Dog Days

It's not quite summer but Oz enjoys his time at the dog park.

Beyonce's SINGLE LADIES with THE DAN BAND

It's no secret that I L-O-V-E the song Single Ladies by Beyonce. It makes me smile no matter what's going on. I hope no one ever plays it at a funeral cause I'll be grinning from ear to ear. Actually, here is my formal request to play it at MY funeral.

Anyway. The Dan Band got all famous when they sang Total Eclipse of the Heart (I f-ing need you more than ev-ah) in Old School, but they're actually even funnier than that scene. I sorta forgot about them until I happened on this video tonight. And now I'd like to amend my request - I want this version of the song to play at my funeral. Too f-ing funny.

(If you're in a hurry, just watch from 1:25 to 1:45. Best part, in my opinion.)

Whoa!

I couldn't figure out what Ozzie was barking at just now. Turns out we had a baby snapping turtle on our back porch.

His shell is about the size of a half dollar. I had to kick him into the grass so Oz wouldn't try to eat him. We're a long way away from the pond for such a small guy, I hope he makes it!
 
Edit: In the time it took me to type this on my phone, which wasn't long, Ozzie grabbed my bluetooth out of the charger and put big chew marks in it. Just thought you'd like to know.

Who Can Tolerate More Pain?

We watched an episode of Mythbusters where they tested "women are more tolerant to pain." They used an old torture method where a hand is stuck in a bucket full of ice water, with the fingers splayed open, and then held there for as long as possible.

We recreated it at home too, because we've often argued whether cramps hurt more than being kicked in the balls. The show used a three minute cut off for safety (the pain is there to keep you from being damaged like frostbite), so we did too.

Chris went first. He felt pain after five seconds, and lasted about 16 sec.
John went next. He felt pain right away, but lasted 17 sec.
Then I went. I felt pain at around 30 sec and lasted until the safety cutoff at 3 minutes.

Woohoo for me! My hand really really hurt at the end, around the 2:30 mark, and it took a good 5 minutes to feel normal again. Chris and John tried again several times, but neither could get to 20 seconds. All in all, a very successful (and not so messy!) experiment.

As the show concluded, and as our home experiment confirmed, girls can tolerate WAY more pain than boys. So there!

Beautiful Day

Ozzie has a rough life. Really.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Pilates

I've been getting really into Pilates. Pilates is a strength training method that helps improve your core (stomach and related "middle" muscles) and other things too. I've only done mat classes because I'm a little too intimidated by the Reformer machine, but I'm in love. It takes an amazing amount of control - the picture above looks easy, but it's tough to ensure your hips are stacked on top of each other, your abs are pulled in tight, your butt is tucked in, your rib cage is lifted off the mat, and THEN doing the motion where you raise your top leg (don't move your hips!) and use your obliques to curl up.

Anyway I enjoy it. Apparently the founder Joseph Pilates said "You will feel better in 10 sessions, look better in 20 sessions, and have a completely new body in 30 sessions." I'm at 11 sessions right now, and it's true that I feel a lot better. Can't wait to get to that magic #30 and have a new body! Well, with my body, it's going to take longer than 30, but hopefully I'm well on my way.

I think for every 30 sessions I attend, I'll treat myself to a Reformer package. That's my motivation to keep going, and maybe it'll be a little extra boost to keep my form and try more advanced variations of the moves.

Spring!

Ozzie really enjoys being outside now that the weather is nice. So do we. But he celebrates by finding sticks and chewing them up. I hope our neighbors don't mind the random piles of stick debris.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry