Archive for June, 2007
June 9, 2007 · Filed under Beene, Doggs, Seattle, Smackimus
It’s raining today in Seattle. I know, we’re all in shock, too.
Two good things came out of it, though.
First, we are heading down to Ballard with some friends from up the street to hang out at Portalis, imbibe, and watch the bike race. The rain today is a good thing because the rookie Cat 4-5 race is going to be spectacular. I’m putting $5.00 on some douchebag deciding he’s going to win the race by launching his attack mid-corner while he’s still in the middle of the pack. That will be totally cool to watch.
Second, we got to try out the rain coats we just bought the dogs.
June 8, 2007 · Filed under North Carolina
While I was living in the South, a friend of mine kept reminding me of the difference between a Yankee 
and a Damn Yankee. The difference, apparently, is that a Yankee is a Northerner who comes to the South, while a Damn Yankee is a Northerner who comes to the South and stays there. (Do I need to remind you where the name Yankee came from, by the way?)
Well, when we were moving out of the South, we were faced with sheer disbelief, from everyone. People would say things like, “Hope you like rain” or “People move too damn fast up there” or “Seattle has the country’s highest suicide rate.” (Not true, by the way – the suicide rate in North Carolina is the same as Washington. Must also note this: Michelle and I would routinely have people on the street call out to us, “Hey, slow down…where you walkin’ to in such a hurry?”)
This leads me to figure the following: Yankees are Northerners who come to the South. Damn Yankees are Northerners who stay in the South. Fookin’ Yankees are the ones who had the nerve to leave.
And, because I can’t resist:
What are a Southerner’s final words?
“Hold my beer, watch this.”
And, you can shop for all your Confederate needs here.
June 7, 2007 · Filed under Doggs, Smackimus
At the risk of making this sound like a blog about our doggs and how distorted our perspective is about them, it’s time to tal
k about Smackimus Desmus Meridius (Mack for short).
Mack, I’m quite convinced, was a gladiator in a past life. He is incredibly smart, built like a brick shithouse (or was it a shit brickhouse?), and the most insane athlete you can imagine. As a gladiator, he would have had absolutely no problem taking out Tigris of Gaul. In fact, even in his current life, he still routinely tears through one of his toys, jumps up, and gives us a defiant look that says, “ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?”
He’s wicked smart, and, in sharp contrast to our other dog, actually has instincts left. (OK, technically Beene does have one instinct, but I’m not sure “run like a retard in the opposite direction of the noise” really counts as an “instinct” but serves more as “strategery to make things suck”.) I’m convinced that if Mack broke out into the wild, he would not only thrive, but be considerably better off than he is now. He would also somehow overcome the handicap of having been neutered and still father a gaggle of mini-Macks.
As you may have noticed in the many photos of Beene, Mack is missing from all of them. This is not because we’re ignoring him or Photoshopping him out of the pictures. No, this is because during every moment spent out of doors, Mack is engaging in one of the following activities:
- Patrolling a Pachinko
- Making sure no armadillos are infiltrating our perimeter
- Squeaking any and all squeak toys he can find
- Verifying that any toys that were not squeak toys upon last inspection have not become squeak toys since then
- Trying to eat bird seed that the birds have knocked out of their feeder (slobs)
- Calculating the various trajectories that woud need to be employed to neutralize any threats that might present themselves
None of these are frivolous activities such as cold chillin’ on someone’s lap and demolishing chairs in the process. No, he is involved in practical tasks that serve to better the world.
So, I mentioned he is really smart. That’s cool, because it has made him a really well-behaved and well-mannered dog. That said, it also means that once he gets something in his head, he is completely one-track minded about the affair.
Take, for instance, our most recent trip to the pet store, Bark, in Ballard. We took both dogs down to buy rain coats for them. 
Yes, I know, this is idiotic. However, as you may have heard, rainfall is not entirely rare in Seattle, and while Mack has a downy layer of fur to keep him warm, Beene is an evolutionary anomaly and, due to the chilling effect of wet fir, reacts in one of two ways to rainfall. The first is to shake like a leaf and refuse to move. Not good when the dog weighs 150 pounds and shrieks like she’s being murdered when you pull firmly on her leash. The second is to bound and leap, no doubt in an effort to stay warm. This is also bad if the dog weighs 150 pounds and you like the way your vertebrae and shoulders are configured. Also see the note about shrieking in response to a firm yank on the leash, which inadvertently happens while she’s lunging around. (Then combine that with her one “instinct”. That is what I call a “vicious cycle”. The end of the cycle, incidentally, involves the person at the other end of the leash trolling for asphalt with their face.)
Anyway, we were in the market for doggie rain coats, and Bark had a sale. We figured it would be nice to get Mack one while we were at it. When we brought Mack into the store, our normally well-mannered dog went bananas in response to all the animal smells he encountered. When the lady behind the counter gave them each a treat, his ears stopped functioning and his brain simply became an ornament. All he could hear was a loud buzzing sound. I’m pretty sure he was also cross-eyed during this time. He scrounged around like a damn bloodhound with his nose to the ground, or balanced on his back legs, looking for treats on counter tops. There were several cases where he was chewing something crunchy, but I’m not convinced they were treats. I don’t want to think about what he actually did find.
We were never able to get him to sit still long enough to try a coat on and we had to guess what size to get him. I hope it fits.
June 5, 2007 · Filed under Photo Album, Seattle
What does a nice, romantic evening have in common with putty knives? Nothing.
Well, that’s not entirely true.
Michelle and I had a wonderful weekend. We went to sleep a little early on Friday. This was somewhat 
unplanned. We ordered a pizza which we ate on the porch, and as the sun started setting, we decided to turn in early and learn to play our new board game, Power Grid.
Ok. This requires an explanation. We are not geezers. Neither are we six years old. (Power Grid is intended for audiences age 12 and up) Michelle, when in need of a pick-me-up, likes to beat me at a game and seemingly has a Karnak-like ability to guess the who-in-the-where-with-the in the little brown Clue envelope. Clue, however, is a terrible game to play with two players (especially when you always lose). Next up: Monopoly. While this game can be played with two players, it takes very long and paying two hundred dollars for prime New York City real estate is simply too unrealistic for my highly developed mind. It also gets tiresome on day 15 of the game and we’ve each managed to buy one monopoly and put one house on it. Just wait until you land on my monopoly! Rent went up from $4 to $6!
Back to Power Grid. I think the author of the instruction manual suffered from an odd combination of Tourettes and Narcolepsy, since it was simultaneously impossible to follow and intolerably boring, so we never made it past the section that explained how to set everything up to prepare to play the game. This truly is something to behold. We are quite certain whomever wrote the instructions also made the information label on the side of the box. We have no clue what it means. Our best guess is that between the hours of two and six, we should electrocute each other by plugging the cord coming out of our asses into any nearby outlet. If you are 12 or over, do not stick your finger in any European 220 watt outlets that we all keep handy here in America. And remember to set your alarm for two hour intervals.
Having passed out from sheer boredom, we both woke up – still sitting upright in bed – at around 12:30am. We put the game away and went to sleep.
We got up around 9:00am on Saturday. This didn’t happen naturally. There is nothing natural about having a Great Dane – who has no doubt spent the last 15 minutes staring at your sleeping face – grow tired of waiting for you to feel her dull and empty stare and suddenly shove her snout into your jawbone. Until you understand the intricacies of what kinds of objects and odors are preserved in giant floppy jowls you will never understand what this is like. And I really don’t wish that upon you.
Naturally, I screamed. I screamed like a 6 year old girl with blond ringlets and pink ribbons in her hair. This had the added benefit of waking Michelle up.
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