Brave Guinness doesn’t like thunderstorms. I know that many dogs dislike thunder, but I find something funny about a 140 pound zombie hunter being afraid of loud noises.  Usually the big baby finds me and hides under my feet when the thunder starts. I guess I’m the alpha-male, so he knows I’ll protect him. On the night of this tale I was traveling, so Guinness was the resident alpha-male, though I don’t think he understood what responsibilities the title imparted. read more »

We have a rule in our house that states, “Happy tails never get punished.” This rule harkens back to the halcyon days when Cozy was a puppy, circa 1997. Lauren and I were newlyweds, we had a beautiful, clean house, and our precocious little pup had grown enough that her tail could sweep the coffee table clean with one wag. We were young, eager to please parents of our first puppy, so our rules were designed to foster the long-term happiness of our fuzzy little bundle of joy.

Fast-forward thirteen years. Our house now has two pre-teen children. The pretty green carpet in the picture has been ruined (by dogs) and removed. Cozy and Daisy have long since passed over the Rainbow Bridge. Now Annie and Guinness rule the roost, but still the rule remains, “Happy tails never get punished.” read more »

I am honored to have been asked by Ricman to write up a bio for Peenut Guy, the main character in a comic he’s been drawing. Peenut Guy can be seen on his webpage over at PeenutGuy.com, and for you guitar-lovers out there, the strip is posted daily on TheGearPage.net.

Who is Peenut Guy? He is you and me. He’s every one of us who’s had a bad day. He is every one of us that’s ever made a mistake or a poor decision. There is one defining characteristic of Peenut Guy that separates him from most of us though:

Peenut Guy never lets life get him down. read more »

Somehow, a box of tissues wound up on the floor. In a normal house, this would be a virtual non-event. Someone would walk by, see them, pick them up, and put them away. Luckily for you, we live in a house where people don’t seem bothered by boxes of tissues in odd places. I’d be wiling to bet that I could glue an inverted box of tissues to the living room ceiling and not hear a word about it for months. Unless someone sneezed, in which case I’d be asked where the tissues were. In such a situation I might reply with a single finger pointed up, resulting in wonder and excitement from my children who would have completely missed the point of the exercise.

This time though, the tissues were left on the floor where we all stepped over them for days. One day something changed, at which point I stopped and stared, trying to figure out what had caught my eye. Then it struck me; the tissues were suddenly outside the box. read more »

Here in the woods of New Jersey, when the leaves start to fall and the temperature drops, we all tend to spend more time indoors. And by “we”, I mean family, dogs, and the filthy vermin commonly known as mice.

Our rodent problem is not a unique one. Go to any hardware store around here in October, and you’ll see the mousetrap section picked over like the dairy aisle in a supermarket before a hurricane.

I tend to be a “live and let live” kind of guy. In the past I’ve used live traps so that I could release the gentle creatures into the wild where they might frolic and play. Those days are gone I’m afraid—now I kill ‘em dead. I felt bad while disposing of the first thirty or so. After fifteen years of battle, I now have the blackened soul of a cold-hearted executioner. My wife though, she’s the scary one. read more »