Until today I had never seen these pictures of Bonnie a volunteer took before I met, fostered, and adopted Bonnie. That person added me on Instagram. I noticed the HSNB logo and started to peruse the animals on the feed. Bonnie was among the dogs that were featured.
It still amazes me that she had been in the shelter for a year, but to most people adopting a blind dog is daunting, not to mention the medical expenses that she came with even before her eyes were removed. These pictures were taken long before her bilateral enucleation, of course. I am grateful every day that she’s my little girl now, even though she can sound like a tremendous dragon when she growls, usually to protect me when I don’t want her to. After getting professional dog training, Shea and I are much more adept at calming her down and acknowledging her real and understandable fear.
I’m displaying very minimalist (so unlike me) xmas decorations this year in the rental. I have these two ceramic trees that my mom hand-painted which survived the fire, but I’m already looking forward to decorating my home when I’m back for xmas 2025. A surprising amount of my holiday decorations survived the fire since the garage was relatively untouched, but I don’t even feel like transporting them over here.
I suppose the Tin Man would be the most appropriate character from that story to be at the Vallejo Car Museum.
Yesterday was Shea, Greg, and Steve’s first time at the Vallejo Victorian House tour, which is another Madhatter event. This year the kickoff was at the Car Museum in Vallejo which I had never been to. What an incredible jewel, but sadly I hear it is rarely open to the public and may be closing down. I even heard that many other vehicles have regularly been swapped in and out. I didn’t realize how much I would geek out at car museums until I went to the one in Danville, and now every opportunity I have to see a car show I go to it. I was a Matchbox car fan as a kid, but I was one of those (gay) nerds who never liked them to get dirty like my brother’s Hotwheels cars. Anyway, I hope these exhibits will somehow be shared with the public going forward. This would be such a magnet for Vallejo tourism. Here is just a taste of the exhibits at the lovely welcome reception we had with good food, live music, etc.
I got my obligatory Madhatter character picture outside the Vallejo Museum last year, so this was Shea’s year to get a celebrity shot with him.
While walking around the Vallejo Victorian Home Tour we had to take our obligatory shot in front of the Capitol Stairs Mosaic downtown, which is beautifully maintained with its adjacent gardens. It’s a sight to behold and a very cool feature of Vallejo that reminds me of some areas of Rome.
Bonnie is chipper morning with her foster brothers Calvin and Hobbes. It doesn’t last, but it’s nice while it does.
Calvin had no problem running up the stairs while following Snoopy, but Hobbes really needed some encouragement. When he was left out he made a scream that sounded like a witch’s cackle, so Shea tried to help him learn. Eventually, he just grew tired of being left out and now he runs up and down like nothing. This reminded me of building Bonnie’s confidence with the process, but she’s blind! This is Shea’s filming of Hobbes steps lesson:
Calvin and Hobbes wrestle with each other in the bedroom. Shea tried to capture them following Snoopy in lockstep, but they moved so fast!
We are emergency fostering these two brothers who were tied up and abandoned at the fence of the Humane Society of the North Bay yesterday. Calvin and Hobbes are lovely even though on the drive to the house with us they were extremely nervous. These poor pups had quite a dramatic day yesterday. I’m so glad they had the loving touch of the great staff and volunteers at HSNB. Shea is very patient with them while we keep them safe and warm until they can eventually find a forever home, but they are on a mandatory three-day hold. They are about a year old and very healthy from what we can tell. Look at their amazing eyes.
Here are all four of them on the couch with me. You can barely see Snoopy who is the only one with his eyes open.
You’ll hear me refer to them as Ernie and Bert, but we had to change their names since those were used so often recently at the shelter.
In a dramatic roller-coaster of a night, what should have been quite routine, a second reading of the ordinance, became chaos, when a last-minute vote struck it down due to some requests for what amount to minor changes on the part of the tobacco retailers. Fortunately, the lawyers on the council were able to save the day and a motion was made to bring back the item for a vote that same night and it passed. There are crumbling about some amendments that might be made, but the two years of work were not for naught. This was as good a xmas gift as I could hope for due to the sweat equity so many of us on our coalition put into this ordinance. I did not speak because it was unclear that I needed to, and by the time I left, I was miffed that it did not pass.
A fury of communications ensued after my colleagues and I departed from City Hall. To my glee, I got the good news that Vallejo youth will now be protected as the second jurisdiction in Solano County, the largest city jurisdiction in Solano County, and one of the recorded worst jurisdictions in the Bay Area in some years for youth tobacco sales. Here are the relevant parts of the TRL drama from this evening, on what was otherwise a very long night:
