Blog Number 243

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Somehow (and I don't know how), our dog has begun to join me on my morning walk.  I try to get up around 5 AM and have a route in the neighborhood that I travel around x amount of times (x, for those of you who forget algebra, is an unknown number).  The x depends on several factors but mostly revolves around the weather conditions (especially the wind as I am not a big fan of wind, I think it goes back to my younger days when I had much longer hair).  Anyway, someone (specifically the wife) suggested (this is a code word for "do it, there will be no discussion on this matter") that I take the dog each morning with me.  Gabbi (our dog) has inherited a feature from our cat in that around 4:45 it is imperative that at least one human should be awake and getting the the necessary chore of getting the animals some food.  The cat can be contained in another room and made to leave us alone for the most part but the dog (for now) is in a crate in our room at night so when she gets to whining, well someone has to get up.  So, I get up, get ready and grab the leash and now have a walking buddy.

I wanted to share with you an experience from Wednesday night too.  Wednesday evenings we drop the kids off at our church for the AWANA program and this leaves the wife and I for our only alone time for the week.  It lasts only about 1 hour (not including drive time) and we typically go to the Super Target and sit in the Starbucks that is located inside the store.  Anyway, we are sharing a venti Gingerbread Latte ($5 with tax!) and I am doing what any husband of 10+ years would do at that time.  I am half listening to the wife and half watching the shoppers as they meander by us.  I try to catch the key words of what the wife is saying since there is usually a pop quiz later and over the years I have done OK (probably a solid B average).  Anyway, at one point when I was not paying particular attention I did hear the phrase, "...there is now scientific evidence that milk thistle helps purify the liver..."  At this point in time I know that my quiz score will be low as I had no recollection of any conversation previous to this phrase that would indicate that how we got to a place where this phrase would fit into a normal conversation.  I froze and did the unthinkable.  I had to ask her to repeat herself (indicating that I was not paying attention).  I had to do this you see or else I would have lowered my pop quiz average something fierce.  It seems that milk thistle really does help (this ends the educational part of this blog, well it ends the blog too I guess).

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon