Law of Dog Ownership #4: Given a choice between two potential poo locations, your dog will always choose the one with the higher Poo Inconvenience Score (PIS).

Poo Inconvenience Scores:

• Well-Kept Lawn: 2pts
• Neighbor's Well-Kept Lawn: 3pts
• Church Lawn: 5pts
• Lawn With a "No Dogs" Sign: 6pts
• Church Lawn With a "No Dogs" Sign: 10pts
• Area In Front of a Nice Restaurant: 5pts
• Area In Front of a Nice Restaurant With Outdoor Seating Area: 7pts
• Area In Front of a Nice Restaurant With Full Outdoor Seating Area: 10pts

In the event of a tie, preference is given to the location that gives the greatest number of casual observers the best view of the pooing. So, if the dog were to have to choose between a Church Lawn With a "No Dogs" sign and an Area In Front of a Nice Restaurant With Full Outdoor Seating Area (both 10 points), the dog would choose the restaurant, and if possible, angle himself such that his rear end is facing the restaurant full of shocked people.

Corollary: If the dog walker does not have a poop bag on hand, any location will do.

Enzo had a good weekend.

I think something went wrong with this batch of toilet seat covers at work.

While Rahul, Dave and I were walking back from lunch today, we came up with a new word:

This weekend I saw Wordplay, a documentary about crossword puzzles. As terribly nerdy as that sounds (and believe me, there were some nerdy people in the movie), it was actually really good. Two Shas up. That being said, does anyone know any good sites for free online crossword puzzles? I don't hope to solve the Sunday New York Times in 10 minutes like these people do, but I do enjoy a good puzzle every now and then.

Remember these?

Australia and New Zealand Day 11-12 - Uluru

Australia and New Zealand Day 13-14 - Melbourne

For those of you interested, the game I'm working on has now been officially announced as: Lord of the Rings: The White Council. The White Council website doesn't actually work, but you can still see stuff at Project Gray Company.

Over the July 4th weekend, I headed off to New York for some fun in the sun. Amanda had already made plans to visit her best friend Ramona over the same weekend, so we took the same flight out. The flight was fine, if not a little foodless (100-calorie Oreo snack packs??), but since it was on Southwest, we had to fly into Islip, i.e. IslipintodespairbecauseI'minthemiddleofnowhereonLongIsland. Because of the bizarre Long Island Railroad schedule, we had to wait around for a couple hours at the Ronkonkoma station for the train to come. In the meantime, I bought 3 Munchkins and an iced coffee and tried not to let my brain leak out of my ear. A train ride and a few subway mishaps later, we were finally at Ramona's.

She made us a yummy pesto dinner and we spent the rest of the night hanging out and playing with her adorable dog, Alba.

Friday after lunch at a Thai place near Ramona's, Amanda and I headed to the American Museum of Natural History where we met up with Kahn. Afterwards we made a stop at Levain Bakery for what were seriously the Best Cookies Ever. Now I know I use the phrase "Best ____ Ever" pretty much constantly, but this time it's serious. The best cookies I've ever had, and well worth the $3.50 (!) each.

For dinner we met Moo and II at Vespa, which was good, but a little pricey. I had very tasty gnocchi for my main course, and finished with a dessert of kiwi sorbet.

Around 12pm the next day, Moo, II, and I headed up to East Hampton via the Hampton Jitney busline. The ride up was fairly uneventful, except when one of the Jitney employees told me to be keep it down because I was talking too loudly.

The rest of the day, or pretty much the rest of my time there, was spent trying to decide which leisure activity to partake in: eating, napping, reading, swimming, croquet (really!), going to the beach, watching a movie, etc. It was a full house, so I slept on a mattress on the floor, crack house-style. That is, if crack houses were in East Hampton and had swimming pools in the backyard.

I was especially excited to be there because it had been a full 7 months since I had seen Bug, who had recently celebrated her 2nd birthday. Let me say that her cuteness has only increased with her age. She is extremely talkative now, but her brain has developed much faster than her motor coordination, so she's at that age where she has a huge vocabulary and a lot to say, but can't always pronounce it. At dinner one night, she wanted to know what everyone's favorite animal was. She tried to say, "What's your favorite animal, Auntie Sha?" but it came out as, "Wha your fav amo Auntie Sa?" Fortunately, PP and YGB are well versed in Bug-ese, and were always available to provide real-time translation.

I also got to spend some time with the rest of PP's family, including EP's and Oz's new baby boy. He's also very very cute, and often has a very serious look on his face. I also saw EMA and RM, whom I'm pretty sure I haven't seen since their cross-country road trip, when we had a nice tapas dinner in Mountain View.

Saturday and Sunday were pretty relaxed, with a lot of hanging around the house. Saturday night we went to the beach to watch a fireworks display, which was very cool, except that the glowsticks YGB bought for Bug leaked on my hands and made them smell funny. Sunday morning we went to the beach and played, or shall I say "played" some football, which was fun.

Monday morning, YGB, RM, EMA, EP, Oz, and I got up at Early-o'-clock to go deep sea fishing. I've wanted to go for a long time, but I was worried that my motion sickness would get the best of me, so right when we got up, I took some Dramamine and hoped that it wouldn't knock me out. We went out on the Blue Fin IV with Captain Mike and First Mate Dennis around 6:00am. At our first stop, Dennis showed us the fine art of "jigging", or moving the lure in a way that will attract the fishies. After a while of unsuccessful jigging, RM finally got a bite and eventually reeled in a big ol' sea bass. I believe my words were "Holy crap!" when he pulled it out of the water, as I'd never fished for, um, fish that big before. Eventually, all of us caught at least one fish. The final count was: RM - 3 sea bass, YGB - 1 sea bass and 2 blue fish, and 1 sea bass each for the rest of us. RM, besides catching the most fish, also caught the largest, with his heaviest weighing in at 17-lb. He was, you could say, getting jiggy with it.

Back at the dock, Dennis and Mike cleaned and filleted our fish for us, and we tried some sea bass sashimi from our fish, which was actually very tasty.

Even more exciting than bringing home around 100 pounds of fish was the fact that nobody puked! Knowing my family and our history of x-treme motion sickness, this was indeed something to be proud of.

The rest of the day was spent lounging around and exploring the town, and YGB drove me to the airport the next morning so I catch my flight back to California.

I arrived in the afternoon and had just enough time to stop at home before heading to Peter's for their July 4th XTravaganza barbeque. It was good times and good steaks. Mmmm....

All in all, another successful trip to Hamptonia. Pictures....ah, who am I kidding?

Okay, so this is just one step closer to Crazy Cat Lady-dom, but I just discovered Dogster today, which is, like it sounds, a Friendster site for dogs.

Ummm....ok.

So anyway, here's Enzo's profile. A few random people have already asked Enzo to be their dog-friends because he's SO CUTE.

And not that any of you were waiting for it, but I'm in the middle of writing up my report on my trip to the Hamptons, so it should be coming pretty soon.

This is awesome. And by "awesome" I mean "not awesome".

Jump in My Car by David Hasselhoff

In the 5 or so years that my website has existed, I've tried to make an effort to keep details of my family (mostly names) out of the chaos as much as possible. (Friends, you get no such courtesy; sorry.) However, this makes my posts awkward to write and read, with "my sister" this and "my sister-in-law's sister's husband" that. Therefore, I've decided to come up with a list of aliases for them all. Those who know them might be able to figure out where these names came from, and those who don't won't care what their real names are anyway. For future reference, here's the list of names I'll be using, subject to revision. Abbreviations, if any, are in parentheses:

• Moo: My older sister, a resident at a hospital in New York.
• Italian Ice (II): Moo's boyfriend. He's smrt.
• Yang Gong Ba (YGB): My older brother, also living in New York.
• Puerto Rican Princess (PRP): My sister-in-law; not actually Puerto Rican.
• Bug: My two-year-old niece, daughter of PRP and YGB, and the cutest lil' girl you'll ever lay eyes on.
• Eight-Minute-Abs (EMA): PRP's younger sister. An architect.
• ReadyMade (RM): EMA's husband. He builds cool things.
• El Pato (EP): PRP's older sister, lives in Singapore. If you're wondering why I called her "The Duck", it totally makes sense if you know her real (nick)name, I swear.
• Oz: EP's husband, originally from Australia.
• Mr. Incredible: EP's and Oz's 9-month-old son, who already knows how to use the potty.
• Tokyo Drift (TD): PRP's, EP's, and EMA's youngest sister. Used to work at a racing auto shop.
• Yai: PRP's, EP's, EMA's, and TD's Mom. She can grill like a pro.
• The Doctor PRP's, EP's, EMA's, and TD's Dad.

Hopefully it doesn't get too confusing.

Incidentally, if you are one of the aforementioned people and would like a new Secret Nickname, or if you just want to know why the heck I gave you the name I did, just shoot me an e-mail.

I'm about to leave on my very first deep sea fishing trip. I've been given 5:1 odds that I will be the first to throw up, while my brother, who has gone before and apparently had a puke-a-licious experience, has been given 1:3 odds. Wish me luck! I hope this Dramamine really works.