What would Cesar do?  I’ve put an inordinate amount of time into researching the “tug of war” game with dogs.  All to no avail, I can’t find a solid answer.  For every supposed “expert” that says to never let the dog win, there’s another who says it’s fine and builds their confidence.  Then you even have several in between who swear by a certain percentage:  “Only let the dog win 15% of the time.”  So I’m supposed to count each time, yeah I see that happening.  Far as I can tell it doesn’t seem to matter one way or the other with young Teagan, I guess I ought to just play with the dog and quit cipherin’ so much on it.  The pup can play some tug, I know that.  Took me by surprise the first few times;  She pulls like a freakin’ four wheel drive truck, and she can hang on like…  Well, like a pitbull.  She plays nice though, although we are still working on the “release” part.  Other than an extended round of tug-of-war and nice long walk, I didn’t do much last night.  Would have been an awesome nite to go watch the Royals down at the Brooksider, but I guess I effectively scratched that option with the new dog.  (They banned doggies on the patio quite some time ago.)  Tonight promises similar boredom…  Not even a baseball game on tonight.

I sat home on the couch with the dog last night and watched the big basketball game.  Wow, that was boring.  But, since I was going to be bored anyway, I sat there and watched the entire thing.  I’ll always readily admit I ain’t the biggest sports fan out there, so I followed the game on the Internet too, watching for other opinions.  A common theme seemed to be that excellent defense was the cause of the abysmal score.  I dunno, I just couldn’t see it.  All I saw was loose balls bouncing all over with nobody bothering to pick them up, open shots clanging off the rim, (or the backboard or the third row of seats,) and guys dribbling off their foot.  It honestly looked like both teams were trying to throw the game and they couldn’t decide who wanted it less.  Made for a heck of a boring game, at least for me;  Far as I can tell the only people who actually enjoyed watching it were the ones that had Connecticut in their bracket.

I have again been left to fend for myself, as the wife took off for Denver last night.  Yes, I am already hungry, thanks for caring.  I will persevere though.  Not like we saw each other much this weekend anyway, we were sorta busy.  Friday we kind of laid low, I had to get into the swing of the oncall routine.  Uncovered the grill for the first time and made some chicken, and that was about it.

Saturday morning we got up and headed to our second session of the boot camp.  It went better than the first round, I think.  I felt I did a little better keeping up, but maybe I’m just trying to make myself feel better.  I’m not as sore, that’s for sure.  After that solid start to the day, I headed over to Brice’s house to listen to the Royal’s game and watch some ribs smoke.  He got a new smoker a few weeks ago, and this marked the maiden voyage.  I took Teagan with me too, with good intentions of introducing her to Bob’s pups and getting in some play time.  Unfortunately this turned out to be a quite poor idea.  They got off to a bad start and it went downhill from there.  The meet and greet lasted about 4 seconds and then Smokey latched onto Teagan’s ear with a bite that would have done Mike Tyson proud.  He wasn’t letting go either, it took quite an effort to get them apart.  No harm done though, remarkably, but play-time was over.  We did let his younger dog Bailey out a few hours later and this went much better, so at least they got a little rough-housing in.  Later that night Donette and I met the Martin’s down at Knuckleheads for some music.  I’d never been there before, although it’s been on my list for many years.  Pretty awesome place, it definitely has “character.”  Planning a return visit soon, as a matter of fact.

Sunday was a rather low-key event.  I had to work all morning in the wee hours, and that always wears me out.  I got the lawn mowed, and Donette continued her bathroom remodel project for the better part of the day.  Watched the unnecessarily drawn-out Royals game, did some more work, then it was up to the Northlands to drop Donette at her parents.  All-in-all not the worst weekend ever, especially with the oncall qualifier.

Ahhh, the start of baseball season.  Always a big day in KC.  I started the celebration by emptying my wallet for a newspaper on the way to work.  For the children, you know, that’s always my philosophy.  Then I got to work and realized I didn’t have any money left for my morning Cheez-its;  So much for good karma.  As for the big game, we skipped out on actually heading to the stadium.  There were several opportunities for tickets, even some really good tickets, but between the weather and the associated cash outlay we took a pass.  I went over to my buddy Ronnie’s house and watched it, along with several other guys and a few slabs of ribs;  Can’t go wrong there.  Donette stayed home and listened to it while slaving away on one of her big home-improvement projects.  Pretty exciting game as it turned out.  That ball Gordon smacked in the bottom of the ninth was one of the more thrilling foul balls I can remember.  Hey, you gotta take what thrills you can get when you’re a Royals fan.

Last weekend we went ahead and pulled one of our cable boxes out;  Sort of a dry run to see if our cable-free lives are going to be feasible.  We haven’t actually turned it back in to the cable company though…  It’s still safely stowed in one of the closets in case I go into some kind of shock or something.  So far so good though.  As soon as I think it’s safe to unplug the other one I guess we’ll probably take them both back.  (I.E. after the basketball tournament is over…  I tried watching the games on the Internet but the feeds were pretty crappy.)  It’s only been a few days, but Hulu seems to serve my needs just fine.  All the “My Name is Earl” seasons available commercial free at the click of a button;  What else could I ask for?