Sarah asked me if I'd be open to moving... if she could find a as good or better place for the same or less... and if she could find us a subletter... and if she did all the packing during the day while I was at work... and if it could all be done soon, like, very soon...

That's a lot of ifs. But I said, yes, I'd be open to it. I like T too. I'd like to keep her.

So, Sarah's hustling to make something happen. We'll see. It all seems a little like madness, but some of the options aren't bad.

We had Young over to watch the episode of "Chicago Fire" that he'd shot a small part for. Very small part.

Young: I had one line, guys. Two words. It's very possible I'll be cut out entirely.

And he was. Cut out.

But we still had a fun time and afterward forced Young to act out his scene, which he begrudgingly did after a lot of prompting.

Me: "Did you see a kid over there?!!!"
Young: "No. Sorry."

We've made numerous and varied attempts to talk our landlord into overlooking the "No Pets" policy... with no success. He's not going to change his mind.

No pets. No dogs. No T.

A dark day.

We are... investigating other options.

Uh oh. We know what this means.

Sarah is doing another cruise contract. Two months. Leaving in a few weeks. Escaping the cold, making some money.

This isn't a new development. We decided on this a while back, but it does make our potential puppy problem more complicated. Or maybe it makes it less complicated.

Sarah has posted lot of pictures of the puppy on Facebook, and okay, yes, I posted a few too and changed my profile picture to include the puppy and blah blah blah. I'm not immune!

Puppy pictures get lots of likes and lots of comments and most of the comments are along the lines of, "KEEP. THAT. DOG." and "There's no way you guys are giving up that dog," and "You guys are keeping that dog, I can tell."

And they might be right, except... uh... we're technically not allowed to keep a dog long-term in our place. So...

...we're looking into it.

I've seen this view a lot in the last week. The cold back yard, at, say 4 in the morning, while I wait for a puppy to pee, or poop, or even realize that that's why we're outside.

I imagine house training a puppy is at least in some small way what it's like to have a baby. Messes, not enough sleep, it's more or less all you can talk about, to each other and everyone else...

Sarah's phone is filling up with puppy pictures.

It may not be exaggerating much to say she's taken as many pictures this last week as she took her entire time at sea.

The world is a friendlier place when you're walking a puppy.

People smile, people stop. Tow trucks pull over the side of the road and dudes with weird goatees pop their heads out the window, and, smiling ear to ear shout, "Hey man, is that a hot dog?!" (Me: Uh... yeah, part dachshund, part hound.)

Even in the evening, when it's dark and people are more prone to be afraid of each other, everyone's pretty cool with you when you're walking a puppy.

We started our yearly Biggest Loser competition at work today. I could use it. I thought I'd lose weight on the cruise ship. Didn't. I did work out. I blame the pretzel bread at the buffet.

Anyway, we weighed in for the competition and I was kind of shocked by exactly how much I weigh now. Oh well, just gives me more to work with to win.

Walking back to my desk from the weigh-in, I had to pass these doughnuts that someone had kindly brought into the office. Didn't eat one. Thought about it. Still thinking about it. But didn't.

Holy crap, it's 1 degree outside!

Too cold for everybody!

The floors are kind of thin in our place. You can't hear talking but you can sometimes hear the muffled sounds of people walking around. Our upstairs neighbors have a new baby, which of course, equals more walking.

But it's not too bad. And it's world's better than the pounding music noises that used to float up to our tiny cabin from the laundry room at 6 in the morning on the cruise ship.

From the statuses bubbling up on Facebook, it appears our old cruise castmate, Mitchell, is back at sea. He does a cruise contract a year always around this time, and, as I’ve mentioned, it’s been a year. In fact, it seems he’s back on the same ship, doing the same circuit.

Some of his statuses: “Watching ‘Perks of Being a Wallflower’ on an almost constant loop on the crew channel...love it soooo much.” and “Floating into Costa Maya as we speak...National Beach Club I'm on my way!!! Oh...is it cold in Chicago? I' m an ass.”

You know, we never did get that picture of Paris up on the wall. But it does make an excellent barrier to keep a dog from crawling behind the couch to chew on the curtains or poop.

So, thank you, Paris.

The name she was given at the rescue shelter is Tijuanna. That's sort of a terrible name, sounds like a B-movie prostitute, but we've resisted the idea of renaming her. That seems unwise.

So we call her T. Or Tea. Sarah spells it "Tea." I spell it just "T." Like what Silvio would call Tony Soprano. T.

[Also, I think it's funny to put a dog's toy on top of the dog's head. I always have.]

Sarah spontaneously decided to foster a puppy. She drove some friends to a rescue shelter for them to adopt a dog, and... I guess it's hard not to come home with something yourself.

It's just for two weeks.

I'd be more annoyed if she wasn't so adorable. The puppy I mean.

So, wait? When does this blog end?

Good question. In most ways it's seemed to overstay it's welcome. It has been over a year since the blog began (Jan. 2) and it's not like I've traveled much (or at all) in the last eight months. I suppose the one year anniversary of us actually starting our cruise contract is still a few days away.

I'm not sure yet.

To oversell it with a metaphor: I'm drifting in (emphasis on drifting) towards the end of the journey, out of fuel, but still looking for exactly the right final port.

A year ago today we moved all our stuff out of our old apartment and into a storage space about the size of this spare bedroom. Actually, probably a bit smaller.

We got rid of a bunch of stuff along the way, but not enough, I guess, because this spare room is slowly turning into another equally packed storage space.

I have an internal-use-only test version of the new game on my phone. Jealous?

My mom sends out great emails full of pictures and captions that are, in their own way, like a little photo blog.

Yesterday was my nephew Will's seventh birthday and the pictures included captions like, "Tate didn't want to look at the camera until he was told no cake if he didn't smile for the picture," and, "Not sure why but Will didn't want to make a wish. . . he only blew out 6 candles so it wouldn't have made a difference anyways?!?!"

Speaking of Christmas, (still, endlessly, I know, sorry) I saw this picture pop up on Facebook, posted by one of the dancers we met on the cruise ship. A Christmas Day all-crew photo.

My favorite part is the one passenger standing off to the right side.

Upstairs at work, the ghosts and Santas have been stowed away in the old timey phone booth, like some college stunt from the '50s.

Overall the prank seems to have been well received, taken in the spirit it was intended... once everyone realized no Santas had been damaged. But the night of the holiday party I did overheard at least one slightly drunk person muttering, "They've been slashed. I was told all the Santas were SLASHED!"

I did, however, take the wreath down off our door. I mean, we can't let the world know it's still Christmas in here.

Oh no, it's getting too cold outside.

Sarah: I know you're supposed to take the tree down after January 6th, but... can we keep it up a little while longer.
Me: Why not?
Sarah: It's nice.
Me: I have no problem with that.

One of the things keeping me from traveling more this year (or, say, doing another cruise ship) has been taking on more responsibility at work. We're finishing up a new game that I'm overseeing all the written content for, and I gotta say... it's going to be awesome.

It's coming soon. It probably won't be out before this blog is done. But soon.

You can check out the first teaser trailer here.

My (37th) birthday.

Diet or no diet, Sarah is adament about cake on birthdays. "Everyone deserves a cake on their birthday."

Still, we've downgraded to cupcakes. I brought home four Sweet Mandy B's cupcakes on her birthday. Today, for mine, she brought home six.

It's a bit of a cupcake arm's race.

For the last six years or so, Sarah and I have been having a joint birthday party. We usually do it at the Grafton, but this year decided to have it at Lady Gregory (who someone pointed out, is maybe the Grafton's wife) because it's closer to our apartment, and also, we figured, maybe we could snag this cool library room.

We couldn't. The place was very busy. No getting the library. But we got some seats, we had some drinks with friends and celebrated another collective year of living.

Sarah's birthday.

Sarah sent me this picture from her phone of her text message history with my Dad, along with the message, "This made me laugh. I love your dad."

I'm kind of impressed that he's figured out text messaging at all.

And... to be fair... she clearly didn't text him on his birthday.

It's been nice to have a dog around, even the stuff I thought would be a pain, like taking him out in the dark and cold. Of course, it's still a novelty now.

The part I always thought would be most terrible, was picking up dog poop with my (plastic bag lined) hand, but honestly, it's kind of nothing. Not a big deal at all.

The Captain is staying at our house for a few days while his owners go off and have a baby.

Hung out with some friends on New Year's Day.

Steve: Your birthday is coming up. And Sarah's. Will you have your party.
Me: I don't know. Maybe. I can't believe I'm going to be 38.
Young: You're not going to be 38? How old are you.
Me: I'm 37, right?
Young: You're not 37. When were you born?
Me: 1976...
Young: You're 36 you idiot. You're going to be 37.
Me: I've literally spent the last six months thinking I was a year older than I am. And... I hate to admit this, but just now, when I realized I'm only turning 37... I felt this huge rush of relief.