I've been trying to gently break it to Zeus that he gets to go back to Doggie Camp for a week while I'm at my narcotics school, but he just doesn't want to hear it. He's totally in denial. Every time I begin to broach the subject he decides he wants to chase after a squirrel or bark at a car or lick his balls. But, no matter how much he avoids the subject, it is going to happen. He's not going to be happy with me.

Tuesday after work I (and 29 other people) had to go to the range to do our annual firearms qualification. We had to shoot the POST pistol course twice, once in regular light, and once in low-light. (Actually low-light wasn't all that low-light because no one wanted to stick around for a couple of hours waiting for the sun to go down, so low-light was more like sorta-dusk.) Now, I haven't done any shooting since the Academy (shame on me!) And it definitely showed when I shot the course the first time. Top score is 120, and I managed to throw out every shot that I fired from my left hand at the 7-yard line, plus a few others here and there, ending up with a dismal (for me) 109. That's the worst I have ever shot the POST course. Next time through I decided to get my head out of my ass and focus, and shot a much more respectable 119.

And, I've started running again with the latest academy class. I dropped out of running during the summer when the temps were up in the triple digits, so it's been 2-3 months since I've done any. I managed to keep up without difficulty though, which shows that the cardio that I've been doing on the cycle at the gym was not worthless. My legs and calves sure hurt though! We did about 2 miles on Wednesday, and then 2.5 miles on Thursday. Thursday was actually a killer for me, because I talked my workout partner into coming running with us in the morning. (Bear in mind that my workout partner is also a co-worker, and is in pretty darn excellent shape.) So as soon as we finished running, we both headed to the gym and did a pretty heavy chest workout. (I benched 115! Woo! That's the Olympic bar with 35lb plates on either side. That's a milestone for me, but my real goal is to have to 45lb plates on the bar by the end of the year.) Then as soon as we finished there (by that time I was pretty ripe) I followed him up to Covington so that he could drop his (police) car off at maintenance, and then gave him a ride back to Slidell. By that time I decided I was already sweaty and stinky, so I might as well wash my police car... I don't think I managed to get a shower until about 4 in the afternoon between one thing and another.

I'm also getting geared up for my school next week. "Geared up" means going shopping for clothes that I can wear to classes. It's not a uniform kind of thing, and I realized that I have very few casual-nice clothes, so it was the perfect excuse to shop. I actually haven't done any real shopping in a long time, since I've been so disgustingly frugal lately. But said frugality is paying off, since I'm real close to paying a number of large bills completely off. It's weird, but my financial status is a lot better now than it was when I was making so much more money. It's funny how controlling your spending will do that to you. I actually stop and think, "Do I NEED that," before I buy something now. If I'd had these spending habits back when I was making the big bucks I'd have had every bill payed off with a heap of money in the bank. Live and learn!