My dog ate my homework

Lawrence Toppman:

Though that's a legendary excuse, my dog actually did eat my homework once. When I was eight, we had a dachschund puppy named Max, whose teething spree involved my baseball glove, two shoes and a fourth-grade math workbook. When Mrs. Peters asked what had happened, I replied with the truth, unaware that saying this this to a teacher was like Eliot Spitzer telling his wife he'd be working late at the governor's office.

But I digress. I used that headline because I was fishing around for an excuse for my laziness over the last 10 days. I haven't been exercising, even though my cold is gone. I snuggled up to a huge brownie, and not the kind that cobbles your shoes if you leave them out overnight. I skipped a week of weighing myself, because I didn't want to get inevitable bad news.

Anyhow, I finally climbed on the scale this morning for the first time in two weeks, to find that I've backslid only one pound. I'm still four pounds ahead on the process and have sworn to mount Ye Olde Treadmille tomorrow morning, as usual. Unless the cats claw up the belt and render it unusable, of course. I saw one of them stretched out on it this morning....