Sense of Adventure

Holy crap!

Not ten minutes ago I was out in front of the house doing taijiquan. I like to do the Long Form outdoors when I can. It’s a very pleasant evening, and there’s more room outside than in my living room.

I was just nearing the end when I saw a couple of cats come into my driveway. I figured they were fighting, although it struck me odd I hadn’t heard them yowling and fussing. But cats usually don’t pal around together outdoors.

They held their bodies kind of hunched, as cats do when agitated. But they didn’t act upset. They mainly seemed curious.

They came up by the car, maybe ten or twelve feet from me. There’s a full moon, or nearly so. By its light I saw they weren’t cats. They had long, pointy muzzles, black masks, bushy tails with dark stripes.

Yes, they were raccoons. Not big - about housecat sized, obviously. I suspect they’re adolescents.

Freaked me out. I know raccoons live here in the Rio Grande Valley - I saw one a couple of years ago, big fat critter, a mile or two north of here. It crossed in front of me on a dark residential street between 2nd and 4th streets, one evening while I was driving to Smith’s. But I certainly never expected to see one around my house. Much less two.

They peered at me without much sign of interest or concern. Then they went back out and walked south down the sidewalk. I came inside to, well, tell somebody.

I hope they have sense to stay out of my backyard while Emma’s out, and to avoid tangling with the neighborhood cats. I don’t want anybody getting hurt. I also hope the little bastards stay out of my trash caddy, which I just rolled out to the curb for tomorrow’s pickup.

But … raccoons. In my driveway. Kewl!

I try to keep Emma Dog supplied with rawhide bones. She tends to get bored - I’m just not real exciting company for a dog, our walks (still not regular enough!) notwithstanding. The bones keep her entertained for hours.

The other night her Uncle Joe noted she had what he thought of as “small” rawhide bones, and suggested bigger ones would last longer, hence be more cost effective. I buy them in bags at the best discount I can get, usually when they fall off the truck and wind up on the shelf at Costco. They carried some from a brand called Healthy Hides a couple years ago that just lasted forever.

Perhaps that’s why they don’t carry them any more.

It usually takes Em a few days to chonk through one of the bones I’ve been giving her. But I thought, Hey, maybe Joe’s got a point. He is the wisest man I know, after all.

So yesterday I went to PetSmart to get her a bag o’ food, and checked the rawhide bones. And my eye lit upon the Super Colossal Dinosaur Shinbone model. Aha! I thought. That’ll hold her.

So I got it, and bestowed it on her late last night. She accepted it eagerly. Then she dropped it on the living room floor and peered at it.

“Chew your bone, sweetie,” I said.

She looked up at me like, “Dad? How?”

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Just watched Idiocracy on cable. I loved Mike Judge’s Office Space. This one, also by Beavis and Butt-Head creator Judge (Albuquerque’s own!), offered some laugh-out-loud moments … such as the sign for “St. God’s Hospital,” with the last few letters crunched down the side where they run into an angle in the building.

But on the whole it struck me as a movie that makes fun of stupid people without itself being particularly smart.

I found it deeply okay. It’s worth a watch.

For a better experience, watch Office Space again. Then go read Cyril Kornbluth’s The Marching Morons.

The real one. Here in New Mexico the seasons usually arrive on or about the first of the month they’re supposed to start: December, March, June, and of course, September. Despite what the bureaucrats say, the feel of the air, the nature of the light, the mellowing temperatures tell the tale. And I’m not the only person who thinks this way; Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy does too.

Usually I can smell and feel the approach of autumn by about the middle of August. This year, after again having a cool start to summer, we got a late-season heat spurt that kind of hung on. There wasn’t a lot of autumn advance notice.

But today when Emma and I went for our walk it was clearly beginning to be autumn in Albuquerque’s North Valley. My favorite time of year.

We walked the ditch that runs up through Tinnin. It’s a beautiful walk year-round. The yards are mostly a combination of immaculate lawn and well-designed and maintained xeriscaping (that latter’s usually the sticking point.) The houses are mostly gorgeous and well-constructed, as I learned when I got to walk through some of them during construction years ago, courtesy of my friend Chip, who was in the business.

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