Blog Blog Woof Woof

To all the mothers of the world let me take a minute to say that I am awed by you, each one. You don't get the credit you deserve. To my mother... Thank you for everything you did for me while I had you. I miss you so much! Jai

I saw a Phish Halloween show...it was the 96 show " Remain in Light " by Talking Heads . I went with my friend Kevin and the seats sucked. It was the Omni and we were at the top - no tapers tickets for me for that show. The excitement was energizing. Everybody was guessing which album there would be. Then we got inside and they gave out handbills, like the Broadway type, and not being a big Talking Heads fan I didn't understand the cover photo (Remain in Light with Phich members instead of Talking Heads). We trudged our way up and up and up some more. We squeezed into the seats - they are much smaller when you are that high up and I filled Kevin in on the show. He'd never been to one of these type shows (3 sets, etc). So an hour or so later Remain in Light begins and it was intense. I didn't know they album so I didn't know what was going on. I remember being excited to see El Buho , who'd I'd gotten to know in Nashville and I remember thinking how ...

What is the most common phrase in your house? "Mommy, can I?" "Honey, do you know where my is...?" In our house it is something like "Tara, Hold on. I can't hear you." or "Jai, I can't hear what you are saying when you walk into another room." Tara admittedly and sometimes quite obviously can't hear. I on the other hand still hear pretty well, especially considering my live music history. At least we are considerate enough and smart enough to say more than "Huh?"

I threatened to make a doghouse for Johnders way back when we first got him for a couple of reasons. I thought it would be fun to try, not having much in the way of carpentry training, and also because he used the cheap plastic one we bought as a toy and never went inside it. I started with the idea of a green roof but as summer progressed I saw that he had a favorite spot in the shade and a green roof wouldn't work if I put it nearby. My next idea was to spend as little money as possible. I didn't know if he would actually use it and wood is expensive. So I went to our neighborhood listserv and asked for wood pallets, thinking I could break a few apart and use the parts. Somebody offered 2 right away, I picked them up, put them in the garage and there they stayed until a month or so ago. Tara was nesting by cooking. This was my way of nesting, I guess. Anyway, its all but finished and Johnders loves it. I did some things out of sequence so it didn't work out exactly l...

I have always envisioned myself as a dog owner but I wanted to do it on my terms. I wanted the dog I wanted when I wanted it and he would be easy to train and well-behaved and so on and so forth. Tara thought if we got a pet it would be a cat. She's not a fan of the dog neediness(is that a word?). We'd talked about getting one and people would tell us getting one is good prep for having a baby, which we are trying to do, but we'd never done anything to really move toward getting a pet. It remained on that "Yeah, one day, probably." list. In August we went to a BBQ at a friend's house and we were greeted by this black & white splotched puppy. It was a very cute, happy, friendly puppy but I didn't think much about him. Then, from across the room, my very unimpulsive , cat-loving wife said "can we keep him?". I was stunned. One, because I would we hadn't planned for it. Two, Tara doesn't say things like that. Three, Tara didn't want ...