Weekend with the Wade's

Ladies and gents, let me tell you, this was a nice week in Iowa. We had a couple 40deg days, a 50deg day and a 74deg day. It was awesome. Some of you might think that is nothing to brag about. But for us Iowan's who are used to 0 to teens weather and snow and rain and ice and "Wintery Mix"(I don't really know what that is, let alone the spell checker) this time of year, those kinds of temps are what some people talk about for ages. In fact, I bet when I'm in my early 100-tweens, I will say to my great great great great grand children, "I remember back in the day when we didn't have Autoweather and we indulged in sporatic weeks like the first week in March of 2008". By the end of that sentence, they will have gotten bored, played 17 virtual games and had conversations with 4 other people about how great great great great grandpa smells, without me even noticing...

Anyway, my point is, the weather was good and that allowed Homer and I to go on lots of walks. In fact, we went on walks 5 of the 7 days this week. That is a new record! Homies was extremely excited to go out this week because of the weather and there were a lot of kids out. Not that he would know what to do with kids, other than bark at them and run away. But at least he was excited about it. We went on our usual route around the lake. This week, not only were there lots of people out walking, the bikers came out as well. They are particularly difficult to deal with when they come up behind you and you are wearing earphones and cannot hear anything outside of your current tune and they about run you over. I almost got taken out from behind by an overweight dude decked out in full biker attire. Not Cool!! Homer had the hardest time dealing with it though. Anytime he saw someone on a bike, I knew we were going to go for a ride. Homer wanted nothing to do with bikes and had no problems dragging my 140lbs along for the ride into the nearby forest or couples of people standing on the side of the walk way. This Saturday I went on a walk with the rents and was able to take both dogs out. Mervin was so completely thrilled to be outside of the house and the fenced backyard. He made sure Dad kept up with the group. Mervin has a tendency to "powerwalk" wherever he goes, so that helps. That last 10mins of the walk it started to downpour. Homer and Mervin had no problem with it though. They thought it was great.

Speaking of walking/running dogs, I listen to AC360 podcast on weekdays and stumbled about this video last week. HI-llarious. I actually had a couple people in the office ask me what I was laughing so hard about...



Homer ran out of food this week. So I ran to Target and purchased a 50lb bag of Purina Dog chow. This bag was enormous. I mean, this would take Mervin literally an entire year to finish. Homer might polish this bag off before May-ish.

Also, Homer spent the weekend hiding/barking and my parents. Homies went through his normal adjustment routine of barking at foreign people from the dining room where he thinks he is safe. Then he will venture closer to the new person but never get with in touching distance. Eventually the barking dies down and he will go about his normal business while maintaining a 10ft radius from the newcomers. If he ever leaves the room to go outside or upstairs and comes back to the same new people, we start the process over gain. Its like he has temporary amnesia. But he eventually got over it and by the end of the weekend, the barking was pretty much done and Kev and Deb could get pretty close to him.

Update:
I was reminded tonight that Homer became the first Houdini dog ever. On Monday and Tuesday, Ellen went through her normal routine packing her lunch and putting the dogs away in their kennels. This is normally a trivial process that lasts all of 7 minutes. However, Monday and Tuesday were different. I came home at 5pm on those two days to be greeted by none other than Homer Brett. Yes it seems that Homer had found his way out of his cage. A feet that would even perplex David Copperfield. The same thing happened on Tuesday when I arrived home. But with every magic trick, there is an explanation. Apparently when Ellen puts Homer away, she lets him in the front of the kennel. When I let him out, he comes out the side of the kennel, and I seemed to have forgotten to close the side the time before. So Homies had two days of pure unadulterated freedom to do whatever he pleased. I'm kinda surprised he didn't pull a Rick James all over our couch...

That's all for now. B-dubs out!!