This is a picture of my new dog, Ryder. Pretty darn cute, eh? Like a living, breathing Beanie Baby. Why am I blogging about him, you ask?

Well, seeing as he's a sort of gift from my good buddy Jeff from Birmingham, MI, and seeing as Ryder is also from Detroit, I thought I should name him after some famous Motor City music Icon, and since "Marvin" or "Smokey" (or "Tammi") didn't quite seem to fit, I liked the homage to Mitch Rider and the Detroit Wheels, (with a special thanks for the intro to "Devil With a Blue Dress").

A few days after I named Ryder, I thought to myself, "Hey, Ryder (AKA "Rider") might be a cool band name, eh?" So I called Gary. "What about 'Rider' or 'The Riders' for a band name?"

These days I can't help but notice when I do something counter to what my history has taught me is the "wise thing" to do. Sometimes I can simply chalk it off to my short-sighted desire to getting my needs met, no matter the outcome, and sometimes I see that action as some naive urge in me that still wants to believe "it will somehow turn out differently this time. This time, it will all work out in the end." And I suppose, if you back up far enough, it can all appear to have done just that, worked out. Just don't count the bodies scattered along the side of the road, the collateral damage on the way to that ephemeral place we affectionately call "the end." There is, of course, no such place. Seems like where we're standing on the time-line of our lives is the place we keep referring to as "the end." But we're really just traversing across the Great Unknown on our way to somewhere else.