Deacons mtg tonight. Another day of work all day, come home briefly, leave for the evening, get home after the kiddies are in bed. School day tomorrow.

I taped the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, and started in on it. I'm through the Working group, and halfway through the Terriers. I always enjoy David Frei's commentary, he's been a fixture of the show for years now. But, I always get a chuckle out of some of his standard cliches. For instance, when asked what a judge looks for when the dog is trotting down and back, he always says something like "The judge is looking to see all the qualities in the breed's standard come together." Oh, I see. Crystal clear. How about a specific example?

Or, for the last few years he does a segment where he demonstrates a hands-on judging. But all he does is put his hands on the dog, from front to back, and mumble generalities about looking for things in the breed's standard. Again, how about an example? It would be nice to put a champion show dog side by side with a decrepit mutt of the same breed, to show specifically how one conforms to the standard and how the other doesn't.

Finally, my favorite, when the judges pick the winners in a group, they always point at the first place one, and pull them out, or have them move apart, etc... and Frei often says something like "I think the judge has some kind of order in mind". I just want to throw heavy metallic objects at the tv. I've watched the show for years, and I've never seen a case where the first dog the judge points to isn't the winner. Yet Frei always seems to try and make ya think there's still some uncertainty to the order the judge makes his picks.

I don't know which dog won this year, so don't tell me! But, I'm sure it wasn't one of my favorites. I love the Irish Wolfhound, the Scottish Deerhound, and the Russian Wolfhound. My dream is to have a country estate where I can have these dogs running around.

(There's a different host this year, not sure why they ditched last year's guy, who had taken over for Joe. I wish Joe was still around. He continually uttered the best cliche of all, when they went to commercial breaks, he said "We're working our way towards Best In Show.")

I just like watching the show to see the gorgeous dogs. I don't for a minute believe it is anything more than a highly subjective, and therefore meaningless, competition. Here is an interesting article on that point.

And finally, dreams. Yes, a bit of a gear switch there. I've noticed sometimes when I dream that if I find the dream particularly interesting, like a sprawling grade-A action adventure dream, I sense myself almost eager to see the dream continue, to find out what happens next. I wonder if there is any research looking at whether interesting dreams trigger the same receptors in the brain that addictive drugs do, so that we feel we really want to continue the dream.