Wednesday, November 12, 2008 | by nathan

Autumn Is A Time of Transition

When people ask me what I do for a living, I tell them I’m a writer. After all, at least three-fourths of the time I spend at work is spent writing. Granted, I’m not writing about stuff that possesses my soul in any appreciable way, but I am putting words to paper - er, screen - and it’s more fulfilling than any stupid retail or office job I’ve ever had. Also, the hours are good, the benefits rock and I rather like almost everyone I work with.

But in my heart, and in my mind, I see myself as a writer. Having a blog doesn’t make you a writer, just in the way that frequenting a karaoke bar doesn’t make you a singer. What makes you a writer is writing; that is, the act of putting words out there, and of trying to make them the best words they can be. It’s the art of trying to tell a story, or make a point, to be as honest and as heartfelt and true to yourself and your subject as you can be, preferably with as few words as possible. I know plenty of people who study writing and/or get paid to write who could care less about becoming better at their craft - most of these are "writers" because they think it makes them cool; I also know plenty of people who can, in a matter of seconds, state a point more succinctly and beautifully than I could ever dream, but for whom the vocation or craft of writing has never been a second thought.

When I started this blog in December 2004 I was just about to begin a graduate degree in professional writing; in the time since this website started I’ve finished that degree and secured a mildly lucrative job as a PR professional and a good deal of work on the side as a freelance writer. In the meantime, though, I’ve spent most of the last four years being really super dissatisfied with this website. I’ve tried several writing projects and creative pursuits, all to varying degrees of success or pleasure.

What it comes down to is that I have this website so I can be totally free, in a creative sense, and - oh, fuck it. This is basically my really long way of telling you I’m getting rid of Sam Fridays.

What? Was that the sound of you clicking off to another website? Hang with me for a minute while I explain, then by all means - my links page has tons of better sites.

Those of you who’ve loved keeping up with my sweet dog’s adventures have been great and supportive, and I love you for it, and when I started the project I thought it would help me to have this weekly deadline, even if only self-imposed. Instead it’s become this shackle around my neck, and every Friday that passes wherein I have NOTHING WHATSOEVER to report about Sam feels like death to me, and I am really looking forward to casting it off.

Also, photos of my dog doing stupid and/or humiliating stuff has almost nothing to do with writing.

The fact is, I have so much to write about! I want to really give you guys and myself something great, and I feel like I’m being a hack by making this blog about my stupid dog. I want to write about all I’m learning - at AGE TWENTY EIGHT - about what it means to be male in this country, and in this world, because I’ve spent this year feeling more connected with my … guyness, for lack of a better term … than ever in my life. I want to share that with you. I’ve spent this year dealing with growing older, and fear, and I want to write about all of that. I want to write - I promise to write, actually - about why I don’t want to see Religulous. I want to stop talking about the election; I need Sarah Palin to go away, for a little while at least. I want to stop griping and be more positive. I have a lot to share, and the real challenge for me now is to, well, challenge myself to share it well.

So forgive me; I’ll try to include Sam in more Daily Photo posts, which are a regularly-scheduled part of this site that I really, really enjoy.

I love keeping this website, and I love all of you guys who read it - all ten or so of you - and I am looking forward to trying harder for all our sakes.

Friday, October 3, 2008 | by nathan

Sam Fridays: Sam Gets Acupuncture

Remember these?

They’re the little naturally-velocroey m-fer weeds. They grow like crazy all over my yard, and are especially dense behind the shed. This week, someone - I won’t say who - let Sam out to potty and thought it might be a good idea to let him run around, get some fresh air in the backyard. A well-intentioned plan, but, like Sarah Palin’s political platform, horribly naive and misguided.

Which is how Sam ended up like this:

Those little barbs are specifically designed to attach to animal fur, come off, get stuck, and then - one supposes - get transported to some other type of location where they will fall to the ground and grow anew. Little SOBs is what they are. Now Sam has them ALL OVER HIS BODY. The worst is in his ears, where they are so thick they just about velcroed his ear to the side of his head.

They don’t come out easily, either, and so you have to make him sit there while you basically pull hair out of his ears. He doesn’t like it, I don’t like it, and I can’t be sure, but I’m pretty sure I heard Jesus grinding his teeth and muttering under his breaths in between sips of a gin and tonic. Because they are JUST SO DAMN ANNOYING. And I hate sitting there hurting him while trying to get these little SOBs out of his ears.

When Sam stayed with Jayson and Laurie this week they furminated him, which helps. People, I need a furminator! Sam is not happy with these developments, either, but it’s HIS OWN DAMN FAULT.

Also they’re in his paws:

Still, if that’s the worst thing he’s got going on, he’s got a pretty good life. When I’m not pulling barbs out of his fur, he’s a pretty happy dog:

Of course, if he gets in those weeds again, he’s going to be a pretty dead dog.

Friday, September 26, 2008 | by nathan

Sam Fridays: A Conversation With My Dog

The other day I let Sam go outside, and promptly realized there was good garden photography to be had; I ran back inside for five seconds to grab the camera. When I came back out, this happened:

Hey Sam, whatcha doin there?

Hey, where’d you go?

I was getting worried. I couldn’t see you and thought maybe you’d ceased to exist. Then who’d feed me?

Oh, calm down. I went inside for five seconds to grab the camera. Look - the broccoli’s blooming! I wanted to take pictures!

Whatever. I don’t care about the broccoli.

Aw, come on, Sam, don’t be like that. Want me to scratch your belly?

Why that would be simply marvel… NO! I cannot be bought with promises of belly scratches.

In fact, look! Look at this! I’m rolling around in the grass, which I will then track into the house! You’ll have to sweep it up! THAT’S WHAT YOU GET.

Now quit that, Sam. Quit it right this minute.

Fine. But I’m still mad at you.

Oh, come on, Sam. Don’t be mad. Want to come inside and eat a piece of cheese?

Oh, all right. I can’t stay mad at you.

…aaaand scene.

Friday, September 19, 2008 | by nathan

Sam Fridays: Sam’s Favorite Place

We don’t have carpet. My allergies can’t handle it, and, frankly, we both hate to vacuum. So, when Sam gets to go to my mom’s house, say, or somewhere that is carpeted, he likes to roll around on it like the little fingers of thread are a zillion little hands, massaging and scratching him.

When we’re at home, the couch in the office serves this purpose well:

This week I let him stay in the backyard too long, and he came back inside with about a million little sticky seeds in his fur; now, they’re ALL OVER the couch and the floor in there.

"Sorry."

"Ah, that’s okay, buddy, I just… hey!"

"Sorry. I just don’t like it when you take my picture."

"Well too bad! You have to earn your keep around here, buddy."

"So then maybe I should pose like this, as cute as possible?"

"That would be fine, just hold… hey!!"

"Sorry, I had an itch."

Friday, September 12, 2008 | by nathan

Sam Fridays: Sam In Mostly-Monochrome (Part 2)

Here’s some more black and white Sam for your delectation:

Such a distinguished gentleman, that one. Now if only he’d stop eating paper towels.

Friday, September 5, 2008 | by nathan

Sam Fridays: Sam In Mostly-Monochrome (Part 1)

Dun Dun…

Dun Dun…

DUN DUUUUUUUUUUN!

DUN DUUU…. D’oh!

Sam! Wake up! (He’s been doing a lot of this lately; he finds us boring).

Though he’s always more than willing to go in the car…

Because he knows that lately, anytime he goes in the car he’s probably going to get to see my mom, his Favorite Person Ever, whom he knows, affectionately, as That Lady Who Will Give Me Treats or Fritos or Strawberry Creme Sandwich Cookies. Which is why, at my mom’s house, Sam looks like this:

More black and white Sam coming next week.

Friday, August 29, 2008 | by nathan

Sam Fridays Bonus: With Thanks To Brian

Friday, August 29, 2008 | by nathan

Sam Fridays: Sam’s BACK!

Sam loved Colorado. Like, a lot. Like, so much that in the month that we’ve been back he’s been noticeably less exciteable in general. Most evenings when we get home he just sorta lays there, looking at us like, "God, you people are boring."

Really, who can blame him? In Colorado he got to go on hikes:

Where he saw - and smelled - gray squirrels and any number of other exciting things that caused his little doggy heart to pound and his ears to perk with excitement:

Even when he was getting almost too tired to keep going, he still didn’t want to go back to the cabin:

He was sad to leave, and it’s shown in his decidedly less-than-enthusiastic behavior over the last few weeks (next week’s post will likely focus more on that). I could tell the moment we got in the car for the 11-hour drive home that he didn’t want to go. Just look at that punim:

I volunteered to take the backseat for the entire return trip to Oklahoma, because I didn’t want my little brother to have to deal with Sam’s antics while he tried to sleep. So, I let Brian drive, I gave up shotgun to my bro for the first time in my life, and I packed, my camera ready to go when Sam got all cute. Mostly, the poor dog, sad to be leaving the Colorado he’d come to love, slept on me. Or under me:

When he wasn’t lying down, he loved to stare out the window. Like me, his favorite bits of scenery were the mostly-flat ones in eastern New Mexico, the Texas Panhandle, and Oklahoma:

All told, I was pretty proud of the way he did on the way back. I’ve been, at times, significantly less proud of his behavior since we’ve returned, but I’ll discuss that more next week.

Friday, August 1, 2008 | by nathan

Sam Fridays: Sam Goes to Colorado (Part 1)

We took Sam along on the Great Oklahoma Road Trip to Black Mesa, to see how he traveled. We’d never been in the car with him for longer than it takes to tool around town - friends’ houses, the vet, the dog park. I had really wanted to bring him along to Colorado with us, but I wasn’t really willing to risk a twelve-hour car ride with an ill-behaved or frequently-carsick dog. I thought the five-hour drive out to Kenton would be a good dry run. It was; Sam performed admirably.

So, having passed his audition, Sam got to come along with us to our current locale of Summit County, Colorado. We loaded up in the car last Saturday morning: me, Brian, Sam, and, in the backseat with Sam, my brother, who, for the first leg of the trip, had to share space - and try to nap - with a dog who really, really craves human attention. John’s a car sleeper; ever since he was a little kid, the second a long road trip starts, he’s out like a light. I drove the first half or so of the trip, getting us all the way out to Boise City, Oklahoma, again, before asking Brian to take over. Several times, I’d look in the rearview mirror and see my brother, asleep, Sam’s face RIGHT IN HIS, like, "Um? Hello? Are you okay? Pet me!"

For the last leg, I rode in back with Sam, who was his usual sweet self. If we slowed down or changed speed, he’d look around, waiting for something to happen, but on those long highway stretches he just laid himself down and rode along. That is, until we ended up with a screw in our tire in Commerce City, Colorado, and had to stop at a Wal-Mart to get it fixed. That’s when this happened:

Unlike his fellow passengers, Sam couldn’t have been happier to spend 35 minutes sitting in a Wal-Mart parking lot in a less-than-friendly looking neighborhood in suburban Denver.

Eventually we ended up back on the road, and at our destination, where Sam has had a week of getting to chase gray squirrels around the backyard, hike up long mountain trails, and pester my entire family for affection. He’s been loving it. But that story’s coming next week:

Friday, July 11, 2008 | by nathan

Sam Fridays: Sam Hits The Road

So the other big thing that happened this weekend was that Sam got a test. We’re headed up to Colorado for a week later this month, where we’re renting a cabin that is pet friendly. I had really, really wanted to bring Sam along for this vacation, but he’d never spent any prolonged period of time in the car, and given how excited he usually gets when going for a ride, and the fact that our old, stupid vet had told us not to let him get too excited, I was leary.

But, last week, Sam had a checkup, and the doc said that his heart was fine, go ahead, get him excited, let him run and exercise. He’ll love it. That Friday, we were planning to head out to the Panhandle, and we were taking two cars, the Flynns and us, and they were bringing Hera along.* So I figured it was as good a time as any to test Sam out - if things didn’t work, if he didn’t do well on the long trip, at least it was a short one, comparatively. If he did fine, then at least we’d know.

Sam likes the car:

He was very excited to get to go on the trip. He did really well on the drive up. We kept the windows open a crack so that he could stick his nose out and sniff things as we went by them, and he loved this. After awhile, though, it got too hot for anyone in the car to have the windows cracked, and Sam, like a good boy, laid down in the backseat and just rode along.

He did really, really well the whole way up, as did Hera. Both dogs were so excited every time we let them out to go pee that they actually forgot, for quite some time, that they had to go at all. Particularly funny was when we let them out in Boise City, and Hera decided she NEEDED TO SMELL EVERY INCH OF THAT TOWN OMG.

No less hilarious was Sam pulling me and Brian all over creation. When we stopped in Woodward to let the dogs do their business, Hera and Sam dragged us almost a block away before finally going, and even then, they only did it reluctantly, like ,"if I pee, I have to go back in the car! OMG THE CAR!"

When we finally arrived at the Bed and Breakfast, we found it populated with some other dogs for Sam and Hera to befriend. One of them, Angel, was a dalmation who was mostly averse to Sam’s amorous advances, if you know what I mean, and who snapped at him every time he got close. Another, however, was Star, who was just really friendly and sweet:

Aside from their new friends, Hera and Sam were in Dog Heaven at the farm. Not only were there all kinds of new things to smell, it seems that Sam’s dads didn’t feel the need to keep him constantly on the leash while he was there. He had plenty to occupy himself, and spent a lot of time exploring:

We did leave them in our rooms when we went out to the Three-State Marker at night, and anytime we were away from the ranch, so as not to bother our hosts with their care. But Sam seemed to like it all right in our room, too:

The afternoon after our hike to the top of Black Mesa was mostly spent lazing around in the air conditioning. Once the sun started to go down, however, and the heat waned some, Brian and I took Sam for a walk on the nature trail directly behind the B&B. I kept the leash in my pocket, just in case, but Sam was having such a good time and mostly staying close to us, and so I decided we’d let him walk freely. Which is what he did. He mostly stayed close to us at first:

But after awhile he started getting braver:

When he’d get too far away we’d call to him, and he’d come running back, sorta reluctantly, only to whip around and take off in a different direction:

Boy, he sure did like it out there. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Sam happier than those two days we spent at Black Mesa. He was into everything:

When it was time to head back up to the Bunkhouse, we called Sam to come, and he ran ahead of us, where we figured he’d wait patiently while we opened the gate and let him through, like he had before. Something had come over him, though, his indominable dog spirit, I suppose, and my sweet, timid dog went squeezing through the barbed-wire fence. Brian and I shouted, and watched with horror as he made his way through that barbed wire, emerging safe and sound on the other side. We checked him for scratches or injuries, but there were none. He had, however, left a present on the fence:

At some point on the walk, Sam did slow down enough that I could capture this photo, which is going to be framed somewhere in our house in the coming week. I love it so much; how awesome is our little family?

Or perhaps the black and white version?

*I’ve been told to say that, for months, I’ve been misspelling Hera’s name; I’ve been calling her Harrah, which is wrong. It’s Hera, like the wife of Zeus. For that, I apologize, and I offer the following: I’ve searched this site for misspellings and corrected them, and here’s photo of lovely Hera’s lovely face. She, like Sam, was crazy happy the whole time we were in the Panhandle. She and her parents went on to Colorado from there, where I also imagine she had a wonderful time: