Homes, homes on the range

The view from the back yard at Rancho Pendejo.
The view from the back yard at Rancho Pendejo.

The move to Duke City is going two ways, gradually and then suddenly, like Mike’s bankruptcy in “The Sun Also Rises.”

Since August we’ve managed to shift Herself, her toiletries and a subset of her wardrobe, and Mister Boo to Rancho Pendejo. Then, a week from today, boom! The movers show up and in two days Chez Dog will be stripped bare, its innards exported to New Mexico.

Mister Boo supervises my cycling coverage from the other side of the couch.
Mister Boo supervises my cycling coverage from the other side of the couch.

I spent Saturday night at the new place. Herself had scored a queen-sized bed for one of the guest rooms, which meant we could dispense with the inflatable mattress in the master bedroom, and come morning I did a few hours’ worth of paying work in the living room before stuffing the mobile office back into the Subaru and motoring north.

I’m out of practice at working on the go, and it shows. I tapped away at the MacBook in a crouch from the couch until I remembered the previous owner had left a cheapo desk and chair in a back room. Duh. That took a few of the kinks out of my process.

But I missed having the Turk sprawled out on my drawing board, and Mia peevishly demanding someone’s attention (“Meow? Meow? Meeeyow!”) So it was good to come home, even if “home” is something of a fluid concept at the moment — here today, there tomorrow.

And I even managed a ride, the first in a good long while. And just in time, too. Last night I dreamed that I had shed so much muscle mass since this two-speed exodus commenced that my bib shorts had become baggies.

 

Interbike 2014: Homeward bound (part one)

A room with a view.
A room with a view.

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (MDM) — Another Tour de Interbike is nearly in the books. The penultimate stage is today (Flagstaff to Albuquerque) with the finale tomorrow (Albuquerque to Colorado Springs).

The Mad Dog Media nerve center at the Luxor.
The Mad Dog Media nerve center at the Luxor.

It was the usual nutty cluster of fuck on the show floor, and thus my best-laid plans for bloggery gang aft agley. My cell at the Luxor was as far away from the action at Mandalay Bay as one could be and still be in Las Vegas, so my dogs were barking so loudly by the time I got “home” that I just tumbled into bed. Mornings were spent over at LiveUpdateGuy.com helping Sir Charles wrangle the Vuelta.

I did another round of that this morning from my sunny suite at the Hampton Inn in Flag’ — a mighty improvement from the Luxor it was, too — and now I’m fixin’ to head east at high speed for Duke City. Mister Boo is not the only critter in the house with a bed now, thanks to Herself. ‘Oorah, etc., et al., and so on and so forth.

Tomorrow I’ll be taking that left turn at Albuquerque that Bugs was always missing. I wonder what the cats have in store for me? Best not to think about it, the way Bugs never worried much about Elmer.

 

Interbike 2014: The Peristalsis Project

Speaking of moons, I snapped a quick shot of this one through the driver's-side window as Mister Boo and I barreled along north of Pecos.
Speaking of moons, I snapped a quick shot of this one through the driver’s-side window as Mister Boo and I barreled along north of Pecos.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (MDM) — It was about 9:30, and I wanted to hit the Whole Paycheck for a late dinner before it closed for the night, but after the long drive from Bibleburg Mister Boo was having some difficulty locating his inner turd in the largely greenery-free zone surrounding our hotel.

We’re here to close on Chez Dog South, a process that has been … interesting. Especially if you’re trying to do it from a distance, with Herself on a junket to Maryland, while holding down four part-time jobs. The deal is to be done this afternoon, but I will believe when I’m standing in the title company’s office with a key in one hand and my pants around my ankles.

Speaking of incoming and outgoing, I finally located a small patch of grass and steered The Boo toward it.

“Go ahead, man,” I told him. “It’s a mortgage company’s lawn. Knock yourself out.”

 

Reunion

The Boo and Herself
Mister Boo and Herself enjoy a tender moment.

Oh, happy day. Mister Boo loves himself an auto trip, and if it takes him anywhere near Herself, well, so much the better.

The vet has given the Boo the all clear, though the one-eyed little stinkbug still has some meds to finish up. I passed the doctoring off to Herself and got back to paying work between forays into the Realty Jungle.

It helps to remember to fetch a mouse and SD-card reader along on these little junkets, which of course I did not, and if I have to keep working a trackpad and uploading photos via telepathy for much longer I will require a trip to the vet myself.

The good news — well, besides the Boo’s eye injury being healed and his reunion with Herself — is that we have finally made an offer on a place after examining eleventy-seven of the sonsabitches and are awaiting further reports from the front. More as we learn it.

 

Vision quest

Mister Boo has the vision of a GOP congresscritter but more brains and a decidedly sweeter temperament.
Mister Boo has the vision of a GOP congresscritter but more brains and a decidedly sweeter temperament.

One of the drawbacks to having eyes that bug out like VW headlights is that one gets cracked from time to time.

Mister Boo, who suffers from a lens luxation in the right eye, from time to time manages to exacerbate the problem by bumping into something. Author-poet Jim Harrison, who is likewise blind on one side, has mentioned having similar navigational issues.

Anyway, the poor little guy (Boo, not Jim) did it again on Wednesday, and his eye specialist has prescribed a fresh round of medications. So until next Wednesday at least he gets:

One drop of dorzolamide in both eyes twice daily.

One capsule of minocycline daily.

A half tab of carprofen twice daily.

One drop of ofloxacin in the right eye thrice daily.

And one drop of NaCl solution in the right eye thrice daily.

Mind you, this is in addition to the walks (administered twice daily); meals (twice daily); and treats (as needed, which is to say every 15 minutes until he’s full, and then every 30 minutes thereafter). Plus, I anticipate that on his next visit to the eyeball doc the Boo will be prescribed a patch, a peg leg and a parrot. Then we’ll have to call him Cap’n Boo. Arrr.

There has to be some way to blame Obama for this.