My Dog is the Antichrist

There are two types of dog owners in this world: there are dog owners and there are dog parents. I pride myself on the fact that I am the former. My wife, on the other hand, cries whenever we watch Dogtown. This leads to very conflicting attitudes that my dogs must react to. When people knock on the door, my beautiful bride shouts "Hush!" in unison with my "Good girls!!!" There is a fundamental difference in motivation between us. My wife wants polite doggies; I want them to earn their keep. That dog food is expensive, yo! Allow me to illustrate:

Reasons for owning a dog: Me

1. Home protection
2. Companionship
   

Reasons for owning a dog: Wife

1. Companionship
2. ...

Granted, we adopted beagles so I don't expect to come home and find the Dynamic Duo keeping a cat burglar at bay on top of the piano... I just want them to make enough noise to get someone annoyed enough to pick the next house to rob. Is that so bad?

We both agree on one thing, though: no POO in this house! Unfortunately, someone didn't get the memo- Savvy, the Crapmiester. Before we got married, I wanted to get a dog. So we looked online at this great no-kill shelter in Saint Louis and we found these two beagle sisters. two were strays, but Savvy seems to have had a lot of bad experiences with humans and her reaction to any alarming stimulus is to drop any extra weight in case she needs to run. A couple of weeks ago, she went in the house right after she came in from a potty break.

I vowed then that I would not rest until she was trained not to poo in the house. I am a Pack Leader! Do you hear me, Cesar!?!

So I got online and looked up my options. Here's a hint, people: don't yell at your dog! Who knew? If I went on the carpet, my parents would have flipped! Now we are trying to train the dogs to ring a bell to let us know when they have to go. But yesterday, the neighbors were fighting and we could hear the yelling through the ceiling. I look down, and Savvy has 'the look': the look that says "You're not going to be happy with me in about 5 minutes." So I look around, and there is a present on the floor. I was really happy about that, because now was go-time! I took her to the door, got her out of the house, and she did a little more outside. Good girl!

Wrong! She came back in and proceeded to resume her initial task! And that is why my dog is the Antichrist.

The Flood of '09

It's been a quiet week at my hometown Coralville, Iowa.

It's been cold here and cabin fever has been setting in. Especially here in the Biomedical Engineering department, where we sit for hours upon hours staring at dispassionate computers that refuse to give us the output we need to complete our thesis projects. So we had a badminton tournament in the Field House this Saturday.

It started like this:

My advisor took the lonely few of us who stayed during winter break out to lunch and he mentioned that he liked to play badminton.

Badminton is a funny thing. I told him that I had played with my grandparents when I was a kid and that I was pretty good at it. He said, "No,no, no, no! You've never played badminton before." Not really understanding, I reiterated my position that yes, in fact, I had played badminton before. He just shook his head at me, which was a bit puzzling, I have to tell you.

Well, I got back to the lab and was recalling the fun that I had associated with the game and how I would like to play again when I thought up the idea of a lab tournament. Only not between ourselves, but we'd challenge the lab a few doors down since they had a lot of people during the holidays too.

Well, I brought it up with the professors, and the next thing you know it's on. Because it was my idea, I had to plan most of it so I got up early on Saturday to go print out the tournament bracket and my advisor happened to call just as I was leaving to ask for a ride. So I got him, and then went by the engineering building.

It turns out that a pipe had burst Friday night, and most of the labs on the floor had an inch to an inch and a half of water throughout! Computers, files, power cords, backpacks: all soaked. And by the time we were finished, our shoes as well!

We still had the tournament, but we were about two hours late to it. Luckily, our lab wasn't as damaged because most of the computers there were up off the floor. But there were some very unhappy people this weekend.

It's Wednesday, and we still have air dryers going full blast in the hall. I now work in a wind tunnel.

I learned two important lessons:

• always store your electronics off the floor, and
• you can not win a badminton tournament barefoot.
  

Unfortunately, I've discovered that I'm a terrible person. While everyone else was using their day off to give service: going to homeless shelters, shoveling snow for the nursing home, eating fruitcake nobody was willing to throw away, I went sledding. Yes, its true. But I did salvage some of my humanity- my Indian (tandoori, not wigwam) colleague Rohini has never "shredded the powder" before. So I invited her and some of my lab mates and friends to go sledding. A few were busy sleeping off too much fruitcakes, but there were some available to come, so we helped her learn the art. She happened to bring along a video camera. Let's have a watch...