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.

Emma was Brenda’s pet cat. Well, that’s what she started out as. Brenda got her shortly after the two of us got together, and Emma immediately spent much of her time showing her displeasure at having to share Brenda with me (especially the first year, when I was finishing school and Brenda often left Emma alone in her apartment while visiting me at school). But in those first few years after Brenda got her, I also took care of Emma during the summers when Brenda was off doing summer theatre gigs. I quickly became very attached to her, as, I believe, Emma got attached to me. We sorted each other out.

In total, the three of us went through almost eighteen years of life together, marking loads of residences, moments, anniversaries, milestones, memories. There’ll never be another cat like her, there’ll never be another Emma the Cat. She died, one year ago today.

Emma would never put up with another animal in the house, so/but for a very long and fun time, we were “stuck” with “just” Emma. And so shortly after Emma died, Hooper the Dog came into our lives, and in many ways I see my amazing experiences raising and learning about this dog as Emma’s last gift to us. I suppose Emma continues to live on in Hooper.

We also added another cat—Ellie—to our family last December, and while I haven’t written much about her on here yet she adds an extra layer of complexity to this weird little ride of adapting to life without Emma. She’s different, yet similar, to Emma. So it’s been fun and sad, exhilarating and disappointing, interesting and boring, to get accustomed to this new feline resident. More to come about her in the future, for sure.

But the main act tonight is Emma. I miss her still, always will.

I wanted to share with you one of my favorite Emma stories (more specifically, one of my favorites not already published on this website).

We had just moved from our first apartment in Hoboken, NJ, to a new, bigger, two bedroom place. It was hot—really hot—and humid. O.J. Simpson had beaten a murder rap that very day. We had paid professional movers to move our crap from Tenth and Park to Seventh and Willow Ave in Hoboken, and despite being spared the pain of dragging our stuff up five flights of stairs, we were still currently surrounded by boxes, brimming with Our Shit, swaddled in immense amounts of pro-grade, puffy and fluffy, bubble-wrap and puffy-paper.

Hours and hours after the movers had left, we were sweaty, tired, and painted into corners with our things and packing paper. Emma had been exploring the new digs with the careful stalk and active nose of a cougar in a new zoo. Emma jumped up on the microwave cart, currently in the middle of the kitchen, and—this is important—next to a recently-emptied box that was now the receptacle for all discarded packing materials, and began to walk around and eye the box adjacent. Three feet high, and loaded with puffy things, she began to show an unhealthy interest in the box.

“Brenda…” I silently gestured towards the scene that was unfolding.

Slowly, Emma walked to the edge of the cart and lowered her head toward the box, sniffing. She waved and poked a paw into the abyss, seeing that the paper would not hold her weight. But the curiosity was too great, and we watched her slowly try to walk on water, if you will, and fail miserably. She ended up doing a head-first dive into the box, disappearing instantly into the paper. We laughed, but the fun was just beginning. The box began to tremble, the papers churned and flew about, and eventually Emma exploded out from the paper, perched impossibly on the edge of the box, and then as the box began to fall over, she did a gainer off the edge of the box and shot like a bullet for the back bedroom, not to be seen for quite a while.

We laughed so hard, I can still recall how hard my sides hurt.

These are the memories I think of today. I’ll think of her all day today, and I’ll think of her at least a little bit, every day, forever.

This shit makes me crazy. The local paper ran an article today about the booming pet care business, especially in dog-crazy Boulder. Here in Boulder, there is a “law” that encourages Boulder pet owners to refer to themselves as their pet’s “guardians”, not “owners”. You know how I feel about this one; I have a receipt. But it gives you an idea of the mentality Boulder residents have towards their pets, and in general I think it’s great. Here, our dogs are our kids. They hike (off-leash) with us, they frolic in the many dog parks, they are welcome in many businesses, not just the multitude of pet stores and pet bakeries (yes, pet bakeries), and they are everywhere. In an attempt to appear balanced, the author obtained some dissenting views, views on people who pour themselves into the care of their animals; views I have had to put up with from many co-workers over the years and even my own family members. The one they chose to print was a doozy:

“They either need to have children or get the Internet.”

This scholar was quoted while standing in the most overpriced petstore in Boulder with her Australian Shepherd at her side. I feel sorry for that Aussie. She has a dog, but clearly it’s “just a dog”. No massage, no cancer therapy, no quality dog food for this guy, oh no; it’s just a dog.

Where do we begin? First off, we can’t all have kids (you stupid bitch). Some of us don’t want to have kids (you myopic wench). And besides, the internet is a global computer network infrastructure that is owned by no one and utilized by many. You don’t “get” the internet, just like Al Gore didn’t “invent” it. And if you equate the responsibility of raising kids with a monthly cable internet subscription plan, I feel sorry for your kids as well as your Aussie (you sick cunt).

Emma, our dear departed cat and companion of 16 years, was my child and I loved her. When she died I struggled with my feelings of loss and attachment and was alternately devastated and frustrated—by my immense sorrow on the one hand, and the I-should-just-get-over-it-already-vibe I felt from some of my child rearing friends and family members.

Some people just don’t get it. As I type this, Hooper lies at my feet looking content and I get a warm feeling knowing that Brenda & I are responsible for this. A domestic dog living in a city is as dependent on us as any child. They can’t talk, they live much shorter lives, they have no opposable thumbs and they eat cat poo, but does that mean they don’t deserve to have someone take care of them and raise them? They didn’t ask to be born on the street, and they certainly seem to enjoy the spoils of good dog ownership: Hooper has a comfy bed and eats like a king, a diet of raw food and grain-free dry food that is supplemented with fish oil and other supplements. He is engaged in learning new “tricks” and goes to the park every single day. Is this indulgent? I don’t think so; he is canis familiaris, not canis lupus. He is descended from the wolf, but he is something else, an evolved species that owes its existence to the fact that it figured out 15,000 years ago that maybe these humans could work together with them to make a greater existence for us both, and we have. And now that we are all in a better situation than our ancestors of 15,000 years past (hey, we even have Internet!), are we supposed to simply treat these animals like some barely-alive, barely-feeling entity? What the hell is the point in that? Look, if you want to have kids, great. But bear in mind that you are engaging in the least sustainable practice possible in the world today, and an overwhelming number of you are doing a shitty job of raising your progeny, to boot. So get the fuck over yourselves. Your kids consume more than any dog, and most of them are rude, snotty and grow up with an overwhelming sense of entitlement. How does that validate what you do? I’ll tell you: it doesn’t.

So let me and my people raise our dogs and cats, naming them and petting them and feeding them and massaging them and playing with them and training them and loving them, worrying about them, caring about them, putting up with them when they are being assholes and just connecting with them. You do what you feel you need to do, I won’t implore you to get an internet of your own, but if your kid comes up to me and tries to talk to me in a restaurant while you bury your head in a burger, I’m telling it it’s an asshole, and I don’t care how young it is, capiche?

And this leads me to my latest announcement: I’m thinking about my third of fourth career change (depending on how you quantify a career): I have been thinking of becoming a veterinarian for a little while now (fleeting thoughts go back decades, but serious thought has occupied the last months or so), and I’m really starting to look into it. It’s past the “idea stage” of many of my hare-brained schemes and more into the active planning stage. More on this later.

Hooper is a licker.

In recent days, the temperatures have soared to the point where I wore shorts to work today. Never mind that it is supposed to snow here tomorrow, in April you take advantage of the warm sunny days. So I wore shorts today, and that means Hooper was licking my legs (and up my shorts) whenever I was in the vicinity. With our dear friends Dierdre and Evan coming this weekend with their three kids in tow, I started thinking it might might be a good time to teach Hooper that the vigorous licking, while appreciated, is not always appropriate.

And so we have embarked on our latest “trick”, the training of “stop licking”. Brenda & I decided it would be cool to teach Hooper some Italian while we were at it, so we selected the term “basta” as the “leave me alone” term, which is Italian for “enough”. He’s getting it.

How cool is it to have a bilingual Lab?

Well, it’s official. I am fucking crazy.

At the ballfield tonight, exercising the dog, my neighbor Jeannie whipped out some treats for Hooper and her dog Joplin. She mentioned they were homemade. Instead of saying “take your homemade, organic, fair trade dog treats and your sixties-icon-named-after dog and get the hell out of here, hippie”, I said “oh really? That sounds like a good idea, all-natural and all”. Still not totally convinced this was anything I wanted to get involved in, I went home and did as she instructed, and Googled “homemade dog treats”. After perusing a few that seemed like more trouble than they were worth, I stumbled across these little babies, called Bacon Bites.

In other words, bacon cookies. Imagine my delight!

And so I convinced Brenda when she got home that BLTs were on the menu tonight, and the extra bacon could go into the treats (OK, OK, there’s never extra bacon when I make BLTs, but I thought this was a way to divert some of the fat to another stomach). And so, this guy who doesn’t bake, who doesn’t really like cookies at all, poured bacon fat and crumbled crispy bacon into a bowl with flour and egg (and garlic powder!) and actually rolled it out and cut it into little cookie nips. They are baking right now, at three twenty five, for thirty five to forty minutes. I am baking cookies for my dog. I am fucking insane. What’s sadder is that I fully plan to sample the cookies, and I’m not a little scared that I will actually like them and start fighting with Hooper over them. I mean, they’re bacon cookies, after all. Bacon… COOKIES! Am I wrong!?

Just before I started rolling out the dough, I walked over to Hooper with the dough (who was nicely draped over his bed, by the way) and let him have a sniff; two whiffs and he opened wide and tried to take the whole glob. So, I think he’s gonna like ‘em.

Life goes on around here, the main story being the cat and dog, who continue to work through their issues. The gate remains, but Ellie is definitely interested in coming down and joining us. If only that damned dog wasn’t down here:

When one of us does take Hooper out for a walk, Ellie is quick to come down, hurdle the gate, and start exploring the lower levels. Of course, she likes to do this from up high, like on top of the kitchen cabinets:

Hooper finally got his own bed, but currently he believes it to be a giant expensive chew toy. Deep down, he knows what he’s supposed to do on it, and eventually he settles down and demonstrates, like so:

This post also is the first one that employs a new plugin that I installed, which allows for a slick Javascript display that enlarges the images in my posts. Try it out; click on any image in the post and it will expand to a slightly larger size, with caption. I plan to refine this a little bit more and then I’ll incorporate this effect into all the previous posts, since I need to update them all to work with my new theme. Feedback welcome!

Say hello to Ellie:

Yes, we got another cat. On December 23rd. And we named her Noelle, a play on the season. But this was not an impulse buy.

Brenda & I have talked about getting another cat since the dawn of discussions about life after Emma. We actually had a kitten on hold the same time we had Hooper on hold, but we decided one thing at a time. But as time wore on, we thought we should add a cat to the mix sooner than later, lest Hooper get too used to the idea of being the sole recipient of our attention. And so, Noelle, a.k.a. Ellie.

She’s three years old, and recently gave birth to a litter, even more recently was spayed, and her owner gave her and her brother up because she was moving out of the country.

We went to the Boulder Humane Society on Saturday, and placed a hold on one cat that we liked, but we didn’t quite have the vibe, in much the same way we didn’t feel a connection with Happy the Plott Hound we tried out the day before we met Hooper. The next day we planned to look at Loki, a handsome tabby who we liked the day before but didn’t have a chance to meet before the adoption center closed. When we got there, Loki was already being visited but we saw that his sister was mewing fiercely and so we met with her, and she lived on my lap, purring, me melting, and Brenda said “let’s just take her home”.

And so, we now have a cat and a dog. They are living separate lives for the moment, but we’ve had some meet and greets. They are going well, and I think it’s all going to work out. Ellie has her claws (which I can attest to), and Hooper seems more afraid of her than anything. Here are some snaps from tonight’s meeting.

First, we have Hooper happening upon the aloof Ellie, lured by treats:

Moments later we have Ellie being petted by Brenda as Hooper retreats to the living room:

Cats rule.

Any doubts about Hooper’s hiking abilities, including high altitude, cold/snow, distance, have been put to rest. Hooper is a wonder dog.

With the holiday weekend winding down, and with the entire Front Range experiencing a very late start to the snow season, I decided to go up to Brainard Lake and scope out the trail to Mount Audubon, a hike that Brenda & I successfully did last summer. Mount Audubon stands over 13,000’ tall, so generally by this time of the year it’s totally covered with snow and is a challenge to summit. But with the dearth of snow we’ve had so far this year, I thought it might be a doable climb, and a great intro for Hooper to a longer and higher hike. Brenda’s been a bit under the weather, so she stayed home but Hooper & I headed out around 8:30 this morning to see what kind of trouble we could get into.

The access road to Brainard Lake is closed this time of year, which adds another two miles of walking just to get to the trailhead; I totally underestimated the impact of this, especially in winter with all the snow. Forty minutes after we left the car, we finally arrived at the Marshall Lake trailhead (I was totally going from memory of our hike last year, and I have to say I was pretty happy that I was able to find my way back!). At this point, I had already pulled a couple of chunks of ice from Hooper’s paws and his whiskers had icicles hanging from them, but he seemed interested in nothing but proceeding in a forward direction. I decided to hit the trail for a little while.

As we walked along the trail, I recalled the great hike Brenda, Bryce and I did up this trail last summer, and on we pushed, through the snow. I decided we should at least try to make it to treeline…

When you hike these high peaks, you eventually reach a point somewhere around 11,000’ there the oxygen is so thin, most vegetation gives up and heads for lower ground: treeline. You emerge from the cover of the thicket of trees and enter a rocky moonscape, windy and barren; ironically, I find myself the most alive when I’m up there.

And so when we emerged from the trees, and the winds began to blast us—no longer shielded by the trees—I concluded that we simply must continue on. I was not expecting to make the summit, but I wanted to press on for a little bit at least, in hopes of making the ridge before the final push to the summit where there are some spectacular views in their own right.

The winds picked up as we pressed on, and there was little shelter available for relief from the wind. Checking my watch I realized we had been walking for almost two hours, and simple math makes that out to be a four hour hike to the car, so I decided we were done for the day. I found a spot that wasn’t quite so windy, fed Hooper some food, and snapped a few pics:

Here’s my favorite picture from the day, with Hooper looking at some hikers on a lower peak while Long’s Peak looms in the background:

After that pic was taken, we headed back home, and arrived at the car three and a half hours after we left. Looking at a topo map after we got home, I estimate we turned around just a little short of the goal, but sill walked about ten miles in total and got up well over 12,000’ high. After giving him dinner, Hooper has been asleep ever since, but I think he’s proven his mountain mettle. Next summer is gonna be awesome. You’ll be seeing us on top of many high peaks, you can bank on it.

It’s been a while, again. First off, it’s Facebook’s fault. That’s right, I joined Facebook and I can’t seem to stop checking in every day to update my “status” message and see how many friends my friend Lauren has. But, that’s not the purpose of this post. Discussion on the insanely silly endeavor of Facebook will surely follow, maybe after Thanksgiving.

Anyway, Brenda has been working crazy hours again, and it all came to a head over the last couple-few weeks, and finally ended this past Thursday, when the show she was building some suits for opened at the University of Colorado. And it turns out that the guy who she was working for has a condo in the mountains that was going unused this weekend, so we loaded up the truck and moved to Keystone… resort that is; snowbarders, movie stars…

Brenda & I (and Hooper) had not been in the mountains in the winter yet since moving to Colorado, and it was fantastic. So far this year, old man winter has not really visited the near mountains but that’s ok with us since we’re not skiers or snowboarders. But this gave us a chance to experience a typical Colorado mountain resort town at the beginning of the high season, and it was certainly entertaining for us.

With Hooper settled in the condo, we headed out into the village to find some lunch. As we walked through “town” (Keystone resort is home to several fabricated centers of Starbucks and clothiers and liquor stores situated maze-like, Disney-style, around the lifts) we started to absorb the amalgam of skier/snowboarder fashion/lingo/gait/attitude. At one point Brenda said “uh, yeah, we’ve definitely entered a foreign world”, and I could only laugh and agree. I have been soaking up some of the lingo just from listening to office conversations about ski conditions (apparently the amount of base is important, and for some, a nice run of groomers is awesome, but that definitely outs you as a skier and the boarders will, like, totally frown on you), and I caught some glimpses of the fashions in the sale circulars every week last year, but it wasn’t until we walked through a living breathing throng of True Believers that I really came to grips with the odd, different, and let’s face it, totally cool world of alpine sports.

There’s a certain swagger that the snowboarders have; it almost seems like they’re fully conscious of the outlandishly baggy nylon clothes they’re wearing, emblazoned with obviously targeted graphics that they’ve paid a lot of money for, but don’t care (and to those of you that truly don’t care, I salute you; especially those that can’t really afford all that shit.

The skiers, then: they have this cool way of slinging their skis over one shoulder and hooking their arms over the end of the skis, backing that up with a swagger all their own, a more muted swagger that seems to say “we were her first, assholes, don’t fuck with us (but boy, it sure does seem like you guys are having a simpler, cooler time of things)”.

I was struck by the sense that this was one big party that I had no idea was going on (god dammit); at every bar (of which there were several), there were racks out front where people would leave their boards or skis, after a hard day of sliding down the slopes. My initial reaction was to look for some sort of locking mechanism, but there was none; these people were leaving their high priced equipment at the door, unlocked! This did not compute for this northeasterner. Inside, people sat around and ate and drank in the gear they wore all day as they careened down mountains on slippery planks of various sizes with no brakes. I felt inadequate. I ordered a beer. Here’s what we woke up to, out the front door of our place:

Brenda, Hooper and I made the best of our abilities by going on a couple of short hikes, punctuated with Hooper discovering his love of snow (or perhaps re-discovering; Hooper was a stray from Utah and we figure he was born around early February of 2007, so he’s probably no stranger to snow, but who knows?).

We left early on Sunday, took a scenic way home along the Peak-to-peak Highway, and got home in time to enjoy an early dinner at Zolo Grill, one of our favorite restaurants in Boulder. All in all, a great way to spend Brenda’s first free weekend in a long time.

DDC. Doggie Day Care. Hooper’s there right now. See for yourself right here; click the link for the webcams, and check out the action in play area two. It’s a full house today, and there are half a dozen black labs to boot, but you can still spot him; he’s the cutest one in the bunch.