Posts from — September 2008

Well, I got my transcript from my undergraduate institution, the first step in ascertaining just how badly I messed up my first pass at “College”.

Answer: 2.672.

My first thought was that level of decimal accuracy was totally unnecessary.

Yeah, I fucked up. Yeah, this is a major setback. Yeah, I aced my last two biology quizzes. Fuck it, I’ll get it done.

Well, Hooper had a long day, but he’s home, he’s sleeping, and he’s minus one tooth. The remains of one of his upper incisors were removed—in pieces—from Hooper’s skull, and he now has “character” in the form of a gap in his toothy facade.

He wobbled around the living room and made us all nervous on the stairs, but he quickly flopped on his bed and slept while I read a biology textbook. It’s been pretty amazing to watch him be so mellow, and no one is more intrigued than Ellie, our cat. At long last, Ellie could inspect this odd creature with impunity, and she took full advantage.

I hand-fed him his entire dinner, and I think at this point he forgives me for taking him to that horrible place this morning. As I type this, Hooper is sleeping soundly and all is right with the world.

Tonight in my biology class, I got my first test results back. Ace. My instructor even wrote on my quiz: “Good; I think this vet thing might be doable”, and encouraged me to take a chemistry class as soon as possible. Then I got a text message from Brenda, asking me to come home right after class because Hooper broke his tooth playing at the ballfield.

When you study stuff like this, sometimes it’s hard to see the real world relevance to your work. But tonight, Hooper reminded me of why I’m doing this. And so as soon as I could, I drove home and we all rode over to the 24-hour animal hospital. Sure enough, one of Hoop’s incisors is sheared off right at the gum line and will need to be extracted. Apparently, Hooper and Monty—the two most ball-focused dogs in our neighborhood’s play group—turned to chase a thrown ball at the same time, and turned right into each other, and Hoop just got the losing hand in that deal. The vet sent us home with antibiotics and painkillers (for Hooper), and we will make an appointment tomorrow morning with our vet for the remains of the tooth to be extracted. The upshot of all of this is that I have been trying to schedule a time to shadow my vet as she does day-to-day activities, including surgeries, and so it may just work out that Hooper provides me with the impetus (and the patient) for finally doing it.

The pain meds seem to be helping, but every once in a while Hooper lets out a single, loud, bark, as if to say “god DAMN, this hurts!”. I hope we can get him in tomorrow for the extraction. Stay tuned.

Tonight was one of those nights I truly felt lucky to live in Boulder. Tonight, at the fabulous Boulder Theater, the Reel Rock Tour kicked off to a packed house, and Brenda, Leslie, and I were there.

The Reel Rock Tour is a traveling film festival celebrating rock climbing, in the extreme. Good god, it was fucking amazing. The only thing better than the photography was the amazing skill and daring of the people in the films. Well, that and the rocks; the rocks were amazing. From Eldorado Canyon—right here in Boulder—to Yosemite to Chamonix, France, these places served as playmates to people who tested their limits; their drive, determination, balls and boobs, as they climbed, slept on, and B.A.S.E. jumped off of some of the most amazing fucking rocks on the planet. It was awesome.

In case you didn’t know, Boulder Colorado is kind of a hotbed for rock climbing. More importantly, in case you didn’t know, Brenda (my wife) is really into rock climbing. I reveled when Brenda took a rock climbing course at the Boulder Rock Club, and enjoyed her stories every time she came back from the gym, and especially when she came back from Eldorado Canyon on a climbing adventure with her classmates from the gym.

So when I saw this film festival advertised, I jumped at the chance to check it out, and I ended up being totally sold on the idea of rock climbing.

By the time the feature event rolled, I was totally engrossed; the beautifully brilliant mountainous landscape projected on the screen was wonderful to look at, but then the reflected light from the screen revealed an amazing thing: the Boulder Theater was totally packed. Every seat was full, and people were sitting in the aisles and standing in the stairwells, to catch a glimpse of these amazing athletes groping their way up the most impossible of routes.

The alpine hikers were my faves, but there were so many characters both in front of and behind the lens that you just wanted to be your best friends, and the fact that half of them were in the audience watching the show (and occasionally tossing out swag, including climbing legend and Rob’s girlfriend Beth Rodden’s husband Tommy Caldwell tossing out shit like ten feet from us) just added to the drama.

All in all, a good night. I am so going to try rock climbing now!!

Ahh, Boulder. Scott Carpenter Park, just around the corner from our house, has a public municipal swimming pool that keeps the kids cool all summer. Now that summer is over, the pool is officially closed for the season—to people. Boulder being dog-crazy Boulder, that does not mean the pool is yet closed for good to all creatures, though. No, after a de-clorination process last week, the pool was officially open to dogs starting this weekend and extending to next weekend. Yeah (woof)!

Naturally, upon hearing of this insanity, we made plans to participate.

We arrived at the pool parking lot Saturday afternoon—surrounded by vehicles with filthy pickup beds and festooned with decals like “my Border Collie is smarter than your honors high school student”—and headed into the melee. Once inside the gate, we paid our five bucks, took Hoop’s leash off, and the games began. Now, Hooper loves to swim in the reservoir by the East Boulder Dog Park, but that has a sandy beach and a nice gradual slope into the water; this is where he learned to swim. But this pool business, all concrete and with an abrupt transition from land to water, well, this took a second to adjust to. Seriously, like, a second.

Watching the dynamics involved with roughly forty dogs running around, all overloaded with the sensory stimuli of having an entire human public pool at their disposal, was thrilling, amusing and hysterical. A co-worker appeared, with his wife and their dog Winnie. They were trying to get Winnie to get over her fear of jumping into the water. With Hooper obviously over his fear of jumping off the pool coping, we decided to see if we could tackle the diving boards.

There were a couple of dogs over by the diving boards who were seemingly chanelling Greg Lougainis, showing no fear of the bobbing board or of leaping off the end. One dog actually pushed off the end of the board so well that he managed to get the board to bounce a few times after he departed. It sounded really professional, the “boing—splash, boing, boing”. I figured Hooper would be a natural, but he displayed a lot of anxiety about jumping off the end. He happily jumped up on the board, and would follow me out to the edge if I showed him the ball, but no matter how I threw the ball into the pool, he just couldn’t be enticed to jump off the end. You ask me, he’s just showing everyone how smart he is. But the pool is open for dog swims next weekend too, and I think I’m gonna bring him back for one more try at diving before winter arrives. All in all, it was a great day and it was fun to watch Hooper take in the newness of the entire experience.