As you may have noticed, I changed the look of my blog. I am still in the process of tweaking it to make it look better, but the big transition from a WordPress.com to a WordPress.org blog has been completed, thanks to my Husband, who sent me to see the Valentine’s Day (B-) movie with my girlfriend, but sat home all day transferring my files. Now that’s romantic.

Read this in The Times today and I liked it. It’s part of an article called “Love in a hard place” aka NYC. This may not be the warmest place, or the prettiest, but it’s not a war zone, people! Its just a city. Anyway, here it is:

Puppy Love: Lost, Found

We got our dog, a King Charles spaniel, a couple of months after we got engaged, a first tender step toward the responsibilities and compromises of building a life together. We were lucky to live a block from Central Park; I was even luckier that he was the one who walked our dog, Bowie, there in the early morning, rain or shine.

One frigid February morning I awoke to a breathless phone call from my betrothed. Bowie was gone, having disappeared into the wilds of the Ramble in pursuit of a fluttering sparrow.

While I sprinted in pajamas through a traffic light, then a gantlet of evergreen boughs, I imagined our 7-month-old, 15-pound, pink-tummied puppy flattened by a taxi, drifting on an ice floe in the Jackie O. reservoir or clutched in the talons of Pale Male.

I made a singular promise. Whatever happened, as long as I lived, I would never blame the loss of our dog on my future husband.

Drawing near the southern edge of the Great Lawn, I spotted them in the distance: a man kneeling down with a mud-caked puppy; my family reunited.

We walked home together quietly through the dappled light that bathes the park at that hour. I let out a deep breath. People always say that having a dog teaches you how to love someone in a straightforward, unconditional way. Sometimes, that someone is not the dog