Goodbye Sasha

Sasha, 2000-2011
Today, my dog Sasha passed away. She is the only dog I've ever had in my life, and biased as I am, I think it's safe to say she is now up in the creme de la creme of doggie heaven that they reserve for the best of the best pets out there.

There will be no right words to describe the sadness and loss I feel - the sense of yet another chapter of my childhood coming to an end - but I would like to spend this moment dwelling not on sadness, but on celebration of a wonderful animal who blessed my life for ten years.

I spent the better part of my youth wanting a dog. It took a family trip to Arizona and a long weekend spent with my aunt and uncle's wonderful Rhodesian ridgeback, Riley, to convince my mom that not all dogs drool and shed and are otherwise awful. I spent the entire car ride back to Kansas borrowing familiar tunes and rewriting the lyrics to describe why I wanted/needed/deserved a dog, and howling them aloud from the backseat. ("99 reasons I want a dog, 99 reasons that I want a dog..." You get the idea.)

The dog search process was long and arduous, but eventually the three of us - my parents and I - agreed on a breed. After falling in love with a friend's silver standard poodle, we opted for the same. Sasha was born in October 2000, a black ball of fur.


She loved learning tricks, wrestling, tearing stuffed animals to shreds, and playing soccer with me in my kitchen; I'd score by getting a deflated soccer ball into our mud room, and she'd score by grabbing the ball in her teeth and dashing into her kennel with it. After each point, we'd drop the ball again in the middle of the kitchen and start another round.


She was a smarty pants from day one. Eager to have a dog that might someday make it to the bigtime (this was pre-Youtube, but I had such aspirations for my puppy), I worked relentlessly to teach her tricks: the usual repertoire of sit, stay, shake, roll over, all that - but bonus ones, too, like wave, crawl, the infamous "back away" (see video below), and to ring a bell with her paw when she needed to go outside. Bright as she was, she started abusing that last trick in her teenage years...a squirrel outside in the yard, and Sasha would be rushing to go ring her bell.

Here's a couple of my little cousins playing with her at a family reunion years ago.




She was wonderful with kids - patient, friendly. She was a big fan of pulling her own stunts, though. Her favorite trick was with strangers at the dog park, trotting over with her frisbee or tennis ball and dropping it at their feet. "Aww, how sweet!" the stranger would think and bend down to pick up the toy. Just as their fingertips would reach it though, BOOM there was Sasha, pouncing back on the toy in a playful and defiant "Ha, gotcha!" sort of maneuver. She'd shake her toy ferociously back and forth in her mouth, drop it on the ground again, back up several steps, and sit innocently looking up at the stranger with her smiling eyes, waiting to do it all over again.

I've always had backwards pets, in that my cats are the cuddly, needy ones, while Sasha the dog was always an independent soul. She never slept on my bed like I always dreamt a dog would - but she did like to hang out. She always wanted to be in the same room as us, whether in her kennel, on her bean bag, tucked into a cabinet when she could still fit inside one, stalking the cat, or getting into some other kind of mischief.






Sasha saw our family through many transitions in our lives. She came on many road trips and family vacations; she loved traveling in the car. She knew three different cats that graced our family over the years. She's also seen me through three significant relationships; there are home videos of me and Mike playing with her as a young dog still, videos of Daniel doing tricks with her, and videos I made for Alan when I first met him and wanted to share with him from afar my beloved dog. She stuck with my dad when the other two ladies in his life moved out of the house, and carried him through what were probably some of the toughest times in his life.

Check out her mad skills: (okay, the "bow" is pretty half-assed, but cut a girl some slack; she was excited about those treats.)


She was truly an amazing dog. Thank you, Sasha, for a decade of delight, and may you rest in peace. I will love you and cherish your memory always.

Trio of Epics

Epic One: Fireworks & Four Wheel Drive in Meth Country


Camba Quote of the Evening: "Yitka, you may love Seattle, but it comes with the whole state, too."

Apparently there are a lot of meth heads out in the woods of Washington state. I guess that's true of just about any secluded area in the country (the highways in Montana are overridden with anti-meth campaign billboards), but it's a fact I hadn't given much consideration to until this Independence Day. And actually, it's generally unrelated to the rest of my story, except that I really loved Cam's quote and wanted to include it in my July 4th report. My creative writing degree is failing here, however, to craft a smooth transition from lamenting the prevalence of meth addiction in WA to the fireworks part...so with that said...

July 4th was great. It did involve five of us packing into my friend Maddie's 4X4 and venturing deep into the forest in Washington state. The evening's thick fog intensified the sense of adventure as we rumbled through giant potholes and undulating gravel road on our way to Camba's Secret (not so secret?) Spot on a mountain, where each year, good company gathers to celebrate our great country.


In the spirit of the rugged Northwest, we spent the evening: pitching tents, making s'mores by the campfire, grilling burgers on Camba's portable grill, drinking cheap wine out of Camelbaks, shooting fireworks off the side of the mountain, dancing with sparklers to djembe drums, belting out Bohemian Rhapsody, and singing a few too many rounds of Row, Row, Row Your Boat as well. We camped overnight and I woke up colder, I think, than I ever have on a July 5th...shivering in my sleeping bag, grumbling to Alan about wanting hot chocolate NOW.


But back up for a moment...back to the 4th itself, at oh, around 9:58 p.m. We were all hanging out by the campfire, unassuming, having given up on the chance of seeing any fireworks other than the ones we'd set off ourselves, since the fog was so thick. Ordinarily, I'm told, there's a spectacular view from the Secret Spot, and fireworks shows from a hundred miles in all directions are visible. But come 10 p.m., someone suddenly exclaimed and pointed through the fog. Sure enough, hundreds, if not thousands, of pinpricks of colored light began flashing all over the horizon, like silent fireflies in the distance. It was truly spectacular.


(And yes, I did get some hot chocolate the following morning, during our caravan back to the city.)

Epic Two: Alan and Yitka Go To In-n-Out Burger

Once upon a time, at an interstate exit in the depths of California, I had my first In-n-Out Burger. Since then, various obstacles have gotten in the way of my pursuit of a second one: namely, (1) vegetarianism and (2) lack of In-n-Out Burgers in pretty much the entire country. Customers and coworkers alike donning In-n-Out Burger t-shirts taunt me weekly at REI, even though the closest one to my apartment door is 593.6 miles away. Lame.

When I discovered that the Burger Chain of the Gods had opened franchises in Arizona, too, I nearly exploded. (Literally!) When the price of renting a car and taking a shuttle to get from Flagstaff to Phoenix for our flight proved equally pricey, renting a car emerged as the obvious choice for two reasons: (1) opportunity to get our ambrosia fix before returning to the In-n-Out dead zone of the Northwest, and (2) a chance to listen to ESPN radio coverage of the World Cup game as we drove through the blisteringly hot Arizona desert.

The radio station may have switched over at half time to a local baseball game instead, and "pelota" may have been the only word I understood as I tried to follow the game instead on the Spanish channel (but my my, how much more exciting they make soccer sound than the American/English announcers!), and I may have learned via text message from Seyeon that Holland lost, and our flight that we pushed so hard to make may have gotten delayed by two hours...we may have had serious problems finding the In-n-Out Burger joint amidst the serious suburban sprawl of Phoenix, and the line, when we got there, may have been nearly hanging out the door with a 20-minute wait, but at the end of the day...

Do I really have anything to complain about? Nope. Nada. 'Til next time, oh Tasty One...

  
The views on the flight home weren't bad either.
Epic Three: Eating Snickers Naked on a Mountain

Well, not naked. Not entirely, anyway...some shirts may have been removed for temporary airing out and enjoyment of the solitude and breeze at the top of Bandera Mountain, a quaint little peak at 5,200 feet just east of North Bend; hopefully nobody on Rainier across the valley from us had binoculars.

After a hike up Mount Si a couple weeks ago on a cold, foggy "summer" day, Alan and I finally hit the hiking-weather jackpot with our ascent of Bandera a few days ago. The skies were clear, the wildflowers and beargrass in full bloom, and we had the whole darn thing to ourselves.


See how sharply the foreground slopes off? The photo's not playing tricks; it really was a near-vertical scramble to the top.




Flowers, Rainier, blissful 65-degree sunshine all summer long (all 1.5 months of it!); Good God, yes, I'll take the whole state, too. It was one year ago, today, that I arrived in this place, and it still makes my heart swoon.

Yes, someday I do have to go to work again...

World Cup season: The only time you can see a Seattleite wearing an American flag shirt and downing a brewski at 7 a.m.
My blog entries may make it seem as though I no longer have a job. Of the last seven days, however, I've worked five of them...I'm just like a normal working person now, instead of a crazy working person. I still have to work today, for example. But first, I woke up at the crack of dawn to go pick up my friend James and drive to the relatively new soccer bar, the Market Arms, in Ballard to meet Greg for some early a.m. World Cuppin'.


The line just to get admitted was ridiculous by 6 a.m. The game didn't start until 7 a.m. Pacific time.
Happily, we all made it in before kickoff. Unhappily, DirecTV cut out for a few minutes shortly thereafter, which very nearly resulted in riots...but happily again, it returned, and a good 20 to 50 minutes after placing our order, we even got some drinkies (the 20) and breakfast sandwiches (the 50) to enjoy with the largely scoreless, albeit fast-paced, fraught-with-tension USA vs. Algeria game.


Bloody Mary, Guinness, or Coffee...take your pick.
All 90 minutes of regulation play passed without a goal; meanwhile, in the England-Slovenia game, England led 1-0. Either Slovenia needed to get a goal in their game, or the US needed a goal in theirs, for the US to advance. Although the US dominated the entire game by far - and had even scored once, earlier on, though the referee called a somewhat questionable off sides and threw the goal out - it took until the four minutes of stoppage time for the US to finally knock one in. It looked like this:




USA scores...finally! Screams, high fives, embraces with strangers all around!


The atmosphere inside was equally celebratory.


After the game, throngs of soccer fans poured out onto the sidewalks in Ballard. Every other car coming through the intersection blared its horn, and the fans erupted into another chorus of screams and cheers.
Long live soccer!

Futbol fun in Seattle!

So, three nights ago, a dream came true:


I went to a soccer game in America, and the stadium was packed! My dad and I had season tickets to the Kansas City Wizards (the "Wiz", as they were, back in the day) for a few years in the late 90s, and I've sorely missed the excitement of watching live soccer since then. Watching on TV just isn't the same; you can't see all the movement on the field. You miss out on so much strategy-ogling. And the crowd rowdiness...the bands! The cheering! Those obnoxious long noise-stick-things!
...the waaaaaaaaave!
I had an opportunity to watch Croatia play Israel when I was in Zagreb a few years ago...I still don't remember why I let that opportunity pass me by (money, probably?), but it was silly. So to have a big soccer game planted in my front yard is a huge deal! And I mean that front-yard bit almost literally; my doorstep is in within walking distance of Qwest Field = no pesky $30 parking fees for me! Although apparently there wouldn't have been any anyway; VW is a sponsor of the MLS and offers VW's complimentary parking at games...what?! Awesome!

But anyway. The point is that Michael and I got $25 tickets (!!!) to the Real Salt Lake vs. LA Galaxy game on Sunday. For those who don't know, the MLS Cup is the Super Bowl of real futbol. The Seattle's MLS-debuting Sounders FC had a great first season, but didn't make it all the way to the Cup - but Seattle won hostmanship (?) of the final game months back. I can't think of a better city, as Seattleites have shown an unbelievable amount of enthusiasm for the sport. Average attendance at Sounders' matches trumps average attendance for both the Kansas City Royals' and the Cleveland Indians' 2009 seasons. Soccer, more popular than baseball, in a US city?

= Reason 23498235 I love this city. As though I needed any more...

The excitement began with the official March to the Match - swarms of screaming soccer fans, all decked out in jerseys and team scarves and painted faces, and a marching band that played renditions of contemporary radio hits. A seriously awesome, and proud, experience to march through Seattle with a bunch of like-minded futbol hooligans!




For our money, the Cup gave us the absolute maximum amount of soccer we could have asked for. The teams had tied the last four times they'd played each other, and this time was no different; after 90 minutes of regulation play, the score was 1-1. After 30 more minutes of over time, the scoreboard hadn't budged. They even managed to tie their first set of shootouts. Finally on sudden death shootouts, Salt Lake proved triumphant. (I won't try to recreate the match itself in writing; I am not a sports writer. Maybe I'll work on it. But not on Thanksgiving Eve.)


Yup, we had a blast. Sure, it was cold, but...the March to the Match warmed us up, and the couple pre-game beers across the street at the local Pyramid Brewery kept us toasty, and the crowd energy was awesome...a few especially rowdy RSL fans behind us swearing their heads off at David Beckham ("God hates you, David Beckham!" - Is that the way Utahn's call it? Ah, I won't let a few bad eggs ruin my entire opinion of a state I otherwise love, but man do I hate bad sportsmanship...)

Otherwise, the game was absolutely fantastic - all I'd dreamed it would be. I can't wait to become a serious Sounders fan in the coming years. Lucky for me, albeit entirely unknowingly, I bought a rain jacket I at Dick's back in Ohio the day I decided officially to move to Seattle, and it is totally in Sounders colors. I was clearly destined to be a Sounders fan.


Michael pulls his hood up to shield himself from the celebratory confetti blasted out in jet streams periodically throughout the game.


My new boots are certainly covering a lot of ground! Michael, in addition to modeling the snazzy Arc'teryx jacket pictured above, is also sporting some of the most awesome hiking boots ever created: the Zamberlan Vioz. Available at REI. Just sayin'.

Also: Qwest Field offers a fantastic view of the skyline:


I'm learning it's hard to go anywhere in Seattle and not have a fantastic view in at least one direction. Which is probably Reason 23498236 I love this city.