BIG Dog

There's this BIG dog in our neighborhood.

I'm talking BIG. A big pale malemute bitch, with a neck you need both arms to encircle, and fur two inches deep, so thick she never gets anything but the surface wet in the rain. This dog has a neck and body like a bull. You have never seen such a big dog.

And we're really happy that what she wants to do with people is talk and grin and lick your face and roll over and get her belly rubbed and sleep on the blanket next to you.

Cuz if this dog ever got mad...

She has this horrible wolf grin -- and I remember one night when I heard her weird cross between wolf mumbles and Japanese war talk behind me, and turned around in the dark to see her approaching with her huge head low, and those horrible snaggly white teeth gnashing at me -- -and her tail wagging. I just about had heart seizure.

That's what she does. It's her idea of how to say, "Hi! Nice to see you! I'm a cute puppy! Pet me!" I honestly think she believes that she's a dear little lapdog, and is a little confused that she can't get crawl into a person's arms. She was probably a lap-puppy.

Yesterday when we were lying down, here comes this massive buffalo of a malamute swaying into the yard with that huge head directed at us, ears back, mumbling and gnashing. Until she came up and licked me all over my face.

We're REALLY happy she's such a nice gentle dog.

And that she's so clean and has clean breath.

Blistering hot for here -- 75-85 degrees. Oh, people are just melting. I'm fine. Last year's road trip with Roberta Gregory, tooling around Palm Springs and environs in August, at 114 degrees in the shade, has made me appreciate this weather for the balmy coolness it is. Lovely breezes off the ocean.

Fishing notes: was out yesterday trying to catch some greenling. Hooked one, lost it.

Then saw a long golden fish fooling around in the kelp. Saw it roll twice. Decided to try for it.

Now Jim down the street has done wonders with helping me get an idea what to do to fish. So I flipped the bait right over THERE where I'd seen the fish.

Pretty soon, I got a NICE hit, and started to reel it in -- and suddenly it was hit even harder, and the hook snapped right off the line.

A lingcod had decided it wanted my greenling, durn its gold-speckled hide! That was a lingcod I saw, and I should have known, it was that big ('bout 27 inches -- I'd say just the good side of the limit).

Well, I didn't mind losing it. Considering the lingcod season quit on the 15th. So I can say I at least shook hands with a lingcod.

In return for a business article I sent to the Peninsula Daily News, Ric at Jack Mackeral seafoods gave us a nice fillet of marbled salmon -- something you can't get anywhere else in the world, unless you're Japanese, and willing to pay ungodly prices. Grilled it slowly over driftwood coals. Not grilled one moment too long or too little.

To die for. Tender, moist, juicy -- and just slightly smokey. Best job of cooking I'd ever done of the best fish I'd ever had. And such a delicate crispy skin. The fish was so fat the drippings made the coals flare up.

And after loading wood and giving blood yesterday, the salmon and the fruit juice we drank all evening put us right back on our feet.

Which reminds me. I'm thawing some old freezer salmon that nobody up here will touch, and I'm going to need more drift wood.

Hey, someday we may be spoiled -- "Is it bought, or is it caught?" but not yet. We're feeding a fish hunger that goes back years.

See ya.

>^..^<

I keep trying to get to the yard to sit and draw on the next Bosom Enemies story (no laptopping in sunlight, ya know), but between gorgeous weather and -- ahem -- the beginning-of-summer controlled happy white stuff stuff busts going on right across the street and all over town -- they do sweeps for early in the summer for the hard stuff, 'cuz, while everybody agrees that the old Mary Jane does less harm than alchohol, the damn crank and meth gets made to leave Dodge -- I did tell you we live right next to the sherriff's office? -- and taking a turn at throwing a line in the water again, just to see if anybody's out there and hungry, and this morning the tide being out practically to the end of the entire reef, and grabbing the opportunity to see just where all the rocks and weeds were, for later, and teaching a Neah Bay missionary how to find agates -- where the hell did the time go? Of course, every place in the lawn and garden I walked by needed just a few more minutes puliing up grass and weeds, just to save time for later.

I'm starting to feel like Hugh Grant in "About The Boy." Jobs -- how do people fit them in?