Things making me laugh today

• Seattle has already been eliminated from the playoffs. It's August.
• The E# (Elimination Number -- the combined number of wins by the first place team and losses by the trailing team that would eliminate them from the playoffs) for a few teams: Pittsburgh: 3; Cincinnati: 3; Washington: 4; Kansas City: 10.
• The Cardinals are 10 games back.
• The Yankees are 10.5 games back.
• This post.
  

This is getting ridiculous

For the past two nights, I've had a dream about drinking pop. On Tuesday night, I dreamt I was close to exhaustion, and someone gave me a bottle of soda to revive me. I drank it, and then realized I wasn't supposed to.

Last night, I dreamt that some people at work were going on a Slurpee run to 7/11 (this is a common occurance), and I asked them to bring one back for me, expecting to get the cherry variety. Instead, they brought me a cola slurpee, and I had to decide whether or not to drink it. (I did.)

What the hell? When I gave up meat for Lent, I never once dreamt about wolfing down a cheeseburger. During my alcohol-free days, I never had dreams about boozin'.

Is this normal? Have any of you ever given something up, and then dreamt about it incessessantly?

Back in the day, Mountain Dew used to be part of my identity. Like, Stoner and Mountain Dew were often mentioned in the same sentence. I finally gave that up, but replaced it with other forms of carbonated caffeine.

Perhaps this pop addiction is more deep-rooted in my psyche than I originally thought.

Soda-Free, week one (or maybe that should read "weak one")

So, the soda-free week has been a bit challenging so far. Actually, it's harder than I expected. I really, really want a soda. Right now. I think weekends may be the most difficult.

On week days, it's just the afternoons that are killing me. Especially when I have something salty for lunch. Water just isn't cutting it.

At home, I've been drinking juice diluted with water. It's pretty good, actually. Although, I find that what I miss most about soda is the bubbles. I've thought about buying carbonated water, but I feel like that's not solving the problem. You see, part of why I wanted to quit soda in the first place is because of the pop effect on my recycling bin. As in, it's constantly overflowing with cans. Even though I recycle, I'm still creating a lot of waste. Which is also the reason I don't buy bottled water. I need to just be OK with tap water, or in the case of the office, H20 from the water cooler. So, switching to carbonated water really doesn't solve that problem.

Another problem: booze. I am a huge, huge 7&7 fan. Pretty hard to keep drinking those when one of those 7s is off limits. I realize that eventually, I'm going to quit this quitting. But I just need to go soda-free long enough that I'm no longer addicted. Not sure how long that'll take. Long enough that I don't think about a cold can of bubbly a few times a day.

Considering how hard this is, I'm SO glad I never started smoking.

Pop off

This morning as I was getting ready, I was gulping down the last few sips of Diet Pepsi, only to have some miss my mouth, dribble down my chin and onto the front of my shirt. Sadly, this is a common occurrence (damn you, wide-mouth cans!)

The incident got me thinking about my love affair with carbonated beverages. I have been a pop junkie for about 15 years. It all started with Mountain Dew, an addiction that lasted from age 14 to 23. After graduating college, those calories started to catch up with me, so I switched to Diet Pepsi and Diet Sierra Mist (yes, I am loyal to the Pepsico brand), addictions that lasted from age 23 until this year.

Over the past year I've been slowly making the transition from pop to coffee. I just got tired of attending work meetings and feeling like a 12 year old with my can of soda while every else sipped coffee. Basically, pop = teenager. Coffee = fancy-pants grown up. Now, I refuse to ever be a coffee-house-frequenting, wanna-be intellectual (which, by the way, = college freshman), but I am happy to take one more step toward adult-hood. The big 3-0 is on the horizon, so it's about freaking time.

The only problem with this transition, though, is that coffee didn't actually replace pop. Instead, it sort of became a soda supplement. I still consume about 1-3 cans of pop a day. Mostly, in the form of diet, caffeine-free beverages, but still. Over the past 15 years, I've probably put about 10 Pepsico executives' kids through college.

So, I'm quitting. Tomorrow. We ran out of pop today, and I'm just not going to buy anymore. Twelve packs of soda have gotten quite expensive lately — about $4.50 each. I go through two a week. That's about $470 a year. Not a lot, but no small change either.

Even though I'm not giving up caffeine (something I've considered many times), I have a feeling I'm going to go through some withdrawal symptoms anyway. But if I can make it a month pop-free, I think I have officially kicked the habit. I'll be sure to report on my progress here regularly. And just for good measure, I'm going to keep track of my weight throughout the process. Caffeine is an appetite suppressant, but according to some studies, artificial sweeteners can make you eat more. So maybe I'll lose weight. Or maybe I'll gain.

Regardless, I'll burp a lot less.

Me winks

It's official: I function better on less sleep. For the past few years, I've been getting 8+ hours a night, and I'm groggy most mornings and my brain doesn't really start to work until after lunch.

But in the past few weeks, for a few nights here and there, I've only gotten 6 hours of sleep. And in the morning, it's so much easier to wake up and I have a ton of energy when I get to work.

So there. Less sleep is good. Also, I think this means I'm officially old.

More Elvis

A Big Hunk o' Love

Gotta get me a peanut-butter 'nana sandwich.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Sweaty Elvis

Right before I passed out on a toilet.

Must love dogs

I pretty much wrote this post in my head on Saturday afternoon. It was going to be a post about how crazy spontaneous and easily persuaded we are, and how just like that, we adopted a new dog.

Except just like that, we didn't.

Chris and I were in St. Louis for his cousin's wedding this weekend. On Saturday afternoon, on our way from breakfast to a post-wedding picnic (the wedding was on Friday night), Chris' dad had to stop to pick up some new reading glasses, so the rest of us went into the Petco next door rather than bake in the 100-degree heat. We thought we'd get Rosie a souvenir from St. Louis. That souvenir turned out to be a 3-year-old Great Pyrenees. He had been abandoned in a campground, and he was adorable and docile and affectionate and slobbery and ENORMOUS. We fell in love immediately. We talked to his foster mom and got some information on the adoption process and said we'd think about it for a few hours.

Then, we went to the picnic for about two hours and talked about it and decided that yes, we MUST adopt this dog. It was fate. So, we went back to Petco approximately 3 hours after our first visit, and he was gone. Already adopted out to another family that so, totally will not love him as much as we would of. Jerks.

So now, we're seriously thinking about getting a second dog. Rosie could use a playmate. In fact, every time we dogsit, Rosie gets extremely depressed after the other dog goes home. She needs a friend. A really big, slobbery, fluffy friend. The hunt is on.