Having a 90-pound dog is like owning a clumsy bully that you can't retaliate against. It's like giving commands in Norwegian to a deaf Japanese toddler, like having an elephant who is scared of mice, like having an energetic and curious 2-year-old giant who doesn't know how big he is.

Now I understand why one of the women at the rescue place wished us luck when we took him home the first day.

I took my car in the other day for a routine oil change, and asked the guys to have a look at my accelerator because it has been sticking lately. When I went back to pick up my car, I got an invoice listing what all they had done to it. There was a note that they had checked the "exellorator" but had found nothing wrong. I think I'll leave it at that.

I was reading the latest issue of Money magazine the other day and I came across an article about the merits of mixed breed dogs. Not mutts, mind you. No, these dogs are carefully bred from two purebreds to create one dog that embodies all the good things about its parents. I give you, for example, the Golden Doodle. I'm not making this up, I swear. A mix between a Golden Retriever and a Poodle, the Golden Doodle is an improvement over its progenitors, as it is more relaxed than a Poodle but has better hips than a Golden Retriever. Oh, and it's hypoallergenic. Not a fan of the Poodle? Don't want a dog with "doodle" in its name? No problem! There is a veritable slew of new mixed breeds on today's market from which the discerning owner-to-be can choose. The Puggle (Pug + Beagle), for example, both boasts a better respiratory system AND is more limber than your average Pug. A word to the wise, however: Don't expect to pick one of these up for free out of a box in your neighbor's yard; these "new mutts" will run you anywhere from $500 to $2500.

Confession: I have been reluctant to discuss our cats on this blog because it would mean admitting to the world at large exactly how many cats we have. It's not that we have a house-load or anything. You're not going to see us on the news for having a hundred cats that we can't take care of. It's just that, by having the number of cats that we do (see, I avoided it again!), we are inching towards-- if not well into-- that realm of "cat people." You know who I'm talking about. People who have Christmas cards printed up, with pictures of themselves and their nine cats around them. People who take their cats to the drive-through at McDonalds. People who tell stories-- LOTS of stories-- about their cats. Those are cat people. So, I've been reluctant to discuss our cats on this blog. However (comma), now that Luke is in the picture (click here), our cats may at some point crop up in conversation. So I'll say it: we have three cats. Edgar, Amos, and Lydia. Try not to whisper to one another behind our backs.

After years of wanting a dog, John and I finally bit the bullet and got one. This is Luke. He's a 1.5 year old Lab/Rhodesian Ridgeback mix. The cats are still unsure of him (they seem to want to attack him), so I think progress will be slow in that department. Otherwise he is happy and healthy and fitting in well.

This just in from the AP:

NEW SMYRNA BEACH, Fla. - Police are on the lookout for the naked tickler. Investigators said they believe one man could be responsible for a series of bizarre break-ins in which a naked man enters victims' rooms while they are sleeping and tries to tickle their feet. The naked tickler struck again in New Smyrna Beach over the weekend. Investigators have been working on five similar, unsolved cases since 2001. Most of the victims are women over age 60, said police Cmdr. Wade Kirby. Kirby said no arrests have yet been made because they don't have a lot to go on. New Smyrna Beach is 44 miles northeast of Orlando.

Things that I will never get used to about living south of the Mason-Dixon line:

1. "Sweet tea." Not tea with sweetener, no. Sweet tea. It's an entirely different animal.
2. The flexibility with which people interpret traffic laws. And it's NOT just because there are lots of old people down here!
3. Church signs and other religiously-based advertising. The sign in front of the church up the road has been a constant source of mirth for John and me, providing such gems as "If you're too open-minded, your brains will fall out." And the other day we saw a sign for a lawn service, which read "Cuttin' sod while servin' God."
4. The fact that they actually call Northerners "Yankees."
5. Barking tree frogs.
6. Boiled peanuts and other Southern cuisine.

Saturday morning, as promised, my copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince arrived from Amazon. I started reading the first chapter, but soon found that I was completely lost and had to go back and re-read the previous book, which I did on Sunday afternoon. Sunday evening, I turned my attention back to the Half-Blood Prince and was so completely gripped by the story that I couldn't put it down until early this morning, when I finished it. Now I find myself, having devoured yet another book, with no one to talk to about it! John is finishing the last two books in the Narnia series, and won't get to Harry Potter for a while. Kim, fellow Harry fan, hasn't gotten her copy yet. So, if anyone out there has finished the Half-Blood Prince, drop me a line. In the meantime, I will eagerly await the final year at Hogwarts.

When John and I were in Berkeley visiting a friend, the three of us grabbed a bite to eat at the Slurp Noodle House on Telegraph Road. We sat in the window so we could people-watch (because, really, where is there a better place to do that than in Berkeley?). There was a young couple sitting on the sidewalk in front of us, with their dog. Our friend had to step outside to take a call and shortly afterwards, the couple started rolling around together, and the guy began biting the woman on the back of her neck, vigorously. We asked our friend afterwards if he had seen the biting while he was out there, and his response was, "No, but that explains the growling I heard!"

Last night John and I spent $20 and the better part of an hour at Kinko's, sending a fax for his work. Today, after we found out that the fax hadn't actually gone through, we went to Office Depot and bought a fax machine. (Technically speaking, it's a "multipurpose" machine because it turns out that it cost the same as a fax machine but it can do much more, so we opted for the neater toy.) We reasoned that if we had to fax too many more things, it would actually save us some cash to just buy the machine ourselves. So now you can fax us something, if you like. I'd just better not see any butt cheeks coming across. You know who you are...

I've never been much of a movie-goer. I think it stems back to Star Wars, which I saw when I was a toddler. It was not the movie itself (which was great), but rather the noise that soured me on the whole movie experience. So, it takes a lot for me to decide to spend $8 and two hours of my life sitting in a dark theatre, watching a movie. This has been a source of frustration for John, who really enjoys seeing movies. But yesterday, I went to see Fantastic Four with John and a friend. It was a spur of the moment thing and, because I had no expectations at all for the movie, I couldn't be disappointed. And I found that-- while the movie itself was mildly cheezy-- I really enjoyed the movie experience. It felt good to blow off chores for a while and sit in a crowded theatre. So I think I'll make that a new Sunday tradition: to go see a movie in the afternoon, no matter what the house looks like. Good times.

I recently upgraded to Tiger, the latest version of the Macintosh operating system and I have to say, it's quite impressive. With more bells and whistles than you can shake a stick at (how many is that, anyway?), it does everything but my laundry. I now have a handy "dashboard" with "widgets" that do all kinds of things for me: my Wikipedia widget circumvents actually having to go out to the web to look something up, my dictionary/thesaurus widget saves me the trouble of picking up either in book form, and my weather widget effectively renders channel 31 (the Weather Channel) useless... unless I want to check on the latest hurricane. One new program, Automator, is supposed to automate (hence the name) many tasks that I already do in a given day. I'm hoping that I can teach it to pop up and freshen my water every once in a while!

While we were in San Francisco, I saw an ad for the "WhiteLight" tooth whitening system. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend you visit www.whitelight.com because it's extraordinarily entertaining. Basically it's a plastic, mouth-shaped "light transmitter" that you put into your mouth and turn on. The idea is that the light it emits will whiten your teeth. One user, "Michelle," notes that, "With the White Light system, it just, it makes it all possible for you to have those teeth that celebrities have." Teeth that, apparently, glow in the dark. Look at the pictures! I'm not making this up!

On our last day in San Francisco, we headed to the Palace of the Legion of Honor art museum, which is on the opposite side of the city from where our hotel is. We navigated the bus system and, after a 40 minute bus trip and a 10 minute hike up the hill, arrived at the museum. Both the bus and the walk gave us a chance to check out parts of the city we hadn't yet seen, which was really nice. The Palace is a relatively small museum, but it has some wonderful pieces. It also affords a striking view across the bay, including a view of the Golden Gate Bridge. After we finished at the museum, we took the bus back to Union Square, had lunch and did some shopping. We went to a really cool "European Character" store that had loads of Tintin stuff-- the entire series of books, t-shirts, mouse pads, greeting cards, plus two nearly-life size statues of Tintin and Snowy. If you don't know who or what Tintin is, well, you haven't really lived! We also went to Macy's (all seven floors of it). Later, at the hotel, I happened to check the messages on our machine at home, and found out that our flight tomorrow had been cancelled! So we called Delta and got on all new flights. That's all the news that's fit to print. The next post will be from Gainesville. See you then!

Today we did the ultra-touristy thing: we walked through Chinatown, hopped a cable car to Fisherman's Wharf, and walked around Ghirardelli Square. At Fisherman's Wharf, we visited with the sea lions at Pier 39, then grabbed a nice lunch. Afterwards, we checked out Ghirardelli Square and then tried to catch a cable car back up to Union Square. The lines for the cable cars were hundreds of people long, so we grabbed a cab instead. Back at Union Square, we checked out the shopping scene, had a bite to eat at a cafe, and walked through Chinatown some more. Now we're back at the hotel and completely exhausted. Tomorrow we plan to hit the art scene at the Palace of the Legion of Honor, and head to Golden Gate Park. More from SF later!

I wanted to let everyone know what we've been doing in San Francisco. Yesterday was the last day of Java One, which left John and I free to do whatever we wanted. We spent the afternoon visiting the Modern Museum of Art and then headed to our new (slightly less lavish) hotel. The hotel is right on Union Square, which is basically a huge shopping district. We checked in and then went to a nice Italian restaurant for dinner. After dinner, we walked around the area and found a nice coffeeshop to relax in for a bit. Then we headed to the hotel for the night. This morning we ate breakfast in a small cafe right in the middle of Union Square, then did some shopping and left the city to go into Oakland. John had placed an order at Sweet Maria's (www.sweetmarias.com) for some green coffee beans, so we took the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) to West Oakland and walked around until we found the place. The owner, Tom, showed us around the warehouse and packed us off with John's 8 pounds of coffee... hopefully the folks at the airport won't take us in for questioning! Afterwards we called a cab and went to IKEA, then called another cab (and waited an hour for it to show up, getting sunburned in the interim) and headed into Berkeley to visit a friend. We spent the day with him, saw the UC Berkeley campus and Telegraph Road (think Massachusetts Street in Lawrence, only more weird). We had Asian noodles from Slurp and authentic Italian gelato, then got back on the BART and came back into the city. Sorry to those whom we didn't call, but by the time we got back to the room, it was 11:30 pm in Kansas. Hope everyone is doing well, and we'll talk to you soon.