Back up to Bronxville on Saturday night for a real party.

And by real, I mean a party that starts off right: with a visit from the fire department (or fire brigade, as Ben calls them).

The photograph only makes us look like bigger morons, as it doesn’t show the fire’s initial magnificence (and by the time I thought to take some photos, the fire and smoke had already gone down quite a bit). However, it was sufficiently scary enough to call in the professionals. What had started as an ingenious attempt at cleaning the gas grill (scrape, then burn off the residue) resulted in the grease trap below the grill catching fire, and sending plumes of smelly, black smoke into the house and neighborhood. Lesson: clean the grease trap!

Anyway, the police and fire department were very nice, and even carried the grill off the porch and into the yard, and tried very hard to not snicker at the idiots. (As soon as the first cop got there and saw me standing on the porch with my camera, he told me “well, taking pictures isn’t going to help,” and remarked to the firemen something along the lines of “they started a fire so they could take pictures of it,” making me feel doubly incompetent. I tried to explain that I only picked up the camera after we had called for help - there wasn’t anything else to do but wait anyway - but he had already moved on, realizing he was probably dealing with art students.)

After our “incident,” the rest of the night was spent very predictably: eating a lot of food and consuming a fair amount of alcohol. As this was Tony’s first party - and his first time with a number of other dogs (Ben’s parents’ dogs Minnie and Pip, and Ben and Amanda’s dog Louise) - Tessa and I also spent a good deal of time making sure he wasn’t going to get stepped on or try to nose-dive off of the porch stairs. Most of our concerns were unwarranted; Tony did very well (aside from some what is now typical roughhousing between he and Louise) and was cooed, ooohed and ahhed at by everyone there.

By the end of the night (or the beginning of the morning), Tessa and Tony had been partied out, and spent some time on the basement couch while the remaining boys (er… men?) played some very rousing games of ping-pong, pool and foosball (parents’ houses are great).

I thought when my parents got their dog Fergus, that he had an awful lot of nicknames. However, Tony has already surpassed (and borrowed a few names from) Fergus… mostly due to Tessa’s brilliance at nicknaming (I did not, as much as I’d like to take credit for it, come up with Peeps McDinkledog). Here is the list of Tony’s nicknames that we have used the past week, in no particular order:

Baby
Babe-ington
General Babe-ington
Sweetheart
Wiener
Sausage Dog
Desert Dog
Dog
Sergeant Dog
Dude
Sir
Buttercup
General Doggington
Doggins
Pooper
Stinkypants
Porkpie
Buster
Champ’n
Champ
Peeps McDinkledog
Sir Poops-a-lot
MC Pee Pants
Buddy
Buddy Budster
Buddy Budwell
Tone loc
Tone-ster
Torpedo
Tornado
Thrasher
Tompkins
Butternut

So we’ve had Tony for a week. Or, Tony has had us for a week. I suppose it depends on your perspective. He is now 4 1/2 months old, and has gone two days with no “accidents.” He has also mostly learned his name, “sit,” and “come,” and kind of learned “down.” He is hard to walk (he pulls a lot and still doesn’t really understand the leash), but hilarious when he runs (which lasts about 4 seconds).

Here he is to scale (the grid is composed of 1 x 1″ squares):

And here is his latest trick compilation video:

Holy crap! He fits right in!

(Ben, you asked for it.)

So we got a dog. A small, tiny, little dog. He’s a 4-month old Chihuahua, and he is incredibly excited about his new owners.

Before you make fun of us - I cannot freaking believe we have a freaking Chihuahua. I swore to Tessa that we would never, ever have a tiny dog. However, after many visits to see him in the store and much persuading on Tessa’s part, I realized that this particular dog had an amazing personality - he doesn’t yap, or act terribly annoying and is already - after only two days - mostly housebroken.

But I do understand that we now - even more than before - now represent the very face of gentrification in our neighborhood (two white graduate students with a Chihuahua in Bed-Stuy - I mean, we even have a little bag for him to travel on the subway) and I fully expect some sort of karmic retribution.

Hopefully, it’ll be something like a really tough (but somehow rewarding!) teaching job after school (and not something like one of the neighborhood Pit Bulls deciding Tony would make an excellent afternoon snack).