It's good to be home. Here's how the last couple of days went:
The night of my last entry I started to get pretty tired as we got into Montana, so I started calling Motel 6s. At the one in Billings, no one would answer the phone, so I figured 'screw them' and made a reservation in Butte. After trying to find a Pacific Pride (the members-only commercial fueling stations I try to use when I'm on the road) near Bozeman and discovering that all three of the ones in the area had converted to Commercial Fueling Network (the members-only commercial fueling stations I ought to be using when I'm on the road), which I discovered by driving all over the Bozeman area and going to all three stations, I filled up at Flying J, already fighting to stay awake, and made the rest of the drive to Butte. The Motel six in Butte is right at the junction of I-90 and I-15, and should be easy to find, but when you're exhausted and relying too heavily on GPS, things aren't as easy as they should be. Instead of having me exit I-90 and basically drive right into the motel parking lot, the GPS had me go down I-15, exit onto some middle-of-nowhere road, and drive into what looked like the hybrid of a trailer park and a train station, where I crossed no less than 30 sets of railroad tracks before ending up at the other end of the road that the motel was on. But even when I was going the right way, the GPS was trying to steer me back in the wrong direction, and when it started repeating, "When possible, make a U-turn," over and over without even a second's pause between repetitions, I threw it against the door of the truck.
I got all of the dogs inside the room and was ready to sleep by around 4:30 AM. Guido and Tony slept in crates, same as the night before. I slept about four hours before getting up and loading everyone out again, and this time it was an older, white, non-Russian man who kept asking me if he could clean my room yet. What the hell, Motel-6? Tell your housekeepers that check-out time is at noon and to leave me alone, especially when I've only been there four hours.
We got back on the road and had a pretty uneventful day. Either that or a lot of things happened that I can't remember because I was so tired. We got into Forks around 10 PM; all the dogs looked good, and my little ferals were all happy to see me, which was a little surprising, because in the past they've tended to revert slightly to their former, wilder selves when I've gone away. I took Maddie up to the small dog room and introduced him around; he was a little confused but he'll figure it out. Tony and Guido went into kennels, and Katie stayed in my room with me and the ferals. She is so good with other dogs, I may just keep her in here with me.
I have a couple of photos to share, taken with my phone again. The first is Maddie looking sad in the truck when I came back from lunch -- this was the sight that greeted me every time I returned to the truck after leaving him, even if it was only for a minute. (Don't worry, I always left the engine on during the day.) The second is Maddie when he smelled the ocean for the first time, as we crossed the Tacoma Narrows bridge.
I'm sitting at a truck stop with some dogs in the back of the truck, and I have to take a leak, so I'm going to try to write this quickly. Here's what's happened since I left the hotel with the old guy in his pajamas sitting in a chair in the hallway:
First, I got my pizza, thanks to a late start when I left Madison:
That's at Gino's East in Chicago, and sorry about this, vegetarians and vegans, but there's a sausage patty that covers the entire surface of the pizza. (I can get into a whole meat discussion some other time.) It took me 2 days to eat this thing.
I had hoped to be able to get to the Anchor Bar in Buffalo in time for dinner, to have a repeat of my last drive to the east coast where I ate Buffalo wings in the place where they were invented, but it wasn't to be this time. So instead I pulled an all-nighter to get to Massachusetts and pick up Maddie, my first rescue of this trip. That's right -- Madison, WI to Templeton, MA without stopping to sleep, and then to Warwick, NY, where I grabbed a shower, picked up another dog, and hung out for awhile before finally sleeping. It took over 36 hours. It was only 1,300 miles or so, but there was a ton of road construction, plus the stop for pizza, the time it takes to do a rescue, the time it takes to get lost in Warwick, NY, the most confusingly laid out town I've ever been to, where despite having been there twice before, I couldn't find my way around. Anyway, the dogs:
Maddie is a cockapoo (a huge one) with numerous, severe bites in his history, including at least one that sent someone to the ER. He's been good with me once we got over the initial meeting. He sleeps with his head on my lap while I drive.
Katie is the dog from Warwick; the reason I have Katie is a little complicated, or maybe it's not. I got an email from a woman named Eileen in NJ who volunteers at a shelter in Trenton that had a dog named Dillon who had knocked heads with a small boy at a Petco adoption event. The shelter decided Dillon was probably dangerous and hired an outside firm to do a behavior assessment. The people who did the assessment were imbeciles and chose to interpret normal dog behavior as unpredictability, and decided to deem Dillon non-adoptable. Eileen wanted me to take him, but being in the hands of idiots and assholes isn't enough to qualify a dog for placement with me. So I worked it out with Warwick Valley Humane Society to take in Dillon, assess him, and if he turned out to be truly dangerous I'd take him, either now or in the future should his behavior change over time. In return for them taking Dillon, I took Katie, a little pit-type dog with a pretty interesting behavior pathology. Katie obsesses over objects, and her obsession can escalate to the point of losing control and becoming dangerous to anyone trying to handle her at the time. It's a behavior I've seen in other dogs, but where I've seen it the most is with wild cats. Katie loves plastic water bottles, Frisbees, blankets, but she can also obsess over things like grass or a person's fingers. It starts with nibbling and progresses to biting and shaking, so she has to be diverted. So far it hasn't been too difficult, but as she becomes more comfortable and settles into the Sanctuary, we may see some changes. Anyway, here's a picture of Dillon, now at Warwick, where he's available for adoption -- he looks like a boxer/pit mix to me:
From Warwick I went to Noblesville, IN. I picked up Guido and Tony; Guido was kind of a high profile dog -- here's the story. That's the first search result I found -- there are a lot more stories about this if you want to hunt around. Guido is interesting; he definitely has barrier issues. When I first met him he was very 'mouthy' but I could keep him under control fairly easily; when I left the yard and came back a few minutes later he bit me. The bite didn't do any damage, but probably could have. He went for me again when I was lifting him into the back of the truck, but since then has been fine with me once he is out of his travel crate. Inside the crate, he's pretty defensive. We'll get through it. Here's Guido:
Tony bit a couple of Hamilton Humane's board members, and truthfully, I took him because board members of animal rescues are usually a total pain in the ass and a thorn in my side. I instantly liked Tony when I heard he'd bitten not one, but two of them. Here he is:
Tony was named Toby before I took him, but I have a dog named Toby who looks just like him, so that needed to be changed.
From Indiana, it was back on the road. I stayed at a Motel 6 in Sioux Falls, SD last night, and this morning the Russian maids were hassling me at 10 AM to get out of the room so they could clean it, even though check out time was noon. So I've had bad experiences with Russians on both road trips I've taken to the east coast, the previous experience being at a restaurant in Jackson, WY, staffed entirely by Russians who wouldn't take anyone's order. But I'm not willing to give up on you yet, Russia.
So now I'm at a Flying J, and this entry ended up not being so short, didn't it? And I still have to pee. So I'm going to wrap this up. Seacrest out.
I'm not really the 'planning ahead' type when I travel. I'd rather be spontaneous and just see where the trip takes me, whether I'm getting dumped off in a foreign country or driving across my own. But the downside to spontaneity is that during the peak travel season, the hotels and motels fill up pretty quickly, and since I like to drive until I can't keep my eyes open anymore, getting a room can be a real problem. The first night of this trip I ended up spending $150 on a suite with a huge jacuzzi because all the cheap motels were full. The bed was uncomfortable, and bear in mind that my bed at home is a homemade wooden shelf with an old futon mattress and a bunch of dogs on it. Night two I stayed at a Super 8 with a really nice, soft bed, spent around $80, and slept for around 14 hours. I guess I needed it. Night three was a Best Western in Bismarck, North Dakota, where I was given a key for a room that already had someone in it. I opened the door and saw the TV on and the person's feet sticking off the end of the bed. I stood there for a few seconds debating whether or not to say anything, because s/he hadn't heard the door open. I opted not to roll the dice, and I got the hell out of there, but I think the person heard the door shut and came out into the hallway. I didn't look back. The guy at the desk gave me a free breakfast coupon that I didn't use, because I don't care that much for eggs. Once in a room that wasn't previously occupied, after opening the door slowly and calling out, "Anyone in here?" I slept pretty well, or at least well enough that I didn't get out of there until lunchtime. And then there was last night...
My GPS lied to me yesterday and told me I'd be in Chicago by 10PM. What the irritating little lady neglected to mention was that while she could tell me where I was in the US at any given time and how to get wherever I wanted to go, suggest restaurants to me, find gas stations and hospitals for me, she couldn't manage to tell me what time it was in the place where I was actually located at any given time or what time it would be at my destination when I arrived. So the arrival time I was looking at was in Pacific time, which, guess what -- is not really of any use to me when I'm trying to get to Chicago and have some pizza before I go to bed. I kept thinking, I don't remember Madison being ten minutes from Chicago...' and it's not. It's about 150 miles -- 2 hours with no traffic. But not realizing that my GPS was so good at some things and so bad at others, I called the Super 8 booking line and asked for a room in the Chicago area along the I-94 corridor. The woman on the other end asked me which location I wanted to stay at, and I said, "You're the one with the map." Seriously, if I wanted to look through the Super 8 book I wouldn't be calling. So she suggested three places and asked me which one I wanted to book, and I asked for prices, because again, she's the one with all the information, and that's why I called. Downtown was $120, but the one by O'Hare was around $60, so I booked it. When I got to Madison I called and canceled, and not wanting to have a similar telephone experience, I got out the Super 8 book and looked for Madison locations. The one I chose had the "Pride of Super 8" designation, and free HBO and Wi-Fi, so I called and asked if I needed a reservation. I was told I didn't, so I headed over, passing two other Super 8s on the way.
When I got there, I saw a guy with a weird gut, pointy man boobs, and fanny pack rushing across the parking lot to get into the lobby ahead of me, so I made sure that didn't happen. As I made my reservation, he got inpatient and started asking about the rooms -- he wanted a double room, but he didn't want to pay for a double room, so he was trying to finagle a single room with a fold-out couch. I'm serious -- he asked for a fold-out couch, and when the girl told him there wasn't one, he got really upset, like fold-out couches were standard in other motels. I've stayed in hundreds of hotels and motels, and I can't say I've ever seen a fold-out couch in any of them, but this guy had an idea and he wasn't letting go of it. As I left, he was trying to explain that he and his son weren't accustomed to sleeping in the same bed. Then get accustomed to paying an extra $20, jackass.
In the middle of the night I was awoken by a woman ranting in the hallway about something to do with disrespect and 'what she's been through', and I considered yelling at her to shut up, but then she was quiet and I fell back asleep. I was awoken again by the same woman, and considered going to the door and telling her to shut up face to face, but I quickly drifted off again. The third time she woke me up I decided to go into the hall and punch her in the face, but I was too tired and fell asleep again before I was able to fully measure the pros and cons of such an action. So what will tonight bring? I shudder to imagine it, but at least I'm not sleeping in my truck at a rest stop where I can't put the windows down because of the insects swarming outside. I'll leave you with a picture I took with my phone in the hallway of the place I stayed last night:
It was that kind of place.
I'm heading to the east coast on rescues, and I've been 'tweeting' from the road, but I took a few pictures yesterday and wanted to get them online. They're not good pictures, and as bad as they are, they seem especially bad after working with Amber Chenoweth to take pictures of the Sanctuary dogs, but they do document the trip, so here:
I was driving on US-2 south of Glacier National Park and noticed a herd of mountain goats sleeping on the hillside above the highway. Just after that was a parking lot for people to use while they looked at a mineral lick that the goats used on the other side of the river. Everyone was crowded around the railing, and I assumed there must be more goats, and maybe they were closer, but it turned out that people were clamoring to see a single goat on a hillside about three times as far away as the ones I'd just seen. And since they were part of a guided tour, they couldn't go up to the highway to look at the larger herd. Suckers.
In eastern Montana I shot this out of my window while I drove. It's inspirational.
I made my way across Montana and into North Dakota, where I finally got tired of driving on secondary highways where I had to slow down to 25 MPH every 20 miles to go through some rundown farm town, so I cut down to I-94, but on the way my GPS showed that I was passing some kind of park (green thing on the GPS). I thought to myself that it would be cool if it was Theodore Roosevelt National Park, one of the only national parks in the west that I've been wanting to see but haven't had a chance to visit yet, but it looked too small on the map. Then I saw the entrance sign, and it was Theodore Roosevelt, so I jammed on the brakes and went in.
I'm sure Theodore Roosevelt has a lot to offer, but for me it's mainly interesting because of its bison. I'm kind of a bison fan, and there are a few places in the Dakotas where you can see herds that, while contained within the parks by fencing, are surviving in a wild state, vulnerable to predators and the elements. It was getting dark as I drive into the park, and I thought I might not see any bison, but about 15 miles in, I drove into a herd of them.
This bull was as tall as me -- the pretty obvious dominant male of the herd, although .
the 'leader' of a bison herd is a cow. Big as this guy was, he was tiny compared to how large bison used to get before the US government tried to wipe them out in an effort to starve the Plains Indians. This guy weighed about a ton, but a large bull 200 years ago might have weighed 3,000 pounds.
Here he is again with some calves in the shot.
This one was getting a bit frisky with me, and sent me scuttling around the side of my truck for safety a few times. I'm pretty cautious around these guys; I never left the side of my truck and tried to keep 'some truck' between me and them at all times. None of them took any threatening postures or anything, I just try to be safe.
On the way out I came across this longhorn bull and his herd -- compared to the bison I'd just seen they looked tiny. This guy was kind of a character, jumping and kicking when my truck got close.
More to come in the next few days; I'm leaving North Dakota this morning.
Last week my neighbor and I drove to Spokane to pick up two great Danes named Juno and Satina; the dogs had been declared dangerous after killing another dog on a neighbor's property, and they were facing an uncertain future with their usual pet-sitter leaving town and their guardian having an out of town job approaching. The dogs had been imported from Germany and were being bred, pretty regularly from the look of Satina, the older of the two. Satina was outgoing and happy to meet us, but Juno was shy at first, and did his fair share of growling and lunging. Once we got the dogs into the truck, they settled in nicely, and from Spokane, we headed south.
I dropped my neighbor off in Oakland, CA to visit with his family for a few days while I went on to Los Angeles, where I would visit friends and family and meet with some producers to talk about a possible TV show. Juno and Satina traveled well and seemed to be enjoying the ride. Satina was old (for a great Dane -- six years) and overweight, so she needed help getting in and out of the truck, but seemed otherwise content, so you can imagine my surprise when I returned to my truck after eating lunch at a Carl's Jr. in Chatsworth and found her dead in the back seat. The temperature was cool in the truck and as I replayed the last thirty hours in my mind, I couldn't think of anything that had happened that would have caused her to die. A bit in shock, I made a few phone calls, postponed my first meeting, and drove to the office of the veterinarian I had always gone to when I lived in southern California, so that he could perform a necropsy. Getting 160 pounds of deceased dog out of the truck wasn't the easiest thing in the world, but we managed, and I left Satina on the operating table, still a bit in shock, but more worried about poor Juno, who had just lost the only remaining thing from his prior life.
Juno surprised me a bit. I took him to my mom's place in San Juan Capistrano for about half an hour before we had to return to LA, and he seemed relaxed, even playful. We drove back north and arrived at the Hell's Kitchen set for our first meeting, and Juno was a hit. I had initially considered not taking the Danes to my meetings because I felt it might be too stressful, but with all that had happened to Juno, I wasn't going to leave his side. In the meetings, he did what big dogs usually do -- he slept.
I got a call from my vet about Satina; he had found cardiomyopathy to be the cause of death -- the walls of her heart were twice the thickness they should have been. He also found a diseased spleen and a large tumor on Satina's bladder that had spread to the spleen. The doctor asked if I wanted him to continue pulling tumors from the dog or to send tissue samples out for analysis, but there was no point -- the dog was essentially full of little time bombs. Had I known, I wouldn't have taken her to California, but I had no way of knowing. I was upset to have lost Satina so quickly; she never even saw the Sanctuary, but I had to focus on Juno, who was still very much alive and well.
We had two meetings that day and three more the following one, and Juno was a star -- a perfect example of why dangerous dog legislation is ineffective. Juno, who, if he was in Washington at the time, would have had to have been leashed and muzzled for the protection of the public, was a gentle, shy, quiet dog, and in the meantime, in Astoria, OR, a little girl was killed by her family's Rottweiler, who had no such restrictions placed on him. It was a tragedy that probably could have been easily averted, and as one family mourns their terrible loss, legislators and 'concerned citizens' are no doubt devising ways to prevent such an awful event from happening again, and the laws they are writing will no doubt punish dogs for the irresponsibility of those who possess them, and this tragedy will reach much farther than Astoria. It is already taking a toll; not until I looked up the story myself did I learn the breed of the dog involved -- everyone who had told me about the incident had said it was a pit bull. More bad press for pits.
But I'm getting off track. Juno, the "dangerous dog" was proving himself to be anything but. It was Friday and my meetings were all over; I gave some brief presentations to three elementary school classes at St. Margaret's where I had gone to school as a kid, and brought Juno out to meet my mom's fourth grade class, with a fence separating him and the children. He wasn't allowed on the campus, but being a little afraid of children, Juno was happy to keep his distance.
From the school we headed off for lunch with my friend Bob from high school and then back to LA where I had two rescues waiting. The first was Jill, a wolf-dog that had ended up at SPCA Los Angeles after no one could handle her in a home environment. Jill was shy, smart, scrutinizing. It was hard to gain her trust. I ended up spending about an hour at the SPCA with her until I was able to walk her on a leash, but even then getting her into the back of the truck was going to be a problem, so I opted to crate her and transfer her into the transport cage from there.
Next we went to a dog training facility where I met some previous clients and some new ones; I was there for Tesla, a doberman pinscher who had been accumulating a significant bite record and for whom the style of training the facility was using had not worked. The facility's owner and I had had an argument on the phone the day before that essentially amounted to her insisting that my methods would not work in an urban environment because the dogs needed to be under more control. In short, I can only do what I do because I live in rural Washington. I still don't understand the argument -- I have the same safety concerns that people in 'the big city' have, and I grew up in southern California, remember? I'm not some yokel who just rolled into town.
When we met in person, it was more of the same. I started out by badmouthing punishment-based dog training, to the delight of half the people there and the chagrin of the rest. Once inside the part of the facility where the dogs were housed, I saw a number of the items I had just finished disparaging: shock collars, spray bottles, choke chains -- Items used to cause pain and discomfort. I watched a yellow Lab jump and spin when he was shocked by his collar; his crime -- barking. The dogs weren't allowed to put their feet up on the fence when they greeted visitors. They weren't allowed to mount each other during play. They weren't allowed to communicate vocally. It was all about control and dominance. It was disgusting. Tesla was so stressed in that environment that she ran around nervously with a tennis ball in her mouth; she wanted to interact with people, but it was clear that she was on edge. I attempted to work with her a bit, but my gentle methods were entirely foreign to her -- she seemed to be waiting for the punishment to start, and the presence of her 'trainers' wasn't helping. The dog was a wreck.
I opted to just get Tesla the hell out of there. I took her out to the truck and had her jump up onto the tailgate, but she was afraid to go into the cargo area at first; I asked one of the young staff members to hold onto her for a moment while I grabbed some treats from the cab. He took hold of her so sharply, almost violently; it occurred to me that it wasn't only the dogs who were being trained inappropriately. Tesla went into the back of the truck on her own and I ended up not needing the treats. I stayed for awhile and talked with my new clients, got some firsthand accounts of a certain celebrity dog trainer's shortcomings, then got on the road. We got as far as Buttonwillow, CA before I was too tired to keep going.
Juno stayed in the hotel room with me, while Jill and Tesla slept in the back of the truck. Tesla had gotten into a bag of Juno's dog toys, which she had gathered around herself and made a sort of nest. She seemed stressed and didn't want to come out of the truck, but once I offered her a treat, it became clear that she wasn't stressed at all, just very comfortable. When I took her up to the hotel room for a little while, I realized what was really going on with Tesla -- she was feeling safe and secure, maybe for the first time in her life. Tesla was coming to me because of a history of biting; she was didn't like her head or feet touched, and she was a severe resource guarder. In the hotel room with me, she rolled around on the bed, and I touched the top of her head, pinched her toes, and tested her limits. She never bit me -- never even growled.
The next day we visited my friend Jason in King City, where I spent the night before heading to San Francisco to hang out with Melissa and Rick, then over to Loomis to see my cousin Tim and his wife Ali. I spent the night in Davis before going back to Oakland to pick up my neighbor, Chuck, and head north again. We made it back to Forks early the next morning, and I promptly got sick for about a week. The dogs settled in nicely; Jill got along great with the male wolf-dogs, and Juno and Tesla got along with everyone.
I wish I could say things slowed down, but with a little wild basenji mix from eastern Washington coming in, along with the last five of the Kennewick Eskimos, and Jack... sick or not, I stayed pretty busy. Maybe I'll get some rest next week.
So a few weeks ago I visited a frequent flier forum to see if any of the members knew of a way for my organization to take donations in the form of air miles, as I know a lot of people travel for work and have a ton of miles but not a lot of money. For the Sanctuary, it would be helpful to use the miles for rescue trips, and I could also take miles in lieu of a paycheck, since I don't currently get paid anything. I didn't get any replies for a few days, and then this came:
"i believe that nothing is wrong by your thoughts concerning obtaining donated airmiles for charity purposes,but if i were the owner of any airline,i would insist that any or all donated airmiles do not involve charity website only,but involve having those interested to donate via your website,but your website would direct all donors out of your website linked to that airline.
That way,the airline could track each and every aspect of any donation.
the airline could ensure all miles being donated belong to those whom are donating them
i do not know anything about the process,but merely stating how i believe the process is probally maintained for the protection of all involved.
As to your mention of your own charity getting added to some list, i would tell you to telephone each and every airline to be directed to the correct department that handles those actions.
good luck, hope my thoughts enlightened you to atleast call the airlines on the phone,since that is the 1st thing i would have done,even though i know as much about the subject as you."
I know I'm being petty, but this really pissed me off. I stopped myself from blasting this guy two or three times and ended up not responding because I think he was really trying to be helpful, albeit in a really annoying, patronizing, self-indulgent way. Seriously -- what the hell? He says he knows nothing whatsoever about the process, and then states that, based on his complete lack of knowledge on the subject, he believes things to "probally" work a certain way. Then he says I should call every airline and ask them to add my tiny charity to their lists of huge nonprofits that they partner with; I may not be an expert on air miles, but I am an expert on nonprofit management, and that's about the stupidest business advice I've ever heard. I tell you what -- you call every one of the world's 120 plus airlines with frequent flier programs and see how far you get. In fact, call one of them and get back to me.
He then has the gall to suggest that his utter lack of knowledge on the subject would be enlightening to me and that he hopes I will take his advice, because, even though he knows only as much as I do on the subject, it's the course of action he would have taken, before bothering the busy, overworked frequent flier community to see if any of them might actually know something. God forbid I would try to gather information and do research before going to the airline directly -- wouldn't want to know what the hell I was talking about ahead of time, right? He says he knows as much as I do on the subject, but as it turns out, he knows quite a bit less, and that's impressive, because I know next to nothing. "If I were the owner of any airline?" Come on out of your ass some time -- it's much nicer out here. Of course, to be fair, that's an assumption, but I think it's a safer one than the ones this guy makes about how airlines handle their charity mileage programs.
Sometimes people try so hard to be helpful they end up just being a pain in the ass. 'I don't know the answer to your question, so I'll make some shit up.' Have you ever been driving on a city street and had to slam on your brakes because the person in front of you is stopping to let someone pull out of a parking lot? In being courteous to one person, he's pissing off the ten people that nearly wrecked behind him. Or what about that friend that insists that you sleep on her lumpy-ass couch instead of checking into a hotel with a nice, big bed and free HBO? She cooks you disgusting food for dinner so you don't have to spend your money at a restaurant. Thanks to her generosity you feel like a prisoner in some creepy David Lynch movie.
A few years ago I met a guy in Bangkok, and after we talked for a few minutes, I asked him if he knew where there was an Internet cafe. He said he did, and rather than give me directions, he walked there with me. The only problem was that he had no idea where there was an Internet cafe -- he was just a really helpful guy. After wandering around for nearly an hour, I told him I was hungry and wanted lunch; he showed me to a restaurant where I had the worst meal I ate my whole time in Thailand, and he told me he'd be back in half an hour to continue 'helping' me find Internet access. He was a really nice guy, and honestly, I was a bit amazed at how hard he tried to help me even when he had no actually ability to do so. And I still sneaked out the back of the restaurant and ditched his ass.
Last year in Costa Rica my friend and I had a flat tire -- a scenario I'd dealt with plenty of times, complicated by the fact that the vehicle was parked on sand, making it tough to jack up high enough to get the spare on. I had it under control, but then another guy showed up to 'help'. He was trying to impress my friend and show that he was handy and would make her a good husband or something, so instead of getting the tire on and going home, we dicked around in the rain for an hour, it got dark, and we had to have someone else come in the morning and take care of it. Nice guy -- I thought she should have gone ahead and dated him, but I wasn't as much of a fan the first night we met.
Running a nonprofit, my whole life is about helping, so I guess that makes me somewhat of an authority on the subject. There are a lot of ways a person can help, but sometimes helping isn't helpful. Sometimes you have to let people help themselves, or get out of the way so someone who actually has something to offer can step in. A little discernment is in order. Help where you're needed, leave it alone where you're not, and learn to tell the difference.
I realize this probably makes me sound like an ungrateful jerk. I guess I'm OK with that.
In a few days I'll be heading to St. Charles, Missouri on what will probably be the last rescue trip for awhile. I thought this would be a good time to start using Twitter, so if you're interested in the play-by-play, I'm @stevemarkwell. I have no followers yet and it's embarrassing, but on the other side, I'm not following anyone. Is it bad that I don't really want to? Regardless, Twitter can be a valuable promotional tool and I felt I needed to use it, along with Facebook and blogging, to give people multiple ways to connect with my work. With the article about the Sanctuary coming out in the LA Times soon, I figured I'd better get on it quick, too. Funny about MySpace... anyone still using it?
So check me out on Twitter if you're a ... Twitterer? Tweeter? What a stupid site. But I'm still going to give it a fair chance.
