2001-09-28

Parents arriving today, posted at 11:43 a.m.

Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com

My parents are driving from Michigan today to see me. I'm excited, but nervous. I've been cleaning all week, and the place looks nice. For some reason, it's important to me that things are looking good when they come. I'm rushing to the grocery store after school to get some stuff for homemade pizza, which I will make for them. It should be a good weekend, but I can already tell that I won't be able to do all the stuff that I need to do. Ugh.

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I went to the Baltimore County Humane Soceity last night, in my continuing quest to find a dog. I took out this dog named Jasmine, which was a black lab mix that reminded me of my parents' dog Molly - a small version of a black lab, only about knee-height. She was a nice dog, was a little over two years old, and I took her out to run around. It was nice. She isn't well trained - she doesn't come when she's called, for example - but she can sit down. And she was very sweet - not like the dog I took out at the Humane Soceity of Baltimore City that didn't pay attention to me when we were out there.

I went back inside, and decided to take the adoption papers on the way out, since they were closing. The people there gave me the dog's profile. It wasn't too promising. The previous owners brought it in because it had attacked three dogs in the neighborhood. Since Jason is thinking about getting a dog in a few months to add to our household, this does not bode well. Today, I looked at the website, and here's what it said about Jasmine: "Hi, I'm a very nice girl. I love people! I'm good with kids, I don't like other dogs though. take me out and see how much fun I am." She was a pretty fun dog... but I just dunno. That profile sheet didn't exactly impress me.

At the two humane societies I've been to, there have been no puppies - just slightly older full-grown dogs. I'm not sure what I should get. They say that puppies can only hold their bladder for an hour every month as they are old, plus one (so a three-month old puppy would be able to hold their bladder for four hours), so humane societies don't like to give puppies to full-time working folks like myself. Plus, puppies take a lot of time to train. On the flip side, it seems like it would also be difficult to train an older dog with baggage who already has bad habits ingrained into it. I think that an older puppy - 5-6 months old or so - may be ideal. Still, I sure would love to save an older dog from euthanasia.

We'll see. Maybe my folks will want to go to a kennel with me tomorrow and help me make a decision.

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I stayed up way too late last night, watching the NBC lineup and cleaning/vaccuuming the house. Watching "ER" alone - Jason and Mike went to bed - was depressing; it made me miss Erin and even Jenni, as we all used to make plans to watch it together. I even lost interest in it and started to clean, even though it was a good episode. I like "Friends," didn't really care for the new show "Inside Schwartz" (I'll watch it again next week, but if it's going to rely on those dumb sports gags every episode, it's going to get really old really quickly - it's probably another crappy 8:30 NBC show), thought "Will & Grace" was pretty mediocre by its standards, and laughed once during "Just Shoot Me," a show that doesn't deserve its timeslot but still is better than a lot of the shows that NBC has tried to pull off at 9:30 on Thursday nights ("Caroline in the City," "Veronica's Closet", etc)

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Sometimes, I feel like I'm the only one of my roommates who is responsible. It's not a good sign when I am the most responsible person around, because I've never really been known for my responsibile behavior. I'm admittedly pretty flaky on occasion. Still, I feel like there's so much stuff that just plain wouldn't get done in our house if I didn't do it. Dishes. Buying a vaccuum. Vaccuuming. Putting up pictures. Paying rent on time. Taking out the trash.

Still, if that's my only complaint about living with people, that can't be that bad. Things are going way better than ever imagined. For every time a roommate uses one of my favorite souvenier cups to drain hamburger grease so hot that it causes the plastic of the cup to bubble out, there's a moment in when I'm reminded that I'm pretty lucky that I had someone to move down with and live with. Mike's a pretty cool guy too.

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My freshmen had their first essays - a characterization analysis over "Annie John" and "Of Mice and Men" - due yesterday, and I've been reading them over last night and today. Oh, they're funny. One girl started off her character analysis with "Hello." I laughed out loud.