Burning Electrons

So the last time I wrote anything online was when Buster died.  I miss him, he was a good cat.  I kind of thought that Jake, Susan’s new schnauzer mix was

Comet and Duke relaxing

Favorite positions.

responsible for his death, but on further consideration and consultation with the vet, we decided that it was more likely that Buster had some cryptic heart problem that manifested itself in a massive myocardial infarction and death.  So he probably died in his sleep, or very close to his being asleep.  Just the way I would like to go (not by heart attack, but painlessly and quickly).

I miss Buster, but Comet missed him more.  Every morning, when we would come back from our walk, Comet would run up to the corner and look around expecting Buster to be there, waiting for us.  He needed a friend, and we don’t see Susan’s dogs often enough for them to fill that void.  I figured, this time, that instead of getting a cat and having to put up with all the problems of finding a dog friendly cat, that I would get a cat-sized dog to take Buster’s place.

I googled pet rescue and found Ginger’s Death Row rescue here in Seattle.  Ginger (or whoever) goes to one of several pounds in California, and brings dogs who are scheduled to be euthanized (sic) within a few days up to Seattle.  They are pets who just couldn’t find a home.  That kind of set off alarms because I didn’t want an asocial animal, but I decided to check them out.  When I got to the pet store where they do Gingers adoptions, the dog I was going to look at was already adopted.  But they had this little reddish brown wire hair Warwick terrier mix named Duke, who had a lot of potential.  He kind of hung  back in this cage and was a little standaoffish to begin with, but he started to warm up when I took him for a walk outside.  I thought he could be the dog.  But I couldn’t adopt a pet unless Comet approved of my choice so I drove home and picked up Comet so he could meet Duke and see if he liked him too.  I also picked up Susan because I trust her judgment more than I trust my own in these matters.    She  and Comet both liked Duke right away.  Comet immediately started playing with Duke the same way he played with Buster, but Duke could give a little more back in return.  I mean, Buster had formidable claws, but he was loath to use them, thankfully.  I always thought that Comet was playing a little to rough with Buster, but he played at least as rough with Duke, and Duke would come right back and instigate more attacks by his big brother. They wear each other out, which is good.

Duke

So, they are cool together.  Most of the day they sleep on the couch, but when they decide to play, they chase each other around my living room, through the halls and through the dining room and back to the living room, in a big circle, crashing in to walls as they go (it was raining yesterday so they couldn’t do all that outside).

Duke has surprisingly few problems. His major shortcoming is that he is just learning to not poop in the dining room.  Its taking a while because the weather has been bad so taking him out into the yard after he eats has been a problem, but he’s learning, slowly.  He has already learned what meditating is, and while he might not meditate himself, he leaves me alone when I am  on the cushion.

I still have a lot to learn about lap dogs (hes only 12 lbs).  I think he would like to get in my lap a little more than I let him, but we will work out an accomodation as we get used to each other.

I think that I lucked out again in my choice of dogs.  Comet was (is) the Perfect Puppy and Duke fits right in with Comet and me.  Comet shows a little jealousy sometimes;  he’s still my main dog and always will be, but Duke has already bonded with me and with Comet and with the house.  He even gets to walk with Comet off-leash for their first walk in the morning, around 5:30.  There are no other people around and no traffic at that time, so as long as the dogs stay on the same side of the street, I have no problem with their running freely.  Duke really reminds me of George when he chases after his big brother, Comet.  He has this big dog attitude, like when he is walking down the street he kind of struts with his head held high and that makes the ends of his ears flap as we walks, similar to the way George’s hair flopped.  Duke is cool. and I think that Comet is happy that I got him.  I know I am.

Related articles by Zemanta I just had to put this reference in. It has nothing to do with my blog.

• Ten Things You Don’t Know About Comets (blogs.discovermagazine.com)

I was driving through dowtown Ballard, collecting some things I need for my trip to India and South Africa when I drove past the shop I used to rent with Scott Hendrickson.  Suddenly, I remembered that when I first moved to Seattle with my last wife, Susan, we had hocked everything we owned so we could raise the down payment on a boat.  We were totally into being sailors, learning all the boat’s systems while working for 10 years so we could sail around the world.  That was my idea, anyway.  (Fade to black on white…)

While we were still in Providence, RI, both of us woefully underemployed, we lived in a little town called Tiverton, RI on the Sakonnet RIver We had access to a Valiant 40 that was moored across from our house.  That was the reason we got inspired to buy a boat and live on it until we were ready to retire and take off around the world.  Susan and I had both been married twice previously, and were tired of having big weddings, so we decided to get married at a close friend’s house in Seattle, before we took off on a whale research cruise up in Alaska. It was an awesome honeymoon.  Jerry Garcia died while we were looking for whales in Alaska, so that gives you the time frame we were dealing with.

I had lived in Seattle when I did my postdoc and Susan really liked Seattle based on several trips we made here. I had also lived aboard a boat in Santa Barbara, so I had a better idea of what we were getting in to than Susan did. Despite that, after the wedding, we decided to look for jobs in the Pacific NW, and I found the perfect job, being Lee Hood’s lab manager (I was supposed to not have to write grants anymore (yeah, right), so I applied for it, and Susan applied for a job as a tumor registrar in Tacoma.  Both places wanted to interview us and paid for us to fly out to Seattle for the Interviews.  I had mine on one day, and then, the next day, so while Susan was interviewing, I walked around Lake Union, looking at boats for sale.

At one brokerage, I saw a boat in the 40 foot range that looked solid and roomy enough to live aboard, but I also saw another boat that was a 47 foot ketch, that had beautiful workmanship (alas, it was wood), and was a good price, but I thought 47 feet was bigger than we could sail comfortably.  But it was a beautiful boat, so the next day, I made the mistake of showing it to Susan, and she decided that if we were going to live aboard a boat, it had to be that one, The Odyle.  We put in a bid that was way under the asking price, but not so far under that it was it insulting, and flew back home to Tiverton.  A few days later the owners accepted our bid, and that set everything in motion for us to divest ourselves of everything in order to buy the Odyle.  At least we thought we were getting rid of everything.  When we finally got here with our stuff and moved aboard, we found that we had enough stuff to fill the boat and then two additional storage lockers with junk we would never use.

But, the point of all this was that between 1997 and 2001, all our effort, or mine, anyway, outside of being a scientist, was put into learning how to live aboard, and sail,  a 47 ft ketch. Not that we sailed a whole lot, but we worked on the boat a whole lot.  It was overwhelming and, in the end, we only did one trip up into the San Juans (a group of islands in the Puget Sound where people go on boats).  Even though we had put so much of our effort into being sailors, I barely remember that it even happened now.  The live aboard culture is very different than the dry land culture, but it was only when I drove past that shop that I even remembered that it happened.  Susan had felt that living aboard was romantic for about two weeks, and all the time after that was spent thinking that this was not the thing that she had signed up for.  I eventually found that the peripheral neuropathy got so bad that I have a very hard time balancing, and the last thing you want to be is off balance when you are on the pitching foredeck trying to shorten sailed in a gale.  It became clear that my days as a sailor were numbered.  Susan’s ended even before mine did.  But we have very few records that that time ever existed:  No momento’s of our time aboard or trips we took.  Not even any pictures.  It all just funneled down the tube and disappeared into some lost time when we thought we were going to be happy sailing around the world.

Completely gone.