Let's move onto something a little lighter, shall we?

Well, "lighter" is a figurative term…you see, Sophie's body max index has been an ongoing project in our lives.

She came to us as a scrawny malnourished rescue kitten. She was all length and no width; she looked pitiful. We left a bowl of food out for her at all times to eat whenever she saw fit. Cats are supposed to know when they are not really hungry anymore and stop, after all.

By her second year checkup with the vet, she had filled out drastically. She was still growing however, so we thought it was a phase. Not to mention, she is a larger cat breed. By year three however, she was officially overweight, weighing in at 17 pounds. I have to interject, for the sake of Sophie, that during that year we identified medical problems that require her to be on prescription cat food that is much higher in fat content.

But even with that interjection…Sophie doesn't eat; she inhales.

She was left to her own devices for too long in the wild and never lost the scavenger mentality. Nick and I had to be a lot more active in her diet by veterinary proclamation, or we were going to have a (fuzzy) walking beach ball on our hands.

All of her portion sizes have been reduced, and she eats from an automatic feeder that disperses a portion at 8:00 AM and midnight. I get home from work at 4:30 PM, and I give her a small portion of wet food for her evening meal. The vet warned us that putting a cat on a diet is much worse than any human on a diet, and boy he wasn't kidding.

In the beginning, she'd nag us to feed her, tripping us as she wound around our ankles. Eventually, when we didn't give in, she'd up and bite us. She got nasty all around. She'd run in from another area of the condo and head straight toward one of us to take a meaty nip from our legs. In case you don't already know this: cats like to be the boss. They constantly challenge authority.

Needless to say, when those feeding times hit, she is an eating machine. Nick and I have separated ourselves from the dry food with that automatic feeder (she now chews on that thing instead of us), but she still relies on us for the afternoon wet food. She is the pestiest of all pests when I walk in the door…and for what? Moments after I put her food down, it's gone. I doubt she even tastes it.

Sophie entertained us most of the afternoon yesterday. We had returned home from a shopping excursion in the Dells to find the cat spasmodically throwing herself at the door. Upon closer inspection, a small bug was resting outside the glass.

The entire purpose for the trip was to see The Cute One. Even so, when the plane landed it was the first time I had ever been in the Pacific timezone much less Sin City. I am not a gambler (there's usually a dress or pair of shoes that I would rather throw my money at), but I wanted to take in other parts of Las Vegas while we were there. Shortly after checking in, we headed to New York, New York to find a place to eat a light dinner.



After learning the price of a fountain soda at a sandwich place, I made sure to take advantage of the free refills. I consumed Diet Pepsi until you could see it splashing in the whites of my eyes. I drank well past the point of comfort and barely left any room for my black bean burger—but by God, I was going to make 'em hurt on the fountain soda.

After dinner, we left to do some touristy stuff on the Las Vegas Strip. We caught the fountains at Bellagio…



…and the Mirage Volcano. We took video of that too, but I am not all that entertained by it, so I won't embed it here. We waited quite awhile for the show to start since it was on Nick's tidy little list of must-sees. As such, since we both had cameras, we ended up with a lot of shots outside the Mirage hotel. Most of them were deleted because they looked the exact same as the other 50. Oh, look! There's a duck! [click.] Oh, look! There's the same duck! [click.] Oh, look! There it is again! [click.] Boredom bites, but thankfully today's memory cards support that level of boredom.



The "volcano" was disappointing for me. I didn't see the draw, but then maybe we were just standing too far away from the center of the action to be drawn in. I was very tired by this point as well. On a normal night, we go to bed at 9:00 (early morning people). The time change threw me off, and I was mad that it was still so light outside when I was ready to crash. Still, Nick had one last thing to see that night since it was going to be our only time to sight-see.

My fatigue was making me very cranky because my body was still on Wisconsin time and thinking that it was past 10:00. I never sleep well the day before travel (mind too busy), so I was even crankier than usual. I didn't mortally wound Nick with my stabbing glares, but I wanted him to at least hurt a little. This is a conflict that we run into on every single vacation. Nick likes to fill every second with an activity. I myself enjoy a little feline laziness when I go on holiday. I usually return to work more exhausted than when I left because my time away was all GO-GO-GO-GO.

I knew that I would play along and go to his last item on the list because I always fold, but I wasn't going to go quietly. He hailed a taxi to take us to see the Fremont Street Experience.



If I had been in a nicer mood, I might have let him know how much I enjoyed seeing the light show. As it was, I had a point to make, so I remained taciturn as I snapped photos and thought to myself, "Wow…"