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Two things have happened in the past couple of weeks... one of them is sucky, and the other one is awesome. So I'll focus on the awesome thing: We got a puppy, and his name is JETPACK!
"Jetpack?" you say. "Why would you name a dog 'Jetpack'?" My sister and I were talking a few months ago about weird names people give their kids these days, and I joked that I would name my future kid "Jetpack" so that I could brag to other people, "I have a JETPACK." Unfortunately, the idea of bestowing this name on my actual human offspring was vetoed by my wife, so I told her that when we finally got a dog I would name him Jetpack instead.
Mary and I went to The Lange Foundation in West LA, a nonprofit organization that rescues animals from city pounds, especially "special needs" dogs who are going to be destroyed otherwise. Mary and I spent some time with a few of these dogs but ultimately we decided we wanted a puppy. Mary's into "wiry" dogs, and Jetpack is some sort of terrier mix that came into the shelter with his litter mates. She picked the dog, I picked the name.
We brought Jetpack home a few days later. We both love him a lot, but having a puppy is EXHAUSTING. He tries to chew on everything, he has way too much energy, and he pees every few hours. The good news: Mary and I are both very good puppy parents, so it only took 3 days to get him housebroken, and we think we've figured out the correct food/water schedule so that he will sleep 7 hours straight at night before having to go out to pee. Also, among the things we didn't know before: owning a puppy in the city means he CANNOT go out for walks or meet other dogs until he's 4 months old and fully vaccinated. We never had this problem out in the suburbs, where I took my dog Cobi out for walks the day he got home. So in the meantime, it's a lot of ball-chasing in the apartment and in the hallway for exercise.
I'll end this post with two final thoughts:
1) Jetpack has blue eyes. Cobi had yellow eyes which made him seem freaky when you took flash photos of him, and I assumed that all dogs had yellow eyes. Apparently not:
2) We live on the fourth floor, and we have an enclosed balcony. Jetpack is a curious little booger (just like me) and he likes to prop himself up on his front paws and watch cars go by. I think it makes him look like a dictator:
And yes, having a dog again does make the shitty thing seem less awful. =)
I admit, it's been a long time since I've written anything on my blog. Not that anyone is paying attention, anyway, right? I can't help it, after I joined The Facebooks it just became way easier to post a one-sentence item about what I'm doing than to come here and write something thoughtful.
So, what's new? Oh, Mary and I got married.
Yep, it was in Maui. And in case you're upset that you weren't invited, don't be... it was a really small affair. And in order to accommodate Mary's post-med school, pre-residency schedule, as well as the Chinese zodiac, we got married on a Monday! Who does that, anyway?
Happily, my whole family was there.
And all some of my closest friends, too!
Everyone always asks, "How's married life?" The answer: "It's no different than before." Except that now Mary is here all of the time. And my closet no longer has any empty shelves in it. We even had to buy a dresser. Unheard of!
Mary started residency pretty much as soon as we got back, and then I was busy trying to sell a pilot for a while. But over Christmas/New Year's we found some time to go on our "honeymoon" to Europe. We went to Paris and Rome. It was FREEZING when we were there... apparently unusually so. Still, we had a great time and got to see a bunch of interesting sights. Here's Mary looking triumphant in front of the Arc du Triomphe.
Rome was great, too. Lots more ancient stuff there. There's so much ancient stuff in Rome that they don't even bother posting security guards in the Roman ruins. There are all kinds of columns and statues lying around, in the dirt. You can sit on them, lie down on them, probably even pick stuff up and walk off with it, and the Romans just say, "Eh. We got plenty more where that came from." I can't imagine what it's like to live in a city where most of the stuff is literally THOUSANDS of years old.
Here's a picture of us at the Il Coloseo (that's "The Coloseum" for you Americanos)
If anybody is going to Paris or Rome and needs recommendations on places to stay or anything like that, we've got plenty! And we can even tell you how to get into the Vatican for free. Shh!
More posts coming soon, I promise!
The "Bacon Explosion" is the recipe of the moment, and it's no wonder why. 2 pounds of bacon, weaved together to form a "mat," wrapped around 2 pounds of Italian sausage and grilled, creating a 5000-calorie, 500-grams-of-fat loaf of delicious meat. I haven't tried one yet but I'd like to. In the meantime, I've dreamed up a few other recipes that creatively use bacon to cram more fat into our diets...
BACON STRAW: STEP 1: Roll 1 strip of bacon length-wise, into a narrow tube. STEP 2: Cook until crisp, forming a “bacon straw.” STEP 3: Use bacon straw to drink 1 cup of melted butter. Yum! STEP 4: Eat straw.
JAMBACON: STEP 1: Grill 1 pound of bacon. STEP 2: Freeze bacon overnight. STEP 3: Put frozen bacon, 1/2 cup Crisco, and 1 banana* into blender. STEP 4: Enjoy your bacon smoothie. (*Banana is optional.)
PIG IN A BLANKET: STEP 1: Using “Bacon Explosion” technique, weave 40 pounds of bacon into 80-inch x 90-inch mat. STEP 2: Cook until crisp. STEP 3: Go to sleep, using your new bacon blanket to absorb fat directly through your skin. STEP 4: Wake up to find yourself being eaten alive by inventors of “Bacon Explosion.”
I have decided that I am a terrible blogger. So many things have happened recently and I haven't blogged about any of them! It's a good thing I don't have a twitter feed...no one would bother subscribing to it because I'd never have anything new to say.
So, in the interest of catching all 3 of my "followers" up on what's been going on recently, I've decided to update the blog with a bunch of new entries, all post-dated. In other words, these are all entries as I would've liked to have written them at the time they happened...except that they really didn't. So don't feel bad if you say to yourself, "I don't remember reading any of this crap!" Because you didn't.
Item #1 (moving backwards thru time): Mary's birthday was a couple of days ago. She's now 26! Yay! She made herself this gorgeous cake.
Did I mention how good she is with her hands? Apparently all of her med school profs say she should be a surgeon. Nevertheless, she's going into ER, which is (I'm told) a slightly better lifestyle. Plus if you're ever drunk and fall down, there's a pretty good chance you will see her in the hospital when you go to get your stitches.
