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Category Archives: adventuretimes!

Breaking and entering

Last week, I had the dubious pleasure of picking up my friend, the time traveler extraordinaire, from the airport.  I say dubious, because…she’s not a very good time traveler.  I thought maybe this would create a bit of a problem this time.  Actually, it didn’t.  Her flight was slightly delayed, but that wasn’t really her fault.  Time traveling was a non-issue this time around.  That was nice.

What did end up being a problem (aside from the fact that everyone wanted to be at SNA that night thus making it really difficult to post a good lap time) was the fact that her keys had magically disappeared.  Magically.  She told me so beforehand, actually, but I figured it was just one of those things where you put your keys away in your bag and since you don’t need them and don’t see them for the duration of your trip, and so you feel disconcerted when it comes time to fish them out when you get home.  I figured her keys were just some place in her bag and it would just take some rooting around to find them.

Yeah.  That wasn’t the case.

When we arrived at her place of residence, I decided that it probably be a good idea if I stayed until she found her keys.  Because, you know, I could have just left her to sit on the front steps of the house, mewing piteously.  So she went to work, rooting around her bags to see if she could find her keys.  She mentioned that her car keys were on the same keychain as her house key.  She also mentioned that she may have left her keys out in the hinterlands where she had been traveling.

Aha!  Instead of blindly digging around the luggage in search of keys that may not even be there, why not just lug everything out by her car and see if it unlocks?  You see, she drives one of those newfangled cars that unlocks itself when it senses the transponder in the key.  So, if the car unlocks, we can continue looking for the keys.  If it doesn’t…well, we’ll have to do something else since the keys obviously aren’t in her bags.

Turns out, her keys weren’t in any of her bags.  We did ridiculous things like hoist her suitcase up above her car, just in case the keys were in the very bottom.  So, we resorted to doing something else, i.e. breaking into the house.

Did you know, I have never broken into someone else’s house before?  It’s true.  And here I was looking all suspicious with my flashlight as I was sneaking around the house, looking for the best place to get into the house.  Ok, so I wasn’t actually sneaking.  If her neighbors were looking, I’m sure they would have called the police right away if they saw me sneaking.  I just walked around normally, but quietly, with a flashlight.  People do that all the time around their own houses late at night, right?

Anyway, we did finally get in.  Our method for breaking and entering involved a flash light, a saw I randomly found on a lawn chair, a pool skimmer, and a discussion on whether or not the koi would be of any help (they wouldn’t, and probably would be confused).  You can guess what exactly we did.  We didn’t permanently damage anything, in case you’re wondering.  Also, we did not do this.

Oh, and her keys were in the house the whole time.

In which Yaris learns about waves

Did you know Orange County has a dog beach?  It’s a mile long stretch of beach where dogs are welcome to run around.  Technically, dogs are supposed to be leashed while on the beach, but on their website they say that the rule has generally only been applied unleashed, potentially dangerous dogs.   I guess if your dog is not acting in a potentially dangerous manner, you’re ok.  Actually, they do ask you to use common sense and to keep your dog leashed until they’re acclimated to the area and to not bring your dog if it has a history of being aggressive.

Yaris enjoys the view.

Welp, Yaris isn’t particularly aggressive nor dangerous, so last week I took her to the dog beach.  I wanted to see how she’d react to the sand and water.  She took to it rather well.  Sand doesn’t bother her at all but the waves were a little disconcerting for her.  Once, she went down to investigate all the water and was caught off-guard by an incoming wave.  She turned around to run away but then tripped over her own legs and fell into the water.  This the day after she fell into the lake.  I’m not really sure why she’s so clumsy.

Other than that, she had a really good time running like a crazy dog up and down the beach, sometimes with a pack of other dogs.  She met another GSD with whom she got along.  That’s worthy of note, since she’s normally pretty shy around dogs her size and larger.  She really likes to play with smaller dogs, but I don’t think we’ve met any smaller dogs who like Yaris.

Besides running around, Yaris did a lot of exploring as the beach runs along a rocky cliff and she dug a rather nice hole in her quest to find the white dot (reflection off my watch).  She also followed some kids around who were looking for shells.  She had to investigate and approve each one they picked up.  So nosy.

Trying out those wave things again.

Yaris really enjoyed the freedom to run.  But she would always turn back to see what I was doing and see if she should run back.  So considerate.  At least in terms of not running off without you.

As for me, I found the beach to be really clean.  Amazingly so.  Dog owners were good about picking up after their dog and there was no litter on the beach.  No litter.  That’s hard to believe but I really didn’t see any litter there.  I guess it helps that there are no fire pits at the dog beach, so it means no grilling and thus no food packages to be blown away in the wind to land somewhere else in the sand.

Also, it wasn’t very crowded.  Granted, I went in the middle of the day on a Thursday (random week off from work, remember?), but going up the coast I saw a bunch of people on other spots of the beach.  You can see in the pictures that there weren’t really that many people.  It was mostly just people being tolerantly amused at their dogs’ antics.  There were a few sunbathers too and I think most of them had dogs that were running around.  But I think there were some who just came to enjoy a litter-free beach as well.