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Whew. This weekend, Amanda and I successfully hosted our first-ever dinner party. Or party of any sort in this house, actually. And although it was a lot of work, it was totally worth it.

The final and official menu turned out pretty kick arse:

• For Dinner:
  • Turkey (brined & roasted) (via Amanda and I)
  • Chive Mashed Potatoes with Turkey Gravy (Ditto)
  • Apple-Herb Stuffing (Same)
  • Green Bean Casserole (Us again)
  • Cheesy Carrot Casserole (Sara!)
  • Homemade Cranberry Sauce (Anne!)
  • Dinner Rolls (Amanda and I)
• For Beverages:
  • 5 bottles red wine (via Amanda & I, Kate, Lindsay, Megan, and Anne)
  • 2 bottles white wine (via Amanda & I and Julie)
• For Dessert:
  • Four-Layer Pumpkin Cake (Megan)
  • Pecan Pie (Hannah & Toño)
  • Apple Crumble Pie (two of ‘em) (Amanda & I)
  • Flan (Hannah & Toño)
  • Chocolate & Vanilla Cupcakes (Sara)

So, Holy Crap, in other words. We had a lot to eat. :)

We had 11 people in attendance in total, counting The Hosts with the Mosts. People started arriving around 5:30pm, we all sat down to eat shortly after 6pm, and people filtered out slowly until pretty close to 11pm.

Dinner-Related Happenings of Note:

After peeling five pounds of potatoes what for the mashing, we tried sticking the peelings down the garbage disposal. The intense vibrations from the disposal unit trying to handle the extreme overabundance of ‘tater peels actually managed to shake the drainage pipe lose from the wall, causing a small flood of extremely starchy water all over the new floor. I got the pipe reattached, though, and after a bit of plunging, it didn’t cause us any more problems.

Smaug was being his usual social self during the meal, hanging around the dinner table and playing with anyone who happened to glance his way. At one point, he got bored and jumped up onto the credenza under the window. The only problem with that was, the credenza was covered from end to end with our desserts. He realized his mistake at the very last second and managed a mid-air course correction, missing the caramel top of the delicate Flan by a quarter inch and then stepping carefully around the pies before I caught him an inch from the side of the cake. He spent the rest of the evening locked in the basement.

Miles spent the majority of the dinner outside, because he was just a little too excited by all the new people and smells. Around dessert time, we felt sorry for him, and let him in while we ate our sugary snacks. He happily galloped around the table for a while, saying hello to everyone, and then wandered off for a bit. A few minutes later, we realized that while we were stuffing our faces with cake and pie, Miles was in the kitchen finishing off the turkey left on the platter. He managed to eat a good pound and a half of turkey before anyone noticed. Luckily, I hadn’t finished carving the bird, so there was still some left for leftovers.

But other than that, things went really smoothly. We’re calling the party a success, and are hoping it turns into a yearly tradition. :) And if you would like to see my photos of the evening, you need go no further than right about here.

Amanda and I have been busy little bees these last few days. So has Miles, actually. Observe.

Amanda’s mom was in town over the weekend, so we spent a bit of time hanging out with her. However, Saturday morning/afternoon was deemed mother-daughter time, so I was stuck at home by myself. Struck by a bit of boredom-inspired productivity, I decided to clean and organize the back porch. The porch has been my impromptu storage room ever since I moved in to the house nearly a year ago. There have been boxes stacked everywhere, furniture shoved uselessly against the back wall, and random stuff my parents left strewn about. As of Saturday evening, though, it was clean and usable as, well, a back porch. Featuring seating for 8, even.

Miles was also productive during that afternoon. He used his spare time while I was occupied to learn how to jump over the back fence. He escaped the backyard four times in total. The fourth time, I had to drive around the neighborhood to find him, then wrestle him to the ground in a stranger’s yard to get a leash on him. And then I rearranged the stuff in the yard slightly to make it tougher for him to get out.

Sunday was friend Juan’s birthday, so we celebrated with a brunch at Hannah and Juan’s place. It was a delicious time – we had authentic Costa Rican breakfast cuisine, Bloody Marys, and coffee cake. Miles was kenneled, so he was generally good.

After work on Monday, Amanda and I decided to drive out to West Des Moines to go to Lowe’s and Petsmart. We picked up some sample tiles at Lowe’s to try out in the kitchen, as we’re planning on redoing the kitchen floor in the next couple of weeks. I also bought some grass seed and mulch so that I could try again for some grass in the backyard. We stocked up on pet food at Petsmart, and also got new a new toy, tag, and box of treats for Miles. I guess we were feeling generous. When we got home, we discovered that he’d gone Number Two in his kennel (which is in our bedroom) while we were gone. It was pretty nasty to clean up, as it required climbing headfirst into the kennel. I was feeling significantly less generous after that.

On Tuesday, we decided to let Miles back into the backyard in the afternoon while we were at work, since the drizzling rain was supposed to have moved off. Of course, it poured that afternoon, suggesting we’d have a soaked puppy when we got home. However, Miles was pretty dry when we got back after work, which meant he was smart for once and stayed on the porch during the rain. He must’ve gotten a little bored, though, because he chewed the arm off the wicker loveseat I had just gotten cleaned up and arranged the Saturday prior. I was fairly annoyed with him as I grabbed his water bowl and headed inside. He didn’t seem to notice, though, because he happily jumped up on me as I came in the door, sending the water bowl crashing to the floor, sending ceramic shards everywhere. My annoyance went up a notch or ten, and then a bit more when I sliced my thumb picking up the pieces. I spent the rest of the evening seeding the back yard, trying not to use my thumb. Miles spent a good portion of his evening in his kennel.

Our dog, Miles Davis Standish Wurzinger Glazebrook, tore a chunk of his own hair out early last week in an effort to get to some sort of itchy, bumpy rash-looking thing on his back. This earned me a $100 vet bill, and him a shaved area on his back, an anti-itching spray, a pill twice daily, and an Elizabethan collar. Due to futuristic look of the collar, Amanda and I took to calling him Space Dog! (do do-do!) whenever he was looking glum (which was often). He enjoyed the attention the name got him, so it cheered him up a bit. In fact, by the end of last week he was feeling so cheery that he managed to chew the arm off of Amanda’s futon despite the logistical challenge the collar presented. Amanda was understandably less impressed than Miles.

Miles’ futonic tendencies, however, did lead to an interesting discovery: if you take one cat and one large strip of duct tape, and then abruptly combine the two, the result is several minutes of quality entertainment. I was putting strips of duct tape on the futon, sticky side up, to try and teach Miles not to jump up on it. Smaug seemed pretty interested in this process, and kept sneaking up and pawing at the strips as I tried to lay them down. Struck by what I have to assume was divine inspiration, I grabbed a long stripe of tape and stuck it on his back. He immediately freaked out like I’ve never seen him before and took off running. But he couldn’t get away from the tape, which freaked him out even more, causing him to run even faster. He also kept turning around mid-sprint to try and attack the tape, which made him run into walls. It was, pardon my French, le awesome.

And how is the official duct tape experiment going, you ask? Well, twice now we’ve had to tear duct tape off the dog’s rear end. The second time, the tape was pretty well wrapped around his hind leg, and a moderate amount of hair came off with the tape, which he didn’t seem to enjoy. That’s encouraging, even if it does suggest he’s something of a slow learner. Of course, three times now I’ve walked into the living room to discover it strewn with little pieces of slobbery, chewed-up duct tape. I don’t know if he’s tearing it off himself and chewing it up, or just eliminating the booby-traps before he gets on the futon, but the resultant mess is the same. As with most of our dog-related experiments, I think he’s winning so far.

Our dog, Miles Davis Standish Wurzinger Glazebrook as he’s called when he’s in trouble, or just Miles on rarer occassion, is a connoisseur of life. At least that’s the term I’ve decided to use, because Amanda shoots down a lot of terms that I like to try and apply to our dog (“stupid,” “smelly,” and “imminently replaceable,” to name a few). She’s picky about the naming of things sometimes.

“It’s called a kennel, Rob. You can call it a kennel, or even a den.”
“Whatever. Go to jail, Miles! Go to puppy jail!”

So what makes Miles such a little connoisseur of life? Well, he likes to try things. As in, he likes to try eating them. And he usually succeeds. That makes him a connoisseur in my book. But he doesn’t really limit his intake to things people would normally consider edible, and therefore, I’m going to call him a life-eater or life-destroyer… except I’m probably not allowed to use those phrases. So we go with the connie-one.

Here’s a brief list of things Miles has eaten in the last month or two:

• One of Amanda’s sandals (left foot white)
• Another one of Amanda’s sandals (left foot blue… twister time!)
• My only pair of slippers (both feet, he must’ve been hungry)
• The tags off Amanda’s comforter
• 20-some-odd pieces of junk mail
• Amanda’s proof of car insurance (not junk mail)
• Pan’s Labyrinth from Netflix (I had to buy it, and hadn’t even seen it)
• Speaker for the Dead, with which I was 1/2 finished
• Amanda’s car insurance bill
• All the wicker off the legs of our wicker outdoor furniture
• A spool of gardening twine
• Three or four stuffed animals
• The screen door leading to the porch
• My laptop’s power adapter
• Two mice found in the yard
• More cat food than the cats have consumed
• Most of our recycling from week to week
• A basket of pool toys he found under the porch
• His obedience training clicker (obviously wasn’t needed)

We’ve taken some steps to try and curb his appetite. We leave him on the porch during the day (with access to the outside), which helps with the indoor stuff. We jail (kennel, sorry) him at night. We have a baby gate across the basement stairs to keep him out of the cat food. The next step? We’re considering placing everything worth more than fifty cents at least six feet off the ground and buying Amanda a step ladder. Our biggest concern? Really, how long can we expect that step ladder to last?