another character added to the drama

kellie and i adopted a dog on saturday, right before our region was scheduled to be pounded by 24-36 inches of snow. how's that for rationality?

the dog's name is dizzy dean. you can read more about her previous life here. when we met her at the shelter, they told us her name was despy which different members of the shelter's courteous and professional staff pronounced 'depsy,' 'despi' and 'de, de, how do you say her name again?' this led us to believe a name change was in order. after toying around with the name 'dispy,' which would be both short for dispensationalist and a creative way of ridiculing fundamentalists, we settled on her current name.

since dizzy hails from a workin' breed (cattle dogs are unaccustomed to the 'g' in 'ing' participles being pronounced) she has a reservoir of energy that needs to be drained on regular occasion. knowing this, i took her out this morning for a walk, which will heretofore be known as the walk from hell.

would you like to hear about the walk from hell? i thought you might...

since beverly received at least 30 inches of snow over the weekend, our routes were rather restricted. we could either walk up to cabot street and contend with a steady stream of cars or we could walk down the steepest hill in town, which also doubles as our street. since dizzy desires to herd anything that moves, she voted for the former. since i do not desire either dizzy or myself to be hit by a car or snowplow, i chose the latter. since i'm the alpha dog at 4 judson, my vote ruled the day. i made a bad decision.

as soon as we headed down the hill dizzy did her best imitation of an iditarod champion. as a result she forced me to ski down judson street. although dr. james would have enjoyed the experience, i found it quite harrowing.

once we made it to the bottom of the hill, a ninety-pound bullmastiff peeked out from behind a stalled car. the dog seemed friendly, wagging her tail and slobbering her way towards us. however, since kate, my other dog whom i am now cheating on with dizzy, pulls this same trick right before she pummels other dogs, i made sure we kept our distance. so there i was, dragging my cattle dog away from the possum playing mastiff and using my best t.j. mackey impersonation ("phil, I will drop kick those fuckin' dogs if they come near me") to keep the mastiff at bay. then, after the mastiff found another patsy to work his magic on, i dragged dizzy up the hill she had just forced me to ski down.

after we made it up the hill, i conceded to dizzy's wisdom and attempted to walk her down cabot street. another bad idea. we made it as far as the hess station before i realized that there was nowhere to walk except in the street. moreover, the drivers (and i do use that term loosely) on the aforementioned street were acting like snow was a performance enhancer for their automobiles. thus, dizzy and i made our way back to the condo. as we were walking down the street i saw a red f-150 with a snowplow ramming snow deeper and deeper into the american legion parking slot. as he pulled back to make another viscous run he waved to let me know that he was aware of us and then throttled back into the slot. confident that the plowman knew that we were on the street, i allowed dizzy to drag me towards home. then, as suddenly as he had rammed into the slot the plowman came barreling out. i raised my leash free hand to remind him that we were there, but he kept coming. and kept coming. and, you get the picture, the next thing i knew, the gate of the truck bumped into me, i slammed my fist into the gate and hit the ground. fortunately, the rear wheel finally came to a stop.

while valiantly suppressing the filth-flarn-filth that i wanted to say, i got up out of the snow, brushed myself off and began to walk towards the condo. at this point the plowman finally saw me and asked if i was ok. i told him i was fine and made some conciliatory comment about the tight quarters on our street. at that point he noticed the American Airlines patch on the flight line jacket i swiped from my dad several years back. "hey, do you work for american airlines," he asked (and in so doing became the 1,000,000 stranger to ask that question). no, i muttered, my dad does. "do you think they're open today?" he asked. "i dunno," i muttered. "the airport says that only one runway is operating. things are probably messy." with that, i edged around the truck and headed towards the condo.

thus ended the walk from hell.