Hunger Strike

Herminda has started this new thing where she bribes Duncan with treats she carries around in her pockets all day so now Duncan thinks all humans have treats in their pockets and he insists on sniffing the pockets of anyone who comes in the door.

This morning Herminda showed up around 8:00 and did the typical treat routine just as I was trying to feed Duncan his breakfast. I was calling him over to his food, but he wasn't listening to a word I was saying.

BACK IN MY DAY dogs ate all of their food the moment you poured it into a bowl.

Duncan hunger strikes for two days at a time. He will not eat the food. I try to get him interested in it, but his kibble consumption has to be on his own terms.

He hunger strikes when I'm not in the house. He has never, not once, ever, taken a bite of his food when I haven't been home.

Many Hands Make Light Work

Last week I wrote a post complaining about how cooking blogs make you scroll through 5,000 words of nonsense just to get to the one thing you were looking for in the first place. Then Meg told me that I basically do the same thing with Strangerville because people who listen to the podcast but don't read the blog have to sift through Stranger word vomit to get to the episode. And I was only incredibly offended.

So that's why I put the episode at the top. I'm not losing my mind. You were worried. You shouldn't be worried. About that, I mean. You should be worried about a lot of other things. Like e. coli, and how to spell e. coli.

In other news, I was graceful in front of my neighbors on Friday.

It all happened because it finally started snowing in Salt Lake City.

Every Single Recipe Blog Post Ever

Hi there!

For years I have loved mac and cheese. When I was growing up it was a total staple in my household! Whenever I smell mac and cheese I am

 TrAnSpOrTeD back into my childhood!

For years I have wanted to make the best possible recipe for mac and cheese and I have searched and searched and it has been so difficult to find the PERFECT recipe for mac and cheese but I finally found it!

Polar Plunge

A few weeks ago when I was in San Francisco I got to hang out with Disney Prince Hair Brandt for three days because he loves Full House so much that he lives there now. I told Brandt that I was training for the same Half Ironman race that he and I did together in 2014 HOW HAS IT BEEN THAT LONG ALL OF YOU HAVE GRAY HAIR NOW.

Four years ago when Brandt and I were training every single day for this race, I learned very quickly to dread being in the pool with him for two big reason:

1. I am the slowest swimmer since the Titanic and Brandt is basically Michael Phelps if Michael Phelps only applied himself like 80% and had the hair of a Greek God, so swimming laps next to him was a completely demoralizing experience.

I mean, look at those locks. 

A Thing That Doesn't Matter BUT IT KIND OF DOES

I'm going to spend the next however many minutes complaining about something that doesn't matter.

I need to complain about this. This thing that doesn't matter. It is an incredibly stupid thing to feel anger over. I already know this. I don't need you to tell me that there are actual problems in this world and that the thing that I'm choosing to spend however many minutes complaining about is not even remotely close to being one of those problems.

I know that.

I know that this thing doesn't matter and that it probably says some sad things about me that I'm about to spend however many minutes talking about it.

People who have much more satisfying lives probably never even think about stuff like this. They are probably way too busy living in a state of perpetual productivity to ever even be able to give the energy to something this incredibly dumb.

By the way, you've been warned. You don't get to be mad at me that you spent however many minutes reading this post only to find out that it's actually a post about something that's not even a thing worth complaining about. Because I already told you that this post is a waste of your time. So if you read this, that's on you.

LOOSE WAIT WITHOUT EXERSIZE

For about the last six months I have been telling people that "I'm like totally doing the St. George half Ironman next May." I thought that if I said it to enough humans with memories and judgment skills, I would shame myself into actually making it happen.

Since I got chubbier in 2017 and none of my pants were fitting anymore and I literally popped the button off of nearly every single pair, I knew it would probably be good for me to actually set some kind of goal and work toward something.

I'm not kidding you about the pants. It got so bad that I could no longer fit into a single suit I owned. But I wasn't about to go out and spend eleventy hundred million dollars on a new suit because that felt like giving up and although my metabolism is officially not 21 anymore, I kept convincing myself that I was "like totally doing the St George half Ironman next May" and therefore I would get skinny again.

So, without a suit that could fit my expanding bod, I took to wearing blazers and slacks that I could squeeze myself into whenever I had to go to court.

Pictures from my Phone & Weekly Distractions

Earlier this week Paul Simon posted on Instagram that he was retiring, which was a huge shock because he didn't even attempt to consult with me about this huge decision that affects both of us equally. After screaming so loudly that you could see it from space, I googled everything on the entire internet and found out that Paul is going on a "farewell tour" this year.

Then I spent eleventy hundred billion dollars buying super good tickets to see him in a city "near" me. And by "near" I mean "very not near" because for some reason Paul decided not to include Salt Lake City on his farewell tour and I can only assume this is because he knew it would be too hard to say goodbye. So now none of us are going to be able to think of anything else until I go to this concert three months from now.

Sorry about your jobs.

And now, your Pictures & Distractions:

Same.

TruGreen, The Mob

I'm pretty sure I got a call from the mob today. Like, The Mob.

A few years ago I called TruGreen, the lawn care company, and asked them if I could pay one million dollars every five weeks to have them come and sprinkle fairy dust on my property. They said these terms were acceptable and then immediately started taking money from my bank account at random for the next three summers.

The plan, as I understood it, was that TruGreen would show up about every four weeks and fertilize my lawn. I thought I was being a responsible homeowner by asking them to do this because I have no idea how to keep grass alive apart from pouring water on it and prayin' to Jesus.

TruGreen has a robot woman call and scream into my ear that someone is coming to do the treatment a day or two before the scheduled visit. Robot woman reminds me to make sure the TruGreen person will be able to access all parts of the property. Then she says something about how my pets are going to die if I let them anywhere outside for the next few days.

There's really no way for me to know for sure that the treatment was done because they always come to do it when I'm at work. So for a couple of years I just hoped that I wasn't being scammed whenever I saw one million dollars get taken from my bank account.

Max

Last week was Duncan's adoption day (how has it been a year already omg you people are getting so old). I totally forgot about it because I was in the process of working eleventy million hours so it was really bad timing for a milestone.

Then Matt texted me and was like "if you loved Duncan you would invite me and Ollie over for dinner tonight and throw a huge party and feed us" and I would have been annoyed with Matt's attempts to manipulate me if I wasn't already in the middle of drafting a text to him that said "what time did you say you were coming over tonight to install all of the baseboards in my basement" despite the fact that he definitely never agreed to do that.