I confess

I am a looky-loo. When I see an open house in my neighborhood, I will go. Sometimes I pretend to be interested, sometimes not. This house (above) went up for sale a couple of days ago. The couple who lived there did quite a bit of work, so I wanted to check it out. Plus I have insatiable bungalow fever (note to editor: please consider this phrase for my forthcoming quotable quotes audioblog), so I had to scope it out. When we walked in, we ran into two other neighbors doing the same thing. Busted. Oh well. Before we left, I offered to buy the vintage, metal chairs from their front porch. Leon suggested I just steal them, but I figured someone would have caught me and thought better of it. So anyone got $325k laying around and want to be my neighbor? The asking price given the "boom" circumstances could be a lot worse, but isn't.

Sacramento's most blogged dog, Volume 12

Part of having a dog (and I imagine that this also goes along with having kids to some extent) is that you have to handle some pretty gross shit. This dog has at one time or another gotten all matter of fluid and solid that her little body generates, on me or my clothes. So whenever it is that I have a baby, let's just say that I'm not going to be as freaked out. The dog is the baby training wheels. If I can keep her alive, I can raise a kid. Probably.

So here I am on Sunday at some pet store. I think I really only stopped in because I had the dog with me. Most places don't allow dogs inside but all pet stores do, so I can't really pass one up if I have the dog with me. It's just not fair to her and I'm in the practice of making sure her life is a constant state of surprise and delight. This is probably because I fail to be surprised or delighted with much myself.

Now, most pet stores sell gross things as dog treats because dogs like to ingest some foul things. You usually see your basics: freeze-dried beef liver, stuffed femur bones, dried pig ears, dried pig snout, some kind of hooves (stuffed and non) and the grossest of the gross. Dried bull wieners. They're sometimes called bully sticks, or steer pizzle and come in a variety of lengths, from believable to alarming. Heylove loves these things, but they creep Leon out so I don't get them too often. So after walking all around the pet store letting Heylove vaccum up all the errant kibbles, I decided that she wanted to try the stuffed hooves. I picked out the one stuffed with peanut butter, because the cheese and "meat" one looked far too gross.


I opened it for her and let her go to town.



And to town she went.




The smell of this giant toe nail stuffed with peanut butter was horrible.

Now before you start to think that the only thing I ever do is write about dogs, cook food and eat, let me just say that well, you're mostly right. This weekend was not much different. Friday night I stayed in and made soup. Saturday I went to a wedding for an old co-worker. I cried a couple of times and then I tripped over a bench. I now have two gnarly knee bruises to show for it. Sunday, not satisfied with the level of personal injury commited this weekend, I burned my hand by grabbing the handle of a sautee pan that just came out of the oven (heat is hot!) and then I took doglet walking all over Discovery park. After all this, I still feel like I didn't get enough time to relax and decompress.

I am pretty sure I'm eating at Spataro tonight. This will be visit #2. I'll write a review after the third visit. Besides, having just read "Eating My Words" by former NY Times food critic, Mimi Sheraton, that's what you do. Go at least three times and then write the review. I'm not going to even bother with Ma Jong's. What I ate there sucked so bad, I'm not planning on going back 2 more times.

Sure is good people

Someone I know from work adopted this cutie riblet from the hurricane ravaged Gulf Coast regions. She sure is good people.

So, there's nothing much to speak of this weekend. I am going to a wedding tomorrow and can't figure out what to wear. That means I have to go out and find something. Since I scrapped my 24 hour membership 2 years ago, I've lost weight but gained a whole clothes size. This does not go well with my liliputian-like frame. When does the part in my life come when it'll be perfectly acceptable for me to wear housecoats all day? 70? That's not soon enough.

Other stuff:
1. Saw Capote. Loved it. What struck me most is that it was filmed beautifully. The parts they filmed that were supposed to be Kansas (not sure if it actually was on location, you know how they do things like that. LOTR was actually filmed in NZ and not Middle Earth, sorry to break it to you), were perfectly desolate and grey. And I loved Philip Seymour Hoffman as Tru. He was good with the voice and expresions. And I'm not sure that I've ever not liked Catherine Keener in anything. The only dude I didn't care for was Perry Smith. I think he was a little too something...maybe I want to say fake-tense. But it's not like I know how the real dude was, so whatever. And one other thing I'm going to be picky about is that when Capote does that bit about chilling with Marilyn Monroe and her upside-down hanging Matisse paintings, it didn't seem right. So I went back and checked my George Plimpton book to find where I first heard about it. That book actually says it was Greta Garbo and upside-down hanging Picasso paintings. The book is an oral biography, so either one could be right, I guess. He was friends with both ladies.

2. One of my nicest pals brought me a couple of goodies from H&M today. When does that store in SF open? Supposed to be soon, right?

Fare thee well.

Tonevendor is closed now, but you knew that. Where am I going to buy handfulls of F-men CDs now?


Their last day was Saturday, 10/29. It was their best business day since they opened. Dan said that they should have went out of business more often.


Mochi's last in-store appearance.


Are you crying yet?


How about now?