the home from work ritual

just about every weekday i get home from work and the following occurs:

walk into the house through the laundry room.

our eldest dog Pugston rises from his napping spot on the old couch that's placed in what would otherwise normally be considered our formal dining room, greeting me enthusiastically. he does this because, among other things, i am the Scooper Of The Food and the Opener Of The Door That Leads To The Grass Where He Poops (and he's also been sleeping for the last eight to ten hours so the mere sight of someone new in the house is an exciting change of pace).

after proper greetings between Pugston and myself are exchanged our cat Nerf usually makes an appearance, coolly scoping out the situation.

make my way to the master bedroom where our newest dog Louie has been enjoying the cozy shelter of his kennel where he stays during those times when the house is unsupervised by humans (Louie is young and has not yet demonstrated a level of conscientious bladder control that would grant him greater freedoms).

opening the cage to the kennel, Louie unleashes a day's worth of pent-up kinetic energy as he bolts to the living room eager to chase or be chased by Pugston or Nerf, whichever one happens to be first in his path.

both dogs eagerly follow me to the kitchen door that leads to the backyard, barely letting the door open a crack before they squirm their ways out to the carpet of green grass (well mostly a carpet, we have some brown and dead patches, i never claimed to be a master of the yard) for their routine evacuation activities. i walk out in the yard with them, taking a look at the state of the backyard and keeping an eye on things.

if i turn to look back at the kitchen door i can see Nerf through one of its glass panes, sitting on the kitchen floor observing us in our movements about this strange foreign "not-house" world. maybe he wants to join us in exploring the outdoor flora? oh, no sir, not at all, he's strictly an evaluator from afar. open the door to any degree and he bolts to a location more suitable to his always-heightened sense of caution.

the dogs' business done, we head back inside. the events occurring after may vary in timing or happening (dinner prep, playing xbox, cleaning dishes, minor household chores), but this first sequence of events invariably comes to pass in similar fashion weekday after weekday.

in some circumstances this type of repetition of ritual can grow mundane and dispiriting; with Pugston, Nerf, and Louie, though, our developing tradition is a presence of pure goodness in life.

alive

...just haven't been blogging lately; the switch from eating lunch at work in solitary at my desk to hanging out in a boardroom with coworker friends has really cramped the output.

we have a spiffy new laptop at home that can be used comfortably from the couch with wifi to litter the blogosphere with new entries but i find sometimes after eight hours of computer-screen viewing and keyboard typing at work i'm not really gung-ho to launch into personal computing time; if not that, then other after-work activities like dinner, sports, TV, chores, projects, etc. seem to get in the way.

think i just need to suck it up for the greater good and get back to posting!

the door at work

so the office in the building in which i work is accessible by two doors on opposite ends of the area; both are magnetically locked and can only be opened with the proper badge and reading of the code on said badge by the door lock sensor.

that is, until yesterday when someone leaned too heavy a shoulder or something into the door near my end, the result being that the metal arm lever that brings the door to a mechanically controlled slow, smooth close was broken off from its moorings to the door frame and now acts as a wedge that keeps the door from being closed properly.

maintenance should be by to fix it in short order, but the interesting thing to me for the time being is, having gone through the swipe badge / open door / proceed through door routine for a long time now, that i get this weird Pavlovian sense of unease whenever i now walk through the door standing listlessly agape.

there are no free and open doors anymore, it's lunacy! there must be some requirement to gain access, it boggles the modern mind to just flow through unchecked.

brave dog survives danger, shoddy writing

so cnn had this story on the air about a fourteen-year-old dalmatian that got stuck in a storm drain underground for four days; concerned friends and family eventually rescued him.

i went to the web to find an article of this happy-ending story that i could forward to my wife and her sister (both ardent dog lovers)

and this.... this is the first article i find:

KLTV in Tyler - proofread what you put on your website
________________________________________________________-
8/21/07 Wayne County , West Virginia
Dog Buried Alive Trapped Four Days Underground

Dog trapped underground in a storm drain for four days has been rescued.

Listen carefully, and you'll hear a grown man cry: Tears of triumph over tragedy. Finding his buried dog: alive.

This is a story of sheer perseverance! It could have had a completely different ending. The threat of a cave in, after heavy rain, was very real!

Alex the Dalmation was trapped 15 feet underground in an old storm drain. He crawled in to cool offand got stuck.

A danger, not only to the trapped dog, but it's owner: who had been digging for days to try and free Alex. A friend with a backhoe came to help, inching dangerously close. It's giant, iron claw capable of ripping the animal in half. A hole large enough to swallow this ladder whole and everyone and everything in it.

That was the thing we had to whisper a little prayer for last night, because these dogs get to be like part of the family.

But after 4 days of searching and two days of digging, Alex, was free.

For 14 years he has bee a part of Thompson family.

Alex was taken to the vet, early this afternoon: he arrived on a stretcher. iI's a miracle.
______________________________________________________


a veritable minefield of:
- exclamation points! !! !
- colons and commas dispersed on a seemingly random basis
- fragment sentences that start almost in mid-thought and end jarringly abrupt
- apostrophes where no apostrophe should be
- missing letters and misspelled words


it's so bad, it's almost poetic. brave, brave doggy.

30 is the new 20

hey, my friend of friends, Steven, who in the beginning gave birth to this website, was given birth to on this earth this day thirty years ago!

so happiest of birthdays to you Steve, my contemporary. if your thirtieth year is anything like mine it'll usher in an era of curiously increased focus on the richness of the green color of the lawn grass bordering your domicile. then again, recent home ownership may have contaminated me as a subject for purposes of the scientific "age 29 vs age 30" study.

i'm alive

that is to say, i'm more alive than my blog has been of late.

same excuse remains: work and process of moving into home, trying to keep track of all the things to buy and errands to run.

bright spot of hope: probably going to get a new laptop soon so i can take care of my computer reponsibilities wirelessly from the comfort of our couch at home. this will enable some more responsible blogging frequency (and possibly catching up on old post ideas that have been mouldering) than what i am able to accomplish at odd moments during the workday

another FOX News watch post? ...... yes

ok this is going to be kind of a weak post after almost a month's absence but been super-busy with goings-on at work and home, both environments being full of much activity. i'll deal with the backlog of post ideas later, but for now:

the subtitle script as Fox News' own Neil Cavuto interviews one football player to get his thoughts on how the wealth of another football player was not sufficient to remove said other football player from enjoying rougher, less socially acceptable hobbies:

"Ladainian Tomlinson thoughts on the the Vick dogfighting case"

first the Fox News monkey typist is a poor grammar student, now he's a stutterer.