Ooooh, Spikey!

I'd be excited about my slight uptick in hits this week, except that I've figured out that apparently the TV show "Heroes," which I've only seen one ep of but I hear it's nice, has recently aired an episode titled "Cautionary Tale." So all of a sudden, I am getting hits from the UK, the Ukraine, Germany, Mozambique--all googling for "heroes cautionary tale." As well as random places in the US. Although I'm obviously not what they're looking for, I am gratified to see that I am the #1 hit for this google search (presumably since all three of those words appear in my header.) Only one or two of them have hazarded an actual look at my blog--but if you are, in fact, here hoping I am talking about the Heroes show on a regular basis, I'm very sorry to disappoint you. You'll have to wait til I've watched a few more disks of the set my coworker loaned me last week.

My adventure for the weekend is that I was coerced into dog-sitting for one of my neighbors; I'm in the town directory as a dog sitter, but the last time I dogsat it was an utter disaster and I didn't want to repeat it. But these folks seemed desperate, so I said OK. Things were a little surreal when I biked over there after dark on Wednesday and found myself passing sign after sign that said "No Outlet" "Dead End" "Roadway Ends" and "Turn Back Now, Before It's Too Late." There are lots of signs like this in my little town (well, the first three) but I seriously had no idea there were any houses back on this little gravel path along the river; I was about to turn around when I finally found the house #, at the second-to-last house at the farthest southern tip of town. Surrealism continued when I met the dog, who is the world's most gi-normous Rottweiler. "Oh, he's a sweetheart! Don't worry, you can just let him out without a leash and he'll come right back in!" Jesus, I thought, I am DOOMED. This dog is going to go blitzing off into the sunset, and there is no way I will be able to force a 150 lb herding dog to do anything it doesn't want to do. So this morning, when I had to go let him out for the first time, I'm thinking "Crap, crap crap... I so don't want to do this."

Naturally, it turns out that this is the most timid Rottweiler in the history of the breed. I had to lure him outside with a dog biscuit because it was chilly out. He ran back inside as soon as I opened the door. Additionally, he is painfully sad that his family has left him, and it is all he can do to look up at me with his sad, pitiful eyes, and silently ask, "Why? Why did they go away? Was it something I did? Tell them I'm sorry." No doubt that will only get worse before they return Sunday night, he already seems convinced that life, as he knows it, is over forever. Poor, poor gi-normous dog.