OK, so I was out of town Friday and Saturday. I left early Friday(8:30AM), returned at 11:55PM Saturday. One night out.
Itinerary: Go to San Jose for my wife to do some buddhist temple stuff. Then went to a place to get food, which, she said was disgusting. There was another place with the same name: same disgusting. The place near us in Sacramento with the same name is GOOD. Wife very upset with that, so we went to Lee Sandwiches, which has been consistent for us from Sacramento all the way down to Disneyland. Gotta love franchises that actually aim for that “consistent familiarity”. After that, Santa Cruz, which sorry, I ain’t got love for, never have, never will. It’s really not my kind of town. My wife wants to go to the beach with the kids. I myself am tired of sand and grit. Just not my idea of fun anymore. Anyhow, that aside, the kids had fun. My wife caught a live crab, showed it to me, rinsed it off with some more ocean water, took some photos and then sent it back into the water, so that was neat. After Santa Cruz, we were going to eat, but a couple of the kids needed nappy time, so we walked to the car where we parked, got in, strapped in and headed to Monterey.
In Monterey, we ate at the Wharf. That place was good. Checked into the hotel and crashed out.
Next day, Saturday, we went to Carmel. We struggled to find a place to eat, as we’re not familiar with the area. We did find a place we felt was over-priced until we got served and oh man, it was amazing. We’re going back!! My wife then got my son a fancy hat, and 2 fancy hats for herself, and then we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which was really the focus of the trip. Things had changed, some things stayed the same. There were some new things too. The Seahorse exhibit was really cool, I enjoyed it. The Jellyfish exhibit was boring mostly since the jellyfish themselves are not all that excited, but they are still need to look at. The big Ocean tank seemed to be less full this time around, fewer hammer heads and fewer tuna, but they did have more baitball fish(I think sardines), but I did not see a sunfish. We did make sure we saw everything. The kids and my wife went to the various touching pools and felt all sorts of things.
After the Aquarium, we went back to the Wharf again for dinner, and the food there wasn’t as good. Honestly, I can tell the quality of a restaurant by the calamari, and well, it wasn’t good. My dinner was good because you can’t really fake fresh salmon(especially to me, where my mother’s family was fishermen), but my wife’s stuff contained frozen items, as did that for one of my kids. You gotta choose carefully. Anyhow, we probably won’t be back to that place.
After dinner, we got some caramel popcorn for the kids for the way back, and then a 3.5 hour drive home. We left late, so of course, that pushes everything late. Our fault, no question about it.
Here’s the stupid part.
Now, my in-laws were watching my house and dogs. You might ask, “well, were do your in-laws live?”. Well, I’m glad I’m filling in the gaps. They live NEXT DOOR. They couldn’t be bothered.
One pug is gone, the black, calm and quiet one. The hyper, older, noisier and deaf fawn one, is still safe at home. I did notice the back gate was not closed properly, so I’m wondering if someone decided to steal my dog. My other dog keeps going back to that gate so I’m positive something happened he didn’t like. He’s very upset and screaming and crying about this.
The missing dog did not have his collar on, but he is microchipped, but the company that holds those numbers lost my registration for both dogs(and a bunch of other customers, I’ve sound found out they had a database corruption issue and a few hundred people got screwed this way). I’m calling the local shelters to see if they might have gotten him and he’s safe.
I was up until 3:30AM looking for him, but looking for a dark dog at night, well, that’s not exactly a productive use of time without the proper lights on the vehicle. I had to get to bed. At 4:30AM, my wife and I both felt we heard his weird bark, and I bolted up and tried to see what I could see, but couldn’t find anything. I’m so hoping he has been taken to a shelter.
I’ve just finished a more exhaustive search, which has been equally fruitless. One of the problems is that this dog is so mellow, quiet and calm. He’ll just “vanish” so to speak. He doesn’t even get excited when someone comes to the door.
Every trip there’s some issue.
I am tired of it. They dump their dogs off on me for MONTHS at a time. I gotta feed them and adjust my life around their dogs since they can’t be bothered, and when I can’t take it anymore, they complain about how “he just can’t do anything”, with “he” being “me”. They borrow money from me(that they never pay back), it’s “not enough”. I loan them my stuff, they lose it, break it, sell it or give it away and then nasty towards me like “how dare he get angry at us”. I could go on and on and on about stuff they’ve done to take advantage of me and my house. They don’t even have responsibility or liability for the house they are renting as the rental agreement is in my wife’s name
Anyhow, I’m very upset, which doesn’t help with someone with my depression. Gonna be focusing on getting the furry family member back ASAP if at all possible. I’m really hoping for a fuzzy reunion, but if not, I want closure, as sad as that may be. So, expect me much less active most of this week. I’m having a hard enough time dealing with this, but it’s also hard to try to comfort the other dog who just lacks the emotional capacity to better deal with the situation. He barks a lot anyways, but even my wife has noticed “these don’t sound the same”. Yes, he’s screaming and crying and very upset. Even though the 2 dogs are 2 years apart, they essentially grew up together. With the fawn one being deaf, the back one became his ears. With the black one getting some eye issues and having vision problems, the deaf one became his eyes. They were and are a pair almost always looking out for each other.
