Becca's Blog

Doggy graduation time.

Coffee finished his last obedience class this past Thursday, and Ethel has a couple more Saturday sessions to go, so she'll be done by the end of the month. They have learned all the same things—sit, wait, stay, down (well, Ethel doesn't do "down," actually)—but the instructors have slight variations in how they teach and recommend that these behaviors be reinforced. So it's a lot of details to remember (or forget, mostly), and it means that on walks, when I've got at least a couple of dogs on leash, I usually feel that I should be doing something better/diffferent with them. Even so, I'm pretty pleased at how they are both doing. I can usually get them to drop what they're doing/smelling and give me their attention, which is key to managing their behavior.

Coffee's class was through Bravo Pup!, and we adore his instructor, Paul. I think I want Paul to be my life coach, because I'm convinced he could get me to do anything with positive reinforcement and bits of hot dog. He's one of the nicest people I've met in a long time, and he's incredibly generous with his time and attention. We're glad that he's offered us the opportunity to keep working with him on Coffee's, uh, issues. (In common chihuahua fashion, Coffee can go ballistic—just barking, but that's bad enough—at people or other dogs with very little apparent provocation.)

Last summer, shortly after Coffee came to live with us, we had a couple of private sessions with Sandi, the owner of Bravo Pup!, which gave us the basic tools for managing his fear/aggression/assholeness/whatever. We found out at the time that the little dude gets really excited and happy when he's asked to work, and he's good at it. We were surprised, to be sure. His reputation at the shelter was that of a frail old sad sack who just needed a quiet home to spend his last days in. He actually has a big, kinda dominant personality, and he thrives on attention. We learned early on that someone taught him the "shake" command, but this year by chance we found out that he also knows "high five!" We're quite amused by this trick. Probably no one else would be. 

So the formal obedience class with Coffee is mainly about sharpening up his and our skills. Coffee has everyone in class convinced that he's a timid little shrinking violet; he's only let loose with the full-on barking a couple of times. Since the class is full of bigger dogs, I can't blame him much.

Ethel also has everyone in her class convinced that she's shy, which is not the case at all. She's a gregarious rowdy girl who does get out of line on occasion. Once she jumped up on the couch and stole a bite of cheese roll right out of my hand. It was a delicious cheese bun from Acme Bakery, and I really didn't feel like sharing. And of course dogs are not supposed to get on the couch or steal food. Ethel and Lucy came to us with no obedience training at all, it seems. They are housebroken (Lucy not perfectly, I'm afraid), but they didn't know any basic commands.

Dogs usually pick up "sit" very quickly, but it's taken us weeks to get Lucy to sit reliably on command, maybe because she's so low to the ground. She's good at other commands, though, like "touch (my hand)" and "watch me." It's pretty surprising how much intelligence dogs can demonstrate when you ask it of them.

Once more, with feeling.

A few weeks ago Jane and I grabbed her niece and headed to our county records department, and we got married again, four and a half years after our Canadian wedding. We weren't even sure of the process: It turns out that you have to go through a ceremony and have an officiant complete the license. We figured a civil ceremony would be quick and dry--very bureaucratic. But the vows were quite touching, and Alameda County has a chapel-like wedding room that didn't feel like a sterile government office--it was actually romantic.

We both got a bit verklempt (well, actually, I had tears streaming down my face). It really means so much to me to be legally married to the person I love, in the state where I've lived my whole life.

Afterward we went to a late, festive lunch at the Wood Tavern in Oakland, complete with a bit of bubbly.

We also went to a lovely wedding of a couple that we know, who were also married in San Francisco four years ago, and had their marriage annulled along with all the other same-sex marriages performed in San Francisco. At their ceremony, they said they are afraid of having this taken away from them again, and I know how they feel. 

Californians, please, vote no on Proposition 8.

Impulse purchase of the week.

I went in to Target last night, looking for some festive but inexpensive holiday plates (and a new set of flannel jammies). Believe me, we already have plenty of tableware, including a nice set of holiday dessert plates and mugs. But for me, bad habit though it be, getting in a holiday mood usually involves feathering the nest a bit more.

Instead of some Melmac plates with snowmen on them, I found these.

They are not inexpensive, as Target dinnerware goes, but they're a far cry from what you might spend at a more upscale joint, and I love them. I couldn't photograph them very well, but the deep red and heavy lines have a Cezanne-ish feel to them, and they're rough-hewn and beautiful at the same time. Those bowls are big enough to be small serving bowls--enough soup or cereal for three people would fit in them, so they're not the most practical, and I could have done without them, but there is, alas, no open stock.

I'm kind of a completist freak--I really wanted eight place settings, but since these are bulky and heavy, I figured that would present a storage problem. Also, a table full of eight settings of this stuff might be a bit overwhelming, so it might be better to mix it with something lighter. And considering that our entertaining is pretty much limited to my rich fantasy life, it's kind of a nonissue.

Even so, I was only able to leave the second box in the store last night by promising myself I would watch the Target Web site for after-holiday sales. But then I checked the Web site (I was going to be lazy and swipe their photos), and this set isn't there! I don't really need to go back to the store and buy four more settings, do I?

Mashed potatoes are the food of the gods.

So is pie. I played hooky from work on Thursday and made pumpkin pie, and we roasted a wee turkey. And we have just enough leftovers.

This is a working weekend for me, and I'm likely to be doing 12-hour workdays next week; maybe by next Sunday I can show you some pictures of the finished carwash flaps scarf and my snail's progress on the baby blanket edge.

Sign me UP!

The city of Berkeley will pay to install solar panels on my house? I'm so there.

I heart this story.

County clerks vow same-sex support

Valentine protest gaining sympathy in many offices

My Christmas spirit's not quite dead yet.

I'm still making holiday goodies and thinking I'll get those last New Year's greetings into the mail. And knitting a gift scarf. It'll be an MLK Day gift, that's all. I had most of this week off and got to spend it mostly how I chose, so I just kept on with the holiday baking. And I bought another Christmas album this afternoon and listened to it all the way through.

I went to Down Home Music in El Cerrito this afternoon to pick up a birthday gift for an almost-3-year-old whom Jane and I know, and found a Sarah McLachlan holiday CD. I love her voice, and some of her songs, and this CD contains a bunch of  carols that I'm sentimentally attached to from childhood. So I was happy to buy both records there, and do my tiny bit to support an East Bay institution.

And then I took a moment to remember another East Bay institution. The Ivy Room reopened on December 15--I drove by that evening and noticed that it was open and (horrors!) looked well-lit and way too schmancy. So tonight I stopped in on my way home to check it out up close. On the plus side, the bartender is perfectly nice (he took my shit about whether they had instituted a dress code with good grace), and they have an intriguing drink menu. The drinks aren't cheap anymore, but I can deal with that. On the minus side, if the decor is any indication, they seem to be angling for a none-too-sophisticated crowd of 22-year-olds. One side of the bar is decorated in almost passable thrift-store lounge chic. The other side, where the *bar* is, looks like a living room out of a Sears catalog. As a result, I felt perfectly at home whipping out my knitting. I don't think they plan to book bands anytime soon, if at all. I'd have to stop by later in the evening to get a sense of the crowd--the bartender said it's mostly the after-work crowd, plus some locals.

The buyers of the Albatross were able to clean up the grime without killing the character of the place. Why couldn't the new Ivy Room owner do the same? Damn.

How we know it's fall in Berkeley.

These guys are everywhere. Constructing multi-spider condos between trees, making sure you get a faceful of web every time you try to walk out the gate or up the front step.

A few pics for Rach and Lala.

I've posted a teeny photo album; the link is at the top of the left column. These are a few pictures from two years ago, when my wife and I got married in Vancouver. Many of our photos aren't in digital form, and none were taken by a professional photographer--so they have much more sentimental value than aesthetic value. But still, I'm excited for Rachael and Lala, and thought they might want to see a bit of how the big moment was for us.

If I have time on Sunday, perhaps during the Oscars, I'll unearth and post a few pics from our party, which was way fun and a whirlwind blur.

Don't get me wrong--I love food.

Food should not be a religion, but it's culture, economics, politics--and thus endlessly interesting. It's really the elitism of boutiques of precious produce that pisses me off.

I've been thinking some lately about trying to eat as locally as possible--seeing last weekend that the fish at my local Albertson's came from Chile, Vietnam and Lake Victoria, Kenya, jarred (and nauseated) me. The relatively virtuous choice was wild-caught salmon from Alaska, but still nowhere near the 100-mile radius that environmentalists (the good ones) advocate.

I just subscribed to a service that delivers a box of (sort of)  locally grown organic produce. We'll see how that goes.