Last of the books

6. The Next Best Thing

7. Where We Belong

8. 11/22/63

9. Malcolm X/How Will You Measure Your Life

10. Let's Pretend this Never Happened

11. Gone Girl

12. What the Dog Did

13. The Way Home

Someone needs to invent a mechanism to ensure the proper dip to dipping item ratio. It's never even, and it just leads to a vicious circle. I'm out of pretzels but not hummus, I'll get a few more pretzels. Crap, now I have pretzels left and I'm out of hummus. I'll get a dollop more. And so on. Until the family size hummus is gone. I'm pretty sure this is how the arms race started, except with uranium instead of hummus.

Dogs in hats: sporty

Dogs in hats: jaunty

Sometimes I play dead to see what my dog will do

I'd like to know in advance if he's one of those dogs that can call 911. Do people train those dogs? How does a layperson do that? If you're training the dog, you can't look dead, and if there's another person there training while you act dead isn't the dog just gonna be like "call 911 yourself, human. That's what opposable thumbs are for."

So far, he has not called 911. I'm going to assume that he's just so smart that he knows I'm fine. Usually he just sniffs me and walks away, or sniffs me and destroys something, like "I know this 'grand experiment' is really just an excuse to take a nap, so I'm going to eat your magazine. Take that." Sometimes he plays dead with me, which is ideal, next to calling 911, because nothing is better than taking a nap playing dead with your dog. I think if there ever were a real emergency, he would take action, as long as it was around mealtime, because he has been known to paw at my head until I wake up from a regular nap if it goes past 5:30.

This is what happens when it rains at the shore...