I keep meaning to get here but it seems to be the last place I land in a week’s time.  Sometimes I don’t have any noises I want to write about but I know if I was still the ‘Winehead’ or dealing poker I’d probably be here every day.  Whatever the case may be, I seem to run out of time and energy about the time my head is leading me to my pillow.

My days seem quite long but they must not be quite long enough because I’m always in terminal catch-up mode.  Now that I have a new roommate, a chunk of my time has been taken in two daily walks with her.  She’s high energy and I figure keeping up with her might make me a little more high energy…yeah…right!

My new roommate – Scout – affectionately known as Scouty, not to be confused with Scotty – is a beautiful thing.  I am in awe that I got so lucky as to find this treasure.  We’ve had very few issues, the biggest is she is a food slut.  She doesn’t beg my food when I eat, on the contrary, she goes off and lays down, leaving me completely alone…I love that because she’s not going to eat human food anyway.  The food slut part, she’s been on a pretty strict food regimen living with her last care-taker Danielle, and I started her on the same routine.  Danielle felt she was about 4-5 pounds overweight and it’s possible she had a bit more of a pudge on her middle than needed – until we started trekking the desert/walking twice a day since she arrived on Sunday.  We started the walks on Monday and she’s tuning right up.

Even though I have been very strict with my intake and eating times, I can’t say the same for me, I’m not tuning right up.

There are more considerations here, Scouty is a herder, I have a retractable leash for her and she travels twice as far as I do on each walk because she continually roams from side to side, except when we head for the last part of home she is walking pretty straight – I think I’m wearing her down.  In truth, she’s probably building up more energy and strength and it will take much more to wear her down the longer we keep at it.  On the food slut part, at the slightest sound of a bag being opened, she’s there.  She knows she gets snacks and she has tasty rawhide chews with liver in the middle.  She’s only allowed x amount of snacks a day – hell…I don’t get any, but she can go through her snacks in a heart beat and give me the inquisitive eye as to what my problem is that I’m not still feeding her.

She’s exceptionally well behaved.  Sit means exactly that, she sits.  Stay is a bit more of a test but mostly works.  Go lay down means exactly that, she does.  She has her bed on the floor by my bed and never argues once we hit the bedroom, she’s on it for the night.  She fetches, we do the green tennis ball thing and she’s on it in a heart beat, sometimes refusing to return it because she doesn’t want to play, she opts to take it up on the deck and leave it by the back door.  She knows what “Off!” means.

She loves to hug me and kiss me, at least twice a day she’s up on her hind legs, paws on my chest, waiting for me to bend my face so she can slurpy me.  I do.  I love her!  I’m amazed that I forgot how great having a good dog really is.

Scouty is extremely smart, she hears the jingle of the choke chain in the morning and she’s ready to walk.  She goes instantly to the spot her leash is in and waits impatiently for me to get ready.

The neighbor across the road took a stray that got tossed out by the first bad neighbors that used to live where I live now, her name is Molly and she’s an American Bull – and Scouty and her DO NOT get along.  Danielle told me Scouty is very aggressive and she has real issues with other aggressive female dogs – some males too but mostly female.  Molly is behind a fence but she goes nutz when we hit the road for a walk and follows us down the fence having a fit.  At first my girl wanted to tussle and fought at the leash, now I shorten the leash up by my side and tell her to stay with me and my girl walks right next to me with her ears back…waiting for Molly to jump the fence I suppose…and we walk quietly on by, as soon as we hit the end of their fence, I let the leash out and say, “Let’s go!” and she starts herding out in front of me without even thinking of going back.

We’ve had a few jack rabbits encounters where she was poised and in the air before the rabbit took its first leap, if Scouty wasn’t leashed, we’d have dead rabbits all over hell’s half acre out here.  Scouty’s quick, very quick, and I figure if a rabbit is dumb enough to ignore the poo and pee smells on the property and come on in, and Scouty gets them, that’s just the breaks of nature, but when I’m out with her I don’t want her off leash and looking for her so they are safe.  I got her this hideous neon colored pink harness that I’m going to start walking her in, I’ve heard there’s a bounty on coyotes and I don’t want some dipshit to mistake her coat color for a coyote when we’re out walking.  Yeah, I’m with her but I know hunters shoot other hunters – no need to gamble.

Just in case you’ve ever wondered about the sounds that Road Runners make – other than ‘ZOOM’ and ‘WHOOSH’ and all those other crazy things they do as they evade Wiley Coyote, this one is sitting in the top of a mesquite just off property (and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen one in a tree – usually they are moving across the ground).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APqFXB8iBoQ[/youtube]

This was taken of the same bird the day before.  He’s the biggest Road Runner I’ve ever seen out here…anywhere for that matter…and he’s got a vivid red smear under his eye going back to the bottom of the crest on his neck.  He’s out every day in the same place across the road, making Road Runner sounds.

Not much poker happening in my world right now.  I am going to play the $10 + $1 Satellite to the Sunday Million 5th Anniversary tournament – the satellite is on March 6th and is awarding 1,000 seats guaranteed.  The 5th Anniversary tournament has a guaranteed prize pool of $6M with 1st place guaranteed at $1M and a car.  I can’t qualify for this freeroll but I can play the satellite and I think it’s a must for everyone that dreams of turning a small investment into major, life changing money.

On the side of poker that I find to be distasteful and hateful, the Ultimate Bet Scandal is always coming to the surface. I know Haley Hintze has stayed on it and kept working at getting to the root of all the evil that went on.  This latest bit of noise on the subject is really food for thought.  How many people were involved in it?  How many of your friends played at Ultimate Bet that might have been involved in it?  Were you?  Fuck!

I have to let my roommate drag me around the desert here in a bit.  Laters…