My Dog is Chelsea

I dare you to show me something cuter:

I flew down to San Diego for the weekend to celebrate my cousin Marisa’s daughter Leah’s first birthday. She is so flipping adorable, it’s kind of ridiculous. Such a good kid, too. Here she is with my Uncle Joe, his new puppy Ajax and yours truly:

As is always the case when the MDIC family gets together, there are stories to tell. Stay tuned. In the meantime—happy birthday, Leah!

Live-blogged my first conference for my job this week—the Southwest Washington Sustainability Conference. I didn’t draw the straw to cover RFK Jr.’s speech, but nonetheless felt super cool with my press pass and everything. Sat in the back and typed as the speakers were doing their ‘thang. The result was not exactly a “live blog” per se, but you can (and should!) read them. Please leave comments:

♦ On transportation options and consuming less
♦ On integrating refrigeration and air conditioning
♦ While you’re at it, check out what my coworkers wrote too

PS, it is apparently our first “beer thirty” at my office: 3:30 on a Friday. My coworker just wheeled over a cart with a vast selection of beer options—I chose Mirror Pond. Heh. I could get used to this.

Went out to dinner tonight with my roommate. Our waitress was a bit of a space cadet. This manifested itself in the form of her taking forever to remember what the specials were (”Ravioli stuffed with… um… kale? And… pecorino cheese? And um… we also have a… ); entirely neglecting salt, pepper and parmesan; and disappearing for the duration of the meal only to resurface to drop off the check. That’s when this happened:

She brought us back our credit cards—except they weren’t our credit cards. And they were attached to a bill about 4 times larger than ours. Knowing that the next ice age would arrive before she’d return, I picked them up and walked them over to her.

“Um… these aren’t our cards,” I said.

“Oh!” she said, taking them from my hand. She walked over to a table a few feet away and without saying a word to the patrons, like a bird diving for worms she snagged their bill and replaced it with ours.

Handing me the correct cards, she said: “Oops! It happens!” 

Yes. It does happen. But that’s not the issue here. The issue here is that “it happens” is my line. I am the one who can use it to make light of the situation and communicate to you that I don’t care that you just gave my credit card to a total stranger. Not you. Nope. Your line is: “Oops! I’m sorry!“

But whatevs, shit happens.

… the Stink was born!

She’da been 15 today.

Happy birthday, Chelsea!

On my way home from dinner, I came across a duck and two geese walking down the sidewalk. Oddly, this was not the most bizarre part of my day, but that’s a whole other story I don’t feel like telling.

The duck-goose-goose situation reminded me of my former neighbors’ potbelly pig, Girdie, who used to take it upon herself to mosey on down the block to eat pears from a neighbor’s yard. Occasionally she’d hang out in the middle of the street until a truck would careen by honking its horn. Passersby regularly would stop to gawk at the bizarre creature taking a dump in our courtyard (that’s really all pigs ever do—eat, sleep and poop).

I believe I have a Girdie picture hanging around somewhere… ah yes:

Anyway. A friend of mine from college is moving up to Portland on Friday and will be inhabiting my extra bedroom. These last few months have been the first time I’ve lived alone in FIVE YEARS. It’s unsettling, sometimes, when you don’t have a TV or anybody but your crazy dog to talk to when you get home from work—but it’s also kind of nice to not having to share a bathroom or deal with your roommate’s nutritional yeast always spilling into the burners on the stove or find their toenail clippings on the coffee table or whatever.

So, now that I’ve gotten used to playing the same song on repeat for an hour (”When We Fall” by Phosphorescent) and blasting NPR at 6:30 in the morning and taking a dump with the door open, I’ll have to remember how to live with someone again.

But something tells me it won’t be so hard. Besides, there is no fucking way in hell Claire would clip her toenails on the coffee table. Or eat nutritional yeast, unless it was accidentally sprinkled on deep-fried cheese curds.

OK, I’ll make this a multimedia post. Here’s the song that in two days I’ll only be able to play on repeat with my headphones on: