Five second rule!

I think everyone's heard that phrase yelled at least 34 times in their lifetime, if not more. Yet if you're unclear on that phrase's meaning, I'll define it. If you drop a piece of food on the floor, sometimes people will yell that at your to let you know how long you have to pick it up before it becomes entirely contaminated with floor dirt.

I think what's funny is that the time interval changes with the person. I've heard some yell "Three second rule!" and for others it's been seven seconds.

Yet there's hope for all of us, we can increase that time interval according to a new study from Connecticut College researchers who have too much time on their hands.

Click me to read about the study.

Yes, now we have more time! Leave that food on the ground for HOURS! Okay, maybe not.

In other news, I need to find more friends who don't ditch me for dogs. Seriously. This weekend Amy and I are going camping. We'd reserved an extra camp site so we could invite some friends to come along. At first we had a fair amount of interest, people who were all excited to come along. Then, slowly they began to drop like flies. That bothered me, but at least they gave us more than a month's notice so we could find others to come along.

As of last week, we had a good crew of folks ready to come along. Then yesterday another couple dropped out, citing the following reason:

"We're getting a new dog, and we can only get her Friday night, so we can't come along. Sorry!"

The whole email was this story about how we should be happy for them because it's a shelter rescue dog. The subject line was "Good news and bad news!" The good news was them getting another dog. The bad news was them deciding they can't come. They apologized and said how much they'd been looking forward to the camping trip, that they'd been telling all their friends how excited they were to come along. And darn, now they can't because of a dog.

I am annoyed by this. This is becoming a trend for Amy and I, as we have another friend couple who have dogs and frequently back out on doing things with us because they "have to get home to the doggies!" or "We can't go with you Sunday because we don't want to leave the doggies home all alone for so long!"

I like dogs. I understand that you have to care for them and let them out of the house to do their business. But these friends are becoming dumb about it. On top of that, this couple's "doggies!" are very poorly trained. That's a whole other story, though.

Anyway, I guess from now on I need to seek out people with dogs who know what they hell they're doing. Thankfully we do have another friend couple we hang with whose dog is very well trained and never takes away from their social agenda. So there's hope.

I had to rant about it. You get to read it. Thanks for reading. I guess the take-home message is this:

If you are going to get a dog, please don't become mostly worthless to your friends because of dog excuses. Oh, and train the darn thing so it doesn't jump all over guests and bark non-stop while you make up dumb excuses for your bad training such as, "Oh, he's just jealous you're not paying attention to him! That's why he's barking so much! Teehee!"

That is all.