NotTheRock Musings

Experts everywhere are asking themselves this question... has NotTheRock finally run its course?

Sure, back when it started in January 2003, it was a good outlet for me. And it was a way that my friends (those who knew about it) could hear my inane ramblings and be mildly entertained by it all.

But since then I've started the sports site Boiled Sports with a couple of friends and it's done really well. Sure, we're not millionaires yet, but I have a good feeling about 2009.

Plus I use Facebook now which, like anything else, will also fade from popularity and I'll abandon it, just like I abandoned the juvenile MySpace (which I only joined when a friend who is OLDER than me pushed me to do it).

Of course, Facebook has my real name on it and so when I bash things or people, I have to deal with the repurcussions. And who wants to be responsible when they slander others? Not me.

And so NTR remains valuable to me in that I can write things here that are about my life and yet are somewhat separated from who I specifically am -- thus, I am really writing to write and not just arrogantly posting updates about my life, as though anyone cares (see my rant about Facebook a couple posts down).

The thing is, I used to post a number of times a week, at least. Going a week without writing was unheard of. Now I go a month at a time. This is simply unacceptable, and I admit it. Those few of you who DID come here regularly did so because you expected at least something to feed your desire to read drivel on a daily (or near-daily) basis. So again, I'm sorry I'm failing you in this way. I have ideas to figure things out and improve the situation but they'll have to wait until after the new year. Until then, you're stuck with my scattershot, poorly distributed approach.

So what has been going on?

Well, our dog is still cute.

We went to Mexico for Thanksgiving. That was rather awesome.

We're driving back to the Northeast for the holiday this year.

Back when we were making our plans for the end of the year, we made the official decision to drive home. When we went up to NJ in July, we probably spent $1200 just on travel. I think our plane tickets were close to $500 each, plus the dog was another $200, plus we had to rent a car to get to the 'rents beach house. I didn't want to spend like this again and travel through two of the busiest airports in the country during Christmas week. With a dog. A dog that really doesn't fit into her travel case anymore. Have you ever tried to put an unwilling dog into a small duffel bag? (A live one.) It's not easy when they don't want to go either a result of fear or obstinance.

So we just said, hey, a road trip will be fun. Note we don't have kids yet. Not that air travel once we have children will be any more appealling. I think that that point, we'll just host all Christmases until our kids are 21 and then we might consider going elsewhere again.

Anyway, we decided to drive home. And then just last week I looked at plane tickets for the dates we're traveling.

I shouldn't have done that.

$258 per person, round trip. Come on.

But at least gas is a hell of a lot cheaper now, too. Even with the cheaper flights, I think gas will only cost about $270 for the whole round trip. Plus we'll have our own car with us for jaunts around the tri-state area.

My Acura has never made this journey before, to my knowledge. If it snows and the traction control has to function, I imagine the car will have another light come on that says, "Are you serious? I'm a Houston car."

So anyway, we're off this Saturday morning. I would love for us to hit the road super-early so that we get a long day of driving in and have a shorter day on Sunday. Sunday our destiation is my sister-in-law's place in Virginia. Then on 12/24 we'll journey up to NJ to spend a few days at my parents' place. Some other visiting in NJ and NY will follow and then we'll hit the road again and head back around the 29th or 30th.

We'll travel east out of Texas into Louisiana and then catch I-59 North, which runs Northeast (how fortuitous!) up diagonally through Alabama and into Tennessee. I hope to get to Tennessee after day one. That would leave us just 500-ish miles to our destination in Virginia. We shall see.

So that's enough rambling for today. See you next month!

Just kidding. Sort of.

Maybe.

Labels: holidays, in-laws, married life, Maya, Merry Christmas, on the road again, road trips, traveling

Yes, she's an escape artist.

When we brought her home, and she was tiny, we set up an old cabinet door across the opening of our kitchen so we could keep her contained. My parents keep a 60 pound Irish Setter and a 20 pound Cavalier contained with even less blockage than that. So we figured we were fine.

On her first full day with us, she decided she wanted to get to Watersyne and hopped up and scrambled over the blockade. Fantastic.

So we went out and purchased a legit baby gate, with the twisty pressure mounting so it would stay firmly in place. And it's a good thing, too, because Maya crashed into it at full speed several times, testing her boundaries. We'd be in the living room and hear, scurry-scurry-scurry CRASH! The little mutha was trying to knock it over.

She's been getting bigger in a hurry and her leg springiness is ever-increasing. The dog can seemingly just levitate off the ground from a standstill -- it's incredible. She's at that perfect age where she's got young little legs with strong muscles and she's still only 8 pounds so she's able to hurtle herself into orbit at her whim.

So naturally, she's now figured out how to get past the damn baby gate. Mind you, I have trouble getting past the baby gate, frequently catching my foot on it and tumbling into the kitchen. But Maya has now gotten springy enough -- and wise enough -- to simply run up to the gate and spring herself up so that she can grab her front paws onto the railing. She then scrambles with her rear legs and gets over the damn gate. Incredible.

But that's not all.

We put her in doggie day care yesterday b/c Watersyne was traveling and I was at work. Well, 45 mins after leaving her we get a call from a laughing employee to tell us that she's escaped from the holding area they put the dogs in day care! It's surrounded by a metal fence that must be over four feet high. She someone has found a corner where there's a brick/cement wall on the other side of the fence, and she's used that to get traction, then up the fence she goes and then slips out the top and is free as a bird.

I imagine we'll start getting charged more as she teaches the other dogs -- many of which are bigger than her, don't forget -- how to do this. If she ever learns how to open the pens of the dogs that are in their little pod areas, then we'll know the animal revolution is upon us.

Video of our magician will be up soon and I will share.

Labels: doggies, escape artists, Maya

Now, I don't want to celebrate too soon, but our little Maya suddenly decided to sleep through the night rather than wake up ever few hours to whine and cry until we took her outside. And when people were like, "oh, the puppy stage is only like a year," well, that phrase kept echoing in my head when I was walking around our soggy backyard on a rainy night at, you know, 2 AM.

But starting on Monday night, Maya became our little angel. I think it helped that we suddenly stopped being idiots and took her food and water away after a certain hour so that her little fuel tank wasn't overly full during the night. We started regimenting when she gets to eat and, not surprisingly, her body started getting on a pee and poop schedule pretty quick. The upshot? Solid sleep.

The first night she was good was Monday night and I probably slept worse that night than I have been sleeping, mainly because I kept wondering if she was alright. After three nights of whining and crying, I figured she must have died to be so completely silent. Or maybe her head was stuck in the bars and she was suffering. Or maybe I had yanked her leash too hard and broken her neck. Who the hell knows.

So I kept waking up and worrying... I finally heard her stir at aout 5:45 AM -- I had been planning to get up at 6 anyway -- and so I went out there and she hadn't made a mess or anything! Amazing. Full praise and love was given.

Then Tuesday night, same story. Of course, we were dog tired (no pun intended) and so we crashed at about 10:30. I commented to Watersyne that we were pushing our luck putting her down at that early hour and expecting her to last all night, but what the hell... we were tired. The good little girl lasted, again, until 5:45 AM. I was thrilled. Seven hours of sleep, give or take? A deal I can live with for sure.

Then this morning... it was a little weird. Again at precisely 5:45 AM, Maya began whimpering, after being silent all night long. Did one of us leave a watch in her crate, I wondered? Has this dog learned to read the digital clock on the microwave? Do I have a genius dog on my hands? I've been leaving the kitchen TV on to give her some white noise... maybe she hears the time on the early-morning news and decides it's time to get up. I don't know.

I realize it sounds like I'm joking around but somehow this dog is like clockwork. However, this morning when she cried at 5:45, I ignored her. She must have figured the time change happened early so she went back to sleep for another hour.

Labels: doggies, Maya, talking about poop and pee more than a person without children ever should

For anyone who's had a puppy before they've had kids, you understand what we're dealing with. We got little Miss Maya on Friday and we really are smitten with her. She's just so adorable and truly does the cutest things, like bounding -- all puppy-like -- across the yard, attacking toys with vigor, giving constant little puppy-kisses, and snuggling into you for a nap in a way that melts your heart.

She also does less cute things, such as shitting in the house, peeing in random places and crying through the night.

I realize she's a dog and this will eventually pass (or I'll pop her little head off in a fit of sleep-deprived rage at 4:15 AM one morning) but it's definitely a daunting thing to think about when you're on your patio at 2:45 in the morning saying, "Go potty. Go potty. Go potty. Go potty. Come on, Maya! Dammit! Stop eating the grass!"

This dog likes to eat grass. And mulch. And dirt. And cement. I swear, I think she would have eaten our barbecue propane tank if it wasn't attached to the grill.

We've only had her a couple of days and she's already had good moments and bad moments. She's had times when she'll go into her crate voluntarily and flop down for a rest. Other times, when we have to put her in and close the door, she's been an angel, whimpering momentarily and then settling down to rest. Then there have been times that she took a dump in her crate. And then freaked the hell out about it.

People have said to us, "You'll be able to tell when she's just crying because she wants to come out versus a distress cry when she's peed or pooped in her crate." Well, I think this is true... the freak-out cry is insistent and ongoing. And after we've cleaned up her accident(s), she's very happily gone back into the crate and gone right to sleep with no fuss or whining. Problem is, she's only eight weeks old and has a hard time holding her bodily functions for very long and she also doesn't really ever want to do anything for, say, six straight hours, especially not sleep in her confined crate. So we're still wrestling with getting her scheduling down to the right intervals so that her little tanks are emptied of pee and poop and she's ready to sleep for a while. Then if she cries, we'll just ignore her until she gives in and understands we aren't coming out until morning. Oh, that day will be a wonderful one. We'll see how long it takes.

In the meantime, don't be surprised if I give you a call at a weird hour because I'm up with my damn dog.

Labels: doggies, Maya, pee, poop, talking about poop and pee more than a person without children ever should

Well, the decision has been made -- her name is going to remain Maya.

I know this kept a lot of you awake and you were constantly tuning into Entertainment Tonight much like you would in anticipation of a celebrity baby naming. Hey, we could have named her Apple but thankfully good taste prevailed.

Truth was, there wasn't anything else that we both truly liked enough -- that wasn't already in use by other people, dogs, etc. -- and so we kept coming back to Maya. We kept referring to her as Maya and kept buying things and saying, "Well, another toy for Maya." Not "another toy for the dog." So in the end, just as I suspected, we are keeping her name.

Anyway, tonight is the big night. We head to the breeder to pick her up in a just a couple of hours and then, well, then it's puppy stage time. Watersyne had a very valid question the other day, asking me whether she'd be able to hold her peepee for the whole night (Maya, not Watersyne). And no, of course she can't. She's got a bladder the size of a grape. So my wonderful wife researched this and learned that at 8 weeks (which she is), they can hold it for perhaps four hours. Outstanding!

So I guess I'll be back to my staying up late to watch Sportscenter and then I'll be letting the pupper out. Then maybe one middle-of-the-night visit to the backyard and then, well, early in the morning as soon as I get up. Then she's Watersyne's problem when I head to work.

This is gonna be good training for kids. Of course, I already knew once we had kids that we wouldn't be getting any sleep -- I had just hoped to sleep plenty before that day came. So much for that.

Labels: doggies, Maya

You know what I realized yesterday? I realized that not long ago I said I might try an endeavor where I post here every day for a solid month. And I figured that February might be the best month, given that it's the shortest, there's the least sports action to distract me and, well, I don't know why else. And then I realized on February 7 that I sort of missed the boat on that one. Oops.

In other news, we made our first trip to Petco as expectant puppy parents and we didn't know where to begin... or end, as it turns out. Our puppy, who has yet to come home or even be officially named, already has a half-dozen toys, three different containers of treats, two leashes, a collar (with pink in it, of course), cute ceramic bowls ("that match our kitchen!" --Watersyne), and a divider gate that doesn't fit in the space we envisioned it in.

We still need to get her a crate for home as well as at least one travel crate. And given that she's so small, I think I might see one of those duffel bag, over-the-shoulder kinds of travel bags in her future as well. My wife might look like Paris Hilton. In the carrying-a-dog-in-a-bag way, not the exposing-her-privates kind of way.

Did I need to make that distinction?

Labels: doggies, infrequent posting, Maya, Petco

Well, here's a picture of our new little girl, Maya. At least that's the name the breeder gave her. And we kind of like it. And it's a good thing we liked Maya and not, say, "January," because then we wouldn't have a good name built-in.

So what is she? She's a cross between a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and a Havanese. In a perfect scenario, you get the demeanor and loving nature of the Cavalier mixed with the hypo-allergenic, non-shedding features of the Havanese. But how often is the scenario perfect?

Truthfully, though, Maya is a good find. She's mostly black, which we really liked. And she has that cute little Cavalier face... yet, as the breeder showed us, her coat is the texture of the Havanese -- that is, non-shedding. She's sure that Maya's not going to be a shedder. We'll see, I guess, but there's no doubt that even if she does shed a little, it won't be what a typical dog does. So that's good.

We settled on her this past Saturday on our visit to the breeder 70 miles away. This is not the other one I mentioned that pissed us off so many times. We'll get to them another time. The breeder we used was so professional, helpful and knowledgeable. She's a Vet Tech who loves dogs and, despite there being many, many dogs in her home, the place didn't look messy or even smell doggy. That's quite impressive, considering many homes with only one dog end up smelling funky sometimes.

As for the name, as I said, we kind of like Maya. It's cute and we're already kind of used to referring to her by that. We had a conversation one night, though, about the fun of random names. Like naming a tiny dog "Butch" or "Killer." I actually thought it would be fun to name a dog "Cat."

"This is my dog...Cat."

Wateryne laughed but vetoed my idea. I thought it was brilliant.

Of course, once we settled on her, Watersyne began working on me.

"Are you saying I can't ever dress her in a cute outfit? Or put something in her hair?"

I can just see it now. I'm out walking my 10-pound dog while she's wearing a pink sweater and barrettes. How gay will I look? Very gay.

We expect to pick her up next Friday, 2/15.

Labels: doggies, Maya