WRX wrecked!

It was all going too smoothly, perhaps. So something had to go wrong. The JetBlue flight left Boston on time and arrived early. May's flight was on time too, so we met in the airport terminal as planned. We hopped on the shuttle to pick up the car from MasterPark. I could see the back end of it as we pulled into the lot.

I was thinking, ah, just 30 minutes from now I'll be home and ready to climb into bed.

I went inside and paid for the week's stay. As we approached the car, the attended came up to me.

"Is this yours?"

"Uh. Yeah," I said.

"I have some news about your car." My heart was sank and raced to come up with all the possibilities before he said anything. I'm already tired and cranky from the jet lag (my body thought it was about 1:30am), so "news about your car" were the last words I wanted to hear from someone.

"What," I said. My mind still whirling with a dozen possibilites.

"Well, it was slippery the other night and when the attendent was moving the car, he hit the brakes and slid into another truck."

"WHAT?!" As I walked forward to the front of the car, I was expecting a little ding or smallish dent. I was shocked by what I saw. My poor little WRX (which is due to paid off in just a few months). The whole front was quarter bashed in, buckled and crumpled, the bumper pulled away and the headlight crushed. The signal lamp ripped through the metal. My jaw hit the floor, just behind my heart and stomach. "Mother######!!!"

"Oh my God!" May said.

"We'll pay for all the damages, of course. We pretty much fired the guy on the spot," the attendant said before I could launch in a barrage of curses.

Needless to say I was UBER PISSED off. My guess is that there's somewhere around $2,000 in damage. I did a bit of paperwork and took off. Luckily the only mechanical damage seems to be a slight tweak in the alignment.

What really bugged me was the amount of damage. It was obvious to me that the person driving the car was going fast. My own guess is somewhere around 30 mph, to do this amount of damage. He certainly wasn't going at a reasonable pace for a parking lot in inclement weather, which makes me suspicious. My guess is they had some young buck moron who got into a hot little car and decided to gun it without paying attention. Of course, if I find out that the car was taken out of the lot and the accident occurred on the road, I'll be talking to lawyers, police and the BBB.

Needless to say, sleeping that night...didn't happen. Between the jet lag and obsessing about all the possible nasty scenarious that might come from this, I'd say I slept a grand total of 30 minutes. Not good since I had to be at work that morning.

I'm taking the car in on Monday morning for an estimate and will reserve a spot for the repairs. The MasterPark manager agreed to pay for a rental as well. So far they've been good; we'll see how it goes when it comes down to paying for the damages.


C'est la vie. I just have to keep telling myself it's just a car.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all! May the coming year see your dearest wishes fulfilled.

A good laugh

Last night May and I had some time to spend with dear friends. It was such a hilarious time I laughed myself to tears! It was a long week (not bad, just long) and it was the perfect way to put an end to the week! Nothing like a cheesy kung-fu flick and good friends to wash stress away!

Puppy Makes a Big Mistake. Calamity!

Okay, maybe not calamity, but deep disappointment.

Wakea is my sweetheart's dog. He is a four year-old Coton de Tulear, and without a doubt has the sweetest nature of any dog I've ever met.

But we got off to a rough start, and after a solid two years of establishing our relationship, obedience and housebreaking, it seemed like we had finally gone beyond all the drama and settled into a normal, happy household with cat and dog.

When May first brought Wakea over, he was 2-1/2 years old and not housebroken. He still used the puppy pads to do his business, but he fequently missed, especially when he pooped. I couldn't stand the stench when I came home. It was like an open sewer. May was used to it and had a hard time understanding my frustration. It became a real point of contention in our relationship. To make matters worse, Wakea's breed is notoriously difficult to housebreak and at his age it was going to be an uphill battle. But after a lot of drama with my dearest, I finally got her to agree to crate training.

It took a solid year, but we finally achieved success. I even broke down the crate and put it away. It was great!

Until the wee hours of this morning, that is.

Here's how it all breaks down:

Over the weekend we went to May's condo to visit her sister's new Havanese puppy, Lucy. Wakea grew up in that condo and had peed repeatedly on the rug. Within an hour of being there he peed on it. Ah, nothing like old times, aye boy?

At the time I didn't really think that one event would break all our training, but it did. It just took a day because he was so exhausted after wrastling non-stop with the fiesty 2 lb bottomless pit of energy that is Lucy that he slept through the night no problem.

The next day, we went about our business as usual, coming and going throughout the day with no issues. That night, at about 5am, May woke up with a start.

"I smell pee," she said.

I told her she was probably imagining things, but she was certain. She turned on the light to investigate. Sadly, May's nose was its usual flawless self. No more than a foot from Wakea's bed was a small yellow stain on the carpet. From the smell we knew it was Wawa and not the Demon Cat, aka Battle Cat, aka Gabriel.

My heart sank. May was mortified.

I wasn't angry, although I wanted to be. I was disappointed and heartbroken. After all that time and work he had never peed on the bedroom carpet (Puke, sure, but not pee!). He snuck it over on us by reverting to an old habit of going to pee at 3-4am. We were both shocked at how easily he reverted to old bad habits.

We spent the next hour soaking up the pee and blasting it with enzyme cleaners, deodorants and so on. Wakea spent the rest of the night in the bathroom.

Sadly, now that he peed on the carpet, we will probably never be able to let him have free rein in the bedroom at night again. That makes both May and I very very sad. It feels like a tremendous failure for us. It will take a very, very, VERY long time for me to even think about trusting him outside the crate.

So now what? Well, it's back to the crate for Wa-wa. That means we have to lug it from the bedroom to the kitchen and back every day. We have to listen to him whimper and whine (he doesn't like to be confined). I figure that in 3-6 months we'll let him have run of the house (it's all hardwoods), but it is unlikely he will ever have the freedom in the bedroom he once had.

So sad. :(

Battle Cat Strikes Again

Last week I had to travel to Victoria to deliver a training over Halloween. The training went well and I came home on Thursday.

May picked me up at the airport at South Lake Union and homecoming involved the usual greeting from white fluffy Wakea bouncing up and down. Moments later, on queue Gabe appeared sitting pretty on the kitchen floor. I scooped him up and as usual he started to purr.

"He has some sap stuck on his paw," May said, poking gingerly at his left paw.

I looked. "That's not sap. It looks like blood." I pushed the fur aside and looked down into the raw red meat and sinew of his paw.

May went pale.

Surprisingly, Gabe seemed unbothered by the wound. He already cleaned it and was not in any obvious pain. Luckily, it was still mid-afternoon.

I called the Cat Clinic of Seattle and we rushed him down there. There the excellent staff took good care of him. He went in for surgery that night and came home the next day with several stitches in his left paw and wearing a cone. The cone is quickly becoming Gabe's trademark.

Sigh...Gabriel. That cat! To everyone Gabe deems to grace his presence with he is a lover not a fighter. But once he gets outside, he is a territorial brawler. An enforcer of the Russian mafia masked by a cute, gray fur covered facade.

Sad to say, he frequently comes off on the bad end of those conflicts. Two years ago it was a huge gash on his left thigh. Last year an infected puncture wound. And now this. Gabe, my sweet lovable lap cat (where he is right now), has added yet another nickname to the litany of others: Battle Cat.

For the first 4-1/2 years of his life Gabe was a purely indoor cat. I lived in a top-floor apartment on one of the busiest streets in Fremont. There was no way he was going to be an outdoor cat in that environment. My current home gives Gabe a good buffer from the busy streets nearby, so he has realized his lifelong dream of going outside (at least during daylight hours).

I am told that cats who start off indoor-only are often very territorial and Gabe appears to be a perfect manifestation of that assertion. He is so much happier going outside. But this is his third go around with the cone.

I'm torn between keeping him safe and indoors, but clearly not happy, and letting him outdoors where his is obviously happy but at risk of injury or worse mostly due to his own aggressive defense of territory. He cries at the door all day long in long plaintive mewling or polysyllabic mews and chirps. He stares at me or May and every time we go to the kitchen he runs full speed (quite a sight in the cone) expectant that the back door will open and allow him to venture through his territory.

Well, I don't know whether Gabe will remain an outdoor kitty, but he has another week in the cone, probably two ore three more weeks minimum before the wound has healed thoroughly and the fur grown back. Then it's the holidays and I'll keep him indoors anyway. So it will be near the new year by the time I have to make a real decision.

Gabe is generally an upbeat critter, but he is clearly got himself a case of kitty depression. Aside from the mewling his energy is lower, all he wants to do is sit on my lap all day. That's unusual even for him. He's actually needy instead of the independent-yet-affectionate cat who comes in once in a while to get food and grace you with his royal presence.

Poor kitty.

R.I.P. Keiko

I received sad news today. Keiko, my favorite horse at Hawk Ridge Riding Center was put down today. She had terrible absesses in her feet and despite many long efforts she was beyond healing.

She was a marvelous horse, the first one that I could ride smoothly. I honestly felt like she was teaching me about riding, instead of being the usual persniketty butthead that most horses tend to be with green riders. She was beautiful, slender and elegant.

I will miss you, princess. Farewell.

Seattle 100 Pictures are in!

Woo-Hoo! After 3 weeks of waiting since the Seattle 100 charity ride, the photos of the event are finally up. It was a great time with Paul and Colleen.

Here's a favorite pic:

Thanks to Studio819 for the providing the pictures for free for this event. More can be seen at studio819.smugmug.com/2-fast

On Home Ownership

About 2-1/2 years ago I bought a nice little two bedroom home in the north part of the city. After living in Fremont for seven years it was quite a change, but my apartment building had been sold. I didn't want to continue renting and I couldn't afford a house in Fremont (Good luck finding anything decent for under $500K). After looking for about 3 months I finally found a place liked and moved in shortly thereafter.

Up until that point I rarely ate at home, I would eat out or be out with friends almost every night. Why stay home when there was so much to do within walking distance! Cheap rent made that an easy lifestyle to maintain. But suddenly my cost of living quadrupled, which pretty much put an end to my casual spending days and what spare money I did have went into home improvements like updating the kitchen, landscaping, garage door openers, patios. Long story short, home and house became the focus of my time.

It was difficult for the first year. I didn't have the habit of cooking regularly and just staying in, but now staying at home tending to the yard or some such thing is a joy. I think the reason for this simple sense of satisfaction comes from the same source that causes construction workers to have the highest job satisfaction of any career: The results of the work are tangible. All I have to do is look at the dahlis and lilies or smell the roses and lavender to feel connected to my efforts. These things are sometimes lost of my girlfriend who has lived in very urban settings most of her life and would prefer to pay someone to beautify her home. I can understand her mindset, but I cannot afford such services, nor would I want to let someone else do something I can do myself. My grandfather, father and brother are all the same way...Must be genetic!

Ah well. so much for the first post. Cheers and health to you.