robglazebrook.com

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.

Words cannot describe this video. Alas, you’re stuck watching it.

My workBud Jeremy seems to think that this is an example of what makes the Internet a less-than-useful place. I disagree. This video is an example of what makes the Internet a wonderful, utterly useful place. I mean, just think — twenty years ago, before the Webbernets came about, the people in this video are the sort who probably would have exhausted their obviously excessive pent-up energies smashing mailboxes with baseball bats, torturing small animals with sticks, or lighting their farts on fire (all to impress The Ladies, of course). Or… well, whatever the Japanese versions of these national pastimes would be. I’m sure face painting, garish typography and used women’s underwear would come into play there somewhere.

But look! Instead of all that, these misguided chums can simply funnel their otherwise plausibly destructive energy into song, dance and rudimentary video editing. This way, the only thing they’re really destroying is my afternoon productivity. And I’d rather lose that than my mailbox any day.

So I was filling up my water bottle in the break room at work a few days ago, and as I was walking back to my cubicle I saw something odd: a brown paper grocery bag, sitting in an otherwise empty plastic garbage can, filled to the brim with fresh fruit. After a few moment’s contemplation, I figured that this must be the company’s leftover fruit for the week.

See, August Home has fruit bowls scattered throughout the offices that they keep filled with fresh fruit for their employees. They refill the bowls on Monday and Wednesday mornings. I’d made it a habit recently to grab any extra bananas on my way out of the office on Friday evenings, since I’m usually one of the last to leave on Fridays and the fruit was just going to be tossed anyway. I’d take the bananas home and freeze them so I could make banana bread, or muffins or something in the future. But recently, someone had been emptying the bowl before I could get to it. I assumed it was another enterprising fellow (or fellette) looking to score some quick fruit fixin’s. But as I had just discovered, someone was simply tossing them out earlier in the day than usual.

So here it was, Friday afternoon, and I was faced with a bag full of fruit. And right on top was a nice bunch of bananas, five in all, looking entirely untouched and slightly overripe (perfect for banana bread!). I resolved to check back at the end of the day, just to make sure someone else hadn’t just put them there for saving. If not, they were mine.

At 5 o’clock I headed back to the break room. Score! The bag was still sitting there. I grabbed the bunch of bananas off the top, collected my things at my desk, and walked happily out the door…

…and nearly walked straight into my boss (Brian) and the CEO of the company (Don) having a conversation in the entryway. They both glanced my way, Don told me to get a haircut (a running joke between us), and they went back to their conversation. A second later, they both did a double-take when they realized I was carrying an armful of fruit out of the building. Don was giving me a bit of a quizzical look.

I decided this might look a little bad. I mean, it wasn’t really stealing if someone had already disposed of them, was it? But they didn’t know that. For all they knew, I grabbed these out of the fruit bowl and hoarded them all week or something. I didn’t want them to think of me as a thief, fruit-based or otherwise. So I decided to set things right.

“I got these out of the garbage!” I exclaimed excitedly, holding the bananas high.

Don’s quizzical look intensified. Brian started to look a little concerned, too.

“Err… they’re left over. Someone threw them out. I’m not stealing them or anything.”

Don nodded slowly.

“I’m taking them home. To freeze them.”

“Oh, for banana bread!” Brian said. Bless his heart.

I quickly agreed with Brian, we exchanged brief banana bread-based pleasantries, and I scurried off to my car. I later heard that after I left, Don turned to back Brian and said, “Yeah, he works in IT, all right.”

I’m simply thankful I work in a small enough company that this was neither my first nor my last interaction with the CEO. A good first impression this would not have made.

I would like to take a moment and recognize the occurrence of something truly special: For the first time in a decade, since I first got my driver’s license, all of my demographic information is correct at the same time!

When I first got my license back in 1997, most of the information was accurate: my address was correct and my height was as close as it was going to get (I’m 5′ 10.5″, but do you figure they let you do half-inches? Nope!)… but I may have fibbed a little bit on my weight. I listed myself, that first time, as being 220 pounds. In reality, I was a lot closer to 250. Heh.

Fast-forward to 1999 when I turned 18 and needed to renew. I had just moved to Des Moines a couple of months prior and was living with my grandparents. My mom — who had just moved (along with the rest of the family) to another area of Des Moines herself — took me to the DMV to renew my license, and there I had a bit of a quagmire to work through: I was only going to be living with my grandparents for another month until I headed off to college. But I didn’t know my college address yet. My compromise was to list my parent’s address as my own, despite the fact I’d never lived there. I also bumped my weight up to 250, even though at the time I was already pushing 275.

Then came college and the Great Weight Loss of Whatever Year I Did That. By the time I was 22, it was time to renew again. I listed my new weight at 180, which was actually pretty close to accurate. However, we were only a few months away from graduation, and I had no clue as to what my address would be after that. So I left my parent’s address on my license. I’d still never stayed in the house for longer than 24 hours at a time, but I had no idea what else to list.

Skip ahead to October of 2006, and lo and behold, my parents decided to move and I bought their old house. For the first time since I was 18, my address on my license was finally correct! Unfortunately, two years of grad school and a few months of a new, sedentary job had pushed my weight back up to around 205. So close!

And then there was today. I was exactly 180 pounds when I weighed myself this morning. More importantly, I haven’t moved, shrank, or changed my eye color or gender in the last ten months. My license is accurate! This calls for a celebration, surely.

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?