Thursday the 12th is the new Friday the 13th

This blurry photo is 16th Street around 8:00 AM on Thursday,
right before I bailed out. That's a tree.

I tried to post this last Friday. It didn't work out. The last two days of last week were, literally, a wash.

Thursday began with my reverse commuite to Silver Spring being transformed from a leisurely 15 minute drive to a 45-minute traffic evasion snafu. Every half-mile or so, I was faced with another closed road, and forced to divert eastward. It began on 16th Street, than 14th, then Georgia, and finally onto the neighborhood backroads of Takoma, DC as I struggled to find a way across the border to Maryland that wasn't blocked by trees or emergency vehicles. It's nice that there are so many alternatives, so at least it was possible to get to work.

Not that it mattered. The parking garage was flooded, and there was no power in the building. It became clear that situation wasn't changing anytime soon, so I headed out. I had to go to Rockville last week at some point, and since there was nothing else to do that day, I decided to go for it.

That turned out to be a poor choice as well, since it was impossible to go east or west on any road. By the time I'd gotten up to about Route 28, I realized it wasn't happening. I also realized I wasn't getting back to DC anytime soon, since all roads in were jammed. So I just kept going. I ended up going all the way to Baltimore, where I had a couple other non-urgent errands to take care of, and this was accomplished. Eventually, I made it to Rockville, around 3 PM. Everything was still a mess - working traffic lights in Montogomery County were rare.

Friday the 13th - Groundhog Day

Come Friday, things seems sort of back to normal, except many traffic signals in Moco were still out. I went to my office, began the morning rituals of coffee and email. Fifteen minutes after arriving at work, the power went out again rather dramtically. A loud boom was followed by several smaller ones. The power flickered on a couple times and finally died for good.

After an hour or so of hanging around, we found out power would not likely be restored at all on Friday. Unfortunately, my work requires being connected to the server (unless I can plan ahead and copy everything to my laptop, which of course I hadn't) so there was no possibility of working at home. Another unplanned day off, this time spent on home improvement.

Normal Life Resumes

.. at least until the next storm!! There is no question. The apocalypse is upon us.

Anyway, hope everyone is weathering these times of questionable power. I leave you with a gratuitous cute puppy picture.

Good Things: WARL and Old Timey Desserts

In continuing with my promise to post every day, or at least every weekday, I present you with two Good Things.

First is our dog. I have resisted the temptation to be that annoying new baby/ puppy/ iguana owner who subjects their friends to pictures of their new family member on a daily or hourly basis. But because I don't have any new incidents related to crime, my neighborhood, or drunken debauchery to report today, and I have sworn of bashing cyclists for good, I am succumbing to that desire and posting dog pictures.

WARL is awesome.

The first picture is Jumby, our six-month old terrier. Or "terrorist," as our dog training instructor says, might be more appropriate. We started "basic manners" class on Saturday morning at the Washington Animal Rescue League. I had never been to their Oglethorpe Street NW facility before, but I have never seen a nicer animal shelter. Actually, it's nicer than some Holday Inns I've stayed at. Our first session was without Jumby (it was an orientaton) and the instructor was funny and knowledgable. I have high hopes that we will be able to get the little spitfire in line. Jumby is badly behaved, so we have some concerns that we could get kicked out if he doesn't do well on leash around several other dogs. Luckily it sounds like many of the other participants also have small, smart, annoying terrier-mixes so hopefully we won't be the worst dog in the group. My plan is to run him for an hour before class so he's tired, and starve him so he's hungry and will do anything for treats.

Root Beer Floats are awesome.

I have suffered from a horrible sweet tooth lately. The result has been that I've reverted to making all sorts of crazy desserts and midnight snacks that seem more appropriate for a stoned college student. I am not stoned, I swear. But one of the things I had forgotten from my youth is root beer floats. Man are these things good. The vanilla ice cream seems to have some kind of chemical reaction with the soda that creates frothy, fizzy deliciousness of a most unique kind. Highly recommend picking up some root beer and ice cream if you haven't had one lately.

I have also been moderately obsessed with chocolate milkshakes. Just sayin'.

Dog Park Disillusionment

I'm a relatively new dog owner. The deceptively cute fellow you see at right is Jumby, who is a four-and-a-half month old terror. I mean terrier. N. thinks he is the ugliest dog in the world. That guy, ugly? Okay - he's not going to win any dog shows. He looks more like a hyena than a dog, but just look at that face!

His habits include charging full speed into Sully, the other dog, not eating his food until Sully tries to eat it, and destroying everything. Favorite thing to destroy this week: bed sheets. We now have to lock the dogs out of the bedroom, as he has eaten a hole in three sheets in the last two weeks.

Jumby's First Dog Park Excursion

N. took Jumby to the Metro Dog Park at 11th and Park, across from Red Rocks, for the first time on Saturday. The three of us went again on Sunday. I had never been inside this particular dog park before. It's really nice in many ways - plastic dog poop bags are provided, it's well fenced in, and there's plenty of space as well as some chairs and tables.

What was disappointing was the amount of trash and dog crap in the park. While I would like to blame the recent snow for some of the trash buildup, it seemed pretty clear that much of what I was looking at had been there for a long time.

The thing is, dog owners get special dispensations. We need to go out of our way to be good citizens. Anyone who doesn't own a dog probably has little good to say about dog owners. Though most are responsible, from the other perspective, what do dogs add to your life? Dogs left outside at all hours, barking endlessly. Dog crap on the sidewalk to step in. People who let their dogs run off-leash in public parks and even on the sidewalks. Aggressive dogs that can be scary to walk by, even on leash. It really doesn't take many bad eggs to spoil it for everyone. At the end of the day - there are many negatives to dogs from the perspective of people who don't own or like them. So dog owners, as a group, should bend over backwards to be responsible.

So, the Metro Dog Park was a true victory for dog owners. Technically, there is no such thing as a "legal dog park" at all in this city - the law says dogs must be on leash at all times. So when this place was actually handed over to the dog owners as a rare place that was truly set aside only for the dogs, many rejoiced. It was really perfect, since it didn't actually take a usable space away from anyone else. The land is owned by Metro, so was not technically public land, but WMATA agreed to this use.

And this is what we've done with it. Let piles of disgusting dog crap pile up all around the edges. Let trash collect everywhere. While I'm sure the users of the park aren't generally responsible for much of the trash there, how hard would it be for them to pick it up once in a while? Would you let your own yard look like this if someone else's trash blew into it? It's not going to go away by itself.

When someone goes out of their way to make a special dispensation for you, you go out of your way to show that you appreciate it. If anyone reading this also appreciates this park, why don't you show it by picking up some dog poop or some trash. Forget your self-righteous indignation because it's not your trash or your dog's poop and just pick it up. If everyone who uses this park spent even five minutes a week keeping it clean, it would actually be clean.

... and so how was Jumby's first day at the park?

Now that I've gotten my obligitory trash rant out of the way, let me just say that Jumby finally met his match at the dog park. At home he is fearless. From the day he moved into our house, nothing fased him. He has willfully attacked and goaded the much larger Sullivan from when he was 7 pounds. (He probably weighs close to 20 now). He is always anxious to meet people and dogs on the street when we walk him.

But the half-dozen dogs, all larger than him, was too much. He spent most of his time trying to jump up into someone's (anyone's!) arms. Apparently, people are far less threatening than other dogs. He hid between N's legs. It was pretty cute actually. I'm sure it must be tough to be the only small terrier in a field of retrievers and other much bigger dogs. But it was pretty funny to see him actually not be an alpha for the first time.

We're determined to socialize him, though. Sullivan has never been very good with other dogs, and we don't want Jumby to learn the same behavior, so we'll keep coming back.

Animal Farm in Columbia Heights

Is this puppy not cute?

Since the last time I posted we got a puppy. His name is Charlie, though we have taken to calling him Jumby. The name was taken from this bad horror movie we saw called The Unborn, which was mostly memorable because of this evil little demon child thing that keeps saying "Jumby wants to be born now!" Wikipedia defines Jumbee as "the generic name given to all malevolent entities," so this is probably where the movie got the name from. Either way, it fits.

This brings the roster to two human beings, two cats, and two dogs. Then there's the cockroaches, though they seems to have packed up and gone to winter somewhere else. Or maybe they just moved somewhere that they can get a little peace and quiet. Because that sure ain't our house. But it's all good.

Charlie is very cute. Though N. insists he is getting uglier by the day. I deny this, though I do accept that he's got some old face going on, and his hair is pretty weird. He's like half shorthaired and half longhaired. He started out soft and fuzzy, but now there's all this wiry terrier long hair growing in along with the short silky hair. And he's got this weird Fu Man Chu thing on his jaw, as well as a white soul patch on his chin. Okay, he looks a bit like the dog version of a skinny hipster at Wonderland, so maybe he's not going to win any dog shows. But he's still pretty cute.

However, he unquestionably has a heart of evil. His days consist of tormenting Sully. That, and biting my ear, and peeing and pooping on the floor right after he's been taken outside. Sully mostly just tries to get some quality sack time on the couch, but Charlie thinks that biting his tail would be a lot more fun. So Sully often ends up under the bed, which has always been his private place. Charlie doesn't see it that way, though, and generally follows him there too. Below is a picture of Sully hiding under the Christmas tree.

Please, please leave me alone!

Poor Sully can't seem to find any respite from the little beast, so he seeks the shelter of our indoor evergeen. Or wherever he can go that he thinks Charlie won't find him. There aren't very many places that count.

Though there is evidence that secretly Sully likes the new member of our household. Charlie is too small to get on the bed by himself. So Sully could just hang out there, but he seems to never do so since Charlie's been around. I think he's just putting on a show. Or he's not very smart. Either is quite possible. That gadget at the left of the picture, by the way, is some crazy hot-water wet-vac contraption that N. had gotten for cleaning up Sully's accidents years ago. It's both awesome and necessary for having a puppy.

Back to Jumby vs. Jumbie, though. Though he is definitely a malevolent spirit, there is substantial evidence that he is, actually, a far worse variety than that described by Wikipedia. In the article referenced above, there are a number of ways to protect yourself from a Jumbee. Let's see how these might work with our demon:

1. leaving a pair of shoes outside your door; jumbies don't have feet and would spend the entire night trying on the shoes to get them to fit before moving onto you.

Leaving a pair of shoes outside my door could only have one result: chewed shoes. Quite the opposite, we have found it necessary to leave our shoes on top of tables, speakers, and radiators to avoid destruction. Jumby 1, Jumbee 0.

2. leaving a heap of sand or salt or rice outside your door; jumbies are compelled to count every grain before the sun rises.

Clearly, this fabled Jumbee is an inferior variety to our own. Ours is capable of eating everything in its path, except his own food. This includes Sully's food, toothpicks, my ear and ankles, the rug corners, his doggie diapers, pine bark mulch, and leaves. So any such stray organic matter would be nothing more than a snack to Jumby. So our Jumby would simply devour this (probably even the dirt) and bark until we gave him more. Jumby 2, Jumbee 0.

3. when coming home late at night, walk backwards so that the jumbie would be unable to follow you inside.

Charlie's favorite toy. It used to be Sully's favorite toy.

Well, I'm not quite sure about this one. Our Jumby is already inside, and the only result of coming home late at night is that he wakes up and starts barking uncontrollably. Though I do frequently walk backwards to avoid stepping on the little beast, it certainly doesn't stop him from following me. And biting my toes. Jumby 3, Jumbee 0.

3. if one is being chased by a jumbie, cross a river, as they cannot follow over water.

I can't speak for the river trick but I will give that a shot whenever I have a chance. This dog appears to have no fear whatsoever, though. Even when Sully gets really annoyed and growls and barks and snaps at him, and even though Sully outweighs him by 30 pounds, he doesn't really care. Actually I think it makes him charge Sully even more. At this point lets assume he can't swim, though, and give a point to the Jumbee. Jumby 3, Jumbee 1.

4. Leave a rope with many knots by your door step. Jumbies love to try to untie knots, so they will forget about you while trying to untie the knots.

Absolutely true. He loves knotted things. Rope, the ends of the oriental rugs, shoelaces. All are a delicious snack. However, there's not a lot of untying going on, just unraveling. But as for this stopping him from chasing us down, not so much. This dog is as ADD as a goldfish. Jumby 4, Jumbee 1.

Clearly, Jumby is a superior form of demon that will not be stopped by these silly tricks. Victory: Jumby.

Three Questionable Waste Disposal Decisions

I wrote not too long ago about the daily proliferation of trash on my street. Since then, I've been pretty good about picking up trash every day on the three or four blocks where I walk the VERY BAD DOG who does not deserve such long walks because he tried to attack my neighbor and routinely ignores me and pees on the kitchen floor whenever our backs are turned. Ahem.

Anyway, back to the trash. There has been a noticeable impact. Sure, people still throw crap on the ground. There are these candy wrappers, some kind of peanut butter chew or something, that appear daily. Then there are the random Schlitz Malt Liquor cans and McDonalds trash on Spring Road.

But by and large, I pick up less and less trash every day. Whereas I used to only concern myself with cans, bottles, and bags, now, there often aren't any of those. So I pick up smaller things, candy wrappers, sometimes cigarette butts, and even stuff in the street if street sweeping is not coming up soon.

N. thinks all this is hilarious and bought me a grabber-thingy called the Gopher 2 for picking up trash. This thing is awesome. Although I have been too embarassed to actually take it with me on the dog-walk and use it to collect trash yet, it has many other uses, including ass-grabbing, pet-teasing, and, for those who are not strong with The Force and may need such assistance, remote-control-gettting-while-reclined-on-couch.

So while my moonlighting as a garbage man is generally going well, there are three things that have appeared on my block lately that are somewhat baffling, and beyond the scope of my morning efforts.

1. The Television

Has now been on the sidewalk for about a month. Guess what? Nobody wants your 24 year old Goldstar television. That includes the trash men, a fact which should have been crystal clear after it remained on the sidewalk despite the trash cans being emptied, twice a week, for the last month.


2. The Post Base

This has been sitting on the sidewalk for a LONG time. The guy on the corner redid his fence sometime in the distant past, like early summer or even spring. It's been there ever since. Now, generally, I can't complain about that house because they are good neighbors, keep things up, and I even saw him mowing the treebox once. ONCE.

Obviously, though, there is not a female in that household. Because while all dudes are born with the ability to selectively ignore things like this indefinitely, and indeed even convince themselves that the object in question is actually not there, the opposite happens for women. When there is something within the boundaries of their living space that should not be there, or is in the wrong place, it starts glowing around the edges, then becomes bright white, and finally screams at them like a dying banshee every time they see it. Which they in turn do to you. This I learned while I was married. No woman would permit that post to remain on their sidewalk for months. Clearly, the guy who lives there needs a girlfriend, and possibly a pickup truck.


3. The Compost Pile/Rat Feeder

This is the most problematic of the three QWDDs (Questionable Waste Disposal Decisions). While the first two are annoying, I can (and perhaps will) take care of them myself either with a call to bulk pickup, or by throwing them in the back of my truck the next time I go to Fort Totten. But this one keeps recurring -- and, like that strange itch that you got after that drunken late-night hookup with "Marisa" or "Melisa" or whatever her name was, it's hard to get rid of without involving someone wearing a pair of rubber gloves.

Some person, or perhaps people, are dumping old food in the treeboxes. I suspect that they think they are feeding birds. I really do believe their motive is not absolute laziness since it's always old-looking food, often bread products. In the picture from this morning, it's moldy bagels. I picked them up. Someone saw me do it and thanked me.

But take a closer look at the television picture. That orange pile next to the TV is rice. That also appeared this morning. That's disgusting, and there's no way birds will eat it anyway. There has been rice in the past at the spot where I picked up the bagels. As well as a huge pile of bread, and sausages, and all sorts of crap. Someone either thinks that the treebox is some kind of miraculous garbage disposal, or that they really are doing a service to all the starving vermin in DC by dumping old food on the sidewalk.

Today was the first time I picked up the food pile (the bagels, I couldn't deal with the rice) because it's starting to happen more often. Maybe they will realize it's not cool when someone takes it every day. If not, then hopefully I will see them doing it and have have a frank discussion with them about rats and the purpose of trash cans and sewers. If that doesn't work, then that leaves me with only one alternative. No, I'm not talking about a stakeout with a camera, followed by public humiliation in the form of leaflets under the windshield of every car on the block.

I'm talking about the Real Genius punishment.

Trashed in Columbia Heights

That's what happens to my street, about every day. It gets trashed. I don't mean like a bunch of drunk frat boys. And it's not as bad as, say, Bourbon Street after Mardi Gras. But people throw crap on the sidewalk all the time.

I've started picking up trash sometimes when I walk N's dog, at least every other day and sometimes every day. I didn't start this because I'm trying to be some neighborhood do-gooder martyr or something. It's because I wanted the dog the be able to piss in the tree boxes without having to worry about broken glass. So it began with picking glass out of the treeboxes. But it always starts small, doesn't it?

Now, this dog, while cute as hell, is incredibly badly behaved. He has a paper-product fetish. If you leave a napkin where he can get it, he will eat it. If he can get his mouth around a roll of toilet paper, you think it's Halloween and some drunk kids toilet papered your house. He will clean out the bathroom trash can in seconds. And don't even think about leaving actual food where he can get it. David Copperfield couldn't make a pizza disappear faster. It's pretty unbelievable, actually.

So I soon learned that just picking up the glass wasn't going to be enough. I had to keep the sidewalks clear of paper products, too. Any disgusting napkin or q-tip or McDonald's wrapper was a delicious treat for this demented dog. Rather than spend half of the time on the walk avoiding bits of trash here and there, I just started picking them up. It made life a lot easier.

I must admit, it has gone way beyond it's original purpose. I've started to actually look forward to picking up the trash on the morning walks. I get excited when I find a broken bottle I can clean up. I've maybe even been a little disappointed when there's no trash some days. Yeah, it's pretty sad. I probably should get a hobby, like shrub-sculpting.

But the trash, the glorious trash! Sometimes there's a lot of stuff, especially Sunday mornings. But lately, there have been days when I've gotten next to nothing. I feel like the rate of trash production on the block and a half I "maintain" has gone down since I started picking stuff up. My theory is people may feel a little bad, sometimes, about littering on an otherwise clean block. Not everyone of course. But lately, I've had to walk a little farther to fill up my Giant bag with trash in the morning. It used to be that just one turn on to Spring Road would guarantee me a half-dozen malt liquor cans or bottles and at least one mess of someone's lunch from Wendy's the day before. Now, it's only every few days that I even find an unbroken bottle.

I've also started to notice a lot of patterns in where and when the trash is produced.

1) The majority of the trash appears at roughly the same spots, and generally spreads from there. Bad neighbors. Bad.

2) Someone must be parking their car between 10th and 11th on Spring Road, eating their Wendy's, and chucking their trash on the sidewalk about every single day. Lame. On the other hand, they will probably suffer a heart attack within the next few years, so it's a self-solving problem.

3) People are a lot more likely to deposit trash in overgrown treeboxes. No surprise there.

Sullivan. Don't let his docile appearance deceive you. He is a bad dog.

4) People will leave trash on their steps or front yards for weeks and just not care. Generally, I only pick up crap in the sidewalk itself and the treeboxes, since the street sweeper will get the rest, and people's steps are their steps. But when I've seen the same rotting paper bag with a couple empty beer cans in it sitting on someone's step for a week, I might have to take it.

5) I am thinking about starting a new feature: "piece of trash of the day."

6) I'm just kidding. Sort of.

The point of this post is really just anthropological. I'm not on a mission to create the citizen's trash picking corps. Though it has occurred to me that if even one in ten dog owners picked up a few pieces of trash whenever they walked their dogs, the city would probably be spotless. Something to think about.

Help An Animal In Need

I'm going to break from my usual snarky blogging to help publicize an important effort on behalf of the Washington Humane Society. A friend of mine works for WHS and has recently been working to raise awareness in the case of Trooper, the pit bull who was found near death in a dumpster. This was most likely the result of dog fighting, the illegal and inhumane sport which is known to take place in private yards and basements around the DC area.

Trooper underwent extensive emergency medical care at Friendship Hospital for Animals and was hospitalized for two weeks to save her life. She is now out of the woods and continues to improve, thanks to the efforts of dedicated people at WHS, and contibutions from people around the country.

Unfortunately, dog fighting is still a fact of life in DC. There are always animals in need of emergency medical care, and WHS does not have the resources to pay for these expenses directly. Sophie's Fund was established to pay for emergency medical care for animals in need. Even though Trooper is out of the woods, the fund still greatly needs support. Please help if you can.

Stay Involved - Follow Trooper's Progress

Washington Humane Society Blog
WHS Humane Law Enforcement Division on Twitter
WHS Facebook Group
WHS home page

NPR story about Trooper (summary, and audio)

Photo: Washington Humane Society