SIMPLICITY

www.designobserver.com is a site I have been frequenting... frequently. It's a good site that posts articles, thoughts, and tells about interesting books while also having links to other interesting sites. One of the links is to a site by a professor at MIT who blogs about simplicity. Here is a link to a blog post titled "Why Being Creative is Good."

Lessons in love

This year I decoded to surprise Haircut (Erin) with a puppy for Christmas. I had considered getting her a puppy for a few weeks before Christmas and asked my friend where I should look for one. He pointed me to a humane society his wife recommended because she a vet technician. A few days later he emailed me and told me that the vet's brother-in-law found a 10 week old puppy and was bringing him to the vet. My plan was only to take a picture the Saturday before Christmas of him to give Haircut a chance to decide if she wanted to keep him. After I saw him that plan went out the window. I got back in touch with the vet and made arrangements to pick him up Monday.

We named him Jackson and he's great. He was pretty much afraid of everything when we first got him but after a little while he warmed up to us. He slowly began venturing outside his crate to explore his new home... and to pee on the floor. He is very playful with us now but is still pretty shy around new people until he gets to know you.

He's still a puppy and likes to gnaw on things so at night we put him in his crate. For 5-10 minutes each night he howls from back in the laundry room as if he was singing the saddest blues song ever written. One of the first nights we went to bed and just listened to him howl Haircut said, "I want to go down there and let him know we're still here and that everything is ok. He cries because he doesn't understand that we're doing this for his own good. I think I have a better understanding what God must go through with us."