Triple Gold Stars

I failed to workout yesterday. I blame it one D who worked all day and when he finally stopped around 9 or 9:30 last night, we clearly weren't going to the gym then. Of course, I could have gone during any of the previous hours of the day.

Soy pudding: sounds gross, tastes delicious.

I actually have appointments all four days this week before we leave for Vegas on Friday:

• Today: Facial.
  
• Tomorrow: Dentist.
  
• Wednesday: Comcast phone installation (switching out our modem's).
  
• Thursday: Volunteering and also dinner with our sales guy for our Mexico house who is in town doing another presentation.

Last night I watched Friday's Oprah on ruining kids by giving them too much. It's really quite scary that people don't see a connection between never saying no and the resulting behaviors. I guess it's like with dogs: you don't really see why it's bad to let them do whatever they want whenever they want when they're a puppy because it's cute, but when the are 2 years-old and aggressive or ill-mannered or uncontrollable, that's when the aha! moment kicks in.

Speaking of dogs, Eddie has been hamming up his "Eddie Haskell" act for a few weeks now. Don't know what brought this on, but he's going for triple gold stars lately. For example, today's breakfast. Normally when I feed the dogs, I make them sit and stay over by the couch, then I get their food ready (I mix in other stuff with the dog food which requires warming of water), the point being to make them remain calm and politely wait for the OK to eat their food. I put the bowls down and then wait a period of time (5 seconds - 2 minutes) before I say "OK" and they can leave their positions to eat from their respective bowls. Both are very good at this and rarely cross the imaginary line. Anyway, today I prepared the food while they were both out on the patio looking through our deck door. I put the bowls down and told them to sit outside. Then I opened the door and said OK. Turtle goes racing to her bowl as I intended with the OK, but Eddie races to the normal waiting place and lays down and looks at me. I told him OK and he then went to his bowl and started eating. On the other hand, sock snatching season has begun now that the weather has turned and I'm not wearing sandals anymore. I've found quite a few of my socks downstairs just outside Eddie's crate. He doesn't chew them up, just takes them downstairs.

Finally, a rebate update. See Falafel #13 for my feelings on rebates. A few weeks ago, when I still hadn't received my rebate from T-Mobile, I called the number and said it wasn't showing in their online system that I'd sent it in. The woman asked if I'd made copies of everything I sent. I answered yes. She said OK and then entered it into their system. I received a check the other day. I never had to send in my copies or prove I'd made them in any way - she just asked if I'd made copies. Which leads me to believe that if I'd said that I didn't make copies, they would say tough luck just based on answering no. I have zero brand loyalty to T-Mobile and this rebate process of one of the reasons I have no loyalty. I have extremely high loyalty to TiVo, in part due to an excellent rebate process.