Sewer Diving and Lost Dogs

This is me, assisting a random tourist downtown. Somehow she’d dropped her cell phone into a storm drain.

Down the hole

Today I heard that my brother had to put his old pug dog Beau to sleep. The playmate of my pug, Loki, Beau was originally my late grandfather’s dog and was just a perpetually-wired bundle of canine joy. But Beau was old and it was time; he was starting to suffer and my brother made the right decision.

Still, it makes me remember my cat…my ex-wife and I had him for years and finally had to put him to sleep. So amazingly sad, even if I accept that it’s right, even if years have passed.

2005 Favorite Links

I’m always curious about which links people follow religiously, so maybe you are too. I got rid of my tv in the middle of 2005, so the web (and word of mouth) are my exclusively sources for news.

Of course, I also check in with ThinkProgress.com and DailyKos.com, just to stir my liberal rage.

There’s a lot of other useful stuff I look at from time to time (like epicurious.com or boxofficemojo.com), but the following links I look at daily or weekly:

Exploding Dog
Exploding Dog is always charming, sometimes brutally funny.

The Onion
Of course, the classic humor site we’ve all loved for years.

Google News
The “news site” that I now use almost exclusively.

Perry Bible Fellowship
Awesome, slightly surrealist web comic.

Questionable Content
Indie music fan soap opera comic.

BoingBoing.net
Perpetually interesting source for ‘net culture related stories.

Common Times
A community edited news site.

What interesting sites do you use routinely?

The Anti-Thanksgiving

This ‘morning’ I am drinking very strong coffee and right now Fairytale of New York is playing. “It was Christmas Eve, babe / In the drunk tank” is one of the most brilliantly comical lyrics ever penned.

Last night I had drinks and great conversation with a friend, alternating from indoors to out. We ate pizza, played guitar hero (the brilliant PS2 rhythm game), then watched a super cheesy 80’s movie…a fantasy flick with the standard Euro synth pop. (Guess the movie, win a prize.)

Since my early twenties, I’ve had trouble sleeping past 8-9AM. This morning, after waking up earlier to feed the dogs, I slept until 1PM. No idea why, but I had the best sleep I’ve had in years. Strange, but amazing.

As a deliberate move on my part, I have no plans for Thanksgiving, other than whatever happens on-the-fly. If nothing happens, I’ll catch up on writing. I love that post apocalyptic feeling that cities and towns have on holidays, so I might ride my bike downtown later, just to soak up that vibe.

On the last day of work, I went to lunch with another friend (Ricardo) and we ate at Whole Foods. I had some tofu with seasonal glaze, stuffing, wild mushroom gravy and cranberry sauce. There’s something deeply psychological about holiday-oriented foods; that was a really satisfying (if super casual) meal. And, as an aside, whenever someone goes the extra mile and makes vegetarian gravy, I *drink* that shit…it’s one of those things the vegetarians really miss. Or at least Southern vegetarians. (Now if someone would just make vegetarian beef ribs…)

Thanksgiving

Falling in the shower

This morning I stepped into the shower, like always, but ended up tumbling down on my ass, which is definitely not how I like to start my day. I put my foot down too close to the sloped part of the tub and went down hard, taking the shower curtain with me.

My dog Star sits in the bathroom with me while I shower. (I think she digs the steam…or maybe she just likes to see me naked.) So she freaked out (naturally) when all this chaos blew up around her, and, in a split second, she jumped to the only safe place…the bath tub.

So I was lying there, wrapped in the shower curtain, half in the tub and half out of it, with a dog practically on top of me. The water was raining down on the entire scene, lending it an absurd vibe.

I think I bruised my knee and hip. Ouch.

Eventually, I got up, restored the curtain and–since she was already wet–gave Star a quick bath. I don’t think she was very happy about the entire incident. What a strange way to start the morning. I’m sure Star felt the same way.