There were also the bubble-shaped containers that had crappy prizes inside - key chains, generic Silly Putty, random ugly stickers, the occcasional troll doll, etc.

But the coolest thing you could get from a vending machine was the Superball. Superballs are made of some sort of plastic rubber-y material and if you drop them, they will bounce nearly as high as where you dropped them from - and if you slammed them down, they would bounce way back up to ridiculous heights before falling and inevitably hitting your dog or little sister in the face - hypothetically speaking, of course.

Eventually, little kids get sick of Superballs. The best way to get rid of a Superball is to bounce it so high that it lands in your neighbor's yard, and you don't have to worry about it ever again.

Of course, two weeks later you'll start to miss it and have to beg your parents for a quarter the next time you're in a grocery store. And with any luck, that Superball machine will be empty and you'll be forced to get that stale candy shaped like fruit. Blech.

My husband often buys TV shows on DVD. For drama, I can see where that makes sense. You want to be able to see the story arc from one show to the next. After all, you don't want to catch just some random repeat of Lost on television, not knowing where you are in the adventures of life on the island. And if you catch a repeat of X-Files that's beyond season two, you're pretty much screwed.

But Rod has every episode of Friends on DVD. I don't get that. With comedies, it's pretty easy to just tune into any given repeat and say, "Oh. Rachel and Ross are dating," or "Oh. Cousin Oliver is already living with the family," thus making it pretty easy to tell where you are relative to the whole damn series. You can watch them individually without a care in the world as to what comes up in the next episode or the one before. And the likelihood that you are going to suddenly wake up in the middle of the night saying, "Ooh! I want to see the episode where Mr. Furley becomes the new landlord!" seems slim.

I don't know. For me, it just seems easiest to tell your TiVo to record some random stuff and hope that a repeat of Night Court or Suddenly Susan will pop up at some point. I'm certainly not going to spend good money on those.

All that said, I own Taxi, Freaks and Geeks, 21 Jump Street, That 70s Show, Homicide, and several seasons of both Angel and Buffy all on DVD. Do as I say! Not as I do!

Well,this is post number four. I really want some breakfast and I think that walking around the house might inspire me for post number 5. In the meantime, let me update you on my last several posts.

1.) I am still blaming TC & Jenney for being behind. Bastards.

2,) Superballs are apparently made of synthetic rubber polymer polybutadiene vulcanized with sulfur. This is a substance that is used not only in the making of Superballs, but also in the illegal baseball practice of corking bats.

3.) Suddenly Susan is not out on DVD. My heart weeps.

4.) Night Court, however, IS out on DVD. I am now having flashbacks to the judge's love of Mel Torme and Brent Spiner's recurring character of the redneck family father with his oodles of children. Not that I'm buying the darn series - I'm just giving it a big thumbs-up on the TiVo and hoping it shows up as a suggestion sometime.

5.) If I ever feel the need to watch Mork & Mindy, ALF, Green Acres, or Welcome Back, Kotter, I can do it on DVD. Um... yippee?

I went downstairs and started to make myself a bowl of cereal when I noticed that I still had brie and some nice bread from earlier this week. I love bread and brie. Occasionally I will get some bread and brie and grapes and I'll sit outside and pretend to be French.

When Rod & I were in Paris last year, we sat in the Luxembourg gardens and ate bread from a local bakery and brie from a fromagerie. Sadly, the brie in Paris was nasty. It was like brie mixed with gorgonzola and spiced up with some lovely toe jam.

Rod and I soon turned to bread and Nutella. You can't go wrong with chocolate hazelnut spread.

Every hour, the people who are running the Blogathon do some games. I though I would participate in this one, because I think it's fun. The task is to go to Google. Put in "Your name is" and post the results.

Here are mine:

Laughatlantis is a bad beat in poker
{Pounding) LaughAtlantis is like throwing a hotdog down a hallway
LaughAtlantis is doing things with these people
LaughAtlantis is visiting 31 places
LaughAtlantis is offline

Those first two are on the same page of a message board where improvisers are one-up-ing each other's insults. There are several more fun ones on that page, but none of them showed up in the search. Poop.

So, this whole Blogathon experience, for me, is about about both a personal challenge and an opportunity to raise some money for a really good cause: buying books for children.Thus, I think it's only right to give you a look into what have been some seminal books for me. So over the next three posts I will give you the top five books I've read this year (and why), top five of my childhood (and why), and top ten of my life (and - you guessed it - why). That should take me through to 2:00 and give me the chance to go take a shower too.

I was wrong. I've got 11 books from childhood (plus three series), 8 from this year (when, from my own admission, I've read a lot of crap) and a top five all-time that realistically could spread into a top fifty if I really wanted to make it do so. Poop, poop, poop. Now I am WAY behind. And I really need a shower.

Okay, quick quick, and I will give reasons a little later...
Top five from childhood (which, by the way, I wish I had separated out into smaller, more manageable age-appropriate groups)
5) Bread and Jam for Frances (series) - Lillian and Russell Hoban
4) From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler - EL Konigsburg
3.) The All-of-a-Kind Family (series) - Sidney Taylor
2.) The Westing Game - Ellen Raskin
1.) Danny, The Champion of the World (with its original illustrations, none of this Quentin Ellis crap)

Shout-outs to:
What If They Knew? - Patricia Hermes
Trixie Belden series - Carolyn Keene/Kathlryn Kenny
A Cricket in Times Square - George Selden
The Burg-O-Rama Man - Stephen Tchudi
The Hundred Dresses - Eleanor Estes
Island of the Blue Dolphins - Scott O'Dell
Where the Sidewalk Ends - Shel Silverstein
Lisa and the Grompet - Patricia Coombs
The Trumpet of the Swan - EB White

Gaaaaaaaaaaaahh! SO behind!!!

I just looked at the blog entries that some other people are putting up for this here 'thon thingy, and some of them are SHORT. So I'm going to take this opportunity, while I find myself falling woefully far behind, to give you my quick list of good books for this year, with no explanation whatsoever, and no shout-outs to other books either.. HA!

5.) Burning the Map - Laura Caldwell
4.) The Girl in Hyacinth Blue - Susan Vreelund
3.) To Say Nothing of the Dog - Connie WIllis
2.) The Day I Turned Uncool - Dan Zevin
1.) Marley & Me - John Grogan

Rod informed me that book lists are no fun without reasons. I hate it when he's right. Thus, here's why I loved these books when I was a kid....

5.) Bread and Jam for Frances (series) - Lillian and Russell Hoban... This is an illustrated series for kids perhaps 4-6 or thereabouts. Frances was a little badger who would only eat one thing: bread and jam. (In the course of the series, I seem to remember she also got a baby sister, had a birthday, found a best friend, and occasionally went to bed without fear of evil monsters in the form of a pile of laundry.) Frances was headstrong and forthright and had a wonderful imagination and strong opinions. And I can still remember my mom reading me the Frances books, making the stubborn Frances voice. It's memories like THAT which have inspired me to do the blogathon for this charity.

4.) From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E.Frankweiler - EL Konigsburg... A brother and sister run away from home and live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I loved the pictures of them washing their socks in the fountain and digging pennies out of the wishing well there in order to buy lunches. And I loved that that their running away led them to a mystery that they could solve, and was not just an escape from thir parents.

3.) The All-of-a-Kind Family (series) - Sydney Taylor... This was a five-book series about a family of young Jewish girls in New York during the first world war. Simply put, I loved every character in those books. The dad was big and gruff and patient, the mother was warm and inviting, and each of the girls - Ella, Henny, Sarah, Charlotte, Gert (and finally, little brother Charlie) had distinct and wonderful personalities. These books took me to another time, taught me a lot, and touched me deeply.

2.) The Westing Game - Ellen Raskin... I loved loved loved this book. It was a mystery of sorts for early teenagers. A bunch of families were brought together to live in this new apartment complex, then brought to the reading of a will for a man that most of them had little to no connection to. They were all paired off in a special game that was meant to reveal the murderer of the dead man, Mr. Westing. The reader got to see all the clues, got to see how everyone interpreted them, and got to try to fugre out the mystery for themselves. I remember reading it back to back when I first took it out of the library - once just to read it, then again to see whow all the cluesfit in, now that I knew who the murderer was.

And last but not least, Danny, The Champion of the World... in the next entry!

A lot of people cite 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' as one of their favorite books from childhood. While I agree that it's a fabulous book, I prefer one of Roald Dahl's far lesser-known books. 'Danny, the Champion of the World' tells the story of a little boy who lives with his father at the edge of a woods where rich people go to shoot pheasants. The owner of the land is threatening both Danny and his father and something must be done to deal with him. Ultimately Danny and his dad come up with a brilliant plan to basically steal all the birds from the woods on the night before the bad guy is having a big hunting event, so that he will be humiliated. The plan is incredibly creative and convoluted and just plain wonderful.

Personally, I hate the Quentin Blake illustrations that accompany most Roald Dahl books published today. That is especially true of 'Danny.' There is magic in the original pictures - of little Danny behind the wheel of an Aston Martin late at night, of his father in poacher's clothes on the edge of the woods, of a woman running down the street with her baby perched atop a baby carriage filled with pheasants that are just waking up from a groggy drugged sleep... I have gone out and bought copies of those original books off eBay and half.com to give to friends, just because I think that the book is not the same without them. If you have a chance, go out and get this book. It's wonderful. Just... magical.

Okay, here are quick encapsulations of the great qualities in this year's books...

5.) Burning the Map - Laura Caldwell - This is chick lit with characters that are not just out to find a guy or go shoe shopping; this is chick lit where the characters are still trying to define themselves. The main character here is sensitive and real. Good stuff.

4.) The Girl in Hyacinth Blue - Susan Vreelund... This is historical fiction along the lines of Tracy Chevalier's books - taking inspiration from a work of art and building a story about it. This book fictionalizes the provenance of a Vermeer painting, with a short piece about everyone that the painting touches along its journey from conception to current day.

3.) To Say Nothing of the Dog - Connie WIllis... I am not much of a sci fi fan anymore - I used to love it but it's not my thing anymore - but this was a wonderful book, combining sci-fi and historical fiction in a time-travelling tale where the people from the future are comicly struggling to stay in character and in proper time while at the same time trying to make sure that they don't change history enough to negate their present. Very fun.

2.) The Day I Turned Uncool - Dan Zevin... The subtitle of this book is 'Confessions of a Reluctant Grown-up,' which is quite telling. It's non-fiction about getting older - that is, graduating from your mid-twenties into your mid-thirties. At my age (33) this was an ideal read.
It's an extremely funny (yet frightfully true) book.

1.) Marley & Me - John Grogan.. I started this book one morning on the bus and had to keep covering my mouth, I was giggling so loudly. I finished it on the train home at night, and I was hunched in the corner, trying to make sure nobody saw me crying. This is a book for anyone who loves dogs, has a dog, has ever met a dog, whatever. It's a wonderful book.

And now I think I am caught up, time-wise, and thus I can go take a shower! See you in a half hour!

I was going to go have a shower, really I was. I just figured, "Hey, we have a houseguest coming in this afternoon, why don't I clean the toilets before I shower? It makes more sense than showering first and cleaning them after, right?"

But then I thought, "I should air out the spare bedroom," because the dog often sleeps in there. So I grabbed the sheets off the futon, realizing that the place should probably be Febrezed before I replaced the bedding.

Then I looked around, realized that there was some stuff in there that I should probably stick in the closet, some other stuff that needed to go up against the wall... all sorts of little crap. And this whole time, my husband (whose friend it is that's arriving this afternoon) keeps calling out, "Joy! Fourteen minutes til your next post!... Eight minutes to your next post!"

He's a peach, my husband.

Did I mention that all of that added up to me not taking a shower yet?

I took a shower! I'm clean! I smell good again!!

I'm naked!

Holy inappropriate, Batman. I'm going to get dressed and come back when I have at least enough clothes on to make it comfortable for me to sit on my computer chair without sticking.

Erm... this is about quantity of posts, not quality, right?

Next post will be delayed a bit. Dog just puked. Husband just left the house. The two events are supposedly unrelated.

I can't take too long here right now so, to quote Inigo Montoya, "Let me 'splain... No, there is too much. Let me sum up."

My home office is on the third floor. I walked downstairs and into my bedroom where my dog was sitting at the foot of the bed making That Sound. You know That Sound. It's the gurling, wet, churning sound that can mean only one thing: the dog is gonna hurl. And lo, he did. A lot.

Remember in my first post when I said that I had certain goals for the day, and one of them was laundry. Well, I've started on that one now. I'm thinking that the other ones may be just unfulfilled dreams.

I'll be back.

I'm down by two entries. Here's my "official 4:30 entry." I should actually look into whether I can actually backtrack and make up these entries, claiming extenuating circumstances, or if I should now chalk this up to experience and walk away while I still can. Yellowish-green dog puke on light blue and maroon sheets would count as extenuating circumstances, wouldn't it?

I had to clean up more puke and make sure the dog was okay. Apparently Dentabones don't digest as easily as one would hope. He went outside, puked some more and then went apeshit because there was something in the next door neighbor's yard. Could've been a moth, bird, a squirrel, a giant man-eating monkey, who knows? Bacon will bark at anything, given the chance. He likes to pretend he's an alpha dog. He is so not. Two weeks ago we went to a basset hound rescue event that was themed "Bassets on Safari." Bacon is somewhat small for a male basset and he's been neutered, so he doesn't give off that my-ears-longer-than-your-ears attitude. As such, Bacon was humped. Extensively. And frequently. Not surprisingly, he didn't enjoy the experience.

And so, he barks at anything he feels like barking at. If only he would bark out an "I'm going to puke now" warning... I would appreciate that.

I'm an hour behind, but I shall forge on, damn it all!

My husband's friend Noel has arrived from Ireland and I have been subtly trying to convince them that they really want to order food in before they go out drinking. So I have been saying things like, "if you're going to order something, let me know... and if not, keep me posted..." and then I wander back through the room, saying "Yup, just tell me if you decide you're going out or whatever." But I never let on that I'm hungry, but I really am, you see. Really, really hungry. And I would be thrilled to get some Chinese food. I don't want to order food by myself, because you can get extra food free if you spend a certain amount, and I am a cheapskate and I like the opportunity to get something free. If maybe Chinese didn't appeal to them, I'd be happy to order stuff from Dining In if there was something that Noel and Rod were particularly interested in eating. But no, they don't seem to have any interest in food, the bastards. Hmm, I wonder how I can make my hunger more obvious to them, while not being too pushy. .

You don't suppose they'll happen to read this post on the laptop in the living room where they are hanging out now, do you?

It's time, I think, to address one of the sponsor-provided inputs. Pistachios. Thanks to the lovely Monica for providing me with this inspiration. Two stories have popped into my brain that I want to share. Thus, here we have ...

Pistachios: The Trickery!

This is my recollection, which may not be the best, but here it is, as I remember it.

When my great-aunt was alive, she used to make this wonderful pistachio cake from scratch. It was so damn good. Even I ate it, and I thought pistachios - and all things pistachio-related - were fairly vile. It was moist and delicious and superb. I can remember my mom asking her about it, what the recipe was, and there was never any clear-cut answer that I knew of.

After she died, my mom found the recipe. Apparently, it was "Betty Crocker Cake Mix" + "Jello Pistachio Pudding Mix" = "Homemade Pistachio Cake."

And now LaughAtlantis is proud to present part two of A Series for Monica...

Pistachios: The Idiocy!
(starring pistachios as pistachios and Joy Begbie as the idiot)

Last year I wanted to do something kinda cool for Easter. I asked some people over and I made some food and we had a pseudo-Easter-y event. One of the things I made was a special appetizer that I got, I think, from a Todd English cookbook. It was grapes wrapped in a layer of blue cheese/cream cheese mixture then rolled in pistachio pieces. So I started a day ahead of time shelling the pistachios and chopping them. You have no idea how hard it is to chop pistachios until you've done it. They squirm and wriggle and don't want to stay under the knife. But I kept plugging away because the recipe sounded awesome. The combination of flavors! Of textures! Tasty goodness!

So I worked and worked, slicing pistachios over and over again. I cut my fingers. Pistachios are really very hard and you have to put a lot of pressure on the knife, so my hand hurt and I was just generally miserable. I finally finished my huge pistachios and was ready to go to bed, knowing that I could do the cheese-and-grape rolling tomorrow. My hand ached too much to do it then. I looked at the recipe, hoowever, and it said I should refrigerate it overnight, so I rolled all those damned grapes in cheese misture and pistachio mixture. It was late and I was really miserable at that point. Just miserable beyond belief. My hands hurt so much.

And then, in the process of cleaning up the kitchen, my eyes came upon... a rolling pin. A rolling pin! All I'd really had to do with the friggin' pistachios was put them in a plastic bag and roll them until they were crushed. That's all. Just that. A rolling pin. No fuss, no muss... just roll.

I had fought the pistachios, fought hard, and I'd won... but the pistachios had the last laugh. Damned pistachios.

I shake my fist at the sky!

(Crap, there might be pistachios up there. I'll put it down now.)

Regarding my "5:00" entry... Rod came up the stairs aa little while ago and I was sure that he'd come up to tell me that he and Noel were happy to order Chinese with me, for I was lovely and good and sweet and wonderful and clearly hungry. But no. They were leaving to drink. And so, I am alone, Chinese food-less, sitting at my computer desk sobbing and watching the tears roll onto the keyboard as I softly whisper "Peking ravioli" over and over again...

Ah, melodrama. How I love you.

I'm caught up! That last entry was actually the 7:00 entry and I put it up at 7:08! Woohoo! Go me!! I KICK ASS!

Crap. Now I have 16 minutes before my next entry is due and I've wasted precious seconds telling you how up-to-date I am. Gah, I am dumb sometimes.

Now that the guys have left, I get to do something that I couldn't do while they were here - something ... fun.

Get your mind out of the gutter!

While they're out, I can listen to iTunes and belt out songs. Loudly.

Now, I'm a pretty good singer. Not great by any means, but quite solid. I've been in shows where I have gotten up on a stage and sung - and I've been paid to do so at times. I even got to sing (a duet with my lovely friend TC) over the credits of a short film (produced by my lovely friend Ilene).

But let's face it. There are certain songs that I want to sing, but I frankly don't want people to hear me doing it. There are certain guilty pleasure songs that I don't want people to even know that I know all the lyrics to. Hall and Oates. Kenny Rogers. REO Speedwagon. Random maudlin songs from the 50s and early 60s. All the big numbers from the Sister Act movies.

I am currently kicking ass singing the Howard Jones classic. "No One Is to Blame." I'm doing it justice quite nicely.

Just... don't tell anyone.

I was just wandering through some other people's blogs. I am approaching the halfway point now, but there are folks out there who are almost done - with the drooled-upon keyboards to prove it!

There are a lot of people who came up with cool stuff to do while blogging. I've seen people sewing, running trivia quizzes and scavenger hunts, going out and taking pictures... all sorts of things. Maybe next year I will do something like that... once I figure out if I can make it through twenty-four hours remaining lucid the whole time. Some of the other bloggers have been creative and productive with things outside of just their blog.

But they don't have dog puke now, do they?? No! I'm SPECIAL!

I really did sort of drift off there... not in a sleepy sense, but in the sense that I got so caught up in checking out other people's blogs (and singing loudly) that my mind kind of lost the fact that I have another blog entry to post. I am at a bit of an ebb as far as fun thoughts are concerned, but I don't want to go to my sponsor inputs yet (still to come: Barry Manilow! Sesame Street! Pornospactolotogy! And MORE!) because I think they will come in handy at three in the morning. So right now, I am sort of at a loss.

Inspiration, desperation, inspiration... looking around my room... okay!

On my floor (remember how I said I was going to reorganize? Yeah, Not so much.) there is a book called Bucket Nut. I haven't read it - I probably won't; I got it in a book lot off eBay. But the title brings me to my dog. About two weeks ago, Bacongot skunked. He's been skunked before but in the past we've dealt with it in our downstairs bathroom. The house winds up smelling strongly of skunk and it's pretty bad overall. So this time we took a new approach and handled the deskunking outside. Rod and I both got down on our knees and rubbed Nature's Miracle (that's the name of the deskunking solution) all over the Bacon Dogg. Rod usually sits back and takes pictures of the dog looking sad when he gets deskunked, and leaves me to do the work. But this time he helped! Shocker!

Anyway, we got the soapy stuff all over Bacon and needed to rinse him. Personally, I thought we'd be best off using the hose, but Rod didn't want to walk around to the side of the house where the hose was. "It's dark!" Ooooooookay. So instead, he went inside and filled a bucket with warm water which he then threw - not poured over, but threw - at the dog. He just splashed the water somewhat in the region of the dog. Since I was holding the dog at the time, you might imagine that I got a little wet. The dog got away from me a bit and just slunk around the deck while Rod tried to throw more water at him.

Unsurprisingly, the dog now fears the bucket. Too funny.

We have reached the halfway point and I didn't even notice! Here are some random updates on my day and insights fhat I've had about next year's experience.

- Having some sort of shtick is probably a good thing. I'm looking forward to writing about Minnesota, recycling, and why I love wearing tartan later in the evening. (Just think! You could donate five dollars and suggest something for me to write about! ANYTHING!)

- Having your dog puke is not a good thing. It puts a crimp in your blogging momentum and you wind up having to do a lot of laundry - and backtracking. Actually, having your dog puke is just a bad idea in general.

- Goals are just that: goals. Don't actually expect to get anything done. If you do, cool. If not, that's okay You still spent 24 hours doing something very cool!

- It's a bad idea to have caffeinated soda for the first time in several months. It gives you the shakes, which makes it very difficult to type. Not to mention (and frankly, I probably shouldn't mention this, as it's kinda gross) it gives you gas pains. Ick.

- Come to the conclusion that some people just won't listen. My husband never did get me Chinese food. My dog never did clean up his own puke. And people have actually recommended coming here, armed with the knowledge that I could be sitting here shrieking out the lyrics to Huey Lewis tunes!! If I was taping myself, you'd all be cringing right now.

Or maybe you'd be singing along to "I Want A New Drug" - one thing or the other.

My blogathon monitor just came by in the previous post's comments and "gave" me cake. Now I want cake. I really want cake. I have been jonesing for carrot cake for weeks now but I am trying to lose weight, so that is most definitely out of the question. (The frosting on a piece of carrot cake has approximately 8 kajillion calories in it.)

Down in my kitchen, however, I think that there are bowls of cake, those litle microwaveable bo...

Sorry. 'Golden Years' just came up on the iTunes. Must dance now.

I have a bowl of cake in front of me, a cop of milk and a glass of water for after. I have danced to several Songs That Shall Not Be Named. I have been dancing like a lunatic. I was doing some sort of flailing motion when I looked out my window and realized that the people who live directly in back of me are having some sort of barbecue and are still out in their yard. Not embarrassing at all, really. I went downstairs and made myself a bowl of cake, and have returned to some slightly more mellow music. I now have a basset hound by my side and, though I know he is only there because he thinks that I might give him some cake, that makes me awfully happy.

Life is good.