Fuzzy, my 1-year-old cat, resembles a dog more and more each day. Not a German Shepherd or Labrador, of course. But maybe a toy Bichon-Frize. He licks me when I arrive home from work; he learned to fetch at six months; and his intruder-alert bark is steadily improving (though it hasn’t yet graduated from a yip). Oh, and recently he’s begun peeing on the furniture. Or as the vet likes to put it, “having urinary malfunctions.” After a month of failed potty-training schemes and amonia scented air, we finally found a solution. It arrived via UPS, in the form of a gallon jug of engineered bacteria, marketed under the catchy brand name Anti-Icky-Poo.

We traveled up to Clinton Corners, New York, this last weekend to visit with my rapidly ballooning family. Mainly, though, we jockeying for time with the babies: Owen, Winifred, and Francis. Their parents were there, too, but very little adult conversation was made. Mostly, we spent our time trying to get Winifred and Francis to repeat their first word. No, not “Ma-ma” or “Da-da.” Much to the bewilderment of Doug and Tara, the twins’ first word was “kit-ty.” Too damn cute!

Baby Owen, my sister’s pride and joy, was slightly more alert and active than the last time we saw him, but he was still focused solely on feeding. He’s put on a healthy amount of weight and now appears to have as many chins as his uncle Ted. Also, on another positive note, almost all of his back hair has fallen out. Unfortunately, it’s also started falling out up top, too, and his male pattern baldness is starting to look eerily familiar.

As we all know, it’s cute for a baby to be chubby and balding. But sad and troubling for someone who’s going to be married in three months. Baby = cherub. Groom-to-be = Jabba the Hut. Seeing this picture made me shudder and realize there was only one solution: Go back on Atkins. Buy a few packages of frozen burgers, find two-for-one deals on bacon, get my lazy ass disciplined into a morning workout, and double up on the cologne. Time to get svelte!

—There’s one, and only one, reason I kept this picture: Motivation.

—Baby Winifred’s been practicing her Pope wave.

—She’s laughing here, but make no mistake about it: If you submerge yourself in the pool and then swim up to Baby Francis in the shallow end, you won’t be getting any of her adorable giggles. Just a blood-curdling scream and a day’s worth of the cold shoulder.

After much trial and error, I finally got my Netlix history (a little ways down, in the sidebar) to show my recent rental ratings—those happy-making stars beneath each of the movie titles. The ones in bright 3-D yellow are the movies that I’ve returned and rated; the ones in red (or dark yellow) are just the Netflix-user averages (because I was too lazy to rate ‘em myself). Why, you might ask, would I kill an evening trying to set this up? Above all, it’s because I don’t want any of you to suffer through “Chasing Liberty,” as I did last night.

Many thanks to Oscar Hills for creating this Netflix rating plugin and, in so doing, indulging in one of my dorkiest requests. Also, a monster obrigado to Andy Diller for walking me through the set-up process, and putting up with a few hours worth of bitching. If there’s such a thing as blog envy, it certainly took hold when Andy’s rating stars appeared and all I got was a broken link.

The best email I’ve received all year arrived yesterday, courtesy of David Pizzi, my former assistant at Grey Worldwide. Dave’s message pointed me to www.marryblaire.com, where Blaire Allison, a 26-year-old Jerseyite who specializes in Bachelorette Party planning, has appealed to the web masses to help find her a husband by December 2004. Dave, as it turns out, isn’t just some dirty lurker on the girl’s site; he’s the “Man of the Week,” the latest date candidate offered up to her site’s readers for evaluation. Here’s an excerpt from the Dave page: “So – what do we think? I think he’s totally adorable! I just love a man in a suit!”

Oh yeah, and I also dig a man who can administer the shocker!

There was a great segment by Sarah Vowell on last Satuday’s This America Life about the bizarre evolution of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Who knew that a song we use to mourn the 9/11 victims and rally the troops in the war on terror was originally written to commemorate the first American terrorist?