Welcome to our little corner of the web. We're Tom and David. We have been together since the spring of 1989, which as of this August makes ten years, a fact we still can't quite believe and which our friends have been kind enough to celebrate with us at great length. We live in a small house with a big yard on the east side of Los Angeles, with two dogs, a lemon tree, and a kitchen that two people cannot stand in at the same time without one of them getting elbowed.

Tom (that's me, I'm the one typing) teaches English to tenth and eleventh graders at a public high school. I have been at it eleven years and I still get nervous the night before the first day. Right now my juniors are reading The Great Gatsby and I am reading 140 essays about the green light. I do most of the writing on this page, all of the HTML, and none of the cooking, for reasons that will become clear.

David is a registered nurse on a medical floor at a hospital across town. He works three twelve-hour shifts a week, which sounds great until you see him after the third one. He is the cook, the gardener, the person the dogs actually listen to, and the reason this house runs. He reads over my shoulder while I type this and says to tell you that he did not want a web page and is only allowing it because I promised to put his chili recipe on it. So here we are.

We started this page in June because David's mom in Ohio got a computer and AOL for her birthday, and it seemed like a good way to keep her, and Tom's sister in Sacramento, and all the friends who have moved away, up to date on the dogs. That's really what it's for. If you wandered in from somewhere else, you're welcome too. Pull up a chair, there's coffee.

Biscuit is nine, give or take. We got her from the city shelter in 1991 when she was supposedly a year old and supposedly part beagle. She is about forty pounds of something, tan with a white chest, and she has never once in eight years come when called unless there was cheese involved. She sleeps on the couch when we're out and jumps down when she hears the car, and thinks we don't know. She is the best dog in the world.

Rocket is the young one, about three. David brought him home from the same shelter in 1997 "just to foster for two weeks," and I want that on the record. He is black and scruffy with one ear that stands up and one that doesn't, some kind of terrier in there with who knows what, and he was named by our friend's six-year-old for the way he leaves the house. He has eaten one shoe, one library book (mine; I paid for it; it was Middlemarch and I'd like to think he had taste), and the lower six inches of the tomato plants, about which more below. He is also the best dog in the world. We have two.

Both dogs get walked around the reservoir every morning by David before his shift or by me before school, which means one of us is up at 5:30 every day of the year, and honestly it's the best part of the day. The film with the dog pictures on it is at the drugstore. Give us a week.

The backyard is why we bought the house. It's a long narrow lot with a Meyer lemon tree that was here before us, a fig that David planted in 1995 and that finally fruited this year, a raised bed for vegetables, and a strip along the fence for whatever David is excited about that month. Right now it's dahlias. Last year it was sweet peas. The year before that it was a disastrous attempt at corn.

The tomatoes. Every year David plants tomatoes, and every year something happens. In 1997 it was hornworms. In 1998 it was the strange wet spring and they all split. This year we had six plants going beautifully in the raised bed, Early Girls and a couple of Brandywines that David started from seed on the windowsill in February, and then in June we went away for a weekend and Rocket, who had shown no interest in tomatoes for two years, decided the bottom half of each plant was his. We got, in total, eleven tomatoes off six plants. They were very good tomatoes. David has drawn up plans for a fence. Rocket has drawn up plans for the fence.

What did work this year: the lemons (always), basil in pots on the back step, more zucchini than two men can eat or give away, and the fig, which produced about thirty figs in August that we ate standing in the yard. The potluck crowd got none. Sorry, everybody.

For our tenth anniversary we did the thing we'd been talking about for about nine of those years: we drove up the coast. Two weeks, the old Honda, the dogs at Tom's sister's place in Sacramento (Biscuit forgave us in about a day; Rocket is still not speaking to us), and no schedule at all except a reservation at a little motel in Cannon Beach for the actual anniversary.

The short version: it is the most beautiful stretch of road we have ever been on, and it was foggy about half the time, and we didn't mind. Highway 101 from Brookings up to Astoria, more or less, with a lot of stopping. Things we loved:

• Haystack Rock at Cannon Beach at low tide, with the tide pools and the seabirds on the rock (bring binoculars; we didn't and borrowed some from a nice couple from Portland).
• The Tillamook cheese factory, which is exactly as touristy as it sounds and where we ate ice cream for lunch like children.
• The aquarium in Newport. The big tank where Keiko the whale used to live is still there, though he was moved to Iceland last year; the sea otters made up for it.
• Sea Lion Caves near Florence, which smell exactly like a cave full of sea lions.
• Cape Perpetua in the fog, where we could hear the ocean and not see it, and sat on a bench for an hour anyway.
• The night of the anniversary itself, which was clam chowder in a paper bowl on the beach, a walk in the mist, and then the two of us laughing so hard in the motel room at some nothing I can't even remember that the people next door knocked on the wall. Ten years. I'd do every one again.

We shot seven rolls of film. Three are developed and the good ones will go up here as soon as we can borrow a scanner from Tom's school. Until then, take our word for it: go.

This is the chili that shows up at the potluck about once a month and that people have been asking for the recipe of since 1992. David says it's nothing special and then makes it exactly the same way every time and gets cranky if anyone adds beans at the table. It's a Texas-style, no-beans chili; if you want beans, that's between you and your conscience, but put them in your own bowl. Makes enough for eight people, or the two of us for four days.

Every Thursday since about 1993, whoever's around comes over at seven and brings a dish. It started as four of us and a bag of tortilla chips and has settled at somewhere between eight and fifteen people most weeks: neighbors, people from Tom's school, nurses from David's floor, two retired ladies from down the block who bring a pie every single week and have never told us their recipe, assorted kids, and whoever any of those people brought along. Nobody is invited exactly. You just come. That's the rule.

The other rules: bring something to eat or drink or don't worry about it, wash your own plate, the dogs get no people food no matter how they look at you, and be nice to whoever's new. We eat in the yard when it's warm and jammed into the front room when it isn't. We've had birthdays, two engagements, one very small wedding, a going-away for the family that moved to Denver, and a lot of Thursday nights that were just Thursday nights, which are the ones we'll remember.

If you know us and you're reading this and you haven't been by in a while: it's still on. Come Thursday.

This is the part of the page for the people who made us. A few hellos:

• Mom in Ohio: you found it! Click on the underlined words. Yes, that's Biscuit on the couch. No, we didn't tell her to get down. We'll call Sunday.
• Karen and the kids in Sacramento: thank you for the dog-sitting. Rocket sends his regards to the cat, who we understand is still sleeping on top of the refrigerator.
• Dad: we know you won't read this because you won't go near the computer. Mom, read it to him. Tell him the fig tree did it.
• The Thursday crowd: you know who you are. The pie ladies especially.
• Paul and Rich in Denver: we miss you, the yard is not the same, and your chairs are still on the porch with your names on them. Come home for Thanksgiving.
• And to everybody who has been part of these ten years, near and far, in person or by letter or lately by e-mail: thank you. We are two lucky guys, and we know it.

Other pages we like around here: the Rainbow Softball League (David wants to start one here; Tom would keep score badly), Open Book, the kind of bookstore Tom would spend his paycheck in, and Mr. Whiskers' Cat Emporium, which we send to Karen for the cat.