Meet Grayson

There is a lovely new furry thing at the house.Her name is Grayson, which is not the best name for a dog, especially a girl dog, but we couldn't think of a new one and she seems to like it. We're transitioning her over to nicknames like Grace and Gracie and Gracecar in the hopes that when we find a better name we can teach it to her.

We adopted her from Animal Action Rescue in Decatur, who were very nice and helpful and relieved that she found a good home. They do adoptions at a PetSmart on Ponce de Leon and are wonderful.

We'd been thinking about a dog for a while, and had been stalking Petfinder.com until we found a little brown dog named Rocky that we were sure was perfect for us. He was old and lazy and snuggly and had the biggest, saddest eyes. So we drove out to the middle of nowhere to look at him, and he was cute and fat and very low key, but we just weren't sure. By the time we'd made the drive home however, we were sure that we had room in our lives for that little puppy with the sad eyes. So we called the rescue organization that evening only to find that someone had beat us to the punch. In the time it took for us to drive home, someone else had come in, fallen in love and taken him home. Grr.

But, clearly that had to happen so we could let this smiley mutt into our lives. She loves walks, snuggling, and playing with a super annoying talking rooster toy when we're trying to work late at night. Gracecar is awesome

For anyone else contemplating adopting an animal (which is totally the way to go), Petfinder is a really great site. You can search by species, size, age, whether they're housebroken/declawed, if they are good with kids or other animals, etc. It's super user friendly, and most of the rescue organizations in my area post on it. Plus, it's a quick way to get your puppy fix if Cute Overload is down.

I always like reading how carefully worded some of the descriptions are, I know our little miss was described as "sometimes unsure of other dogs," when in reality she perceives every furry beast as a direct threat to her beloved people and would gladly devour them as a token of her loyalty.

This McSweeney's piece REFRESHINGLY CANDID,YET ADMITTEDLY LESS TRADITIONAL, PET NOTES THAT MY NEIGHBORHOOD ANIMAL-ADOPTION CENTER WOULD PROBABLY FIND TO BE MORE EFFECTIVE: A COMPARISON. captures it pretty perfectly.

I got to visit the Brooklyn Superheroes Supply Shop which is secretly a 826 NYC tutoring center run by the bad asses at McSweeneys. Dave Eggers won the 2008 TED prize for this, you can see his talk here. If that doesn't make you want to get up in the morning, you are clearly a killer robot, and Ben Egerman must thwart you.