Parker had tons of fun at Meramec over the weekend. If we could get him to run around for hours at a time during the week at home, I think we'd sleep better.
Meramec is also fun for people:
Also, we failed to remember that at this point he only gives us seven hours from bedtime before dancing on our heads in the morning. Last night we had him out around 9:30, so at 4:45, there he was, yawning loudly in my face. I made a half-hearted attempt to rouse him at 10:15; tonight, faced with the same behavior, I'll just carry him to the yard. I miss sleep.
The whole family went to Meramec State Park, near Sullivan, Mo., over the weekend. It was Parker's first long car trip with us. Never before in my life have I cared as much about what goes into and out of another living creature; the car trip only intensified this feeling.
Observe Parker as he was for perhaps 98% of the trip:
Now observe him as he appeared twice on the way up and twice on the way down:
That's not guilt, believe it or not. That's a seriously unhappy puppy preparing to demonstrate the folly of (a) feeding him before a car trip and (b) giving him a Bonine tablet on top of it.
He then went on to surprise us not once but five times during the trip. The moral of that story is, of course, don't give him any privacy indoors.
We all had a lot of fun, though, especially Parker. More on that tomorrow.
Here is the artist and his work, in which he shows he's moved on from textiles to sculpture:
That's a $600 armoire. He is so crated from now on.
No TDP tomorrow, but I'm sure I'll make up for it on Monday.
Ah, Parker, having fun at the dog park, yelling at the camera. I'm posting this photo so you can imagine the toothy grin, energetic bouncing, and ecstatic barking, but in the dark at 5:45 am. At least he's now slept through the night twice in a row.
So it looks like North Korea's nuclear test failed as badly as the President's (833 days, 3 hours) foreign policy. Either or both might contribute to his 34% approval rating.
Polls open in 27 days, 15 hours, 57 minutes.
We are ecstatic: our ball of fur and teeth finally, after seven weeks, slept through the night. He woke up only when he heard Abby Ryan's traffic report on NPR. Then he danced on our heads until we took him outside.
I hope this is the first of many nights we can finally sleep seven straight hours.
...when North Korea gets the bomb.
Wow. Try as I might, I can't think of any worse result of the President's (834 days, 4 hours) foreign policies than North Korea exploding a nuclear bomb this morning. (The USGS felt it; did you?)
Josh Marshall has a fair summary of how this happened, but I think we all know already:
The origins of the failure are ones anyone familiar with the last six years in this country will readily recognize: chest-thumping followed by failure followed by cover-up and denial. The same story as Iraq. Even the same story as Foley.
All diplomatic niceties aside, President Bush's idea was that the North Koreans would respond better to threats than Clinton's mix of carrots and sticks.
Then in the winter of 2002-3, the US prepared the invade Iraq, the North called Bush's bluff. And the president folded. Abjectly, utterly, even hilariously if the consequences weren't so grave and vast.
And where is China in all this? Apparently they've decided that a nuclear-armed and insane regime on their flank is better than no regime at all.
How long will it take to undo the damage our administration has caused? How much more damage will we suffer as a result?
Broken link fixed 2014-10-12
Indian summer is here. It got up into the mid-20s (mid-70s F), so I toodled down to Millenium Park. I don't expect weather like this again until March at the earliest. At least I got to enjoy it.