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Author Archives: Jerry
New York Sucks
Added 5 years later: The inexplicably high ranking search engines give this little rant has led to a lot of comments below, including some excellent rebuttals to my original points. There are also a lot of people adding their own complaints about the city that never sleeps. All comments are welcome, but overall I find the ones who disagree with me to be more interesting, and a few are worth digging up and reading. There are definitely some things to love about the city. My favorite comments of all, however, are the ones on both sides of the fence that hide their whiny, entitled attitude behind foul language, apparently unaware of the irony.
Recently the quality of comments has been so low that I’ve considered not allowing any more of them. Semi-literate ravers, please don’t bother anymore. There’s already plenty of barely-coherent blather on both sides.
Anyway, on with the original episode:
– – –
In the unlikely event there are two New Yorkers capable of mounting a meaningful defense of their home city, I’ll publish them both. More than two, either I’ll pick the one hardest for me to rebut, or I’ll figure out a way to let the polls decide. Messages of the form “F%*$ you, you f^%#ing f$^*!” will just add to my smug belief that I am better than you are and will be deleted and mocked.
I have for a couple of years now held the opinion that New York City is filled with victims and crybabies. Everyone knew already that the city was filled with arrogant assholes.
To start with the arrogant assholes, here’s a case in point. Tonight I was sitting in a bar, and at the next table was a pair of Yankees fans. Yankees were playing the Bosox, a game with history and significance. You would expect a Yankees fan to be passionate about such a game, and these guys were. I’m OK with that. That’s why God made baseball. That’s why Steinbrenner bought it from Him.
I overheard part of their conversation early. “They’re still talking about ’98 here. Was it ’98? The Yankees humiliated them. It was a sweep.” Now, I don’t know if it was ’98 or ’96, and yes, the Yankees did completely dominate the Padres. It was a sweep. But that year San Diego won the pennant. When dad buys you a pennant every year, that may not seem so special. But when you earn it, doesn’t it mean so much more? No point explaining that to a Yankees fan.
And that’s what New Yorkers just don’t seem to understand. They seem to believe that simply being from the hive is enough to entitle them to all the respect the world has to offer. Later, the New York fans were outraged among themselves when the best TV was switched over to the Padres game. There was still a TV right in front of them carrying their game, but it wasn’t Hi-Def. “What the f@%& are they doing showing the Padres game?” one NYB asked the other (B is for bastard). Had the man been grandstanding, trying to get a rise out of the other people in the bar, I would have simply labeled him as an asshole and shrugged it off. But the simple fact was that as a New Yorker he expected to get his game on the hi-def TV. He was entitled.
New York is inexplicably proud of being a bunch of arrogant assholes. They call it “street smart” and other transparent euphemisms. When I passed through New York I was not prepared for the incessant whining and victim attitude.
I was passing from Aruba to San Diego, and because I’m a cheap bastard my return flight included a sleepover in New York. No problem, I figured. I’d just find a less-uncomfortable place to crash at JFK. Best case, I find a bar and just hang out all night. It was a naive notion, I now realize.
My first welcome as I came off the plane set the tone for my stay in the city that never sleeps. “Did you see what he just did to me?” I heard an angry woman behind me say. We made our way to an escalator and I tell you now I have never seen such concentrated uncivilized behavior. Poor little Jerry was pushed aside and every time I said, “Oh, I’m sorry” as I was shoved into someone else I was answered with “eat me” or something worse. “Screw the other guy before he screws you” was the rule of the day.
The airport was closing. There would be no crashing in the terminal, no all-nigher in the bar. The bartender was terribly appologetic. I called a hotel and they said the shuttle would be right over. It was a cold night, freezing rain, and I was in shorts. People were not looking at me with sympathy as I stood waiting for the shuttle; they were looking at me with suspicion. I watched two old men get into a fist fight over a taxi. I shook my head. The cold rain on my legs hurt far less than the anger all around me hurt my poor west-coast brain.
It turns out the signs telling me to wait for a hotel shuttle did not direct me to the place hotel shuttles were going. After freezing my ass off (proudly, stoically, without whining) I tromped back to the terminal and called the hotel again. The friendly person apologized and the shuttle was redispatched. I stood longer in the bitter New York sleet until I was finally swept away to the warmth and security of a nearby hotel. I was happy to see that guy, and he was downright nice. Maybe New York isn’t so bad after all. Pff.
Once safely installed in my room, and with the local anger fizzing in my head, I made my way with laptop to the hotel bar. There I sat and watched the local victim hour, also known as the news. Crap, can’t there be one story on the evening not spun as injustice? The weather report was “here’s how mother nature is fucking us over today.” I have never heard a more consistent, pervasive whining than I did in NYC. I have gone out of my way in this story to mention people that were not whiny little fucks who thought the world owed them something. Two were bartenders, one drove a van. Who knows what they thought when they weren’t sucking up to travelers. [Unfair – the bartender at JFK was the read deal. She was funny as hell and a true sweetheart. I would have loved to stay up all night in her bar.]
The next morning I caught the plane back to San Diego. I staggered down the jetway and heard someone say, “Oh! I’m sorry. Go ahead.” I laughed not from humor but from joy, back where we may not be intimate but we are certainly polite, and we don’t feel that the world owes us happiness. We make that for ourselves.
Proud to be an American?
I will publish good rebuttals (profane is OK but abusive is not, coherence is required). If there are too many, I will publish the ones hardest for me to refute.
I am an American. I am really, really fortunate to be one. There’s nothing better to be. But I didn’t actually do anything to become an American. I am proud of my accomplishments, and I am grateful for my good fortune. There are political refugees and immigrants of every stripe who have worked really hard to become Americans. There are people who have taken up arms in defense of this nation and only later become citizens. Many more who are currently defending our freedom are waiting for citizenship.
Those people can be proud to be American. For them it is an achievement. I simply am American. I was born that way. I have not earned the right to be proud. I am thankful to be American, but there’s no source of pride there.
There is another way to be proud to be an American, and that’s to take pride in America’s role—our role—in making a better world. That is the pride in accomplishment. And hell, we’ve accomplished a lot. There was a time in Somalia before it all went to stink that I really thought we had managed to beat swords into plowshares. I thought “this is the role of a great nation, standing as a beacon of freedom and peace.” At that moment I was truly proud to be American. Thought honestly I hadn’t done anything personally (except pay taxes) to deserve that feeling.
It got gray sometime after that. Protecting the Muslim population in Kosovo still feels right, but more timely intervention might have precluded much of the violence. [an aside – why do the factions we support almost always come to resent us? Talk among yourselves.] But still, there was an earnest belief that intervention could save lives and transform those troubled regions. Even if those expeditions were ill-conceived, they were noble of purpose. Something you could be proud of.
Frankly, we don’t have that anymore. I am Accidentally-American, or perhaps Fortunately-American, but I have not pulled off any individual accomplishment to which I can hang the label “proud”, and I am not proud of the actions of my nation (granfalloon) as a whole. At least in the past we believed in our nobility, if no one else did.
I am happy to be an American. I am fortunate to be an American; I did not accomplish being American. I am proud to give to my nation more than blind faith.
Google me baby. Google me all night long.
This list was actually compiled over a longer period than my previous search engine episodes. I used something called “planning” and wrote down interesting (to me) search phrases as I encountered them. As usual, I reserve the right to use pig latin when I don’t want to change future search results.
- lots of searches about blimps – hopefully they read the comments while they’re there, or they’ll miss out on BASSCAR and ISBA.
- Mira Mesa Night life – I expect I come out high on the search because no one thought to mention “Mira Mesa” and “Night life” in the same sentence
- Several searches related to sex, of course, the ones that stand out for me were x-ray beach pictures, butt pitchers, bison ass pictures and the best of all, what is a grilled cheese when it is talked about as sex term
- bars across the western US, most frequently but not limited to Amsay’s Aceplay Akelay Ahoetay, illionmay ollarday owboycay arbay, uaulay arrylay’s and spenaay oungelay (how do you do pig latin when the sord starts with a vowel?)
- HAPPY++2TH+++BIRTHDAY++++TO++++BABY – I doubt they found what they were looking for here.
- ramblings about chicks – that, I have plenty of, another coming soonish
- how to make a lombardi trophy – who cares? Anleystay upcay is etterbay.
- various searches concerning squirrels and violence
- “gravity hill” sagan – links to my Get Poor Quick category page as a result of the reusable space vehicle episode.
- bowling balls darth vader – I’d like to hear any ideas you all might have for why someone would search on that.
- “trumpet bells” picture – linked to the coaxial trumpet episode
- sporstman who would take alcohol – that search seems to imply that there’s another kind
Of course, there were lots and lots of people looking for cooking advice. I get several people a day on that one, and this week someone finally left a note of appreciation over there. Hooray! Elevator ocelot rutabaga made a comeback, my name led someone here, as did a search on the single word “soonish”.
The Monster Within update
I’ve been working very hard on the next update for The Monster Within which is the main reason I haven’t been getting much up here lately. There’s only so many barin cells left, and when I burn them all up on the novel I end up saying “maybe tomorrow” when I fire up the blog.
I don’t know how many of you want a shot at the next draft, but there are certainly some changes. I wrote the missing chapter – the one that demonstrates how bad one of the guys really is – and that led to a rework of another part, giving it much more BAM! Now I’m making my way through the last third of the book, because you can’t go BAM! without causing an echo. The end is also dramatically reworked, and the epilogue no longer mentions people you’ve never heard of before.
I’ve also found a few places where people seemed to have oddly forgotten something they already knew. *sigh* Once I get the continuity issues worked out, fix the search feature in my word processor so I can get all the names right, rewrite all the new bits a couple more times, and do the hokey pokey and shake it all about it’ll be ready for further review.
Let me know if you’re interested in the next draft. Don’t worry, my feelings won’t be hurt if you’re not interested in reading an unfinished novel for a second or third time. But if you missed it the last time or you’re really a glutton for punishment drop me a line and v 0.5 of The Monster Within is yours!
Sadness
I was talking to a friend today. I have not mentioned her often in these pages, and certainly you have never read a comment by her. She is there, nonetheless. She is loud and brash but if you know where to point the x-ray gogs you will see the sadness.
When we part, I don’t say goodbye. We have our own ritual, and some nights I can see what it means to her. Tonight she needed a boost. I haven’t been around lately, so tonight I elaborated a little bit, cluttering our parting with words, until it came down to the key transaction. I dropped to sign language, swish, bang, and she smiled at me.
You Rock.
Thanks. I needed that.
I wish I could do things so right more often.
We share a sadness, a feeling you have to have to see. She is loud and happy; I am reserved but optimistic. Under it all, for both of us, is a dark desperate solitude, a certainty that we cannot be known. A gut-wrenching fear that we might be known. We don’t even know ourselves.
But there is something we have. Some time ago I was sitting at a bar after a softball game with Melinda and Kelly, and my inept love life became the topic of conversation. It came out that I had a soft spot for bartenders. Kelly asked why. “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I suppose they have to listen to me. My way with women is to wear them down over time.” Kelly thought that was hilarious. Fine. She had a girlfriend at the time. I think Kelly has the sadness too. That’s why she laughed at my jokes.
When it comes down to it, everyone I know has the sadness. Different people show it differently, but somewhere in every soul I’ve met is a terrible yearning, a tiny chamber deep inside reserved for thoughts of what might be, but will not be. Thus we are separated from the brutes of the field. No other animal has the ability to ask “What if…?” and no other animal knows sadness.
But “what if” fills my life. It is a constant reminder of things I could have done, could have said, but didn’t. And every day I create new what-ifs, more questions than I will ever be able to answer.
What if, tonight, I had not signed you rock? After all these years it could have become a meaningless phrase, but it hasn’t. There has never been any doubt that I am completely sincere when I tell her she rocks. Some nights, like tonight, she really needed to hear it. Could I have said something more? No. Not without breaking what we have. Not without changing the meaning of “you rock” forevermore. How could I do that, when I’ve seen what it can mean to her? So instead I will stand resolutely proud to be her friend, and I will be sad, for I have the imagination to know what could be, and the intelligence to know it cannot be.
I will taste the sadness, and embrace it, and in my quiet heat I will savor it.
I Am a Beer Cheese Soup Genius
Location: Callahan’s
I was sitting tonight, writing, when my table was most welcomely crashed by Melinda and Tom. Tom spent an hour or so at a different table with some potential coworkers while I was left to entertain Melinda. Fortunately she’s easily amused.
Tom joined us and after more alcohol was sent on the liver trip we decided it was time to order food. The past two days I had sat next to people eating the jalapeño beer cheese soup. One of those did so at my recommendation. It’s a good soup. Tonight I ordered it for myself, but there was a thought slipping through my brain. A way to make it better. I asked for a dash of Angustoura Bitters.
They weren’t sure how much to add, so they brought me the bottle. I had no idea how much to add either, so I hoisted the pup and gave it a few shakes.
Sweet holey moley it was good. I’ve always liked that soup, but this time it was, dare I say, exquisite. No one (except Tom and Melinda, who I forced to taste my new flavor sensation) has ever known the pure bliss that is “Jer’s Callahan’s Bitter Cheese Soup”. You could build a restaurant chain on the stuff. I couldn’t, but you could.
Saguaro
Entropy’s Little Helpers
I put the punch line in the title, but it’s a phrase I really like and want to remember.
I was in the car with my family heading down to White Rock via the truck route (Pajarito Road is closed to keep us all safe) and I noticed at the tops of the cliffs on both sides of the road many, many precariously balanced rocks. I was filled with my boyhood urge to watch those rocks crash with great energy and dust into the canyon below. Just look at them. They’re about to let go. It’s only a matter of time.
There used to be rocks like that hovering over the cliffs behind my house and the houses of all my friends. No longer. By the time I was ten, tipping big rocks off the edge was a hobby. Some required muscle, some required leverage, some even required cleverness. Eventually, with a rumble and a boom, the rock would fall. The rock would have fallen sooner or later; entropy demands it. We were entropy’s little helpers.
All I can figure is that the Anasazi weren’t such big fans of crashing rocks, or they wouldn’t have left any for us. Makes them seem… inhuman.
Imperial Valley Downpour
Imperial Valley Downpour
Episode 4: The Widow’s Tale – Conclusion
Note: To read the entire story from the beginning click here.
“Why me?” I asked.
“A mutual friend recommended you. Willy Gancek.”
Willy Gancek, a.k.a Willy the Weasel, was hardly a friend of mine. He was a two-bit punk with the temper of a rattlesnake and the intelligence of a hubcap. He was ambitious, the Weasel was, but he’d burned all his bridges long ago and was only now starting to realize it. That made him desperate on top of stupid. Just the kind of guy a savvy woman could suck in and use and ditch when the time came, but not the kind she could rely on for exercising good judgement. For that, she would have to find someone else, some sap too scared to be a criminal and too honorable to go completely straight. Me, apparently. “It was nice of Mr. Gancek to think of me,” I said. “I’ll have to send him a fruit basket.”
She smiled. “I believe he called you a washed-up hack who will do anything for a drink.”
“He’s smarter than I thought. For the record, though, a pretty face also works.” Hers was more than pretty, but there were some things I was not prepared to do, even for a drink. Dying was at the top of the list.
“Not very much smarter. He offered to drive me to France. He thought it was in New Jersey.”
My turn to smile. “You mean it isn’t?” I put my serious face back on and left my latest drink on the table, to prove a point. “All right then, Mrs. Fanutti, tell me what it is you would like me to do.”
She produced another cigarette and while I was fumbling for a light she said, “I want you to get me out of the pool.”
I struck the match and concentrated on holding it at the correct angle. She leaned slightly into the flame and took her time puffing her cigarette to life. “I’m sorry?” I asked when we were done. The fire had come close to my fingertips by then, but I wasn’t about to let go.
She looked at me through the thin trail of smoke rising from the tip of her cigarette. Turkish tobacco, I thought. Expensive. The kind used by people more worried about impressing those around them than enjoying the smoke. “The pool full of sharks you mentioned before. I want out of it,” she said.
“Have you tried asking them?”
“Believe me, there is no love between me and those people. They would be happier if I wasn’t around. But there are things I know that they would prefer I didn’t mention to anyone. While I am here, they can keep an eye on me.”
“There’s something they want from you, too, isn’t there?”
She seemed surprised that I figured out that a bunch of thugs who had no qualms about murder would need a reason to keep her alive. “Viti had a large pile of money stashed away. They want it.”
I wondered what the definition of large was among those people. Larger than my large, that was for sure. “And you know where it is?”
“If they thought I knew where it was, they’d have started cutting off my fingers already. But they think Viti will lead me to it.”
She hadn’t answered my question, but I let it slide. “That would be quite a trick from where he is.”
“You didn’t know Viti. He planned for this. Sooner or later something will turn up and lead me to the stash. They want to be there when that happens. He even told them that if anything ever happened to me they would never see the money.”
“So he bought you an insurance policy, did he? He must have known it wouldn’t last forever.”
“Of course he knew. He was a smart man.” From the tone of her voice I wasn’t stacking up so well in comparison. “He did it to buy me time to get away.”
“Which is where I come in.”
“I would like you to help me fake my own death. I will pay you handsomely.”
Somehow I knew she was going to say that. It all sounds so neat and clean; no one will look for you because they all think you’re dead. But it’s not so simple. First, there’s the money. Some of it is going to disappear and reappear somewhere else, and these people are exceptionally good accountants. Then there’s the people. Everyone in on the plan is a liability. Third, there’s the body. There’s got to be some stiff to put in the coffin. I could tell that she had been thinking about it for some time, and she probably thought she had the answers to all those problems, but the plan would be complicated, and somewhere it would go wrong.
“Better to just run,” I said. “Plan ahead, but don’t take too long. Get new papers. Get as much cash together as you can, buy a bus ticket and don’t stop until you’re in South America.”
She looked across the table at me. “It’s not that simple,” she said.
“You better make it that simple if you want to live.”
She suddenly seemed smaller than she had before. She had come in with a plan, some kind of fantasy that had given her hope, and I hadn’t even bothered to hear it. I wonder if she had told her plan to the Weasel, and whether he had encouraged her. She should have known right then that it was going to fail. “I—I need to think.” That wasn’t Lola Fanutti speaking, it was a frightened Kentucky girl a long way from home.
“If everyone did that I’d be out of business.” I tried for a reassuring smile, but I think I missed.
Her voice was rushed. She wanted badly to get out of there. “I’ll contact you again. We have to leave separately. They’re watching me. That’s why I didn’t come to your office.”
It didn’t matter; I was made. If they were watching her, they’d seen her come in here, and they’d seen me come in. She wouldn’t come in to a place like this for a casual drink and I was the only regular who could help her. Out there somewhere there was now a bullet with my name on it. When it would arrive I didn’t know but there was nothing I could do to dodge it. I hadn’t even accepted the job, but they wouldn’t bother to find that out. My only way out was to go to them myself and expose her, but I knew I wasn’t going to do that. I was well and truly fixed.
By the time she had finished paying Jake (“One more for Mr. Lowell”) she had recovered her poise. I watched as she swished her way out the door and into the bright furnace of the city. She could swish with the best of them, I’ll give her that.
Tune in next time for: Death in the Street!
Highway 60
Location: Traveloge, Globe, AZ (map)
Miles: 11256.1
I knew as soon as I turned up Highway 60 out of Socorro that I had made the right choice. Not only is this a beautiful and interesting stretch of highway, but for me it is filled with history.
Before I hit the open road, however, I took a spin around my old Alma Mater, New Mexico Tech, which back in the old days when I was there went by the moniker New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. Two shocking things have happened to the place. One I witnessed myself, the other is hearsay from a fellow alum. First, the campus has been beautified significantly. I almost didn’t recognize my old dorm. It doesn’t look like a Motel 6 anymore. The second thing is (are you sitting down?) there are almost as many female students there as male now. Some of them are even attractive. Contrast this to when Bob challenged me to name seven attractive students at Tech and I got stuck at six. It made me want to go up to each male student and shake him by the shoulders and holler “Do ya know how good you have it here now? Do ya? DO YA?“
But I restrained myself and made my way to the south end of town and the highway. Ah, Highway 60. That critical artery of commerce connecting Quemado, Pie Town (right on the continental divide), and Magdalena. Wide open plains. Rolling hills. Grassland. Forest.
Memories.
The first fifty miles I could still do in my sleep. I drove it five times a week during the summer of the first bacchanal, 1985. It’s hard to believe that was more than 19 years ago. 
By the time we reached the VLA the pups and I were ready for a break and a walk, so we spent some time stomping around my old “office”. If the place looks familiar to you, yes, it was on a Nightranger album cover. (It was also in a couple of movies—you don’t want to watch Concact while sitting next to me. The movie’s OK, but the radio astronomy’s complete and utter crap.) Knowing the woeful state of science education in this country, let me put on my Dr. Science cap for a moment and give you the rundown on the VLA. The Very Large Array (Those guys were poets at heart when they named this baby) is a set of 27 antennae set up in the shape of a Y to act as one huge antenna (map – railroad tracks marked indicate the branches of the Y). It is, in fact, an enormous pinhole camera for radio waves. The dishes move on railroad tracks to change the size of the virtual antenna to optimize looking at big, close things (like the Sun) or very distant things (like quasars and white dwarfs. Actually Quasars are pretty honkin’ big, but they are all very, very far away.) This photo and the others over in the album reflect the widest spacing of the antenna, which is when the tiny-thing scientists try to book time. One side effect of the wide spacing on a day with scattered clouds is that it’s almost impossible to get all the dishes in a picture to be in the sun at the same time. Each arm of the Y stretches for miles. The dishes in the pictures are more than a mile apart.
Past the VLA is the continental divide, Pie Town, Quemado, and Springerville, AZ. Ah, Springerville. It was a chilly spring weekend in 1985. It was the weekend of my 21st birthday. A day to be celebrated, to be sure. My birthday was on Sunday, and at that time one could not buy alcoholic beverages on a Sunday in New Mexico. No problem. Being college students, when we learned of this crisis we quickly devised a plan to buy all the necessary beverages ahead of time. Saturday afternoon we stocked up. Saturday night we had a party and drank it all. Sunday dawned, bright and bleary, and we came to the realization that we had invited every female on campus (there weren’t that many, remember, and as a rule of thumb half the women who said they were definitely going to be there would show up, and twice as many men would be there as women. As long as you didn’t invite any men.) and we had no party ammunition. After trying to work a couple of local connections we determined that it was time for an interstate beer run.
Now, you boys back east with your dinky little states probably think nothing of this. It turns out the beer store closest to my dorm room that was open on Sunday was 158 miles away, west on Highway 60 to Springerville, AZ. Glen and I set out in the Alpha Romeo, top down, bundled up against the cold, heater blasting and tunes craking. 316 miles and one speeding ticket later (The State Trooper was bemused by our top-down stance when it was freezing cold. “Yeah, I remember when I was young and stupid,” he said, and it was clear he did. He was a cool cop.) we had our booze and the party was a resounding success, despite the fact that not one single female showed up. Perhaps because of that, things got pretty crazy that night.
Speaking of driving a long way, Highway 60 came into play again a few years later, when I was living in San Diego. It was on the eastward leg of another trip in the Alpha, this time with Bob as copilot, as we set out one Memorial Day Weekend to get Green Chile Cheeseburgers at the legendary Owl Bar in San Antonio, New Mexico (map). The chile isn’t the same every year, but after driving 800 miles I took a bite of the burger and blurted out “This is so good!” I was getting misty with the emotion. It was a damn good green chile cheeseburger. After we ate we drove a few more hours to visit our folks, and after sleeping a bit we headed back to California by a more northerly route (not all of it paved).
Highway 60 was also the road I took when I first drove out to San Diego. The Alpha was running in top form; I outran the raindrops and tasted freedom. It’s my favorite flavor.
Pup Report
Warning:
This is the type of blog entry that is the bane of the Internet: The Pet Story. The power of the Internet has given people who used to bore their friends to tears with tales of how fluffy responds to the sound of the can opener a new, larger, and even more disinterested audience. The Pet Story in a blog is a sure sign that you are dealing with someone who has nothing of interest to say to anyone. Sadly, the stories these people tell about captive mammals are often more interesting than their stories about themselves. That said, a dog falling on its butt in the dirt is kind of funny.
First, since I made mention that one of the dogs was not well, I’d best explain. Spike pulled up lame the other night. I didn’t see what happened, but he wasn’t using his left rear leg. He kept it pulled up way under himself. I couldn’t see any obvious injury, but when I tried to straighten his leg he snapped at me.
One thing I learned is that Spike is decidedly a right leg lifter. His tiny little dog brain struggled with how to raise his right leg while keeping his left leg up as well. He didn’t succeed in peeing at all on our first outing, even with me trying to lend what support I could. I’m kind of glad he didn’t let loose during those experiments; it could have been messy. Just picture a gimpy dog trying to hold up both back legs at once, and a concerned idiot trying to help.
On one occasion, though, he did manage to hold a handstand for about a second. With training and practice, we could be in the circus. More often, he just seemed to forget about his left leg and drop right on his ass when raising his right. Circus of the stupid.
So Spike’s on some kind of anti-inflammatory (for a 4.6 pound dog, I had to cut the pills in fourths) and is starting to put his leg down occasionally and he has learned to pee the other direction, but you can tell he’s not comfortable with that yet. Lefty, on the other hand, was sitting my my lap yesterday when I noticed a big ‘ol cactus thorn sticking out of his leg. Lefty seemed oblivious to it. He was playing and squirming as always. I tugged on the needle. It was really stuck in there. I tugged harder. No release. Lefty jumped up to find a toy for me to throw.
The next time we were out back, Lefty ran into another cactus while chasing a bird. (He hasn’t worked out yet that he will never, ever, catch a bird.) When he hit the prickly pear he yelped and jumped back. This time the needle wasn’t as deep and seemed to bother him more. I pulled it out and gave another tug on the first needle. No luck. It seemed like pulling it out was going to cause more harm than leaving it in. Finally last night I just cut the needle off to keep it from being driven farther in and decided to let Lefty’s body handle getting rid of the rest of it.
Other than that, the dogs have been having a great time exploring the wide open spaces in Northern New Mexico. But then, they’re dogs. They lack the imagination to have a bad time. Every moment is the best it could possibly be.
Early Morning Vibrations
Location: Little Anita’s, 2811 Cerrillios Rd, Santa Fe NM
Miles: 10708.8
Got up before the sun this morning and after a brief dog-draining followed by a speedy shower I was on the way to Santa Fe to have some work done on the car. When I had called for the appointment the guy asked “What time do you want to bring it in?” I said “As early as possible.” “OK,” he said, “7:30.” “Uh, how about eight?” I asked.
At the dealer in San Diego there is a long line right at opening and that determines when your car gets worked on. So even though my appointment was at eight I wanted to get there closer to 7:30 so I would not be kicking up and down Cerrillos Road all day. As I came out of Los Alamos I got behind the Slowest Driver On The Planet. It was right where two lanes went down to one, and I almost zipped on past him but I told myslef, “Relax, Jerry. This is New Mexico, land of mañana, you’ll get there.” That whole ethic was lost when I realized just how slow the SDOTP really was and how many miles it was going to be before I could pass him. In seconds I went from New Mexico Mellow to Raging Green Impatient.
After finally finding open road I breezed along for a while until hitting the 14-mile constructivitis (announced by a sign reading Scheduled to be completed Summer 2004 – the days are getting shorter, boys!) but things could have been a lot worse through there. Deep breathing and flashing signs that said “Friendly Officers Ahead” kept me rolling along at the posted 45 mph.
When I reached the dealer I realized that all my high blood pressure was for nothing. There was no long line of impatient customers. There were, in fact, no hassles at all. As the mechanic entered my information we talked about San Diego and road trips. I asked him what his favorite place to get breakfast was, he told me to get the huevos rancheros at Little Anita’s, across the street. Little Anita’s had been my first choice anyway, so that was a done deal. He told me that the car would take about two hours unless there were leaks in the air conditioning. I was almost disappointed to hear that; I’d been planning to walk over to the Green Onion for an exceptional Chile Relleno for lunch. With an ailing pup back at the ranch, I feel guilty about staying down here longer than necessary.
The breakfast was excellent. The eggs were cooked right, the chile was good, and the service continues to be outstanding. Breakfast done, green chile afterglow warming the base of my brain, fresh tea bags with refills of hot water, it was all good. I started to write about my morning. I had just typed “OK” above when the manager (owner? he doesn’t look much like an Anita) asked if I was getting good wireless reception where I was sitting. It turns out he had just installed the system and hadn’t advertised it yet because he wanted to make sure it worked well first.
Oh, man. It just doesn’t get much better than this.