BACK-TO-SCHOOL: WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT THE FALL

I did a 2008 anticipation entry in January, now it's time for the Back-to-School Edition.  After a summer of sunny mornings sleeping in, lots of hot lunches, and an exciting vacation, you'd think it's hard to find anything good about the fall (especially since I have to go back to work).  Here is my list to prove that you are wrong!

1. College football: I don't really "know" anything about football, but I like watching it.  It's especially nice to have a favorite team; can you guess my favorite team?  Jimmy and I agree that it's also fun to watch lots of other games, from scoping out our Pac-10 opponents to watching the national title contenders.  Football brings people, food, and possibly HD television together!

2. Halloween: It's on a Friday this year!  I want to be the Jolly Green Giant and I think Jimmy should be Mr. Clean.  We could construct our own costumes with a little time and creativity.  We plan to attend the same party we did last year, which features hundreds of pumpkins and lots of interesting costumes.  And this year, we're going to buy our pumpkins a little bit later so they don't rot on the porch.

3. I get to put my fall wreath on the door!  From fall until the day after Christmas, it actually looks like someone festive lives in our house. 

4. Tons of work holidays: We get a day off nominally for the Jewish holidays in September, Veteran's Day in November, two days for Thanksgiving, and of course, three weeks off for Christmas!

5. Princess' dog agility class begins in late September.

6. New episodes of "Friday Night Lights" start on October 1st.  New episodes of "The Office" start before that.  In general, television returns!

7. Election stuff: it's impossible to avoid!  From the televised debates to the NPR coverage during the commute, I'll be ready for another four-year break by Election Day.

8. Social aspects of work: when the school year resumes, so too do teacher happy hours, Post-It Note conversations at faculty meetings, vicious gossip, and the ongoing war between teachers and administrators.  It's fun for the same reason trashy reality TV is fun; you just can't believe it's true sometimes.

9.  Since the end of November counts as fall, I'll throw my birthday on here too.  This year, it falls on Black Friday, but I don't see shopping in my future.  Instead, I'd like to recreate the AWESOME time me and Jimmy had at Disneyland last year.  My expectations are high because we had such a wonderful experience last time, so hopefully this year can live up to that glory.

TWO STINKY AFTERNOONS

At first, it seemed like Princess was adjusting beautifully. She spent the first two years of her life as a kennel dog who had the chance to run the property for about an hour a day. Occasionally, she would get her turn as the house dog so she'd been potty trained. She must have gone to the bathroom just about whenever it suited her, because for the first few days when she lived with us, she would not potty when we took her out. So that took a few days, but eventually she got into a great routine. She'd pee in the morning, pee and poo when I got home from work, and pee before bed. There was just one time when we came home from work to find a mess of doggy diarrhea, so we figured that had been an act of desperation.

But the last two days have baffled me. I came home yesterday to find she'd pushed her way through her barrier gate, made a big, loose dog poop pile but the fireplace, and spread trash all over the living room. Again I thought it must be an act of desperation, with the trash digging thrown in for fun. Today I again came home to a torqued barrier gate, TWO piles of dog poop by the fireplace, and (here's the kicker) Princess sleeping on the couch. No longer does this act look a desperate "I-COULDN'T-HOLD-IT!" situation. Suddenly everything is looking like it went down in her head like this; "Why wait for the humans to come home to have my movement? Everything went fine by the fireplace yesterday so I'll give that another whirl. No interesting trash so I may as well make the best of it an curl up on the couch. There now, that's cozy."

I didn't think there would be so many poop messes with a potty-trained adult dog. I didn't think getting a dog would be such a poopy endeavor all together. It's hard to enjoy your hairy ball of love when she just made a stinky mess of your house, especially since you closed all the windows and left the AC on for her. Jimmy will come home after me, of course, and his only reminder of the earlier mess will be the smell of the disinfectant. My mom has suggested that this is some sort of pay back for when I used to do disgustingly creative things with my diapers as a toddler. There are tales of houses for sale and diapers on the walls; ruined clown posters and picking turds out of the carpet. But I think somewhere in there is also a story of me trying to scoop my own poop with a shovel, just like I'd seen my dad doing with the dog's poop. Maybe I can train this dog to use the shovel.

2 NEW DISCOVERIES

Unlike my last entry, which focused on a nasty and ghetto discovery, here I am present 2 exciting new discoveries.

1.  Yelp.com  It's like wikipedia for reviews!  Take two minutes to register and you can review restaurants, grocery stores, bars, parks, and even your local SPCA.  You get to see what everyone else says about your favorite places too.  I've written a bunch of reviews already and I think it's a good outlet for my creativity.  If you can't get enough of my blabbing here, you can see my yelp page at:  http://quinnm.yelp.com

2.  Today I dusted off my roller blades and me and Jimmy hit a new trail.  There are several miles of wide, paved trails for bikes and pedestrians running along Ocean Avenue.  I got to skate down by the water as Jimmy biked.  Sometimes I got a little tired so Jimmy towed me for a few minutes.  I forgot how much you have to use your ankles, but it's probably been more than 5 years since I broke out the roller blades.  That was a nice little discovery and we covered about 9 miles.  The best part is that riding the trail got us out of going to the gym tonight.