Week 10-LA to the Bay

So I guess this isn't really about Buster either. It's about the future and I guess my future will involve Buster whether I like it or not. In light of the events of last weeks posts I had considered shipping Buster out to my ex's in Atlanta with no warning-just let a dog arrive on the doorstep. I'd do it if I wasn't so attached to him. It's nice to have a little furry thing when you feel pathetic and single.

My friend Ally was in town from Lake Tahoe the other day driving and we started talking over coffee (code for beer) and she said her and a guy she met in Tahoe (who happens to be a really hot, fit physical therapist) are talking about moving to Marin County to get more work. They both work in the fitness industry and given the current economic situation the country is it it's best to work somewhere that people have extra money to spend on luxuries like trainers and yoga classes.  Marin might not be the richest area in California but they spend like they are so I thought that seemed like a good idea.  She's my best friend and I haven't lived with her since Orange County 3 years ago and I'd love to again.

At the same time my former roommate Amy informed me that she is moving to Long Beach in the fall and that I should come be her roommate for a second time (which is perfect because she loves Buster). Hayley and Callan will also be moving to LA in January, and my friend Ian is looking for a roommate to live with him in Hollywood in August.  So it's a lot of options.

I also got promoted at Whole Foods and my super hot manger was telling me if I ever need a recommendation anywhere that he knows a ton of managers both in LA and around the Bay that he would for sure hook me up with.  And since I'm a nerd I know I'll end up in a master's program sooner rather than later. I can't stay away from school for too long.

But for now? My ex arrives in California on the 9th for a family wedding and wants to see me. Although I think that's code for wanting to see Buster. The only pictures he likes on my Facebook are of my dog, not me.  We were supposed to take a 2 week vacation in Santa Barbara together that I just may end up taking with Buster instead.  But Vegas for my birthday is a sure thang, Hayley will be staying at the MGM during the same time which is going to be perfect.  I'm going to Outside Lands, Los Angeles with Callan, Tahoe for the Fourth of July, and maybe even Seattle with my grandmother for a family reunion.  So life is good, Buster is happy, and I'M FUCKING DONE WITH COLLEGE!!!!!

Hayley at the Chrome Lotus

Week 9-Chrome Lotus, Santa Rosa, CA

This post has nothing to do with Buster. Except to mention that he was very upset about being left at home.  So if you're all reading this for is to hear about all the cute things I do with my dog then skip this week.

So Buster's previous owner, my now very official ex-boyfriend and I have been maintaining a pseudo-relationship cross country for just about a year now.  He was out here for most of last summer and I even visited Atlanta over Christmas break.  But last week some shit went down, some shit that I'd really rather not get into but all that's necessary to know is he broke up with me rather officially.  Which was kind of a downer considering that when I left Atlanta in January I had offered to move there to be with him and that's all I had really planned for my future. Which was stupid. Really stupid. 

All that's to say is that basically I'm a liar and when I said in the first post of this blog that me and Buster are looking for new places in Cali to leave that in my head I was thinking fuck California I fully plan on moving to Georgia post-graduation.  

But since he broke up with me that's obviously not an option because let's face it, why the hell else would I ever leave California? No man is really worth it if you ask me except Adrian Grenier and I'm pretty sure he lives in Hollywood so I don't have to leave either way.

Since I was wallowing a lot that week at the shock of it all and my future now extremely uncertain (let me just interject here that 10 days later it now makes me sick that I ever would base any post-collegiate plans on another person) and I was now very much single and alone on a Friday night I knew there was just one person I could call that could make me feel better about guy problems, mostly because she has had her fair share and maintains a completely flippant attitude toward most guys she dates. And that person is, of course, Hayley Marx. Who else? 

Hayley took me and my friend Ben out for margaritas in Santa Rosa, which was fine but not really distracting.  We walked around downtown until we got to the Chrome Lotus, Santa Rosa's 'club.' 

Now I'd heard things about the Chrome Lotus--that is was full of bros, and bro hoes with tons of tattoos and fake eyelashes and fake boobs and fake tans and basically a really trashy place full of not very intelligent people.  So naturally I decided to go in.  We looked ridiculous because we all had dressed to just go to dinner, not out dancing-"I don't normally wear jeans to this type of event," said Hayley to the doorman, and we got there at like 10:15 or some other equally and ridiculously early hour so naturally we looked retarded.  

But it got better, and let me just say thank God I brought Ben because I was exactly zero fun that night. I was driving and usually when I drive I drink anyways but my brother had gotten into a drunk driving accident the weekend before that had really shook me up so I wasn't about to do that. And the thing is that I REALLY don't feel like dancing when all I've had in my mouth is tonic water.  

I will admit that the place got pretty crackin and it wasn't all bro hoes.  Vanessa Villafuerte even made a very drunk VIP appearance as we were leaving which was kind of awesome.  Hayley found a black guy she had been stalking at the mall to dance with and I parked my sober self by the front door and read FML for about a half hour before Ben and a guy he had found to spend the night with dragged me out to the dance floor and started grinding me from front and behind.  So I did end up dancing and having a little fun.  Ben hugged me and said 'I love you,' before disappearing into the crowded sweaty dance floor with Elton or whatever that guy's name was. I forget but I do have a picture of Hayley dancing all up on him.

Buster

Buster at the beach

Sonoma coast

Week 8-Bodega Coast

I've always loved water. I have a weird obsession with drinking more of than the average human, taking 30 min showers, love doing the dishes and staring at the washing machine as the water spins around. I love watering my yard and splashing around in the muddy water with my bare feet. I'm obsessed with aquariums and sea life and mermaids. But more than anything I love the ocean and swimming. I learned to swim at 4 years old.  My parents, coming from Southern California near the ocean, taught me and my brother to swim before we could even speak properly. I was on a swim team all through junior high and most of high school and even though I wasn't fast I loved it. I'll swim in anything-a pool, lake, the Russian River even when the e-coli content is the highest in history. But mostly I love swimming in the ocean.

When I lived in Orange County me and Ally (my friend since we were 1 year old) would go to Huntington Beach almost every single day.  Ally was never as comfortable in the water as I was but even she would run with me from the bike path, across the beach while flinging our shoes and shorts off and then straight into the water without stopping.

There's just something so natural about being in liquid. Maybe because we spend the first 9 months of our existence in water, but isn't swimming the best feeling in the world? It's the best physical therapy and exercise.  And it's so relaxing.

You can't hear, smell, talk, or see very well. You can do amazing things with your body that you can't do on dry land.  You're weightless. And you're alone, in that huge ocean, just floating, becoming part of something so powerful and amazing.

The beaches in So Cal are my favorite for swimming but there is something crazy and wild about the ocean in Nor Cal. I rarely get more than my feet in the frigid water up here. But one day so many years ago I was with my first boyfriend and best friend. I don't even think we were dating yet. We weren't planning on getting into the water but we were both fish in another life, it was like a magnet was pulling us in and we couldn't say no. We dove in, slamming our bodies into the waves, pulling our jeans up every time we surfaced for air, the salt making our eyes turn red.  But we couldn't stop laughing and smiling. At nothing really, it was so simple and innocent.  People walking past were laughing at how insane we were to get into 45 degree water full clothed.  I'm sure we looked insane but we didn't care.  Later we shivered on the rocks in the weak sunlight trying to get warm because we didn't have any towels. He gave me his sweatshirt to wear and bought me fish and chips. It was a good day.

All that's to say that somehow I was bestowed with a dog that hates the water. He can't swim like many of his race and ethnicity and it kinda sucks. The weird part is he LOVES the actual beach, the sand, so we drive out sometimes and he runs as fast as he can down the desolate coastline. It really is a lot more lonely than Huntington and the OC beaches. Somedays it's so empty, we are almost the only ones out there. There aren't any cities or businesses nearby, it's just you and that ocean, that thing that could swallow you whole in a second. It's so enticingly deadly. It's a little morbid but if I had to pick a way to die drowning would be it. It would quiet, not messy, peaceful, and my body would feed sharks and things. Overall not a bad way to go.

So today Buster ran, I contemplated, and we both felt a little better.

Callan and Andy

Buster

Boba in Berkeley

Week 7-Berkeley

Remember that week Buster and I ended up in an Asian mall in Richmond with Callan, my co-worker? Yeah.

For some reason I decided to go on another adventure with her, this time to Berkeley to meet up with our friend Andy for Indian food.

Why the hell I ever got in a car with her again is beyond me. I love Callan like she is my younger sister but she drives like a stereotypical Asian woman—Buster was flying around the car from all the abrupt stops she made, she can’t navigate to save her life, she stops in the middle of intersections at yellow lights, LITERALLY took an hour to find a parking spot and blames other people for all of it.  Needless to say when she asked me to go to Los Angeles with her this summer I said yes, but only if I do 100% of the driving. I value my life too much to let her do otherwise.

So Berkeley. Not exactly a place for a Chihuahua, more like skinny, half starved Pitbulls and pigeons. We definitely stood out, the 3 blondes walking down Telegraph together, shopping while we waiting for Andy to meet us from Fairfield.

I’m beginning to think that despite being blonde Callan has this secret desire to be Asian. The first place she wanted to go was another boba store, which was actually fine by me, as long as it wasn’t another Vietnamese restaurant full of hungry immigrants.

Andy always takes forever so we walked along Telegraph, getting stopped by all the bums that wanted to pet Buster and check out Callan and offer me drugs. This was also, surprisingly, one of the few times I got kicked out of a store because of Buster.  It was Urban Outfitters, a store I’ve never really loved, probably because ever since living with one, I don’t really love hipsters. They’re pretentious and fake and despite have great music taste have pretty shitty choice in clothing.  I guess when a tank top costs $60 you don’t want to risk having a dog peeing on.  So we got kicked out, not that I really minded. I wished Buster were better trained so I could make him pee on command as we walked out.

So Andy finally showed up with his friend from Fairfield. As terrible as it is I don’t remember that guy’s name mostly because he said maybe 3 words within like 4 hours. They took us to this random Indian place/grocery store in an industrial part of town.

Callan and mine consensus on Indian food: gross. Disgusting, and we will never eat it again. I didn’t even bother giving any to Buster (actually he wasn’t allowed in this place either) at the risk of giving him diarrhea—he had it once when he ate one of my chapsticks and it was gnarly.

First of all Callan in gluten-free and I’m on the verge of being completely vegetarian. Indian’s apparently are mostly vegetarian but it’s all curry spicy soup stuff—basically nothing is immediately recognizable as edible. But the décor was nice and you ate family style and we all played Draw Something and asked Andy about his upcoming trip to Asia on the way home while listening to Andre Nickatina and hanging Buster out the window.

Week 6-Fairfax, CA

I've been called herbally in my lifetime.  Earthy, zen, centered. But there's something in me that just effing hates hippies.  Blame it working at Whole Foods and having to deal with dozens of them day in and day out, varying from the Marin moms with pierced noses and will only buy $9/lb. asparagus that is organic, to the hippies that straight up just smell.  Or being born into a vegetarian household with parents who banned Tylenol from the house and if you were really were sick told me to "breathe deeply and drink water." My brother and I grew up on salad and whole wheat pasta, never any soda or frozen dinners.  And there was the organic vegetable garden in the back yard.  We recycled everything, shopped at thrift stores and spent a lot of time outdoors. 

I've kept a lot of these practices but I've never gone overboard and became vegan and dreaded my hair and worn only hemp clothing.  Hell no.  

So regretfully Buster was not with me this week.  Think about all the hippies out there-they all have mangy looking pits and labs.  Not little chihuahua.  So spending the day in Fairfax meant leaving Buster behind unfortunately.  But he likes rich dumb blondes, not hippies anyway.

Fairfax, CA is about a billion miles east off the 101 freeway.  It's so far from actual civilization that my phone lost service out there and I thought I was going to be stranded because my car was out of gas and I couldn't find a gas station.  What do hippies need gasoline for? They ride bikes or steal vegetable oil from outside Mexican eateries. 

I didn't want to go to Fairfax in the first place considering it's almost at hour away from my house once you drive all the way out there. But a friend from work lives out there and wanted to hang out before going to a bar in San Rafael to see our other co-worker's band play.

Her house in Fairfax was at the top of this hill.  The street wound it's way around the hill where little houses were stuck into the side of it nestled in between trees.  I have to pause here to admit that Fairfax and southern Marin is actually a environmentally beautiful place.  It's very lush and green and the architecture is funky and unique.  The hill however was making me carsick with all it's sharp turns and I was the one who was driving.

The people however....we drove into town to go to the grocery store 'The Good Earth' to get some snacks and walk around downtown to kill time.  The Good Earth had some woman in a floor length patchwork skirt eating some sort of gluten free nonsense and chatting to her friend about cleansing her aura.  I'm not kidding. The whole time I just felt like we were in a movie, like do these people realize how stereotypical they're being?  The grocery store wasn't as bad as expected, just smelled a lot like incense, I'm guessing to cover up the smell of unwashed humans.  And I could tell they were unwashed.  When you were sandals all the time it's easy to tell-exposed foot is a dead giveaway to your cleanliness factor. My friend Cat was talking about steak she made for dinner last night as we were being rung up and you could just see the checker's eyes boring death rays into her for even mentioning meat products.  But hey were buying fruit and sugar free vegan granola bars so she should have been happy.  It might have just been the eyebrow piercings that made her eyes look like they were boring.  Maybe they weren't really.

Downtown was full of bars and a lot of drunk assholes and girls yelling 'Oh my goddess!' as they belly danced around the patio.  Another pause to wonder why hippies smoke cigarettes.  yeah yeah they may be clove cigarettes but what with all that attention they pay to their organic diets the amount they drink and smoke counter acts any amount of healthy food.  

"My aunt came down here one afternoon with her dog and got so drunk she fell asleep in the street.  The post office called my uncle to come down and pick her up," Cat told me. "She calls herself a functioning alcoholic."

Doesn't sound very functioning....

We drove up to San Rafael and hung out at the 4th Street Bar and then played pool and got Sol Food.  Sol Food tastes even better when intoxicated if you can imagine that.

Check back in next week for post about LA-Me and Buster are heading to So Cal for spring break.  Holla! 

Week 5-Helen Putnam Park (P-town)

In light of last week's misadventures in Hippieville, and the every rising price of gasoline, me and Buster decided to take a week off and stay in town.  I got a call from my ex's (Buster's previous owner) brother Kailum, who was in town from San Mateo.  He wanted to hang out although to be perfectly honest I think he missed Buster more than me.  We picked up Kailum and headed off to Helen Putnam Park.

This park is pretty awesome.  I've witnessed LARPing going on there, geo-cachers, artists, photographers, hippies banging in the bushes, the usual.  On more than one occasion I've gotten high there and on this particular day Kailum just so happened to already be high as a kite, so it was a very slow, rambling hike.
Putnam has a lake, weird tree covered muddy trails, and a huge open field right in the middle of it.

"I want to see an epic battle take place right here," said Kailum.  "With like 122 soldiers....no maybe 112. 122 is just too many people to keep organized."

Since where were battles all that organized?

We kept walking.  We saw a guy laying down on the grass trying to take some artistic photograph of a tree.  The interesting part was he was taking the picture with his iPhone stuck in a tripod.  Like if you're going to go to all that trouble get a real camera.

We went back to where Kailum was staying and met the neighbors.  The property is out in West Petaluma on an acre of land.  Some guy with dreadlocks and cargo pants came shuffling out of the front door drinking a Great White.  We met his chickens, some of which he explained he was trading for a goat from the neighbors the next field over.  In the basement he apparently had some eggs in an incubator.  Right next to the clones under lights.  Gotta be a steep electric bill.  But there was something relaxing about just taking a lazy Petaluma day.  The other neighbor Rick, likes to get high (I'm noticing a theme in this post) and work outside in his yard, fixing his diving equipment and playing with the dogs.

We sat in the sun and threw tennis balls for all 5 dogs that were on the property and drank some beers.  It was a good day to stay in town.

Week 4 Tahoe Photos

Week 4-South Lake Tahoe

I’ll start off by saying this: never bring a Chihuahua to a hockey game.  Said Chihuahua will howl, shake, growl, and attempt to attack the hockey players whenever the crash into the wall of the ice rink.  The ref will also give you weird looks and your friends will have to pretend they have Down syndrome in order for you all not to get kicked out for bringing a dog.

Let me back up and explain how we got here. 

My best friend moved to South Lake Tahoe when I was 12.  I’ve been going to Tahoe every winter since then.  However I’ve been Buster’s official owner for less than a year and he has never been.  I decided to drive up for a 3 days week this past week since there hasn’t been any snow.  (My driving skills leave a lot to be desired even in the driest of weather so this seemed to be a prudent decision). 

What I had forgotten was that Buster gets carsick on long trips.  Like very carsick, like his tongue lolls out of his mouth and he pants like he is lost in the Sahara. I seatbelt him in so he can’t move as much but it hasn’t helped yet.  So after a miserable 3 hours of listening to him pant and whine we finally made up the mountain to Ally’s house.

Or commune, should I say.  The house itself has 4 dwellers, one of the out buildings houses Aria’s (the landlords) father, and the other building is his music room.  Her father is also a “car guy” so when Ally said to just pull up to the house with all the cars, she wasn’t kidding.

One roommate is never home at the beginning of the month due to the fact that he spends most of his rent money on ecstasy (hey, it’s Tahoe).

Aria, at 26 years old has just retired, Ally is a yoga instructor, and Laney is a waitress and probably makes 4 times as much money as all of them combined in one night of work.  Good for her.

Upon arrival Buster decided to dig up the carpet in multiple rooms, prompting Aria to consider replacing the carpet…..let me just add that I refused to sleep on this carpet and I sleep with a dog every night that pees on himself.  So I’d say Buster did her a favor.

A friend of the commune was playing in a C league hockey game that afternoon so Ally, Aria, and I put on about half the clothes we owned, wrapped Buster up in a sweater and bundled him in a blanket.  I carried him in like a baby.

We were 3 of maybe 7 spectators at this event.  “They lose EVERY time,” said Aria of Nick’s team-The Green Team.  But that didn’t stop her from screaming and swearing the whole time.  

Buster lay still for MAYBE 5 seconds.  He was shaking due to the fact that we were in a freezing cold ice arena but also the echo of the puck slamming against the wall and players shouting at each other freaked him out to the point of him deciding to started barking and growling at them each time they ran into the wall in front of us.  Which is funny because he is barely bigger than the hockey puck.

This caused the players to start looking at us funny so Aria began to start barking and acting retarded in between screaming at the players to get up faster each time they fell down-not the most PC of hippies. 

Eventually I had to put him in the car because he was totally flipping out.  The Green Team lost just as Aria predicted.  We made dinner, which was vegan (for Aria who is vegan), peanut, soy, and meat free (for Ally who has food allergies and a Mexican parasite) and totally bland (for Laney who is Crone’s disease). I’m not sure how much of this what bullshit and how much was true although considering how much time Laney spent in the bathroom after dinner, her food particulars might have been valid.

When we drove up to Tahoe there was literally ZERO snow on the ground.  Pretty odd for February.  The next morning we were in a blizzard.  Everything was white.  I let Buster outside to pee and he took 2 steps out the door and U-turned right back in the house.  So we left at home to dig up more nasty carpet and walked to the Key’s Café where we spent 2 hours talking to some hot ski bum guy, an old eavesdropper who talked way to close to Aria’s face, and the ski bum’s weird old 50-year-old friend.  We also enjoyed soy free chai tea, acai bowls with granola and bananas, and gluten free oatmeal.

The rest of the day consisted of yoga, more bland food, shoveling the driveway about 3 times, and meeting more random potheads.  Oddly enough there was no actually smoking of marijuana. It probably wasn’t vegan or something.  I was too busy drinking a bottle of wine to myself anyway to care. 

Week 3-Marin County

So my dad has been pushing me to start looking for 'real' jobs and keeps sending me all these links for really boring job openings, but this week he sent me one for a film company intern in San Rafael.  I decided to go check out the San Rafael/Marin County Area to see what I thought and if I wanted to stay up here to work.

This much I already knew-I work in Marin County and I effing hate the customers that come into my work.  Not because they are rich-I have no problem with rich people. Buster and I are actually on the hunt for a rich old dude I can marry that gives me stuff and let's me do whatever I want. It's the snobby entitlement that rich people have that is so aggravating and Marin County is FULL of them.

But it has it's upsides too, like it's environmental beauty.  So when my friend Oliver called me to go hiking at the Marin resovior to see some waterfalls I was down.  I asked him if Buster could come and he said of course...What he should have said was no, this is an impossible hike for a chihuahua.  Thanks Oliver.

We ended up carrying Buster the majority of the time, mostly because this dog hates being wet and being that we wer basically climbing up a huge waterfall, everything was wait.  So that was awesome.  I was hungover during this hike so the snickers we got from other passing hikers at the sight of small chihuahua on this hike were no where near appreciated.  But it was pretty, I'll give it that much.

We went to Sol Food in downtown San Rafael after the hike, where Buster got a lot of positive attention, oohs and aaahs, and pets.  Oliver and I, who were caked with mud and looked liked he had just hiked to hell and back got a lot negative attention like "Ew, who are these dirty people making Marin look ugly." Let me tell you, all that plastic surgery makes you look ugly too, women of Marin. 

Sol Food was delicious and as we walked back to the car, Buster still licking garlic plantains off his lips, a large old man came up to me asking for a dollar for the bus, he only need just 1 please.  He was the nicest person we had encountered all day so I gave it to him and as he smiled and slipped it into his pocket I caught side of at least an 1/8 of marijuana in his coat pocket.  Bus fare my ass.

I hate you Marin.

Join Buster and I next week at we head to Lake Tahoe.  We'll try to remember our camera this time.

Week 2-Richmond, Pacific East Mall

There are several reasons I am happy that Buster is a Chihuahua and not a Great Dane or some other huge beast of a dog. (Additionally there are some reasons that I’m unhappy he’s a Chihuahua but we’ll get to those eventually).

First off, he’s small. When he was a puppy I would stick him in my sweatshirt pocket while I went grocery shopping and he would pop his head out every now and then-which was good, because then it looked more like there was just a puppy in my pocket and less like I had a stomach tumor.

Second of all he’s cute. This let’s us get away with a lot more, like taking him places that I know dogs aren’t allowed to be in. But small and cute is a winning combination. It’s like Buster is the Jessica Simpson of dogs-he’s talentless but people still like him because he’s blonde. So I take him to the movies in my purse, or to Forever 21, or the Pacific Mall in Richmond to go get some Vietnamese food.

Let me start off by saying I don’t spend much time in Richmond. Or any, really, I just go over the bridge on my way to Berkeley and grumble about having to pay $5 on my way home. That’s mostly because it’s one of the most dangerous cities in California, right after Oakland. But when one of my co-workers, Callan (who is small and blonde and basically resembles my dog), invited me to try pho for the first time, I wasn’t going to say no based on mere location.

Callan gets off the sketchiest exit ever that looks like a road that heads out and drops off in the middle of the bay. Some how a city emerges and she pull up to what looks like a mall. She didn’t explain that she was taking us to a completely Asian mall in order to get this food. And by completely Asian, I mean we were the only ones speaking English in the whole place. In addition to sushi restaurants, Sanrio shops, and a 99 Ranch market where you can pick out your very own live fish from a tank in the back and have them kill it right in front of you (hey at least you know it’s fresh), there is also an over 18 club complete with karaoke in this mall. It was hopping too because everyone was puking outside of it.

As racist as it sounds I was beginning to have qualms about having brought Buster. My uncle told me a story about a Chinese restaurant in Petaluma that got shut down because they served dog and cat in the back. Not that there’s much meat on Buster but he’s small and probably easy to skin if you really wanted to try.

But he’s surprisingly obedient when he wants to be and took a nap in my bag while we ate the most delicious pho ever. I don’t recommend going there if you are vegetarian however-it took about 10 minutes to explain that I would not like any meat in my dinner, thank you and once it came it still had meat in it. I just gave it to Buster.

After dinner we went to go get bubble tea. Ah, bubble tea. One of the few reasons I miss living in Orange County. You can only get it where there is a large Asian population (read-not Sonoma County) and as far as I know, Richmond is the closest place. Damn it. If you’ve never had it, stop reading this and go get some now because it is delicious. The menus are always extensive and no matter the combination it’s always amazing. I fed a boba ball to Buster (I hid him again though-Buster boba could be a new thing) and he wasn’t such a fan, but if you go I recommend the Thai ice tea with small boba.

Bottom line: do not bring small dogs to large Asian malls. I mean overall it was cool. What other mall can you get sushi, go clubbing, sing karaoke, get your hair cut, buy clothes, and go grocery shopping all in one place? But everyone who saw him wanted to eat him or dress him up like Hello Kitty, neither of which either of us was really interested in participating in. So Richmond isn’t for us. But I think we already knew that.

I love it here.

I never thought I’d be THAT girl. You know, the girl with small yippy dog that she has simply must take everywhere, and always gushes over –and to round out the stereotype, I’m a blonde.

But that’s what I’ve turned into, although in my defense it was not by choice.  A boyfriend of mine rescued Buster in San Francisco during the Giants Parade back in 2010 when they won the series (hence the name-Buster Posey).  I can’t say I really wanted Buster, but his undeniable cuteness grew on me and despite threats from my mother of impending homelessness I kept him.  He’s too big now to carry around in my sweatshirt pocket, (although how big can a Chihuahua/Pomeranian mix really get?) so I bought him a seat belt and he’s my current travel companion.

We drive around California visiting friends, exploring different areas, sometimes for the day, sometimes for the week.  We call Petaluma Point A and the rest of the state Point B.  Although Sonoma County is home base it’s not the most thrilling of places to live and Buster is a pretty big thrill seeker so we have to get out often. While Petaluma has been good to me for the past 20 or so years and to Buster for the single year of his existence, it's time to move on and we are in search of a place to relocate after this spring.  California will always be home but with so many awesome place in the state we are trying to explore all our options. All we know is we want to go someplace warm because we hate the cold (let's face it, at least one of us come from Latino heritage, we're just not bred for the cold of the Bay Area).

Buster loves long walks on the beach, chasing birds in the backyard and hiking. He completed climbing Mt. Tam this past summer.  His other interests include begging for human food and humping small children when he helps me babysit.  My interests include no longer being a college student and trying to avoid speeding tickets. We’ll see where the semester takes us.