The Blair Dog Project

Because Kita is holding her own (she's still 14 and has kidney disease, but she's much better than she was a week ago) and because the yellow sunflowers are SOOO pretty and because no one else ever seems to be awake when I walk my dogs, I shot some video of them this morning. The wind and the shaky camera just adds to the experience. Thanks for humoring me. Oh, here's the link to Kita's video. I don't think Nero's is fully loaded yet.

smoke 'em while you got 'em

Apparently the city is cracking down its anti-smoking enforcement. Here's the press release that just came through:

City Steps Up Smoke Free Law Enforcement and Education Efforts

The City Manager’s Office announced today that it has hired two temporary, full-time Code Enforcement Officers to help increase awareness and enforcement of the City’s Smoke Free Ordinance.

It’s been brought to the City’s attention that some businesses are allowing smoking after regular business hours. This is not acceptable under the Smoke Free law.

These additional Code Enforcement Officers will be working schedules that include weekdays, weekends, days and nights.

A citation program is also in progress that will help expedite compliance by repeat violators by requiring an appearance in Municipal Court.

The city’s comprehensive Smoke Free law, which went into effect on June 30, 2006, prohibits smoking in places of employment, including restaurants, bars and outdoor patios. The law was introduced by Councilor Patti Bushee, and supported by the entire Governing Body.

The City is also pleased to announce that information packets containing a copy of the ordinance and Smoke Free display materials are now available. The packets can be picked up at the City Clerk’s Office, the Office of Constituent Services and Accounts Receivable. They have also been distributed to City Code Enforcement Officers.

Packets will SOON be available at the state Environmental Health Division, located at 4 Calle Medico, and at the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce Office, which has been gracious to provide the city with a convenient location for businesses on the Southside.

every day is labor day

Here's a link to a roundtable discussion in which I participated on the future of alt.weeklies. The actual roundtable was months ago. Note how prescient I was about Seattle Weekly (not that you actually needed to be Nostradamus to predict changes there, but I did make my comments in April, for what that's worth.
I woke up this morning, realized Labor Day was coming, which meant early deadlines all week. Deadlines Deadlines Deadlines !
KRS 1 was amazing. It was a really fun night. It's ridiculous and funny and wonderful how energetic he is and that he keeps putting it out there after 20 years. Actually he doesn't look like he's aging anymore. Club Alegra was pretty full, I'd guess in the 300 range, and EVERYONE was smoking and, no, I am not pitching hyperbole. Of course, their marque does say "Smokers welcome."
Sunday I went to Vanessie's for its final tea dance to benefit Southwest Cares. It was fun, albeit bizarre to see tons of barechested men dancing to house music in a dark club with pulsating lights when outside it was hot and sunny.
Speaking of sunny, yes, I returned to Darius' pool. It was awesome.
Meanwhile, on the news tip, looks like John Mark Karr won't be charged. What a fiasco.
On the non-fiasco news tip, we've got two great stories brewing for Wednesday. Cross your fingers that we don't get beat (ripped off right afterwards, yes, but not beat on the front end).

cranking along

KRS 1 tonight at Club Alegria. He probably won't go until midnight, so there should be no problem with getting in a little cat nap.
Hey political bloggers: If you missed it, check out Dan Frosch's expose of Wexford and pass it along.
Kita's prescription diet foodarrived today. It was not cheap.
On the bright side, my new ibook does not appear to be part of the battery recall. My serial number missed being in the recall group by about 50 digits. Yahoo!
Sorry my sentences have no transitions.
This is what it's like in my brain!

life is hell

Am operating on the if you can't say something nice, don't blog maxim. Actually, I'm just so very brain dead and stressed out I don't have any thoughts, except stream of consciousness ones, like:

must sleep need money is it raining? must sleep money good raining? coffee drink coffee

On another note, I find this annoying. I mean, I don't have money to buy it, but I don't want anyone else to either! Harumph!
We're in the middle of Fall Guide and at the start of Restaurant Guide. The sunflowers are so pretty this time of year. Must take pictures this weekend.
Our cover story this week on Hurricane Katrina raises some interesting points, I think. I guess today FEMA turned down Gov. Richardson's request for disaster declarations in the southern part of the state. He's going to appeal. There's obviously going to be a whole lot of Katrina coverage coming up, but I enjoyed this story from David Lee Simmons, and you'll find lots more from the alt.press on the one-year anniversary at AltWeeklies.
I visited with the AG's Office yesterday for a story I'll be writing as soon as I clear my desk (or, perhaps before that since I am probably never going to actually clear my desk).
My ipod is starting to go.
And, a little later than I should, I want to link to sometimes-SFR writer Silja JA Talvi's latest in In These Times, a very interesting article on the narcissism of our times.
Amen sister.

hanging on

It's been a tough week. My eldest dog, Kita, a Great Pyranese mix adopted from The Santa Fe Animal Shelter in 1993, was diagnosed with kidney disease. She's 14, has been slowing down quite a bit over the last year, but now things are very tenuous. There's not much that can be done for kidney damage, except try to keep it from getting worse. Because she got sick when I was out of town for the weekend, I've been very paranoid about leaving her alone for long periods of time (like the work day), so I've been coming in and out of town at least twice a day, leaving work for a few hours, going back, going home, up and down 20 minutes each week on Agua Fria until I can barely remember where I'm going. She's on some thyroid meds now and my vet special ordered special food that she'll start eating next week when it arrives. But mostly it's just watching her to see if she's getting worse or better. She's lost a lot of weight. She's always been a big heavy dog, but this morning, when I took her out, she couldn't make it back on her own and I was able to pick her up and carry her home.
I don't know. I hesitate to even write about this, because not everyone has the same level of feeling for their animals that I do. Lots of people do, of course…I've been mostly trying to get my work done, stay at home and not talk to anyone, to tell you the truth. I did make it out for a few hours yesterday to Frogfest, which was a nice little break and I got to hear some good music. Now I'm at the gym, to get a little exersize and check email (again, wireless at the gym, weird, but useful).
That's the news from here. Staying home so much has given me the chance to watch lots of CNN. This JonBenet story is really sick.

the war on personal hygiene

I set off yesterday, at 6:30 am, for the airport, feeling smugly ready for my trip. Being a competent traveler is a slightly juvenile thing to feel smug about, but there you have it. Then I switched on NPR only to learn that the war on terrorism had taken a new twist and travelers should expect to be unable to bring aboard shampoos, perfumes and other liquids.
Those of you who know me know that I am ALL ABOUT bath products. And one of the things I feel smug about, when travelling, is how efficiently I pack my lotions, sprays, roll-on perfumes, shampoos etc. Well that efficiency served me well, I suppose, as it made it easy to locate and leave all said items in my car.
I did not leave my deoderant, however, as no one mentioned deoderant on NPR (a sentence I hope not to have to write again anytime soon) and, to my way fo thinking at the time (and currently) deoderant isn't really a liquid or a gell. Actually I don't know what the hell deoderant is. I do know that my deoderant was new and unopened, it even had a sticker on it to show me, the consumer, that it had not been tampered on. The security at the airport was unimpressed by the sticker, however, and took it. They did not take my lipstick or foundation mousse, however. It was early in the morning so perhaps lipstick hadn't made it onto anyone's radar as a potential weapon of mass destruction.
I had many more pithy thoughts such as these, but by the time I arrived here, tired but relieved, I had a phone call from home that my 14-year-old dog had gotten horribly ill and needed to be rushed to the emergency vet hospital, so thus far most of my time in Evnaston has consisted of talking on the phone to vets, Peter (who is taking care of the dogs), the boy (who is helping Peter get the dog to and from vets). In other words, not having the greatest weekend, and now have to face the reality that when I fly home on Sunday my smugness will be no more.
A. The early flight I booked (because it's always best to get an early start) will be really freaking early because we'll have to get to the airport in Chciago about three hours early.
B. The lipstick I made it here with will have to be checked in luggage and
C. I never check luggage (another thing I like to feel smug about) because I like to get on and off as quickly as possible but that won't be possible
D. And wouldn't be possible anyway because I'll be travelling back with Jonanna who always checks luggage.
As long as my sweet dog is OK I don't give a shit about any of the rest of it: the lines, the deoderant, the 3 am wakeup call. I just want her to be OK.
Although coming home to a $700 vet bill not exactly my idea of a good time either.
Guess I won't be taking a vaca anytime soon.
Not that flying is looking too appealing these days.

Sacrificing personal hygiene and personal smugness for my country and signing off from the mid-west.

the good, the bad and the pending trip

Sorry for the lapse. I've been obsessing over how much I loved Dave Chappelle's Block Party and how much I wish I'd seen it, like 10 times, in the theater. It was SOOO good. You must see it. And I must buy it.
Miami Vice, on the other hand, was just so boring I couldn't believe it. I had to go online, on my phone, during the movie to see how long it was in order to decide whether I'd make it through. Why was it so damn boring?
It made Miami look kinda fun, though. I mean, at least it looked sunny. Unlike other places, ahem, which allegedly get 300 plus days of sunshine, but lately, not so much.
Truth be told, I'm enjoying our weird, wet summer, although the constant cloudiness, raining, thunder, humidity is a bit disoncerting AND I'm covered in mosquito bites AND clearly going to come down with West Nile Virus at any moment.
Hopefully not before I make it succesfully to Chicago and back for the Medill Writers Workshop, which I am both attending and working at—although I think the scale has tipped more toward working than attending at this point (I'm on a panel, making a guest appearance at another panel, critiquing the work of four writers and attending the AAN Editorial Committee—of which I'm a member—meeting). On the other hand, there's an Urban Outfitters a few blocks from the hotel and Julia needs a new pair of shoes (figuratively speaking. What I really need is a new pair of jeans).
So I'll try to blog from Evanston, Illinois, a town I have found to be a little, um, collegiate for my taste, but certainly a change of pace.
In the meantime, I am not rooting for Joe Lieberman.
As for things around here, strangely quiet in the post Best Of world. A few readers will have letters in tomorrow's paper upset about the winner of a certain category and critical of us for choosing that person and there will be, as per usual, a note from me explaining WE DIDN'T CHOOSE ANY OF THE WINNERS, because it is the readers who choose them by voting. A concept strangely lost from year to year. Oh well.
And we'll have a killer cover story as well, a good investigative piece from Dan Frosch, so stay tuned. Or, I mean, stay ready.

global warming & politics

Word Up! Slate's take on the connection between climate change and political geography.
Meanwhile, here in New Mexico…
it really hasn't been all that warm.
The cool and the rain makes it easier to sleep, for sure. Actually, it makes it kind of hard to get out of bed at all.
I'm taking tomorrow "off," which means I'm not coming to work, but I'll still be on KBAC in the morning with Honey, and I'll be editing the cover story. So, not off, just not here.
Next week off to Chicago, where descriptions of the heat wave have me dreading the trip. Really, it all sounds awful. We are so lucky to live here, in New Mexico, where we get a cool, rainy summer when it was supposed to be hot and dry; and where the only natural disasters we have to worry about are drought, forest fires and ones involving weapons of mass destruction.
No, seriously, we are lucky to live here.
Even though the state's web page on how to prepare for a disaster involving weapons of mass destruction looks like this.