Now hey, I was 24 when Clinton was elected, ending twelve years of Republican rule. I heard similar rhetoric then, and similar projections of new beginnings, and I got semi-caught up in it. Does anyone remember the health care promises made back then? Thought so. No, I’m still a hard line cynic, and Obama’s still a politician. But I am of course going to look to the future with a lot more hope than I have had following the last two Presidential elections.

One thing that has really hit me hard is all the attention being paid to the race issue, particularly now that the election is over. Honestly, for me it was never about a black man getting elected, it was about a non-gargoyle getting elected. It is truly amazing to me that this is so amazing, but yeah, I guess is is an incredible feat that a black man has just been elected President of the United States. And that is sad, on so many levels, and at the same time it’s truly amazing.

Bush can slink off into obscurity (and I hope he rots in hell for all of eternity), and we can now look forward to the challenges ahead and watching Mr. Obama continue to rise to the occasion. I wish him the best, and I have never felt such pride in our nation’s choice for this august office.

I have many things going on. Brenda & I just got back from Las Vegas; we finally did the town together (birthday junket for her and some of our friends who also celebrate Libra birthdays), and while we had fun, Brenda is definitely done with that town. Me, I discovered more craps bets I like, but I also walked away a loser for the second time in a row. But I’m up on points when you assign value to table time. I realize this is the entire business model for Vegas.

I am killing in my bio class, two weeks and two aces on my tests, but I didn’t have a great feeling from my last test and I totally missed the last one because I was coming home from Vegas, but from here on out (till December 15) it’s all school, all the time. I plan to ace this class. Who wants odds?

The company I work for was just acquired by UTC Power, so after a lifetime of working for companies no larger than 100 people, my employer is now owned by a 225,000-person firm doing $55B in revenue. This is a shock to the system of epic proportions, and I came home from Vegas last night and walked into a day long series of meetings to explain this transition. My head is still spinning, but one of the upshots was that the parent company’s parent company (got that?) has a program where they actually pay for tuition and book costs employees wishing to obtain additional degrees, in whatever field they desire. So this is all getting very interesting.

Stay tuned.

Answer: 2.672.

My first thought was that level of decimal accuracy was totally unnecessary.

Yeah, I fucked up. Yeah, this is a major setback. Yeah, I aced my last two biology quizzes. Fuck it, I’ll get it done.

He wobbled around the living room and made us all nervous on the stairs, but he quickly flopped on his bed and slept while I read a biology textbook. It’s been pretty amazing to watch him be so mellow, and no one is more intrigued than Ellie, our cat. At long last, Ellie could inspect this odd creature with impunity, and she took full advantage.

I hand-fed him his entire dinner, and I think at this point he forgives me for taking him to that horrible place this morning. As I type this, Hooper is sleeping soundly and all is right with the world.

When you study stuff like this, sometimes it’s hard to see the real world relevance to your work. But tonight, Hooper reminded me of why I’m doing this. And so as soon as I could, I drove home and we all rode over to the 24-hour animal hospital. Sure enough, one of Hoop’s incisors is sheared off right at the gum line and will need to be extracted. Apparently, Hooper and Monty—the two most ball-focused dogs in our neighborhood’s play group—turned to chase a thrown ball at the same time, and turned right into each other, and Hoop just got the losing hand in that deal. The vet sent us home with antibiotics and painkillers (for Hooper), and we will make an appointment tomorrow morning with our vet for the remains of the tooth to be extracted. The upshot of all of this is that I have been trying to schedule a time to shadow my vet as she does day-to-day activities, including surgeries, and so it may just work out that Hooper provides me with the impetus (and the patient) for finally doing it.

The pain meds seem to be helping, but every once in a while Hooper lets out a single, loud, bark, as if to say “god DAMN, this hurts!”. I hope we can get him in tomorrow for the extraction. Stay tuned.

The Reel Rock Tour is a traveling film festival celebrating rock climbing, in the extreme. Good god, it was fucking amazing. The only thing better than the photography was the amazing skill and daring of the people in the films. Well, that and the rocks; the rocks were amazing. From Eldorado Canyon—right here in Boulder—to Yosemite to Chamonix, France, these places served as playmates to people who tested their limits; their drive, determination, balls and boobs, as they climbed, slept on, and B.A.S.E. jumped off of some of the most amazing fucking rocks on the planet. It was awesome.

In case you didn’t know, Boulder Colorado is kind of a hotbed for rock climbing. More importantly, in case you didn’t know, Brenda (my wife) is really into rock climbing. I reveled when Brenda took a rock climbing course at the Boulder Rock Club, and enjoyed her stories every time she came back from the gym, and especially when she came back from Eldorado Canyon on a climbing adventure with her classmates from the gym.

So when I saw this film festival advertised, I jumped at the chance to check it out, and I ended up being totally sold on the idea of rock climbing.

By the time the feature event rolled, I was totally engrossed; the beautifully brilliant mountainous landscape projected on the screen was wonderful to look at, but then the reflected light from the screen revealed an amazing thing: the Boulder Theater was totally packed. Every seat was full, and people were sitting in the aisles and standing in the stairwells, to catch a glimpse of these amazing athletes groping their way up the most impossible of routes.

The alpine hikers were my faves, but there were so many characters both in front of and behind the lens that you just wanted to be your best friends, and the fact that half of them were in the audience watching the show (and occasionally tossing out swag, including climbing legend and Rob’s girlfriend Beth Rodden’s husband Tommy Caldwell tossing out shit like ten feet from us) just added to the drama.

All in all, a good night. I am so going to try rock climbing now!!

Naturally, upon hearing of this insanity, we made plans to participate.

We arrived at the pool parking lot Saturday afternoon—surrounded by vehicles with filthy pickup beds and festooned with decals like “my Border Collie is smarter than your honors high school student”—and headed into the melee. Once inside the gate, we paid our five bucks, took Hoop’s leash off, and the games began. Now, Hooper loves to swim in the reservoir by the East Boulder Dog Park, but that has a sandy beach and a nice gradual slope into the water; this is where he learned to swim. But this pool business, all concrete and with an abrupt transition from land to water, well, this took a second to adjust to. Seriously, like, a second.

Watching the dynamics involved with roughly forty dogs running around, all overloaded with the sensory stimuli of having an entire human public pool at their disposal, was thrilling, amusing and hysterical. A co-worker appeared, with his wife and their dog Winnie. They were trying to get Winnie to get over her fear of jumping into the water. With Hooper obviously over his fear of jumping off the pool coping, we decided to see if we could tackle the diving boards.

There were a couple of dogs over by the diving boards who were seemingly chanelling Greg Lougainis, showing no fear of the bobbing board or of leaping off the end. One dog actually pushed off the end of the board so well that he managed to get the board to bounce a few times after he departed. It sounded really professional, the “boing—splash, boing, boing”. I figured Hooper would be a natural, but he displayed a lot of anxiety about jumping off the end. He happily jumped up on the board, and would follow me out to the edge if I showed him the ball, but no matter how I threw the ball into the pool, he just couldn’t be enticed to jump off the end. You ask me, he’s just showing everyone how smart he is. But the pool is open for dog swims next weekend too, and I think I’m gonna bring him back for one more try at diving before winter arrives. All in all, it was a great day and it was fun to watch Hooper take in the newness of the entire experience.

At this point, since bringing Hooper home, I have read about a dozen or more books about dogs: dog training, dog breeds, dog behavior, dog health care, dogs; the last category includes your typical dog memoir or reflection on living pets, and so far Ted Kerasote’s book totally nails it. Granted, Merle is a fantastic dog, living in fantastic conditions, but the story is still a real rags to riches story, rife with dog care and training tips—and, what I feel is one of the most important skills required of any dog owner, observational tips.

Ethologists will piss all over this book as a 400-page homage to anthropomorphism. And while I admit there is a lot of the author inserting plain-english words into his dog’s inner monologue, we all do that. Every dog owner out there knows they’re guilty of making up Fido’s inner thoughts while out for a play session in the dog park, and you know it.

So, getting past that, you have a wonderful story of a man who takes in a stray dog and together they teach EACH OTHER many important lessons of life. These are lessons I’m learning now, taught by Hooper, and having read “Merle’s Door” are lessons I’m absorbing and cherishing much more deeply, knowing Merle’s—and all dogs’—ultimate fate. And I guess that’s lesson number one that dogs teach us, is that life’s too short to sweat the small stuff.

I loved this book.