Goodbye to 2009

Wow, another year has come and gone! This New Year's eve, mama and papa decided to spend a quiet evening at home with me instead of hosting their traditional nabe party. They put an O-kazari on our door today. It's a traditional Japanese New Year's decoration.

Mama also switched the pictures in the Roots calendar that we received from E-chan in Osaka. Some of the pictures in the calendar may look familiar!



I still love to bark at the TV, much to mama's and papa's dismay. The TV commercial that gets to me the most is one for Contac. You can see the video of the commercial here. I get really excited and almost jump through the TV when the samurai uses his katana. I also love barking at the Contac guy on the left. As soon as I see that guy, I jump up and down and don't stop barking until the commercial is finished. I even know the music for the commercial because no matter where I am in the house, as soon as I hear the beginning of the commercial, I stop what I'm doing and run to the TV. Mama and papa can't figure out why that commercial bothers me and I'm not going to tell them. I bark at Otosan on the Softbank commercials a lot too.
I'm loving my new bed. Papa used to come home and I would get up and follow him around. Now, with my new bed, I've become somewhat of a couch potato. Even when papa comes home from work, I stay in bed and relax.

HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!

Hot and Sour

Papa tried his hand at Chinese food tonight. He made chicken chow mein and hot & sour soup. Both came out pretty good! Mama even had seconds of the soup! Papa thinks both of them can use some improvements but as a first try, we think it was not a bad try. Papa was surprised at how easy hot & sour soup is to make. This recipe was the basis of his soup but papa made a few changes which he says are secret until he perfects it. The chicken chow mein recipe (which he also modified but keeps secret) can be found here. In both cases, he thinks the flavor should have been deeper. He used the whole bag of mein that his family sent from Canada (which turned out to be too much for 2 people) but the flavour was so good! He has 2 more packages of mein to work with. As you can see, I was also busy supervising papa's cooking...actually, I was waiting for him to drop something delicious for me to eat :-)



Just 2 more days of work for papa and then he can spend December 30 to January 4 at home playing with me!!!

All I want for Christmas is...

...a new 58 degree Cleveland CG15 wedge...wait a minute...huh??? That's not what I wanted, but that's what papa got for me. What kind of a present is that for a JRT??? I told him I can't use it so he said he would use it for me. Hmmmm...somehow I think I got the short end of the stick...or club in this case...


I got my real Christmas present a few days ago. Mama and papa got me a new bed!!! I love it! When papa comes home from work, I don't go to the door to meet him anymore...I just stay in my warm bed until he turns on the heater :-)




Even though Christmas day was a regular working day in Japan today, papa took the day off and took me for a really long walk. We went to Ebisu Garden Place to see the Christmas tree and the huge Baccarat crystal chandelier. There were tons of people there and we had a lot of fun walking around and soaking up the Christmas spirit. When I got home, I was a little tired so I just plopped myself down on the floor and slept for an hour. Mama made me a special Christmas dinner! In addition to my regular wet and dry food with chicken, I got 2 of my favorite things - carrots and cabbage!!! We opened our Christmas gifts tonight after dinner. Papa's sister got me a hoodie with my name on it (my name is Roots, not 1973 Athletics...)! Thank you Auntie S, Uncle D and Cousins A and A!!!

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas...

The other day at work, papa experienced the BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) on his Microsoft laptop for about the hundredth time this year. How do people put up with Microsoft Windows. What a terrible excuse for an operating system. This is the reason papa bought an Apple iMac at home...he says it's the best purchase he's ever made...


We've been getting cold weather lately...nothing like the North-East part of the US where I hear they expect 30 cm of snow this week, but we've started dropping below 10 degrees. I still love playing tug-o-war with papa. It's my favorite game. I especially love slobbering all over the blanket and then watching papa grab it and quickly let go because the blanket is all wet!
I also like playing fetch with papa. We play fetch with my blanket but it's so big that when I run with it, sometimes I step on it and trip myself. It makes papa laugh and he says I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer...whatever that means...

The Good Shepherd...

Papa has almost perfected his recipe for Shepherd's Pie! The ingredients for the meat are just about right and he has almost figured out how to make the world's best mashed potatoes. This is the finished product and it is amazing...







...at least that's what he says. Jack Russell Terriers in this house are not permitted to eat Shepherd's Pie. It has something to do with fat dawgs not being cute or something like that...

I don't think he realizes just how active I am! I was the brains behind the dish. I spent endless energy supervising papa to make sure he didn't make a mistake...

And once the hard work of supervising was done, it took a lot of energy to find a place like this and then settle in...

Not to mention how active I am after dinner...
Of course, all of the above activity takes up about 3 minutes of my day. The other 23 hours and 57 minutes of the day I run around the house, bark at birds, attack the TV and vacuum and drive mama and papa crazy. I'd post pictures but papa says I can't sit still long enough to take a decent photo. He has to wait until I take my 1 minute nap to snap a picture. Most pictures papa takes of me look like this: