I started my new job this week; so far it's been okay. I'm getting the hang of the work and hopefully not screwing it up too much. I got into the office fantasy football league that drafts tomorrow. I'm not sure how hardcore all of the people in the league are, so that makes things interesting. One good thing about the new job is that about half of the people I work with are people I've worked with on the National Guard side of things, so it's a little less awkward socially than just leaping into a new group of people. Probably the worst part of the job is making phone calls. I have a pathological hatred of the telephone; I'd almost rather do anything than make a phone call. But I've been able to make the necessary calls and even deal with some very irate people. And in other job-related news; this morning I rode my motorcycle to work, which is the first time I've had the bike out on the interstate. It was a bit anti-climactic, as things weren't nearly as crazy as I thought they'd be. I also got to wear my awesome reflective vest with the removable Velcro ID badge pocket. And I got a tank bag to carry my base pass and various small items in. And I stuck a bunch of reflective tape on my backpack. So in theory I'm at least a little bit more visible out on the highway.

I think I posted a while ago about getting a miscast jeep in my Flames of War Tank Destroyer Platoon. Today I got an envelope in the mail containing a blister pack of three jeeps, so Battlefront's US contact certainly gets a thumbs-up in the customer service department. This jeep pack has some nice little bits, like optional soft-tops for the jeeps or machine guns that can be mounted on the vehicles. I'm pretty happy about that.

And here's a scary story that happened to us yesterday. I got home from work about ten minutes before my wife. When I opened the door I was greeted by the sight of a rather lagre pile of dog poo on the floor. Then I looked around the living room and saw that it was all over; on the floor, on the couches, and trailing into the kitchen. There was more in the back corner of the kitchen. Our Labrador was staying close to me, but our Bassett Hound still hadn't come out to greet me. I called him a few times and he slowly came out of the back room with his head down. I sent the dogs outside and called my wife to warn her before she got home. The poo trailed off down the hall and into the computer room, where there was a big deposit under my desk. Worst of all, Buddy had stood on top of my pants and left a big load directly on top of them and then run across a bunch of baby clothes, leaving a trail of ooze all over them. It took us 1 1/2 hours and a couple bottles of cleaning products to get it all mopped up, plus several loads of laundry and we'll probably have to rent some sort of high-powered cleaning machine to really get it all. I have no idea how that dog could produce so much waste. I think the main reason for the explosion was that he gets very worked up whenever our routine changes. The first time we really left him in the house without kenneling him, he climbed on our bed and peed on my wife's pillow. At the vet's office he climbed on my lap and peed on me. When we moved the furniture around he peed on the floor. When he was a very little puppy I went into the bathroom for a few minutes and when I came back out a few minutes later he had left a dookie on the floor and run back and forth through it, covering the entire hallway with nasty little footprints. And when I didn't emerge from the bedroom in the late morning or early afternoon he must have panicked and run around the house letting his bodily functions go. I think he's over it now. Supposedly having a pet adds seven years to a person's life expectancy, but I think owning Buddy is exactly the opposite. Still, he's my dog and I can't really fault him. We should have anticipated that he would be stressed out by my absence and brought his kennel back in from the shed for a few days while he got used to the idea of me being gone in the daytime.