Saturday, April 12, 2008 | by nathan

Sam Fridays: With Apologies That It’s Had To Wait Until Saturday

So, I’m a full day late on posting today’s Sam Fridays entry. But I have a good reason, a reason I should’ve let you in on on, say, Thursday, because I actually knew ahead of time that this week’s Sam update wouldn’t come until today. And I know that a whole bunch of you only read this site because of Sam, and trust me, I couldn’t be more okay with this.

Anyway, the reason it’s had to wait is because Sam, Brian and I have had a very big day today. As you know, we are currently repurposing the back room on our house, turning it from an awful storage space into a wonderful garden paradise in which we plan to spend the summer drinking pitchers of gin fizz and laughing with our friends. A big part of this process, as it turns out, has had to involve a garage sale, as the reason we were using the room for storage was that we have more, um, crap than space around here. We are attempting to change our crap-space ratio. Hence, a garage sale.

Sam enjoyed this, as we let him wander around the front yard all day without a leash, greeting our customers and generally getting into a whole lot of trouble. I admit, I had an ulterior motive: I wanted to photograph Sam getting into the aforementioned trouble. And as you’ll see, his shenanigans were a scream. First, he locked himself in the front seat of the car:

"Oh, we need some change for the garage sale? I’ll go get it! Where’s the ATM card?"

Then, the big dummy decided to investigate Buzzard, the friendly cat who lives across the street:

Seriously, I might send this one to lolcats.

Sam had a great time playing with the neighborhood kids, who mostly just tolerated him until I told him to leave them alone:

Then - the moment we’ve all been waiting for: Sam finally got to meet Pepper. This, um, did not go well.

See, Sam has never gotten on well with other male dogs, so after the introductory mutual-ass-sniff, Sam spent most of Pepper’s visit growling at the poor pup and then trying to hump him.

It was like watching an episode of Oz staged with dogs, it really was. Sam wasn’t even willing to let Pepper have his fair share of the neighbor kids’ snuggles:

So, finally, we put him on the porch and made him stay there.

All this happened before noon, and here we must take a Station Identification break so I can remind you that I live in Oklahoma, where at noon every Saturday, they test the tornado alarms to make sure they’re still working. Sam hates this with a burning passion, and hilarity almost always ensues, but it ensues elusively, and so far has proven difficult to capture on video.

Today, however, with Sam confined to the front porch, I thought, this is the day! So I got the little camera ready to videotape my dog hilariously howling his head off and trying to find the source of a sound THAT IS ALL AROUND HIM OH MY GOD WHERE IS THAT COMING FROM WHY CAN’T YOU MAKE IT STOP YOU’RE AN AWFUL, AWFUL PERSON FOR NOT MAKING IT STOP MAKE IT STOP!

But Sam? Not a cooperative dog. So what you’ll see, below, is approximately three minutes of my dog sort of half-heartedly growling at the tornado siren - or possibly at me for videotaping him - and TOTALLY NOT EARNING HIS KEEP DOESN’T HE KNOW THAT THIS WEBSITE PAYS FOR HIS VET VISITS?*

No food for you this week, Sam. But anyway, here’s the video:

 

 

Sam, NOT DOING WHAT HE SHOULD DO from Okay City Nate on Vimeo.

 

*No, it doesn’t. Can you imagine? We’d be going to the Dr. Nick of veterinarians. Seriously, though, that does get pretty funny around 1:30.

Sam Fridays