Some say every boy needs a dog.  My girl would disagree with you.

Me – Bey, you are way too young for that.

Daughter – I KNOW dad.

Me – He is a nice boy, be good friends with him.

Daughter – Yes, he did not ask me in human anyway.

Me – Huh?

Daughter – He told someone to tell me.

Me – Oh, he did not ask in person?

Daughter – That’s what I said.

Dan Brown’s books are unpredictable.  I hated Digital Fortress, loved The DaVinci Code.  I thought the Deception Point was monotonous @ best but Angels and Demons was fantastic.

The Lost Symbol follows this pattern.  It’s mediocre but still entertaining.  It’s way longer than it needed to be;  500+ pages that could have easily been written in 400 pages.  There are entire chapters that were written for screen play as if Dan Brown is already thinking about his movie sale for the book.  I am kind of getting tired of the damsel in distress girl in every one of his books.  I think this book suffers the same fate that Night Shyamalan suffered after his movie Sixth Sense.  It’s not easy living up to a super successful release.

To me, this book reads like an apology to his Christian audience after heaping abuse on the church in Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code.

Some of the science is out there again.  Noetic science reads like the Scientologist crap that some people would like you to believe.  However, I can weed my way through the bullshit the same way I do with all of the CSI shows, it’s meant to be entertaining.

And in the end, this book is still entertaining.

I’ve been complaining about not finding a book that I enjoyed reading for at least a year.  Honestly, I can’t remember the last fiction I read that I enjoyed…  Maybe the Alchemist but even that was just OK compared to The Help.

There is a new series that started last night called “More to Love”.  It’s a spin off from the show “The bachelor” but the difference is this show disrupts the typical beautiful skinny people.  This show is for the “big” girls.

There is a new series that started last night called “More to Love”.  It’s a spin off from the show “The bachelor” but the difference is this show disrupts the typical beautiful skinny people.  This show is for the “big” girls.

My first instinct when I saw the trailers was “this is bullshit” followed by an “I’ve got to watch it”.  As I watched the show while eating my dessert (see the irony here?), my opinion did not change.  The problem with these so called reality shows about marriage and finding your true love is not about how they humiliate the women, it’s the fact that they make these romance and love claims while the guy is having a great time with each of the girls.

This is not what makes this show unique though.  It goes even further to humiliate the women.  More to Love is different because the girls are fat!  When I use the word fat, I mean it as an adjective and NOT as a pejorative or a derogatory term.  Most of the girls are very insecure about how they look and they are open about their insecurities.  They cry during most of their interviews and one-on-ones.  Most of them have never had a second date.

The show feeds on these emotions.  It’s cruel watching these women getting rejected again because you know out of 20, 19 of them will get rejected again.  Years of tears are unleashed on this show.

Here is the formula for the show

• Take 20 very insecure fat women.
• Put them in a candlelit room, poolside chats, flowers everywhere, champagne bottles flowing left and right.
• The guy gives each one a huge diamond ring called “the promise ring” (GAG!)  Most of these girls have never received a ring from a man before.
• They are ecstatic for getting this ring.
• As the show nears its end, the host tells the women “return the rings please”

If this is not cruel, I don’t know what is.  The drawn out ritual at the end of the show is fantastic and morbid. 20 women who just received a ring now wait to get it back.  It’s like watching a documentary from one of those shows where the guy picks a “date” from a line of women you would see in a seedy business in the far east.

It’s going to be a great show!  I can’t wait for the fighting to start. (And yes, I am ashamed of myself just like the rest of you)  This is the first reality show I might actually watch.

I love the idea of a no kill shelter where no animal is ever put to death because it was not adopted in time to make room for another poor animal.  As we were waiting for Hunter’s paperwork @ the Carrollton Operation Kindness, a man came by to drop off an animal he had found wondering around.

The animal shelter people kindly told him that they were at their maximum capacity and that they could not take another animal in.

There is a good chance that animal ended up in another shelter where he will possibly be put to his death soon.

Before you get another dog, please take some time to go visit an animal shelter.  I am pretty sure you’ll find your next family member there.

When the world’s best dog Spike passed away on July 12th, our family was devastated with his sudden death.  We realized what a big part of our life Spike was.  The house was not the same without him.  For the first time in years I over slept because my boy Spike was not there to wake me up.  My son no longer felt safe staying home alone.  We were all missing a big part of our family.  We had truly become a family of 5.

There are little things that Spike did that we all missed.  I missed that whenever I sat in my Archie Bunker chair, and let my hand hang on the side, he would always come up and put his head under my hand.  No hand left hanging loose ever got wasted in our house.  Spike was always there to squeeze in a pet on his head.  For the last week any time any one of us dropped our food on the floor, our instinct was to call Spike over to clean it up.  My little girl cried over the fact that Spike was not there to clean her plate after dinner.  Spike’s first words he learned were “I am done” at the dinner table.  That was his call to finish my little girl’s dinner.

We had originally decided to wait a year or so to get another dog originally.  But seeing the void in the little ones and how much they missed Spike, we decided to find another loveable dog for them to fill the void as much as possible.

A friend recommended that having a new dog helps with the memories of the old one by talking about the past and good memories.  So we decided to adopt another dog from the same shelter where we got Spike 7 years ago almost to the day.

We went to Carrollton Operation Kindness.  This is a no kill shelter where every animal gets adopted (more on the no-kill shelter concept later).  We went to COK to look at a German Shepherd we saw on their web site.

Let me tell you about going to an animal shelter…  It’s not an easy place to go to, at least for me.  I hate that people ditch animals on the street left to die.  How a person can throw away an animal is something I still can’t comprehend.  Walking in the halls of the animal shelter is not easy. Some animals are too sick to get up, some are too eager to be petted.  Some want your attention almost to say “pick me” and some are just plain too traumatized to be handled.

Our new dog Hunter had been there for 3 months and had already been returned back from another house who had adopted him.  Already marked as a 2 year old puppy his chances of being adopted were much lower than most of the other pups.  He had 2 things wrong going for him 1) he is a big lab that is full of energy 2) he is a darker animal.

Believe it or not, #2 is not something I just made up.  The ladies at the shelter said that black and chocolate animals don’t get picked up as much as the rest of the crew because they don’t photograph well on their website.  And that’s true if you ever look at the pictures of a black or chocolate lab.  With a flash camera all you see is a black blur.

We asked to play with Hunter in the consultation room (a 12×12 room with nothing in it).  This is the same room where we had met Spike 7 years ago.  When Hunter entered the room, I knew he was coming home.  This guy was gorgeous.  He was a total spazz in the room running in a circle.  Imagine a 65 lb puppy trying to give you a hug.  The ladies kept telling us (almost warning) that labs are not easy animals when they are pups.  I tried to stick my hand in his mouth to see what he’d do.  I did the usual rough play and kept sticking my hand in his mouth to see how he’d react.  Not once did he hurt me or the kids.

I can see how most people would not adopt him.  He was a total nut job in the room.  But that’s what a lab does when you cage him 23 hours a day.  We decided to take him home with us.

So far, the first night was perfect.  It could not have been better actually.  We brought him home, ran him in the back yard for a good half hour throwing tennis balls and brought him inside.  So far, no pooping or peeing in the house.  He loves following his people which is still kind of cute since Spike would not care less what we did in the house.  We decided that the people at the shelter guessed his age wrong.  He is at most 18 months old and still has a lot of growing to do.  My guess is he is going to be about 90-100 lbs in 6 months.

More about Hunter’s adventures soon.