Camper and Sierra go to Lake Tahoe!

Hope Valley, near South Lake Tahoe, CA

We recently went on a weekend getaway to Lake Tahoe with our two doggies, Camper and Sierra.  It was a beautiful winter wonderland with nearly 6 ft. of snow on the ground and a warm sun in the sky.  The pups were overjoyed with frolicking in the snow for the first time ever!  I finally had a chance to sit down with them and talk about the trip:

Jamie: So, Camper, how did you enjoy your first time in the snow?  

Camper: Whatz sno?

Jamie: Oh, um, it’s the cold white stuff you walked on.  When you got thirsty you licked it, remember?

Camper: O yeh, I reemembers.  Uh, it wuz fun!  I liked runnin in it.  And then I liked layin in it.  And then I liked licken it.

Camper prepares for his interview.

Jamie: Great! I knew you would.  You know, you’re a husky and huskies are made to withstand really cold temperatures.  But this was the first time you’d ever been anywhere really cold, wasn’t it?

Camper: Kan I lick youz face?

Jamie: What?

Camper: I wanna lick youz face.  Kan I?

Jamie: No.  We’re not licking faces right now.  Back to the snow...remember when we went to hang out with all the other huskies and you helped them pull the sleds around in the snow?  Was that fun?

Camper: Ya, dat wuz purty fun.  But I no like bein tied to stuffs, I just wants to run!

Sierra: That wasn’t fun.  That was animal cruelty.

Jamie: Sierra, you didn’t like dog sledding?

Sierra: No.

Jamie:  But you guys got to pull sleds with professional sled dogs!  Some of them still compete in the Iditarod.  Don’t you guys know what that is?  Don’t they cover that in your doggie newsletters?  It’s a big deal!

Sierra: When you said we were going dog sledding, I assumed the dogs would be riding in the sled, not pulling it.

Camper: Watz a ididerdod?

No idea what they're in for.

Jamie: It’s a famous dog sledding race held every year in Alaska.  Remember when you got to lead the team and ran next to the pretty white husky, Olive?  She used to race in it every year.

Camper: Yeh, she was purty. But teh doggies wuz loud! Barkin and jumpin and they goes fast!!

Sierra: They were offensive and loud.

Jamie: I know Sierra, you didn’t like dog sledding. Did you enjoy any other part of the trip?

Sierra: Well, lets see, you tied me to a pack of loud, rowdy, furry mongrels against my will, made me run around in a giant circle while tied to said mongrels, I was forced to lay on the cold ground with no blanket or tent to protect me from the elements...

Jamie: It was 45 degrees out, and all the dogs were laying on the ground.  Not just you.

Sierra: Don’t get lippy.  I also had to sleep in the truck with this hairy nincanpoop while you and the other humans were living it up in a hotel.

Jamie: You got to sleep on a giant fuzzy blanket in an extended cab truck that’s about 10 times the size of your kennel and it was plenty warm in there.

Sierra: Don’t get me started on the size of my kennel. 

Jamie: YOU’RE A DOG!

Camper: Kan I licks yo face now?  

Jamie: O.k. Let’s get back on track here.  Sierra, did you like hiking in the snow?  

Sierra: I liked it when Camper fell through the snow drift.

Jamie: Uh...yeah, that was a little funny.

Sierra: I saw you laugh at him when it happened.

Jamie: I saw you laugh at him too.

Camper: Woof! At leest I dint havs to wear a coat, Sierra!

Sierra: It was cold!  I have short hair!  

Camper: hehehehe...youz a weenie.

Sooo sleepy.  Must. Rest. Head.

Sierra: I don’t have to stand for this, I’m leaving.

Jamie: Okay, well, I guess the interview is over.  Seems a good time was almost had by all.  I know I had fun hiking and throwing snow balls at the dogs...

Sierra yells from the other room: That wasn’t o.k.!!  You could put an eye out with those things!

Jamie: ...and hopefully we’ll get to take another trip soon.  

Camper: Nowz I lick yer face?

Jamie: Fine.  Wait, didn’t you eat your own poop today?

BURDS!

I was planning on writing all about our experience at Fleet Week in San Francisco this past weekend.  How we took the Ferry (which is really just a floating day care that plays fast and loose with arrival times), how we walked along the Piers (which oddly enough are not numbered in sequential order), how the military confiscated pepper spray from my purse before allowing me to partake in their barbeque event...But instead, you'll be hearing from Camper again.  Why? Because several readers requested a new post from him and because his life just seems way more interesting than mine right now.

Hay peepholes.  How youz?  I fine.  I poop beter now cuz momz makes us fud evry nite and it tayst likes kandy and I don’t has to eets dry stuff no mores.  Dah only problems iz she takes way too long maken it and I done like waitin.  So I has to keep tellin her “Hurriez up!  I iz waitin!”  Den she always put Sierra fud down first and makin me wait sum more.  Das krap.  So to gets back at her, sumtimes I liks her face in dah middles of dah nite and wakes her up.  Hehehe, she done like it. 

Saturday we wents to dad’s work.  Dey gots lots uh weird birds waddling arownd and I ran all overs makin dose birds runaway even tho moms was hooked to me.  She ran too.

Yesterdays hoomans waz gone all day longs.  And we waz so bored.  We finally goes to doggie park after fud.  But evry time I runs up to a dog to says hi, der hoomans freek out and takes ‘em home.  Whatevers, I just tryin to say hi and chew on ‘em to see whats dey tayste like.

Today dad stayed wit us all dayz.  We went to doggie parks 2 timez.  At da sekon park, der waz a hooman pointen at sum birds on dah oder side of dah fence and so I looks and saw dem.  Dey waz just like dah onez at dads work so I know I kan chase dem and makem runs evrwhers.  So I jumps over dah fence and starts chasin em, but den dad jumps over dah fence and starts chasin too.  I done kno he like chasin too, and he also likes yellin loud.  We runz all overs and all dah way downs to dah water.  But den after runnin fur a wilz, he takes me back to dah park.

Den after dat we come home and hoomans talkin bout sumthin called groomen toomarowz.  I done kno what it iz, but dads taken us wen he get home.  I bet it iz gonna be fun wit lots uh birds and skwerls to run afters.  I tell you laterz what happens at deh groomen.

Camper

Things I've Learned Since Dan's Been Gone

Dan is gone to Kentucky for two weeks and we're currently at the half-way mark of his absence.  At this time it's unsure if I'll manage to survive the remaining half.  But if I do, I'm promised a t-shirt that reads "I ♥ KY."  Here's what I've learned in the week so far:

1. Street sweeping is a sham.  It says you can't park on our street from 3 am - 6 am on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.  I walked the dogs from 6:15 - 6:25 am on Tuesday morning and watched the street sweeper sweep the adjacent street, and approach the intersection to our street, only to turn the other way leaving piles of dirt, leaves and garbage and up and down the empty street.  Jackass.  I coulda parked there you know!

2.  These dogs are trying to kill me.  How do I know this?  Because of their poop.

  2a. Sierra has decided the park accross the street from our apartment is her park.  She doesn't understand why stranger dogs would be walking in her park.  Ever.  So when they do, she not-so-politely instructs them to get the f*ck out while pulling my arm out of the socket.  Sometimes she waits until I'm bent over, picking up her poo, then lunges for the other dog.  This results in poo flying in multiple directions.

  2b. Camper has explosive diarrhea.  Lets move on...

3. I much prefer walking/taking the train to driving.  You never have to parallel park a train.  Though parallel parking Dan's truck feels like I'm trying to parallel park a train.  On the upside, I'm sure I've given people in the neighborhood plenty of parking enduced entertainment.

4. Was I supposed to eat this week?  Dammit.

5. We are EXTREMELY lucky to have such wonderful neighbors and friends.  So far this week Teresa has walked the dogs each afternoon, cleaned up explosive diarrhea, rescued my palm tree from certain disaster, and fed Camper his special tummy diet.  After all that, she deserves a day at the spa.  I'll probably just give her some baked goods.

"What plant?" Photo courtesy of Teresa Goodwin.

6.  I don't like Dan being gone.

Guest Blogger: Camper!

Dear friends, family and blog-follwers:  Sorry for the delay in new musings.  Life, for the time being, seems to have taken hold of all my time and will not share it with me.  As a special treat for waiting so long, I'm bringing in a guest blogger.  He's had quite an exciting last few weeks and would just love to tell you all about it.  But please forgive his spelling errors.  He is, after all, a dog.

Hello Hoomans!

Camper hard at work writing.

It's me, Camper!  The noowist and purtiest edishun to deh Evans-Ball familee.  I'm gunna post this week's blog cuz I been doowin all sorts uh kewl stuffs.  A cupple weeks ago I went to dah Point Isabel Dog Park for the furst time evah!  It waz soooo amazun my doggie head almost ES-PLOH-DED!!  I WANTED TO RUN EVEREE WHERES!!  But meh hoomans wuld not takes off dah leesh.  Unkewl.  But after a lil bit, dey dropped meh leesh!!  Cuz at home dey says meh name, I come to dem and get treets.  But I not gunna come to dem at deh park, cus ders too much goins on!!  So I runs throo deh park and out to where deh hooman cars are, just to sees wats happenin.  Den meh hoomans catched up and dey was all outta breath like they waz runnin.  Dunno why.

Den a weeks later I goes back to Point Isabel.  Only dis time, dey not drop my leesh.  Bummers.  But dey puts me on a reelly reelly longer leesh, so I canz run around wile deys holds me.  It wuz sooooo MUCH FUNZ!!  But sumtimes I forget dey still has da leesh and I starts to run far, den dah leesh jerk me round in a sircle and all deh hoomans laffed at meh.  I gunna pees on deh floor laters for dat.  Hehehehehe.

Den sumthin SOOPER KEWL happind.  I learns how to open deh front door!  And I didn't need thums ur nothin!  Our front door has a handle insted of a nob and thanx to sum sooper great fire codes, deh door unloks when you pulls on deh handle!  So wile mom and dad were out, I wents over to dah park to chase birds and eat deh bread krazy old peeple feeds to dem.  Den the naybor hoomans came with der doggie, Shiloh and day tooks me home and told mom and dad on me.  Den dad tooks dah door apart and it done open any moors.

Dats just a fews of the way good stuffs I been doin'.  I reely likes it here!  K, bye.

Too tired for titles.

Does anyone remember about a month ago when I was sitting around all day long only leaving the house to walk the dog or visit the neighbors?  I do.  And I also remember thinking, “One day soon I’m going to wish I had this much free time to lounge around.”  But at the time I didn’t care because all that free time was making me INSANE.  Literally.  Just ask Dan.

Well, that day where I wish to have that free time again is here.  It is here and it is a bitch.  Don’t get me wrong, I love having projects, and being productive, and I always push myself to do more. But I've found my threshold. In the past seven days I…

Went with Dan and our pups on an overnight camping trip to Mount Umunhum near Los Gatos, CA.  We went with B.A.S.H., otherwise known as the Bay Area Siberian Husky Club.  We met all kinds of great new peeps and pups, watched the doggies pull stuff around for fun and slept in the back of the truck.  See my Facebook album for more on that.

Had my first product launch at work.  We successfully launched Katy Perry Revenge this week, a music gaming iPhone/iPod app with all Katy Perry music and graphics.  It’s very pink and bubbly.  On the upside we managed to keep the release of the game under wraps (sort-of) and we didn’t break anything such as servers, the game, our computers or each other.  On the downside I’ve been randomly bursting out into Katy Perry songs and Dan doesn’t seem to be much of a fan.

Met with Whitney Nichole, a Bay Area singer/songwriter who has just recorded her first full-length album and will be releasing it in a few months.  Through one of my previous instructors, Whitney contacted me for assistance in getting word out to the people about her new album.  How flattering!  Let’s hope I don’t screw it up.  She’s a super cool chick with a great sound who put Ludacris to shame when she and her sister recently covered the tune “Break Your Heart” during a live show at the Hotel Utah in San Fran.  Keep an eye on her; this could get epic…

Finished the week out at the Eat Real Festival at Jack London Square in Downtown Oakland.  It was a festival of food.  Literally.  There were food trucks and tents from local eateries, breweries, wineries and ice creameries all over the Bay Area.  We went with our friends/neighbors Elliot and Teresa.  I ate a burrito the size of my head that was so delicious I wanted to marry it and drank beer from a mason jar.  On the way home Elliot forced us into the Ben & Jerry's where Dan had a tender moment with a scoop of Peanut Butter Cookie Dough ice cream and I had a strawberry ice cream cone which was, again, as big as my head.  I'm now entering a food coma.  My kind of festival.  

Generally speaking this is where I’d leave you with some funny/witty/sum-it-all-up words of wisdom.  But since I didn’t bother writing a title, why bother writing a conclusion.  The end.

Hey blue eyes. Wanna come home with me?

Camper!

Yes, I did use this line on a guy today.  Sort-of.  Dan used it on him too.  He's about 2.5 feet tall, is really hairy, and has sparkly blue eyes.  His name is Camper and he's a husky that we just adopted from the sled dog rescue organization Norsled, here in the Bay Area.  We've been talking about/searching/wanting another dog ever since Sierra had to leave all her puppy roommates back in Florida.  She and Camper had lots of fun running around the park, and Camper also had fun finding an opening in the fence to run through.  Snap!  It may be a while before we can trust him off the leash.  But he's a very happy pup and (we think) about a year or so old.  He was handed over to the folks at Norsled in mid-July after being found roaming the mean streets of Modesto.  Actually, I'm not sure Modesto's streets are all that mean as I've never been there, but either way, that's where he was found.  He'd been staying with his foster mom and dad, Heron and Arturo, and their husky, Kira, for a little over a week when we scooped him up.

Sierra seemed to be a bit...er...confused as to why Camper stayed with us after his foster family left.  We tried explaining to her that she's Camper's big sister now and should be happy to have him here, but she doesn't seem to want to share her toys, bed, food, water or humans with him.  I guess maybe something got lost in the translation.

The Toy Stand-Off of 2010

We said, "Sierra, we brought home a new pup for you to play with all the time!  He's sweet, and happy and gives lots of kisses."

She heard, "Sierra, we hate you and in order to make your life miserable we brought home this new guy.  We're gonna give him all your toys, food, water and bed.  Deal with it."

Anyway, Camper seems to be enjoying his new home, at least that's what we infer from all the tail-wagging and kissing.  And Sierra's, well, dealing with it.  Lesson for the day:  Don't assume big sisters will jump on the little brother bandwagon right away, and don't google "activities for huskies in oakland california" unless you're a 250 pound single person looking to speed date.  Seriously.

Fun With Neighbors

You can’t pick your neighbors, and when you live in an urban setting your neighbors multiply while the square footage shrinks.  Over the past month, we’ve learned quite a bit about our neighbors.  Some good, some bad, and some just not right.  As our loft is a first floor corner unit, we often see various neighborhood peeps walking by.  We also hear a lot of interesting conversations courtesy of our open windows.  The most…uh….fascinating are the conversations people have with themselves while waiting on the corner for the light to change.  Then there’s the pudgy Philippine-Asian-Super Creep that lives in the house behind our building who, instead of walking down the street and talking to himself, stands on his stoop and talks to himself.  Which makes walking by SUPER enjoyable.  Sometimes he even does a little dance and hops from foot to foot, which really only adds to the enjoyment of passersby. 

Not all our neighbors are crazy though (thank God).  We also met the loveable, happy pup Shiloh and his human counterparts Elliot and Theresa.  We first encountered the trio soon after Elliot and Theresa had adopted their new family member and were walking down our street (they live in the same building).  We just happened to recognize Shiloh from a local Petfinder.com advertisement and struck up a conversation.  Since then we’ve gone on puppy play dates, they’ve had us over for dinner and even lent us some glasses and mugs to use as ours are now lost and gone forever thanks to those wonderful movers.  

But now, it’s time to tell you about the most horrible urban neighbor ever known to man: the street sweeper.  It’s bossy and dictates where you park on what days, it’s loud and shows absolutely no regard for whether or not you’re sleeping, it’s loud, and it’s frigging loud. 

Alas, thus is our new urban life; the good, the bad and the downright crazy.

Doggie Days of summer!

As most of you know we recently uprooted our pretty pup, Sierra, from her big fenced in yard, forced her to ride in a truck for 10 days cross-country, teasing her with pastures, fields and forests across the Midwest only to end up in the middle of a concrete jungle in California.  She expressed her unhappiness by looking at us as though she’d like to snack on our faces for lunch and consistently shedding her fur like a stressed geriatric.  So, we tried to appease her by taking her on daily outings to the area parks. 

Fortunately we have a city park right across the street, about 50 feet from our front door…that technically doesn’t allow dogs.  But, that doesn’t stop us from taking her there to pee, poo, chase squirrels and entertain the very loud elderly gentlemen who congregate there at sunrise to drink coffee and yell at each other from across the park.  Such a nice way to wake up each morning.  We also tried taking her to the dedicated dog park about 5 minutes away.  Visits here include a lot of sniffing and little pooing, but hardly any running or playing.  This must be what parents feel like when their kids stand alone in the corner of the playground.  And poop.

So, we ventured out from the city parks to some regional parks around East Bay where Sierra could run around without being attached at the hip (literally and figuratively) to her humans.  These larger parks have tons of space for our four-legged social outcast to run free, some hiking trails for her often lazy humans to exercise and beautiful shorelines and views.  The parks we frequent include Oyster Bay, Albany Bulb and Point Isabel. 

Oyster Bay was actually converted from an old landfill, which is an impressive use of an unimpressive property.  Sierra's favorite part is the jackrabbits who run around the park burrowing holes and tunnels.  Don't say anything, but they totally mess with her. They pop their heads up out of the ground, whistle at her then jet back down under the surface only to pop back up at a different hole (whack-a-mole style).  She's mystified by it.

The Albany Bulb has its very own doggie beach (photos courtesy of a stranger on Flickr who didn’t protect their photo rights – thanks!), which Sierra very tentatively approaches when we throw a stick in the water for her to catch.  Usually she only wades in ankle deep and waits for the waves to bring her the stick.  The Bulb also offers many interesting and intricate trails with hidden gems of hippy artwork (and possibly hippy shacks) among the landscape.  

But our favorite park is Point Isabel, which offers leisurely trails (with no threat of hippy interaction) and amazing views (uh, on a clear day) of the San Francisco skyline, the Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge.  Not to mention the café/shop that sells goodies for humans and doggies!  SOLD!  Sierra gets butts to smell and fields to run in, and her humans get deliciously warm coffee on those cold, blustery July mornings - no, really.

We were very proud of finding our doggie so many fun places to visit, and even thought she might be coming around to the idea of her new home.  Then the Fourth of July came and we realized our conveniently located loft/apartment meant we were conveniently located near a few of the local fireworks shows and our newly happy pup spent the entire night sleeping (and shaking) in the closet, with the doors closed.  Damn.  I hope dogs are as resilient as kids.