California Tim now also comes with a dog.

Her name is Terra and we just picked her up from the Peninsula Humane Society. She's a 3-year-old yellow Lab. She was just spayed this morning so she's mostly been lying down between bouts of wandering around listlessly.

I've never had a pet in my house. My family did have a Rottweiler puppy during the year we lived in Taiwan but it was pretty much an outdoor dog and when it was inside we were terrified of it, probably because the dog we had in our house back home was a porcelain Dalmatian (think Wheel of Fortune). It's strange having an animal--another living thing--inside the house all the time, being semi-alone but never quite.

She's doing everything she can to allay my fears, though, by being about the sweetest creature imaginable (albeit with one of the saddest faces I've ever seen).

She is phenomenal at catching tennis balls.