Man, that old saying is awfully true. Came home tonight and flipped on the faucet to cook some rice and…. nothing.

The water main for my neighborhood broke today- in fact it’s right out in front of my building. The main through here is fairly old- up to 100 years old, in fact- and it just finally gave way.

There’s a big hole opened up in the street and of course we’ve got nothing in the building.

It’s not a huge deal- they’re out there working on it even at midnight, so it’ll probably be fixed relatively soon- but it’s inconvenient and fairly a hassle when you want to have a shower, or flush your toilet, or whatever. You don’t really think about it until it’s not working.

Yesterday, I saw a guy (who I’m guessing is a big Sarah Palin fan) walking through the Pike Place Market.

He had on a t-shirt supporting the idea of domestic oil exploration. At least that’s what I’m guessing it was for.

It had a big map of Alaska on it and a slogan.

“DRILL HERE, DRILL NOW!”

I was going to tell him that Seattle and San Francisco are two cities where that shirt just might be seen slightly differently… then I thought about this dude having some guys (with a sense of humor) hitting on him constantly and him not understanding why, and I laughed, and I didn’t say anything to him about it.

I hope he gets his wish and gets drilled.

The BEST PLACE in the whole wide world, according to Indiana The Wonder Dog, is any place that he gets to go for a swim.

Today, that is Magnuson Park, in the Sand Point neighborhood of Seattle.

There is a decent size off-leash area here, and it has a path that goes right to a little beachfront area on Lake Washington.

The assortment of humans here- white, black, brown, yellow, red, and every shade in between, straight, gay, male, female, and at least a couple of people of indeterminate gender- is surpassed by the assortment of dogs!

Big, little, huge, tiny. Every breed you have ever seen and a few you probably haven’t. Purebreds, mutts, mutts that look purebred and vice versa.

But of course for Indy, who I probably should have trained to retrieve waterfowl, the best part is the swimming.

Indy loves the water. He sprints ahead on the path to get to the lake. He jams himself through the gates, even though they have signs telling people to only let their own dogs through; he is an expert at sneaking in when they think they have kept him out.

And once he is in, it is hard to get him out!

He is a fast swimmer and frequently beats other dogs to the balls that their owners have tossed.

Only problem is that he doesn’t bring them all the way back, preferring to drop them about 5 feet offshore, then waiting for someone to throw another one.

This, for an hour or so, makes this spot (on a gorgeous Pacific Northwest spring day, snowy mountains gleaming on the horizon, the smell of barbecues being lit, and my pasty white skin sizzling in the sun) the Happiest Place on Earth for Indy.

It’s working pretty well for me, too.

Life in the city. I was walking out the front door to go meet Ginger at the International District station of the bus tunnel; she was coming home from work and it was kind of late. There’d been a Mariners game in the evening, so lots of people in our neighborhood.

As I came out, I saw this guy:

Yikes! Lots of blood...

Holy smokes. As I came walking up, I could see his pant leg was completely soaked with blood. There was blood all over the sidewalk, too. He was out with three buddies; one of them was just pushing up the pant leg as I came to them and blood was GUSHING out of the slash in his leg. One guy just about passed out.

I told them to hang loose, that I’d run and get a towel, and to figure out how to get this dude to the hospital. I ran upstairs, snagged an old bath towel for him to sit on if they took their car or a taxi (just what ever taxi driver wants, I’m sure- a dude bleeding all over) and a hand towel to use on the leg.

By the time I got back down there they’d slowed/stopped the bleeding for the most part, using a bunch of napkins and paper hand towels that passers-by had (like I said, this was as the ballgame was letting out, so lots of people with food were coming by). I wrapped the hand towel around his leg and apologized, then cranked the duct tape on there to hold it.

My first aid job

You can see I’ve got a career ahead of me as a medic!

Anyway, while they were waiting for this dude’s sister (a nurse, not that she was going to do anything- she took him to the hospital) to pick him up, I got the story: Just drunk.

Seriously, they were at the ballgame, one guy is getting married so it’s kind of a bachelor party. The drunk dude starts kind of screwing off and running up the street, falls, and gets the worst cut/gash on his leg EVER from a plain old concrete sidewalk.

Anyway, since he was so drunk all they were going to be able to use on him would be a local anesthetic. I’m sure that somewhere in the Puget Sound area, there’s a redheaded guy with an incredibly sore leg. Hope it doesn’t get infected.

The moral of this story is… don’t be that guy! Getting drunk is one thing, getting stupid is another, but mix the two and you win a trip to the hospital, plus a nasty scar over your knee!