the happy

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Okay, so I’m resolving to stop bitching about people so much. Call it my zen live-and-let-live moment or something. I can’t quite descibe it, but I’m having this revelation of “just because someone is doing something I don’t like it doesn’t mean they are wrong, just that it’s not what I would do”. I suspect it won’t last long, mocking other people is the cheap bastion of the uninspired and let me tell you, I am no great light in the sky.
This means 2 things
1) the fucktard in the rusty Chey Cavalier who cut me off tonight gets a pass
2) I will regale you with yet another post about my dogs because my dogs are by far the happiest beings on the planet. Way happier than any person I know.
Okay so.
Every night I walk my dogs. I generally wait until late, usually around midnight. This is partly because I live in a pretty dog intensive neighborhood and my dogs are pretty damned excited by dogs (Ghengis in a happy way, Maddie in a protective way) and partly because I love the late night peace of my neighborhood. On the return trip we walk up the alley behind my house. About halfway up the alley I let Ghengis off his leash. It’s very late at night, there’s never really anyone around and he does not run away.
He doesn’t run away but he takes off like a springloaded rabbit hellbent on dominating the carrot kingdom. He flies up the alley to my driveway, up the driveway around the house, into the alley, back to me. He makes a wide circle behind me and does the whole circuit over and over again until I reach the driveway. Just this little dog beating every ounce of muscle into the pavement, running so hard and fast you are sure he could rocket to the moon.
When Maddie and I reach the driveway he races around the house until I reach the front door, the I hold the screen open and he runs in without even being called. Sometimes I’ll chase him around the back yard or play tag with him, sometimes I just pretend I am going to grab him, I lunge and growl as he passes me.
There are those who say that dogs do not feel any but the basest emotions, that it’s not in their brains or something. They say dogs can’t smile or express joy. I defy you to prove to me that Ghengis is not smiling, that he is not laughing silently as he runs and turns and leaps around. Every night I let the little brown dog off his leash because there is nothing that makes him happier than running and in turn there is nothing that makes me happier than seeing him get to do that.
The pleasure is entirely simple and satisfying.

I am winning

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Proof positive that I am in the running for worst dog owner ever. Today we stuck Ghengis in a 55 gallon aquarium.

Now we have to vacuum all his hair out of there so we can move the lizards into their new home.
I have much cleaning and packing to do. I’m going up to the Soudan mine and neutron collector this weekend! Party on, science nerds!

The night that was

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My time with Dáithí has been pretty limited on this trip. He has been on assignment out of town. Last night David, Anna and I braved tornadoes and hail just to have dinner with him. I thought it might be a good idea to bring Anna along as she always seems to be in need of gentle ribbing and excess beer drinkage. Dáithí decided to bring his computer geek coworkers along for the ride. We drank many beers and ate less-than-stellar food and tried to hook Anna up with a lonely IT dude (or protect her from him….not sure what my stance was on that particular subject).


This is Anna. She didn’t kill him. I am amazed

The obligatory “i’m taking a picture of you as you take a picture of me” shot. Sadly, his camera patteries died soon after this, I was going to fill his camera with surreptitious man ass shots.

Things devolved quickly

I don’t know why, but he gets so embarassed when he talks about the Grecian Isles.

Is any night complete without a Fonzie tattoo??

All of the college kids were back in town. I’d never seen such a concentration of second rate frat boys and date rape victims in my life and THEN we passed a second rate titty bar with freaky crusty guys and lap dancers who were not aging as gracefully as they had hoped to. This is Dáithí’s impression of Minnesota and for that I am very sorry.
Today, while I was at work, he got dropped off at the Mall of America where he spent the better part of four hours cringing in in the bowels of American capitalism. David and I rescued him and offered to take him to dinner. All the regular sit-down restaurants had enormous wait times or overly meat intensive menus. We decided it was high time he ate his first peanut butter sandwich. He’s never had one, apparently his mother sent him to school with cheese and tomato sandwiches instead of pb&j. He tried to convince me this was very European but I’m beginning to think there was some shoddy parenting going on.
We went over to PB Loco for crazy peanut butter sandwiches. Your first peanut butter sandwich ever should obviously be the most upsetting sandwich ever. His had sundried tomato peanut butter, lettuce, cucumber and cheese!!! He hated it. It was awful. He scraped the peanut butter off then destroyed the sandwich completely to make it seem like he ate some. I’m convinced he does not actually eat, he just smashes his food around to give the impression of progress.
My sandwich was delicious but if I described it here you would freak. On a positive note, I took all the hippo animal crackers off all our plates and made a hippo parade. That was pretty cool.
We dropped Dáithí off at the airport. My heart was heavy knowing that this could be the last time I ever see him. Who knows what the future holds. We were not able to spend very much time together, I wish we could have timed it better so I could have had time off work, but the time we did have was delightful and fun.
Tá mo bhríste trí thine
Go raibh maith agat, Dáithí
Fraoch Ban