"Watch it, Bub."

There was a giant crashing sound at my house last night.  I didn’t hear it.  Everyone else did.  They said, “Dad, what was that giant crashing sound?”  I said, “I didn’t hear it.”

There have been a lot of giant crashing sounds at my house over the years.  Once it was a transformer a few houses down.  Another time it was my neighbor crashing her car into a tree across the street.  Most recently it was a tree falling onto my fence.  That was the week before Christmas.

Because the crashing sounds usually mean something has crashed and I’m always late to the party because I don’t check, I decided to check.  Turns out the noise last night was a tree crashing across my fence and into my neighbor’s house.  I live on a corner so what actually happened was one neighbor’s tree fell across two section of my fence (corner) and across the yard of my other neighbor reaching up their deck and against their house.

Very exciting -- for the first smartest dog who was outside when it happened.

Another exciting thing I saw last night was “The Wolverine” which really surprised me.  I wasn’t expecting much more than an over-the-top CGI sendoff.  Turns out it was actually a movie with a story.  Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that there is a copy of Wolverine #1 safely stowed away in a secret hiding place in my bedroom.  (Just like when I was 18 and bought it.)  But don’t dismiss me as just another fan-boy, rather, you should recognize that I’m old school and especially critical of how the big screen treats my favorite characters.  Case in point – there hasn’t been a single Punisher film that I’ve liked.

The Wolverine offered honest character development, a real and complex storyline involving solid A and B plots, and kept the CGI in the background.  Until the last twenty minutes at which point we were rudely reminded that it was a comic book film in much the same way that James Cameron’s Titanic was interrupted by an iceberg.  But I can’t fault Marvel.  It was consistent with the character’s tradition and my goodness, we went over an hour and a half with a story that was part Inception, part Karate Kid II, and part Skyfall.

Don’t just pop it in for the kids if you haven’t seen it.  There was a lot of discussion when it came out about the PG-13 rating.  The IMDB parental advisory is accurate but I’d add the caveat that nothing was gratuitous.  Wolverine is a haunted character and the film captures that.

Do Not Quit. Ever.

The blog has been silent for a bit.  I’ve been considering whether or not to keep it going.  It’s got a cool name, but as anyone who watched “The Phantom Menace” knows, it takes far more than a cool name to make a good product.

The goal of Rejected and Alone has, all along, has been to keep me writing.  What I’m finding is that it now keeps me from writing.  Every post takes away from the bigger projects.  Since the end goal is to produce professional, saleable work, it makes sense (personally) to shift my effort into those projects – like the two novel drafts I’ve finished but not finished or the score of screenplay ideas that need to be broken, written, and polished.

I’ve gotten some very positive rejection letters on my short stories with comments that tell me I’m close.  So.  Very.  Close.  I’m ready to close that deal.  And I plan to publish a novel this year.  Commercial ventures, unlike the blog which I have pledged (even if only to myself) to keep ad free.

So I was going to pull the plug.  After all, how many of you are actually reading these words because you want to be better authors?  How many times do you want to read me saying the same things in different words?  Listen, I can sum up the message of my blog in four words.  Do not quit.  Ever.  Everything else is just me talking and you being polite – and hopefully entertained.

First smartest dog

Then I got an email comment from a stranger who liked some of the content.  And some of you have been asking what happened – am I alright?  Why has the blog been silent?  I talked to my wife about my plans to shut down R&A and she said, “What?  You can’t do that.”  Hmm.

How about this.  How about one post a week?  I’m thinking Tuesdays.  Maybe because today is Tuesday, maybe because Tuesday is a day that needs a little something.  Doug Richardson posts one day a week and I really like his format.

So here is my pledge for Rejected and Alone, version 2015.  One post a week.  And it will make you smile.  To make sure you don’t miss it, please get an email subscription (there’s a link at the bottom of this page).

This was all pretty serious and nobody has smiled yet.  I could say it isn’t 2015 yet, which would make some of you laugh, but instead I’ll tell you a funny story.

Yesterday was my last day of vacation.  It was a good day and I cooked a dinner of twice roasted potatoes, creamed sweat corn, a roasted onion (butter and beef bouillon) and grilled rib eye.  The dogs get very confused when I cook.  I’m not the sort to toss them scraps.  Doesn’t keep the third smartest from hoping though.  Thing is, she’s terrified of pretty much everything, even Norah Jones on the Pandora, so when I was chopping the potatoes she wouldn’t come over and get the ones that fell on the floor.

Then I was rushing in and out between the skillet (olive oil, parsley, ground black pepper with the roasted potatoes) and the grill.  She kept smacking into the cabinets to get out of my way.  The first smartest dog was jumping over her.  The second smartest did some barking.  I put them out.  They still didn’t know what to do.  I felt bad for them, the steaks looked amazing, so I dropped a bouillon cube into their big water dish.

That was a trick because they catch really well, I had to chase them away from the bowl.  Then they rushed up to see what it was I’d dropped in.  I laughed out loud watching them try to figure out how to get to the cube at the bottom of the deep bowl.  They started drinking like crazy and I thought for a minute they were going to drink it all, just to get to the cube.

But they didn’t.  The first smartest was distracted by a tennis ball and the third smartest ran away when I clicked the igniter of the grill.  Maybe you had to be there.

Third smartest dog

There's no dog like an old dog.

Long time readers may recall that last year my youngest son’s science project was to determine which of our three dogs was the smartest.  An interesting side effect of that was the discovery of which one was the dumbest.  But he’s a good, kind-hearted boy, so he described her instead as “the third smartest dog.”

So now, on occasion, I’ll call her #3.  Thing is, I like #3.  She’s sweet and when we got her she was terrified of the world.  Seriously.  She only stopped shaking in dark room by herself.  I often found her in my closet.  She would leap from the dogs’ recliner if I even came close to the shredder.  So I would pet her with keys in my hand.  She’s still nervous about that, but I don’t have to hold her anymore.

#3 is a black Lab.  If you know labs, you know they have a voracious hunger and will consume vast quantities of anything when given a chance.  This one is partial to charcoal and Crayola’s.  It makes for a colorful back yard.  I’ve trained #1-2 to eat only when given permission.  But could #3 learn to wait too?

She can and she has.  It just took longer than the Border Collie did.  I estimate about 1 week of training for the lab per day of training for the collie.  To be fair, the lab is about 7 years old and the collie was a pup, but, well, there’s a reason she’s #3.

My point in all of this is that my family was dubious about my chances for success.  After all, everyone knows that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.  Except that I did.

Think about that.

Have you passed on your dream again because now you’re too old?  If I can teach a lab in late middle age to wait for her breakfast, you can do it too.  Not wait for your breakfast, but live your dream.  The thing about dreams is that most people don’t follow them and they’ll tell you all sorts of reasons why you shouldn’t either, one of them that you’re already set on your life path.  Don’t listen to that.  People, in general, are afraid, and what you are hearing are the expressions of their fear, the things that are holding them back.  But you aren’t them.

So what if you’re only third smartest.  Doesn’t mean you can’t succeed.

"I don't know where we're goin', but there's no sense bein' late."

Last evening my dog went walkabout.  Might have been alright if he was part dingo, but he's not.  He's purebred, "Ball?  Throw the ball?  Pleeeaaassssuuuh?  Look, I brought you my ball.  Ooo - Ooo, here's another one.  And here's a big plastic thing that isn't a ball but I brought it to you anyway.  Throw something." a.k.a. border collie.

I had taken the afternoon off to drive to Dulles because I hadn't had my fill of being stuck in traffic during the morning commute where it took an hour to get to the station a mere 8 miles away.  No sir.  I wanted to drive through Fairfax County in the full press of rush hour.  And we had to pick up our friends.

At some point during our excursion, the gate to our backyard fence was opened.  It didn't fall open, didn't blow open, and the dog certainly didn't open it (I know that was your first thought but it's the wrong sort of gate latch up much too high for him to reach without jumping).  I have two competing theories but without proof or profit, there is little point in pursuing either.

The first clue for us that something was amiss occurred when I pulled into my driveway and was met by the black lab.  She was not supposed to be waiting for us on the front porch.  A quick check revealed the open gate and empty backyard.

I'd seen animal control at the local constabulary on the way in and went off to catch the catcher.  I was too late but the local constable said, "That's your dog alright.  I'll try to get animal control back."

He was able to use a combination of encrypted FM two-way radio technology and an iOS based smart phone to reach the local Ringer who quickly agreed to comeback.  (Clearly his first name was not "Shane").

While we waited, I heard the story.  The dog, often referred to as "Nose", had gotten loose and made contact with a dog walker (described only as a "kindly woman walking three dogs") about 1/2 a mile away from the house.  He went right up to her, was a sweet as candy, so she called the police.

 

When the 5-O-boy-we're-in-trouble-now arrived, they took him into custody and incarcerated him at the precinct.  Whoops, I switched vernacular - he was detained at the constabulary.  They built him a nice kennel from cardboard and posted his picture on Facebook.  Lots of folks wanted him and offered new homes if we didn't ever comeback.

The authorities were concerned that he was so thin and hungry and thought he might have been loose for days so that's why they didn't hold him overnight but instead sent him off to the pound.  We also were concerned about him being thin and always hungry for the first several months we had him, but the Vet and the Trainer always say he's right on target for the breed.  I passed this along and was assured that there was no concern about abuse or neglect - "he was too sweet and well behaved for that" but that, professionally speaking, he was a three when he should be a five.

I was content just to have him back.  He was a bit subdued last night, staying close and (after his dinner) quite calm.  He even watched “Castle” with us without being a freak-a-zoid.  Perhaps the ride in the truck with a cage changed him?

Not a chance.  Like so many of my clients, shortly after being freed, he returned to his old self and ways.  I was woken up this morning by the "Nose" and he was as impatient as ever with the alarm clock.  "Rawrrrrah.  Woof.  Rawwwraaawrrraaaaah."  There is no fonetik (ironic misspelling) way to duplicate his "good morning" and you can't possibly imagine his affection from my written word.

Hopefully, instead of being down the road, his next walkabout will just be [in the] Outback.