Dogged Blog

The earth shook, the baseball game was canceled, but the wedding went on

I'm from San Francisco. Earthquakes don't scare me; I've been feeling them since I was a baby. That doesn't mean I don't respect their power, it just means I stay calm when I'm in one.

A lot of my friends and colleagues on the East Coast don't feel that way. Today's 5.9 shaker centered on Richmond, Virginia, scared the crap put of people I know all up and down the eastern states. I was in a training session for The Shelter Pet Project's new content management system when I started hearing from folks in DC, Boston and New York that they'd been evacuated from their buildings because of the earthquake. We had to cancel the training because the folks running it were in DC, and they lost Internet and phones.

Now, this was a relatively small quake, but it struck areas that are not only not used to earthquakes, but where the buildings codes aren't earthquake-tough. And the whole thing got me thinking about the biggest, most destructive quake I've ever lived through, 1989's Loma Prieta earthquake.

I was at Candlestick Park at the San Francisco Giants-Oakland As "Bay Bridge" World Series when it hit. People with radios at the park kept saying things like, "The Bay Bridge collapsed! The Marina is on fire!" and I kept saying, "Typical media exaggeration, blah blah blah."

And then the hours went by, and they called the game off, and we started driving across a city with no streetlights or traffic signals, broken glass and fallen buildings everywhere, and the radio reporting deaths and massive destruction... I realized I'd been engaged in a little thing called "denial."

I got home, made sure my gas was off and my cats were safe, then headed for my mom's. My brother, Jim, and his then-fiance, now wife, Julie, lived in the Marina; their apartment was one of the ones that collapsed. They made their way on foot to our mom's house, and my other brother, McKenzie, arrived a few hours later from where he'd been in Southern California.

We all huddled together for a couple of days, and then our lives got somewhat back to normal. Jim and Julie stayed at my mom's, McKenzie went back to Southern California, and I went back to work and my cats.

Jim and Julie's wedding was scheduled for a few weeks later. The night of Julie's bachelorette party, my mom called me at work and told me the church had failed its inspection and been condemned. They were frantically looking for a new church, but so far, no luck. And Julie, who was already at her party, didn't know. Did I want to tell her when I got there?

I, being a coward, called and asked the restaurant to tell her I'd been held up at work, and didn't go. Since she and Jim'd had their apartment fall apart around their ears and lost pretty much everything, I felt that the news should be delivered by someone -- anyone -- else.

And it was. Now, I admit I wasn't there, but this is the story my brother told my mom at the time. When Julie got back to home late that night, he was sitting up waiting for her. "Jule..." he said. "It's going to be alright, but..."

She saw the look on his face and held up her hand. "No. Don't tell me. I don't want to hear it."

The good news is they found a church after all. We called as many of the guests as we could, and on the day of the ceremony, one of our cousins went and stood on the steps of the old church with a map to the new one. It was a beautiful wedding, a great reception, and really, now that I think of it: We lived happily ever after!

Talking about Austin in Berkeley

If there is one place on earth that's a lot like Austin, Texas, it's Berkeley, California. They're both funky, full of life, very progressive politically, have great food and coffee and bars, and have never met a wild idea they didn't embrace.

They have something else in common, too, in that they both save the lives of over 90 percent of their community's homeless dogs and cats, even though Austin has embraced the term "no-kill" and the city of Berkeley never has. That was one of the topics of discussion when I had dinner this evening with Nathan Winograd of the No-Kill Advocacy Center and Ryan Clinton of FixAustin.org at Berkeley's Saturn Cafe.

We also talked about the upcoming no-kill conference, some past presentations, good vs. bad PowerPoint, shelter medicine, pit bulls, cats with behavior problems, and how really crappy the parking was that night.

I'm sure I left something out.

 

Would you like some tsunami with your coffee?

I woke up, made coffee, and checked the headlines on my iPhone.

"Tsunami warning closes local beaches, Great Highway." Well, that woke me up.

Fortunately we're not being evacuated, since I wasn't able to get Rawley to wake up. Just another morning in the deerhound zone, I guess.

Snow in San Francisco? Not so's you'd notice

No, it didn't snow in San Francisco. The news reporters couldn't let go of it... when the storm fizzled out Thursday night/Friday morning, they seemed so let down, and then when they started saying, "It's going to come Friday night now! Really! This time we mean it!" I was all, uh-huh. Let go, guys.

And while there may have been a few flakes mixed in with the rain up on Twin Peaks, we're now on day two of bright sunshine and temps in the 40s -- cold for us here in San Francisco, yes, but really not that exciting.

However, my birdbath was frozen over this morning when I went out with the dogs. Oh, Mother Nature in all your horrifying display!

Living the dog days of summer

Take a look at that photo, of Gina's dogs Ben and Heather, swimming in the creek that ran through my property, on a sunny summer day around 6 or 7 years ago. The day was so perfect Gina still talks about it, usually while lamenting how I sold that house to move back to San Francisco.

But even on that glorious summer day, when Gina was tucked into bed upstairs, her dogs beside her, I was sitting at my computer, working.

I was trying to remember last night just how long it has been since I took a vacation without my laptop, without e-mailing a dozen people to tell them how to reach me.

I have edited articles in airports, blogged with my laptop perched on my knee on a bus, pulled my rental car to the side of the road to post something to Facebook. I've gone back to my hotel room while everyone else I'd gone somewhere with was out on the town, and spent the evening working. I hosted the opening night of PetHobbyist.com's Chat Month last February from a hotel room.

I think it's possible it has been 15 years since I really, truly cut the cord and took some time off. Just me and the dogs, hanging out. No deadlines, no e-mail to check, nothing to write or post or edit or even think about.

Vacation.

Starting tomorrow, I'm taking two weeks of it. I'm going to wake up every morning and ask myself, "What do I want to do today?" If I spend the whole time reading the 50 books sitting unopened on my Kindle and drinking tea, I'll be fine with that. If one morning I pack up the dogs and go rent a cottage by the ocean, I'm fine with that too.

Sometimes I think what I need most of all is room for options, for spontaneity.

I'll probably drop in here from time to time. I might even post, because how long can I expect you guys to go without seeing photos of Rawley Deerhound? But I'll be doing it just because I felt like it, because I love to read and write and blog, not because I had to.

And Gina? I know you'll miss me, but thank you for all those summer days (and a few winter ones!) at my old place. I keep thinking about the gazebo overlooking the creek, dogs sprawling around in the shade, and you and me talking about everything from dogs who don't like the water to the amazing dog camp we wanted to start.

I need me some of that!

Photo: Ben and Heather by Gina.

Meanwhile, in a shady garden in San Francisco...

Rawley demonstrates what we're doing this holiday weekend.

Dear San Francisco, please kiss my ass.

Dear City and County of San Francisco Department of Public Works,

Are you out of your freaking mind? You send me a notice saying that if I don't move my garbage cans off my own property, next to my garage door behind my car at least 20 feet off the street, move them so that they are not even visible from the street, you're enforcing a brand new law that will allow you to fine me somewhere between $100 and $500?

I'm a fourth generation native San Franciscan and I care about my city, and I think people should keep our neighborhoods looking nice as much as the next person, but this is just insane. You can barely see the freaking cans from the street -- see photo.  And the whole reason they're out there is because we needed to move my mom's furniture out into the garage to make room for her hospital bed and other medical equipment, but please don't let that or any other tough reality of people's lives change your brilliant scheme to replace the city's revenue stream.

But do feel free to come over and check out the situation we're living with, and the brutal blow to our financial situation that's come with the same economic downturn that's messing with you, and advise us on what exactly you think we should do to make sure you get your citation revenue keep our city streets unsullied by trash receptacles.

No? Maybe you'd like to come build one of the pretty screens you sent us pictures of as "acceptable enclosures" for trash cans.

No to that too?

Then please see headline. Thanks.

All shook up...

Earthquake!  Centered in Alamo, east of here in Contra Costa County, estimated as a 4.2 magnitude, which isn't that big, but it gave me one good, hard jolt here in western San Francisco.

Climate change? Srsly?

It's hot here in San Francisco, yo.

I mean, very very way way hot, no doubt because yesterday's historic ruling that the configuration of our genitalia or our chromosome count cannot be used to deny Californians our civil rights when it comes to marriage laws has opened the gates of hell.

Or, you know, climate destabilization due to decades of pro-business, anti-environment policies on the part of legislators.

The exact "why" might vary with political affiliation, but historic temperature records are falling all over the Bay Area, and it was in the 80s when I walked my dogs at 7:30 this morning. This does not happen here. I know; I'm from here.

My mom, in a fit of prescience and generosity, bought a tiny window unit air conditioner (I mean, I have purses bigger than this thing) for my bedroom. She said it was so my dogs wouldn't be too hot. They did, indeed, spend all day yesterday in that one room, and graciously let me sleep in there with them last night. I feel very guilty at the environmental toll of running that damn little machine all night, but not enough to have turned it off and suffered.

It is possible I own the only window unit air conditioner in San Francisco. I'm not sure.

So not only can I get married, at least until November when we'll see if the out-of-state religious right hate groups succeed in getting our constitution amended to strip me of my rights again, I am also the only person in the City who is not going to sleep in an agony of hotness tonight.

Well, the only one other than my mom, because she, too, has an air conditioner.

A friend in Virginia laughed last night when I said no one in San Francisco has air conditioning. She thought I was joking, and it took me five minutes to get her to understand, no, really: No A/C in this city. Not in homes, not in apartment buildings, not in older office buildings, not in restaurants, not in stores. Only the really big, newer public buildings, malls, etc. have climate control. Some movie theaters don't even have it, although all the new ones do.

Anyway, yes, I feel really guilty, but the dogs are blissed out and napping in my bedroom, and it's 84 degrees in my living room right now -- at 10:30 in the morning. So I'm trying to live with it.

Rain much?

I'm glad to be in the City, I truly am. But as this hideous storm blows through California ... some of the worst weather in half a century, they're saying... I do miss my generator from my house in the country. I rode out storms and power outages as long as a week without being much more inconvenienced than not having cable.

So far my power has stayed on, though. My sister-in-law spent the afternoon here, piggybacking off my wireless connection so she could get some work done even though she has no power at her house just 11 blocks away. Gina, my friend and editor at Pet Connection, has been mostly powerless all day long.

The dogs hate it with a passion, and didn't even deign to potty until after 4 this afternoon, even though I took them out several times. They flatly refused to cross the street or go near the park, and every gust of wind made them even more certain that they were in mortal danger. Which, seriously? They were. Several huge branches crashed down in the park across the street. Scary.

Stay warm and dry!