(getting ready to ride)

"twenty something" was added to alltop, which is a topic aggregator site that displays relevant online 'stuff' in the vein of specific subjects. kinda cool! it appears they've sourced the displayed blogs from 20SB.

i feel very lucky to have been one of the blogs displayed there.

my head's spinning with my TO DO list before the roadtrip, in the way that makes me paralyzed into accomplishing what feels like ZERO and seeing time FLY BY.

i did take branner to the pet store yesterday to get him a travel crate that'll last his lifetime*, some toys, and a long outdoor leash thing so he can chill outside while we're grilling up burgers at the lake...putting the puppy first makes me feel like a true dad.

as for me, well, i'm about as ready to leave as amy winehouse is sober. i have an unassembled dog crate in my back seat, a set of golf clubs that aren't mine in the truck, and i just agreed to grab a drink with brady** after work, because we can all agree that's going to move me closer to packed and ready to go.





*does anyone need a medium sized travel crate for pets up to 21 inches tall? because i might know where you can get one for cheap.

**a big congratulations to brady for having bought a new condo AND sold his current condo, all within the last two weeks. he is living proof that the real estate market is alive, and that some of my friends are responsible, contributing to society-type adults. he's also for sale on the love market...ladies***.

***it's been longer than i'd like to admit that i'd hoped to sneak "...ladies" into a post. check that one off the TO DO list.

(red heads)

check out that mop. notice the errant hair curling around my ear.

look how big the little bugger is getting.

he makes sure i'm paying attention to the road.

but hold on...look who shaved his head for the first time in his life.
even though it's not technically shaved.
it's pretty damn short.

(lake luzerne)

in ten days i'll be headed across the country into the adirondak mountains for about nine days of rest and relaxation. for what's probably approaching a hundred years, my extended family has gathered in upstate new york at a little hide-a-way lake community called lake luzerne, where we have gradually expanded from one main cottage.

my mom and her five siblings spent their summers in this rickety old red cabin about a hundred yards off the lake's edge, sailing dingy sailboats, taking swimming lessons, and challenging one another at badmitton. they grew up in queens, new york, so the respite from their city life caused a serious affection for luzerne, and brought each of them back year after year as they had children and moved away from new york city.

my family, living in the midwest, was always the furthest from the lake, and every year we'd make the 1000 mile drive up there to see my thirty cousins and spend a week running around barefoot, chomping on candy, and yelling at one another underneath a canopy of hundred foot tall pine trees.

thunderstorms were terrifying. beach days were fantastic.

every year we had a badmitton tournament. every year we'd all complain about being bored. we'd ask when we'd get a tv up there so we could watch beverly hills 90210.

...

now we're all adults, and some of us have children. some of us own our own places, and all of us are immeasurably grateful for the relationships we have throughout our family...i could tell you the happenings of every one of my thirty-odd cousins and i love them all dearly. some of them are married and i know all of their spouses and significant others.

for a group from all over the world to descend on a small little town to annually reunite with family these days is a rarity.

i really do feel so lucky.

this year will be branner's and shiloh's (my sister's new pup) first year up at the lake, during which i'll be teaching them how to swim and not run away. this year, brady may join us for his first year up there too.

i. can. not. wait.

(memorial weekend)

i think ya'll can tell i took a bit of a writing holiday over the holiday weekend...aside from the aesthetic adjustments here i took some time off on the prose front.

my weekend accomplishments included the following:

i ran sixteen miles.
i acquired a bottle of Laphroaig Quarter Cask single malt scotch.
i drank a bit of that scotch. while puffing a cigar. like a grandpa.
branner peed on my bed.
i rearranged my home to give branner more floor space to run on.
and i capped it all off with pizza and a six-pack with chalise and her boy G.

other things happened too.

i missed summercamp, which at times was hard (i found some nice updates on the festival at music for ants...go check 'em). when the flaming lips came on at the bar i was at friday night, i mentally jumped to the festival and felt a longing for the weekend in the woods. having made the right decision for a lot of reasons, all in all i was alright with a long, open weekend in chicago.

this weekend my neighborhood's having a festival of its own...and if you're planning on attending you better let me know. i'm hoping to have a bit of an oper house policy this saturday, so please holler if you'll be nearby.

(puppy spray)

branner, my new vizsla puppy, has a few different moods that are becoming consistent.
the predominant mood is a mix of curiosity and shark.

basically while branner's feeling like a curious shark he's focused on biting the things that he can see. when the target of this chewing fights back or or yells, "NO", it's interpreted as encouragement. if the subject of this mouthy attack just moves across the room and ignores branner, he will most likely bark. i usually just respond with, "bark with your purse, sissy."

that mood has subsided a bit over the last 72 hours, and it's been replaced with a much preferred, much sweeter demeanor characterized by a lot of laying around and running into mirrors.

that audacious vizsla puppy in the mirror (i have a mirrored wall in my bedroom*) is STILL taunting branner and in order to establish dominance he's taken to hopping into the mirror with his teeth out only to be smacked in the face by the...mirror.

there's light barking involved, but the other puppy seems to be playing the repeat game right on cue.

the only other consistent mood we've seen here at Casa del D and Branner is dead tired.

which is obviously when most of the pictures are taken of said puppy**, and which usually includes a sort of exhausted moan on every exhale which seems to suggest something along the lines of, "do you have ANY IDEA how much WORK IT IS TO BE ME?"

or, "could i get a massage or SOMETHING because i'm SO TIRED...did you HEAR how TIRED I AM because if not I'LL CONTINUE MOANING."

i'm combating the less desirable moments (involving sharp puppy teeth) with a little of branner's own medicine, moaning dramatically at the same time that he does so he knows how TOUGH MY DAY WAS TOO.

it confuses him, and if you hadn't heard; confusion means QUIET in the world of puppy.

i'm not, as you might assume, biting back when the little guy is in shark mode...

no, i'm not quite as confident as to whether i'd win that battle outright.

instead, i've attained the upper hand in our epic battle for APLHA DOG del Casa by employing a mix of yelling and SPRAYING HIM INTO A CORNER with a water bottle.

which branner would prefer NOT EVER EVER EVER HAPPEN AGAIN.

*bawmp chicka bowwwwow.

**in the interest of, you know, still having a camera.

(vandalism avenue)

every night when i get home from saving the world, i take branner for a walk around the neighborhood.

sometimes he agrees that this is a fun idea.

sometimes it seems more like an inconvenience than anything else.

he spends those testier walks hoping to get to the next corner as fast as possible in case the block we live on is waiting for him there.

god forbid i give the little freak some fresh air, right?

this week, every night, there's been a new car window smashed on the street out back of my apartment.

last night, after my soccer game and with branner in tow, i set down the street at a brisk pace, considerate of branner's single-coated inability to stay warm IN THE DEAD OF WINTER. needless to say this was going to be one of those i hope you're enjoying this, d, because it sucks for me walks.

as we came back around to my block from the other end, finishing up our game of tug and war (time out! time to lick a stranger!), we walked up alongside my parked car (sadie, i call her) and noticed a pile of glass directly under my passenger side window.

it was like some eerie memento moment, because it looked like someone had put a baseball bat through my window, except for the fact that my window was fully intact and unharmed.

and since i'm the kind of guy who figures the best place to be after lightning strikes is at the point of impact, i shrugged and followed branner inside.

(fun with picasa)

camera whore.

(yay)

a comment from kate:

d! i have to stave off tears right now. (is that a word? stave i mean i dont know if it's the red eye i took in from new york this morning or the sweet sentimental words you wrote about us. ok i do know - it's both ANYWAY, i guess i'm just writing to say i dont know what to say. should i even be reading this btw? you are a wonderful writer, and i feel so lucky that you care(d) about me that way. it IS beautiful. and that's what it's all about. thank you.
kate | 04.22.08 - 2:57 pm | #

i'm glad she's cool with my turning our relationship inside-out for you guys.

answers to all your questions in the comments of the last post tomorrow.

ps. branner's getting bigger. quickly.

(he made a list)

there are a few open bl-issues i want to clear up this morning. bl-issues = blog issues = issues raised by my blog.

you see, i operate in the realm of semi-anonymity in the sense that "d" is a mythical creature with a low-profile job. oh, and an active sex life.

hopefully you like this unicorn of a man i've created.

but in all seriousness, working in a public, yet vailed, medium is challenging and rewarding, because the things i write come back to me in phone conversations, bars, and all over the net. my blog feeds into a number of different online locales, the most explicit being facebook, which is the one place i do feel i can control who sees what.

so people in my life read this stuff, and if you're a blogger, you know sometimes you make new friends from other blogs as a corollary to blogging. the people i know and the people i sort of know, in a lot of cases, have questions about certain things i write.

bl-issues.

so i'd like to clear a few up.

• branner got his name from branner hall, my freshman dorm. professor john casper branner, a geologist, was stanford's very first faculty member, so technically my dog's named after an intelligent individual...not a cesspool of drunken make-out sessions.



• i'm not pining for my ex-girlfriend. in fact, beyond hoping she's really happy, i am in a great place about our relationship, which ended many months ago. i haven't seen or spoken to her in a few months. the downside of writing about an ex is the natural speculation it sparks for readers. i didn't start writing about her until i felt a peace with the whole experience, and i did so mostly because i think a lot of my readers might take something away from the long road kate and i took to get past one another.



• summercamp, the music festival i bartend each year, is going to be a solo affair, unless braden can find a cohort to make it a threesome. there's no room for another worker in chalise's absence, per management, so either i'm rolling down there alone or someone laid-back and able to buy a ticket will kick it with brady while i'm slingin' the sauce. apologies to everyone who was interested in working the fest...it's out of my control!



• cha-rule is moving to san diego, which i actually first noted in the comments of ex-everything's blog. this is less a bl-issue as just an issue for this blog's writer. i think the best word to summarize the why of this move is "pursuing", and i think now is as good a time as ever to get on with pursuing sh*t.

any other questions, concerns, or comments i should be aware of?

(little dog on back)

i've learned a few things over the past few days and weeks.

there's stretches in which you only seem to hear bad news. there's stretches when you only seem to hear good news.

it's important to treat both with a level head, and to give people in your life the attention and support they deserve, even when things are kicking ass.

it's harder to convey love when things get hairy.

there's lots of downtime between the experiences and decisions that really shape your life in major ways.

usually those big, important times don't knock before they come in, don't wipe their feet, and sure as fuck don't care whether or not they got an invitation.

i have learned that as of late i've been frustrated with the pace of my life. i've felt like a hamster on a spinning wheel for a few months, and finally feel like that wheel's hit the ground.

it's a nice feeling.

but it's a lot more work than running in place.

oh,

and puppies loooooove to be petted.

but the phrase 'don't bit the hand that feeds you' is laughable in puppyspeak.

(yellow ball)

branner got a shiny yellow ball from daddy, which he ignored until this morning.



when it became the awesomest.

(come see how good i look)

dear readers of my daddy,

click on my nose to see all nine more pictures of me.
mostly when i'm sleeping.



leave comments and i'll read them unless i'm chewing on something.

(best day ever)

"hey, how was your day?"

"pretty typical. pissed about twelve times, dropped a deuce at least four, and spent half of every hour on the hour either biting everything within six inches of me, or comatose. oh, i licked my nuts a bunch. you?"

(puppy crack)

there's a reason my last post was sans puppy pictures.

it's that i can't find my f*cking camera battery charger, which (of course) disappeared the second branner appeared.

right now he's decided china's underneath my ass on the couch, and is doing his best to dig his way to some sweet and sour chicken.

when i picked him up last weekend i'm not sure who was more scared, him or me. we got in the car, him in the passenger seat, and took off, headed for my parent's house and my dog-crazed mother. branner looked up at me with those big blues and basically just wanted to know what was going on. i looked at him (with MY big blues, ahem) and basically just digested the idea of keeping this little guy alive.

so far daddy and son are alive and adjusting pretty well to one another. i'm home base when things get scary. he's happy as a pig in sh*t when i show up after disappearing into thin air like the magical creature that i happen to be.

people ask, "how's branner!?" and my general mental response is, "he's a batsh*t insane crack-addicted three-year old with the short-term memory of a flea. oh, and i love him."

as for introductions, a whole slew of my friends are yet to meet the little psycho, and i just realized while writing this that the tally outside of my immediate family is:

childhood friends: 2
bloggers i've met recently: 2

that's right; couch and jessi have both met branner.

so have cha-rule and brady, to their credit.

but this weekend will be the unveiling, and i'm sure the speech branner's been preparing will entertain and inform.

(pupdate)

apart from the literal insanity that is a puppy, they are pretty much insanely adorable.

it took me a good five minutes to type that sentence.

he's gonna have to get used to the clicky clack of the laptop, which is a ridiculous thing to say, i know, but just one statement in a long list of statements i've made to branner during our first 36 hours together.

ridiculous statements...all of them...because their recipient is about as rational and predictable as we might expect life on another planet to be.

in fact, branner is literally without emotional and hormonal control. he's slave to his internal fluctuation, which causes him to bounce around in circles and nip at my belt loops one second and sleep like a rock the next. the whole cycle lasts a matter of 20 minutes, with longer stretches of dead weight unconsciousness.

the sleeping, aside from it's more obvious benefits (quiet time for daddy!) actually packs its own little treats. during his first nap (while on the drive home) he let out a little bark, obviously dreaming. i kinda died. now, his naps are riddled with woofs and whimpers and restless legs, and it makes you feel like you're watching this little creature grow at a pace that's frantic even for him.

he's attached to my hip, and fully trusting of me. and wholeheartedly committed to the notion that i'm his safety net. i'm happy to see him relatively adjusted to the pack separation he's just been put through, although the minute i disappear it's like the world might end.

he's not a fan of his crate yet, and if under some amazing coincidence my downstairs neighbor is reading this: i'm so sorry...i don't now how something so little can make so much noise. please use that cell number i've given you.

all in all things are going well. we're working together. learning one another.

and i'll be uploading more photos soon:)

(branner)

hi everyone!



love,

Branner.

(puppy pix)

i've just resurrected myself from almost 40 hours of bedridden sickness, so i hope you all had a better weekend than that might suggest.

i have a few things to share, all of which are of major substance, and all of which shouldn't come before puppy pictures.

(sister's puppy)

my sister nancy is smarter than i am.

and now, she's also much more efficient at acquiring puppies than i am.



welcome to the family, shiloh!

(more puppy pics)

(puppy pics)