Category Archives: Uncategorized

Everybody knows we are blessed with the most unretrievenous retrievers ever to grace the planet.

We’ve pretty much given up on training them to do anything other than what they want to do and we’re pretty much good with that.

Aim low and you’ll never be disappointed.

But then, the other day, when I was at Wal-Mart picking up dog biscuits I saw the Flying Squirrel in the toy section (which kinda looks like a Flying Squirrel if Flying Squirrels were neon green and had glow-in-the-dark paws) and remembered that someone had e-mailed me months ago saying that THEIR unretrieverable retriever LOVED these things, so of course I bought one.

Hope springs eternal, ya know.

I got home and pulled it out of the bag and Cutter went berserk. Tug was a little interested but Cutter was madly in want.

I took them outside and sent the Flying Squirrel sailing away. It was hilarious. Picture teenage nerds trying to play basketball, all gangly arms and legs and desire and want but no real coordination and that was Cutter running and leaping after this thing. And when he finally got it he actually brought it back. Whoa.

Tug, as usual, just watched and waited.

After the second spastic retrieve Tug attacked and the two of them rolled around wrestling as they are wont to do and then Cutter picked up the Flying Squirrel and ran it inside and chewed it up.

Took about ten minutes. Me and Tug watched.

And then Princess Cutter got up, shook out his coat, and barked for a biscuit like he’d done something good and worthwhile.

I was gonna post about somethin’ else but then somethin’ else happened.

I work by myself, building stuff for people who are power tool challenged. I like it. I feel, I hope, I’m helping them in my little way to build their dreams.

Today, I went by a fairly big job, checking with the subs, answering questions and what not,  and once things were settled I went to another job to build a fence. It was nice and cool and quiet and I was gettin’ into some me time.

My cell rang.

It was a friend of the customer I had just left saying that she had been trying to reach her all morning and she wasn’t answering her phone nor her door and she was worried because she was a fucking manic depressive and had tried to commit suicide the year before and was worried that maybe she had succeeded where she had failed before and could I possibly meet her in twenty minutes back at her house?

Whew.

So I hurried back and pounded on the door. When I didn’t get an answer I tried the knob and, finding it unlocked, went in, yelling her name.

Do you know what it’s like to call out to the maybe dead? It dries up your spit.

I moved through the house, my yells bouncing around, scared what I’d find. When I got to her bedroom I yelled louder ’cause I could see her, a mound under the blankets, with her dog lying next to her.

She didn’t move so I went to her and shook her and she woke up and I told her that her friend was worried sick about her and she needed  to call her and I went back out into the noise and grit of construction around her house and buried myself in it.

Life’s gotta lighten up a little bit.

OK.

Enough already of the dark stormy introspective posts for awhile. Suffice it to say that, after yet another summer of hard partying fun, I’ve made certain promises to myself. Promises that I don’t want to broadcast for fear of the ridicule and snickering when I fail.

But I won’t.

So,  I’ll let ya’ll know what happened last week on November 1st. That way, one way or another it’ll be done. Or well on it’s way. Actually THEY’LL be done- there was, like, 4 things I swore myself to in that moment of shaky weakness.

We’ll see, huh?

On another note- a quick update in response to e-mails about my loser ability to keep a story line going-

MIGHTY WHITEY- I don’t know what I’m gonna do. My most favorite Chevy Suburban is slooooowwwwwwwlyy being re-built and I’m just about at the end of my patience. I’m thinkin’ I might just have her towed out of the shop she’s in and into another to finish it up. Enough already.

WEIGHT LOSS- This is something I touched on a while back. I’ve lost about 50 lbs and Miss Carol has lost so much that sleeping with her is like sleeping with another woman and who amongst us doesn’t chub over that? Ooo baby, baby.

CUTTER AND TUG?- Are fine as frog’s hair. I’ll post soon.

OCEANDOGGY.COM- Thanks to all y’all, I’m not going anywhere. Like Miss Carol says, you’re stuck with me.

Next- Fetch.

So.

You wake up in the early dark hours with your heart squirreling away and you make promises.

I won’t do that anymore.

I’ll try to stop eating those.

I’m gonna start doing more of that.

I’m over it.

No more and no more.

Promise.

And you lay awake staring at the little alarm clock numbers changing while Miss Carol and the dogs snore next to you and you wait, wanting to sleep and knowing it’s done.

Finally it’s time you can get up.

Outside a storm’s blowing rain sideways and you saddle up Cutter and Tug for their morning walk and head out.

Walking along the side of the road in the darkness a school bus plunks through a road lake drenching you and the dogs.

It’s gonna be one of THOSE days.

motherfuckermotherfuckermotherfuckermotherfuckermotherfuckermotherfucker

When you get back, you towel the dogs off, give ’em treats and food and water, change your clothes, and head out to work.

But as you climb up into Big Black and drive up the street towards the beach the sun breaks through briefly and brightly and-

Something clicks.

And just like that it was over, a memory rapidly fading.

On Monday, the 2009 Touron Season ended, as did one of the bigger weekends of me and Miss Carol’s summer, and maybe possibly my life.

So.

When I started this post I had intended to write a detailed account of our weekend complete with, in no particular order, house guests, beachness and boating, pergola building, attending a 60th birthday party and a wedding in New York, all replete with the overabundance of food and alcohol that holiday weekends always inspire.

And don’t get me wrong we had a blast. But.

As I typed, my fingers numbed to the stupidness that is my life and I slowly realized I’m facing the same fork in the road that I’ve been idling at for way too many years.

The thought pushed me back.

I’ve been lazy. It’s easy to be complacent and lazy. I love easy. I say lazy because while I’ve enjoyed the motivation that writing this blog provides and loved hitting the publish (like it’s really being published) button, my writing hasn’t been good. Nor even close.

For the past year, I think I thought that just posting/writing something, anything, would fill the void, that tepidness in quantity could somehow equal something approaching quality and it doesn’t, nor should it.

So something has to change.

I need a challenge or something looking like it. Whether it’s the challenge of changing the mundane content of oceandoggy.com or doing something that challenges me to write better I’m not quite sure.

But I’m gonna try ’cause the days shorten and the years quicken.

090909.

Up at the strip this weekend was the 47th running of the East Coast Surfing Championships- the ECSC. The ECSC is North America’s oldest running surfing competition and the second oldest continuously run surfing contest in the world.

I have no clue where the oldest is run.

I just know that, if you are into surfing, and who isn’t into surfing?, this is a big, big weekend. Hundreds of professional and amateur surfers converge on VB to compete in our typically smallish surf.

But not this weekend. With Tropical Storm Danny surging up the coast the swell has been amazing and everybody, surfers and spectators alike, have been diggin’ it.

Everybody, that is, except one.

On Friday morning, the first day of competition, a tourist was knocked out of his boat by an eight wave set and drowned even though approximately 50 surfers joined scores of EMT and rescue workers, responding to cries for help from the boat’s operator, rushed to the spot he went into the water and searched for the man.

His body wasn’t found for over two hours.

The sobering point of this post isn’t that amid the fun of a surfing competition someone lost their life. It’s that it happened that quickly. That someone, who just minutes before had climbed aboard a boat excited about a day on the water, who just hours before had awoken and eaten some breakfast getting ready for a day on the water, who just days before had driven from his home in New York to Virginia Beach to vacation and spend a day on the water, that that someone had instead lost his life.

We all know about the fateful fragility of life but something like this really drives the point home.

Celebrate each day. Go and do. Don’t wait for tomorrow. Take a big bite of life and chew vigorously.

Now if only I’ll listen to me.

Last night Miss Carol and me and several thousand of our closest friends went to see Chickenfoot.

I had bought the tickets for Miss Carol’s birthday so that she see her boyfriend Sammy Hagar again. Miss Carol loves her some Sammy.

Not knowing what to expect from the new super group I had downloaded their “album” so that we could listen to it and, quite frankly, it wasn’t super. But we remained optimistic. It was Sammy after all.

The night started out with Davy somebody and the totally forgettable Back Slam something or others. Not only was their original music generic high schoolish battle-of-the-bandish, their covers were even worse. I’m not sure who Davy somebody slept with to get the gig but we were treated to the result.

Then Sammy and the boys took the stage and the first couple of songs just swept us away on the wave that is Mr. Hagar. With his boundless energy and genuinely friendly showmanship you can’t help but love him and want to hang out with him and have Miss Carol have his babies.

It was all new music but it was pretty good and pretty LOUD but then it kept going on and on and we began to realize that it was going to be ALL new music and none of his older stuff. Which is fine, but it would be like going to Guns and Roses and not hearing them perform Paradise City.

It just ain’t right.

Maybe the problem was with us. We went expecting lots of Sammy fronting a super group and instead got lots of super group and Sammy singing. The music was kinda soulless. It seemed like this group of super talented guys got together and banged out some super talented guitar riffs and pounding drum solos and searing vocals and forgot to put their hearts into it.

It was like a tomato and peanut butter sandwich- you like the ingredients individually but it just wasn’t very good mish-mashed together.

In all, the show was enjoyable in the way that any live act is enjoyable but it wasn’t Sammy and we didn’t stay till the end. Nor, we noticed as we were walking back to the hotel, did many of our friends.

Only Miss Carol can walk the sodden fog enshrouded post-Hurricane Bill beach, gray skies roiling with dark storm clouds ready and itching to rain and proclaim-

OMG, as soon as this marine layer burns off it’s going to be bee-YOO-tee-full.

And ya know what?

She was right.

Kinda.

Sorta.

Decades and centuries ago Miss Carol and me frequented the Vienna Inn. We slurped up their cold beer and feasted on their deliciously heart attacky chili cheese dogs.

But then we moved away to the beach and, just like a cast off girlfriend, the Vienna Inn was kicked to the curb and forgotten.

This past weekend we were in that part of the world celebrating a nephew’s graduation from high school and acceptance to Radford AND celebrating my brother’s acceptance into old age. In amongst celebratory bouts of eating and drinking Miss Carol and me wanted to visit a restaurant in Arlington that had been showcased on Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations.

Goofy as it sounds, I have a list of restaurants in cities around the country that have been highlighted on foodie shows that I’d like to visit if and when we’re in the vicinity.

We almost made it to the first one.

Headed into Arlington on Route 7, sitting at a traffic light, I suddenly, inexplicably, remembered The Vienna Inn. And a  burning wanting began. Then that burning wanting became a terrible need. I whined like a little girl until Miss Carol was all like fine let’s just go there instead.

So we did. And you know what? Nothing had changed. It was like going back in time. Sure there were flat screens instead of  big bulky TV’s televising sports but everything else was just like it ever was. It was almost creepy.

We bellyed up to the bar between a biker, on his way from Rhode Island back home to Houston, and a local, in for his weekend Vienna Inn fix. As we drank icy beers and gorged on agelessy perfect chili cheese dogs (Actually Miss Carol had wine and salad ’cause she’s on a diet and it sucks to be her), we chatted, alternating between stories about  the big open road and commentaries on little, homey, Vienna.

It’s nice sometimes, finding a place that time has stepped around or overlooked. In an age of too many brightly lit same-same hyper-perfect chain restaurants the Vienna Inn remains comfortably dingy and well worn. Like your favorite pair of jeans, it just feels good.

When we went to the register to pay the bartender rang us up- two beers, two chili dogs, two wines and a salad. I commented that she had done it from memory, with no ticket. It’s a disease, she said.

And she’s right. The Vienna Inn is a disease.

Cutter and Tug were good puppies, I just thought they’d make a better hamburger.