In the grand tradition of free songs, the next free song code for iTunes is in the comments of this entry.

If you redeem this code, let us know what song you got, and maybe give us a review of it! There are well over a million songs to choose from, so I’m pretty sure there’s at least one that will strike your fancy.

Last night my youth group did a game called “Do Ducks Have Lips”, wherein all the youth leaders who participated dressed up in disguises and walked around a busy mall. The kids then tried to find the leaders. They knew they had found a leader when they asked them, “Do ducks have lips?” and the person responded, “No, do snakes have hips?” Then the leader would initial a card the kids were carrying and the kids would move on.

This was my disguise. I also had super-sag pants. It was awesome. I just needed a wallet chain.

I got a spam email today with the subject, “Refinance your home the Christian Way.” Well, I was thinking about making a deal with Lucifer (you know, the Prince of Darkness) wherein I would sacrifice one unblemished human infant each month in exchange for a fixed 3.97% APR mortgage rate, but now that I’ve heard about this Christian mortgage…

I got Steph a cool shirt for Valentines day that I thought you’d like to see. It has wonderful geeky appeal, and Steph called it “a perfect combination” of her and me. I think that means she likes it! No, this isn’t all I got her.

To me, “All your base” will never die.

I’m not intending this blog to become some kind of shrine to Henson, my miniature dachshund. I admit I’ve been writing about him more than usual lately. I don’t intend to, it’s just that he’s so dang naughty! Someone has to tell you these stories, and I figure that someone is me.

Tonight we moved the kitty litter box outside onto the patio in the back of our house, under an awning. The cat knows how to use the little pet door we installed, and she is perfectly capable of going out whenever she likes, so that shouldn’t be an obstacle for her getting kitty business done. We moved it there because we needed somewhere to keep Henson’s kennel, now that we’re going to begin using it again. Henson is just uncontrollable when he’s at home alone. We’ll come back to find food gotten into and ripped apart, things from our bags strewn about the living room (thankfully unmauled) in the hopes of finding gum or some other treasure, and occasionally there will be an accident in the house. When we bought a little gate to put between the kitchen and the rest of the house so we could limit Henson’s “damage zone” Henson figured out how to escape. We’re still not sure how he does it. So the kennel will be the end of that. We tried to give him freedom, he didn’t take it well, and he won’t have it again.

Tonight Henson made his way outside and found the litterbox. Steph and I didn’t notice he’d been gone for half an hour, and when we found him, he was trapped inside the litterbox, unable to get out. We usually push it up against a wall so that only the cat can get in there, but he once again figured a way around it and got in, and trapped himself. He was covered in cat nastiness. He was immediately brought inside and given a bath, and you can see the result of that bath above. Truly, a more repentant face has never been seen.

I’ve been doing little touch-ups to this blog lately, trying to make it look better. The comments and individual entry pages are way cooler now than they were (partially because now they don’t look like a horrible afterthought). Let me know what you think. I’ll either thank you for complimenting me profusely, or ignore you completely. Either way, it’s fun!

I’ll probably be adding a new sidebar in the next week or two.

My dog Henson is so stupid. He’s also very evil, but that’s a separate topic altogether. Let me tell you how stupid he is. This photograph, to the right, is his dog door. We installed it so that he would be able to get outside and go to the bathroom whenever he liked, and we wouldn’t have to be here to let him out. Understandably, the first night we put it in he had a difficult time figuring out why he was able to walk through the door when he wasn’t able to do that the day before. But this is something we expect all our pets to deal with; it’s not really out of the ordinary to have to show them, slowly, how your hand can pass into and through this otherworldly portal without being maimed, or how you can push the cat out, and she seems just fine on the other side. Eventually, he understood these gestures as a suggestion, and he tried it cautiously, and he liked it.

Since then, he has figured out that he can run through the door to bark at the mailman as he comes around the house, and that he can run though the door to bark at our neighbors when they come home. Those things are easy. But for bathroom purposes? No, the door isn’t for that. He can go out that door and go to the bathroom if we’re standing right there and we tell him to do it, but he can’t do it on his own. Somehow, that isn’t what the door is for. When we’re home, he will come to us with the “I have to go out” look in his eyes, and when we stand up, he takes us to the front door, the sans-doggie-door side of the house, and expects us to open it, leash him up, and let him out. He could never just go out the back and stop bugging us. No way.

Stupid dog.