I don't have the heart to tell Dreyfus that he's 70 pounds over the weight limit cutoff for what would commonly be called a "lap dog". The fella seems to think my lap makes a good seat. I seem to agree with him.

Funny story: A few months ago, my sister and I watched a movie about Crossword puzzles. The movie inspired me to buy book of 500 New York Times crossword puzzles. My goal is to finish them all by my next birthday. (The folks in the movie can do these things in under two minutes... my personal best time so far is 8:35, but I digress... :-)) I usually take the book with me when I eat out, happily doing a puzzle or two while I munch on my dinner. Tonight, I was plugging away on puzzle #385, when I got to the clue: "Defender of Dreyfus" (53 down, four letters). This gave me much joy, mostly because of the name Dreyfus, but also because the time I spent reading about the "real" Dreyfus finally paid dividends. I remembered reading that Emile Zola, the French novelist, had defended Dreyfus publicly during The Dreyfus Affair. A few seconds later, while basking in the triumph of knowing the answer, I found myself asking "Self, why is everyone staring at you?" Perhaps folks were staring at me because I had just shouted

"'ZOLA'! IT'S 'ZOLA'! I KNOW THAT ONE! BWWAAAAHAHA! YESSSSSSSSS!"

Ooops. I'm glad I don't embarass easily.

For the record, Dreyfus is actually named after Bear the Dog, who was on the late-80's/early-90's sitcoms Golden Girls and Empty Nest. The character on the show was named Dreyfuss, but I guess dropping the last 's' was just my dog's way of keeping up the Rebuck tradition of name-mangling (Rhoebock-Rehbock-Rebuck, which was pronounced "RAY-buck" until my generation, which switched to "REE-buck".)