11.29.2005

Thanksgiving Miracle



On Thanksgiving night, just as "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" was really getting good, I heard my dog Puck freaking out over something in the backyard. I figured it was just a cat, or maybe a squirrel who'd stayed up late, so I let him out the back door to chase it off (It is his yard, after all). I was shocked to see that it wasn't a cat, or a squirrel, but a black puppy, who had somehow gotten into our fenced-in backyard. She and Puck got along great, chasing each other around the yard, as theories about where she'd come from bounced around our inebriated crowd. She had no collar, but she wasn't all dirty and smelly, so we figured she'd just escaped from someone's backyard. Then again, maybe she'd been dumped? My wife Brooke was instantly smitten, and wanted to keep her. but I thought she had to belong to someone, and that we shouldn't get too attached. A few minutes later, she squeezed though a hole in our backyard fence, no doubt the same way she'd gotten in, and took off down the alley, toward her (hopefully) rightful home. I followed her for awhile, but lost her in the blackness.

The next day, I was walking down an alley a couple streets over and I ran into one of my neighbors...he asked if I was the owner of a black lab puppy. I said no, but told him my story of the night before...apparently the pup went to his house after I lost her in the alley, and he took her in and kept her for the night, planning to put up posters and try to locate her owners, if she had any, the next day. I told him that if nobody came forth to claim her, we'd take her on.

Now its a couple days later, and I guess she's our new dog. We named her Betty, and she's doing very well. We're still looking for her owners, but it's been a week and we've heard nothing, so it looks like she'll be with us for a while. She's smart, but a bit wild, and is a pretty determined little escape artist, so we're gonna get her some training and try to break her of these bad habits. You gotta love her, though...she's cute as a bug!

11.22.2005

Holy Crap! We Did It!


Another tight game, another Birds win, 4-3. We're the champs, after starting 0-9. What a world! You gotta love hockey!

11.17.2005

Pointy Birds Update

We won game one of the finals Tuesday night, a 6-5 overtime thriller over the Monkeys. For my part, I scored a goal for both teams, chipping in a loose rebound in front of the Monkeys' goal to put us up 2-0, and accidentally tapping a loose puck in front or our net past our stunned goaltender while trying to clear the zone, which tied the score at 5. It's the most embarrassing thing I've done in awhile. Here's to our scoring machine, Steve Rubino, who scored our other five goals, including the OT winner. Saturday we go for the clincher.

Just to be stupid, I've been growing a playoff beard! It's a long-standing tradition for NHL players to stop shaving once the Stanley Cup playoffs begin, and let the face fuzz fly until your team wins it all or is knocked out, a process that can take up to two months! I've only been working on this one for about a week, and the tournament will end no later than Monday either way, so I'm not going to go all Lanny McDonald or anything. Still, this is as close as I'm gonna get so I'm living it up...much to my wife's consternation (Incidentally, in an attempt to similarly frustrate and annoy me, she herself decided last weekend grow playoff leg hair, but she only lasted about 12 hours).

11.15.2005

Pointy Pointy Birds



Late last summer, my pal Davis and I signed up to play indoor in-line hockey with a team in a rec league here in town, and roped another friend, Greg, into joining the league too (We play street hockey year-round, along with our goalie pal Patrick, and it's a buttload of fun). Our team is called the Pointy Pointy Birds, after an ESPN SportsCenter commercial from the early 90s. We got off to the rockiest of starts, opening the season with nine straight losses, before we began to gell as a team and win a few games, eventually ending up with 3 wins, 11 losses, and 2 ties.

Anyhow, since there are only four teams in our league, we made the playoffs, and managed to knock off the #1 team (who'd won the last three titles) in the single-elimination first round over the weekend. And tonight, we begin the best-of-three league finals! Unfortunately, Davis got himself suspended for fighting in the last regular season game, so he's gonna have to cheer us on from the press box...but the rest of us are ready to play hard and bring home the "Cup" ! Here's hoping by this time next week, we'll be known as the Champion Pointy Pointy Birds!

Coming tomorrow: The Playoff Beard!

11.14.2005

The Light at the End of the Tunnel.



I'm just about to cross the finish line on the big project I've been working on for a looooong time, so I'll get back on the horse and post some fancy-dancy new artwrok in a day or two here.

Stay tuned!