{"id":18355,"date":"2016-03-10T14:11:31","date_gmt":"2016-03-10T21:11:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=18355"},"modified":"2016-03-11T10:06:08","modified_gmt":"2016-03-11T17:06:08","slug":"sonora-dogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=18355","title":{"rendered":"Sonora Dogs"},"content":{"rendered":"

When we run low on dog food I take the girls with me to the neighborhood feed store. During chick season (which is a thing, who knew?) they have galvanized tubs of pullets inside the store, and the minute the dogs come through the door they hear them peeping and go straight for them. They can’t get at the\u00a0chicks, since they’re down inside three-foot-tall tubs, but I’ll lift the\u00a0dogs\u00a0up, one at a time, so they can take a peek. Oh please please PLEASE buy us one, daddy, we promise not to eat\u00a0it! Yeah, sure … I can guess how long that<\/em> promise will last.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0072\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We made a dog food run earlier this week, and afterward drove across the street to our\u00a0favorite Mexican drive-thru. That’s us, waiting in line. I ordered a Sonora dog<\/a>, a regional treat I hadn’t heard of before moving to Tucson:\u00a0a hot dog wrapped in bacon, deep fried,\u00a0served with a jalape\u00f1o popper on the side. When\u00a0we got home I pinched off a couple of bits of hot dog and bun\u00a0for the girls. They live for fast food, but I\u00a0never give them too much.<\/p>\n

I carried though with the\u00a0plan to list the\u00a0hot tub on Craigslist. A woman looking for a used spa for her B&B came by to see it and gave me a check on the spot. Later in the day her husband came by to look it over and figure out how to get it out of our back yard and onto a trailer. The next day he came back with two other guys and some dollies. When they took the side panels off, we discovered that the wood frame was rotted on the bottom. This was a surprise to me as well … the spa never leaked\u00a0in all the years we had it; apparently\u00a0the damage was caused\u00a0by overspray\u00a0from the nearby lawn sprinklers.<\/p>\n

Right away\u00a0I began to worry what was left of the frame wouldn’t be strong enough to survive tipping the spa on its side, which was necessary to get it through the gate and into the driveway. My worries escalated rapidly: they’re going to\u00a0ask for\u00a0their\u00a0money back and then leave us with it;\u00a0when they try to stand it on its side the whole thing will disintegrate into an unsightly pile of wood and plastic;\u00a0if they do manage to tip it\u00a0and get it onto the dolly, it’ll topple into the deep end of the swimming pool, taking one or\u00a0two of the guys with it, pinning them beneath its considerable weight and drowning them … I was hyperventilating by the time they got it out through the gate and onto the trailer.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0074\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As you can see, my fears proved groundless. They wrestled it out of the back yard and onto the trailer. It’s gone. Polly and I cleaned up with pile of rotted wood they left behind, and best of all, we still have the check. Whew! Now we have to figure out what to do with the concrete pad. We’re thinking a small gazebo. The electrical leads are still there, as\u00a0you can see, and they\u00a0might be good for something. If we do put in a gazebo, though, it won’t be wood!<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0077\"<\/a>Tuesday they took out\u00a0the\u00a0stitches\u00a0from my skin cancer surgery, but my skin hadn’t reacted\u00a0well to the suture material and the wound didn’t heal as fast as we’d hoped it would. It is\u00a0gross and\u00a0unsightly.\u00a0Now I have to clean the wound daily, put a little vaseline on it, and cover it with a bandage. They want to look at it again next Tuesday.<\/p>\n

I was hoping I’d be presentable\u00a0in time for air museum duty yesterday and the Tucson Festival of Books<\/a> this Saturday, where I’ll be manning the air museum’s tent. Instead, I have this\u00a0huge bandage on my forehead. Fortunately I found a hat that fits loosely enough to cover it and not press against my tender\u00a0forehead. Now that my skin isn’t trying to reject sutures, it should\u00a0heal normally. BTW, sorry about the T-shirt. I usually dress better for selfies!<\/p>\n

The annual book festival is a big deal.\u00a0I’m happy I’m finally getting around to going to one, even though I’ll be busy working at the air museum tent. The University of Arizona is a madhouse during the festival, so I plan to toss my bike in the back of the truck,\u00a0drive to a park about a mile away, then ride onto the campus where I’ll be volunteering. This morning I learned one of my favorite authors, Paolo Bacigalupi, will be there, so I may hang around after my shift and\u00a0try to get into one of the panels where he’s a scheduled speaker.<\/p>\n

The next day, Sunday, is the annual air show at Davis-Monthan AFB. One of my fellow\u00a0air museum docents has\u00a0a secret spot\u00a0just outside the air base fence where he takes\u00a0photos of aircraft doing air show routines overhead. He invited me to go along with him. Should be a fun weekend.<\/p>\n

Monday Donna and I are driving to Phoenix. Our son Gregory’s 50th birthday is today, and since he’ll be in Phoenix on business Monday we decided to go up and take him out to dinner. He won’t get in until the late afternoon, but I plan to drive up early and\u00a0spend the first part of the afternoon at the Commemorative Air Force Museum<\/a> in Mesa, a Phoenix suburb. CAF used to stand for Confederate Air Force, but they changed the name several years ago. I’m sure the minute Donald Trump takes office, they’ll change it right back. They’ll probably bring back the negro baseball leagues, too. And god knows what else.<\/p>\n

Next Friday is a scheduled\u00a0motorcycle maintenance day. I’m going over to Ed’s garage with parts\u00a0I ordered online and we’re going to rebuild the forks, which are\u00a0leaking a bit at the seals. We’ve had some practice at this: between his Goldwing and mine, this’ll be the third set of forks we’ve rebuilt. Originally Donna and I\u00a0were going to tow the motorcycle to Las Vegas Easter weekend so I could go riding with our son while she\u00a0visits Beth and the grandkids, but it being Easter weekend all the hotels are booked\u00a0and we’ve decided to put\u00a0the trip off until April. At least I’ll have good forks when I finally go riding again.<\/p>\n

Our daughter’s barista job at Starbucks turned out to be more aspiration\u00a0than actuality, and for the past two days she’s been beating the pavement looking for something else. She’s out at an interview now. We’re keeping the pressure on … we can’t afford to keep feeding her indefinitely. It’ll be her birthday next week, and I guess we should start thinking about how we’re going to mark the occasion.<\/p>\n

God, I’m sick of the presidential campaign, and it’s only March. I can’t stand the debates, Democratic or Republican. I can’t stand cable news. I can’t stand these endless town halls. I can’t stand Facebook or Twitter, what with people taking sides and viciously trolling against everyone else. I want to skip town\u00a0and live with the wolves for the next few months.<\/p>\n

I bet you feel the same way, too. Well, here’s to you. And me. And may we both still be here come election day!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When we run low on dog food I take the girls with me to the neighborhood feed store. During chick season (which is a thing, who knew?) they have galvanized tubs of pullets inside the store, and the minute the dogs come through the door they hear them peeping and go straight for them. They […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,18,40,3,555,14,2,1601,8,827],"tags":[2063,871,2064,556],"class_list":["post-18355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bicycling","category-consumerism","category-critters","category-flying","category-local-color","category-military","category-personal","category-photoblogging","category-politics","category-social-media","tag-children","tag-dogs","tag-home-improvement","tag-motorcycle-maintenance"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18355"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18367,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18355\/revisions\/18367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}