Bears talk

How could I have gone this long without talking about my 3-0 Bears?? Well, we know the Detroit game should have been a loss. Dallas for some reason, decided to throw 50 times instead of running the ball with one of the best runningback tandems in the NFL. Green Bay self destructed with a team record 18 penalties for something like 150 yards.

But why so negative Joe? The Bears are the only 3-0 team in the NFC. Why aren't you happy?

Well, last year the Bears started 3-1, beating Pittsburgh, Seattle and Detroit after losing the opener to Green Bay. Then they managed to lose 7 of the next 8 and I think they got tagged for a loss on their bye week. Last year Denver started 6-0 by beating teams like New England, Dallas and San Diego before losing their next four games and 8 of their last 10.

But it's a new year and a new team and Denver isn't even relevant.

When you've suffered through the Bears regimes with bad draft after bad draft, bad decision on player after player and an inability to make in game adjustments, you get a bit cynical I guess. It is a new year and Urlacher is back from injury, but there are still significant problems with the offensive line as demonstrated by our failure to score from around the goal line on 9 plays. Our running game is not a strength and when the weather turns nasty, we're going to have to run the ball. And Denver is more an example of how a great start can turn bad in a hurry.

How does the rest of the season look?

We have five very winnable games coming up. If we even went 3-2, I'd be disappointed. So let's say they go 4-1. That's 7-1 to start the season. Pretty damn awesome. Then we have some tough games including Minnesota twice, Philadelphia, New England, the Jets, and Miami and Green Bay on the road. That could be quite a few losses in there. There should be a Detroit win at least in the final 8, but how they do will depend on how they can finish against some tough teams.

But the rest of the season was not on our minds on Monday night. We started tailgating at 4 and I didn't get home until after midnight. LL couldn't make it, but we had a good mix of folks at the tailgate. In the lot, we parked next to the Punke family who sits next to me in my seats. Great fun!

Move In Day.....anyone need some stuff?

Today was move-in day for LL! Unfortunately it was also a day where I had two lengthy client meetings, so I wasn't around for it. Not ideal, but LL handled it pretty well. Noooooowwwww, there's stuff in boxes and out of place all over both floors of the condo. Holy crap Batman. A bunch of the stuff is going to be sold at a garage sale. My folks aren't around this week, so I have to wait to take it out to them (where my mother processes, prices and sells it). How far away from the exit door do I really want to move that 80 pound television??

So I just saw an ad for WWE "Hell in a Cell" on pay-per-view on 10/3. The cost? $45!!! WTF??? This stuff is marketed to white trash right? Where the hell are they coming up with 45 clams for a non-alcoholic item?? Unbelievable.

More busy days of work on the horizon in the near term. I'm actually doing lots of good work for my clients, but it seems like I have no free time. That said, on Saturday, it looks like we're going to be playing in a softball tournament on a minor league baseball field in Rockford. Should be fun as they will be using a juiced up ball, have 11 fielders in stead of 10, have a net in front of the pitcher for protection and have the concession stands open. Since we're only playing on one field, the tournament is only 8 teams. We were promised a late start, so hopefully we won't have too much down time, but it could be 4 hours between games. Hope it's a nice day!!

Progress?

If you recall, last week I believe, my rat poison in Basra led to the death of five rats whose corpses were left on display for half a day at least. Well, it seems my poison planting has had an additional benefit to just those five deaths. When I returned from Orlando and went for my morning coffee, there was a pest control truck parked outside Basra and a guy was putting bait stations around the yard, collapsing some holes and putting poison in others. In true Chicago business fashion, there was another guy supervising him, but not actually doing anything himself.

There was some bad news as well while I was gone in Orlando though as at least one rat has moved back in under our stoop. Poison has been dispersed and tomorrow T-Rex will be deployed again. The war rages on!!!

Construction in the kitchen is done...thankfully. Now it's just a matter of moving stuff back into place and consolidating things with LL. She moves in tomorrow, so much of my free time over the next few weeks will be spent moving things and putting stuff in storage or selling things. In many ways it's good...sort of in a feng shui sort of way. There are things that I knew I needed to do something about, but didn't HAVE to do it, so I didn't. Now I'm pressed into selling stuff or moving stuff or just tossing things out and it's sort of cathartic.

Recuperating

Tournament results update: the two teams to which we lost on Thursday and Friday ended up finishing 5th and tied for 17th out of 208 teams. It was a bad draw and we definitely would have had a better weekend if we spent more time on the softball field and less time at the hotel pool, where we annoyed all of the other guests by throwing a football around. It was fun, but I'm sure the other guests weren't thrilled with us. They had another pool they could have gone to though, so I didn't feel too bad for them.

Yesterday was a long day of travel or at least it felt like it. Most of the guys on the team had the same flight out of Orlando at 7:30 p.m. which was delayed until 8:20. Fortunately, the plane landed only 15 minutes later than originally scheduled.

After getting late checkout for 1:00, we all hit Buffalo Wild Wings to watch some football games on the many, many televisions. It was kind of fun to be there and watch all of these games while not really invested in any one game in particular (Bears play tonight!). You'd be watching one game and then hear a big cheer from people somewhere else in the room and you'd swing around and try to see what happened on their game. Then another cheer elsewhere and so you'd switch focus again. Kind of fun! Unfortunately we had the slowest, most inattentive waiter I think I've ever had (Josh is his name by the way, just off of Hwy 4 on 535). Just awful. My bill came to $14.90 and I left him $15 and didn't feel bad about it at all.

Then it was off to the airport where we learned of the delay, so we headed to the nearest bar for more football. The rest of the trip was uneventful, especially since LL was nice enough to come get me at the airport.

The day made me think that hanging around all day might not be the best idea when traveling. Maybe I should focus on leaving earlier and getting home instead of checking out and then not really being able to do much for 6 hours.

Tough Times in Orlando

As it turns out, there were two softball tournaments going on this weekend down here in Orlando: USSSA and ISA, two organizations in which we play and qualified for their world series.

First up was USSSA, which had 208 teams from around the country and who started their tournament on Thursday morning. After keeping the score close through 4 innings, we lost 24-14 and actually hit pretty well. Hitting out of the two slot in the batting order, I was 4-5, a great start despite the teams loss. Pathetically, we had to use 3 subs and we couldn't get people there that early on Thursday. For Friday we were down to just 1 sub I think.

Our next game was Friday and we lost again, only scoring 4 or 5 runs and I was 0-3. Ugh. The USSSA tournament is still going on as I write and those two teams to which we lost are currently tied for third at 6-1. Unbelievable. Out of 208 teams, we draw two top 5 teams. The best we've ever finished is top 50 and tops out of Illinois teams.

Saturday brought the 23 team ISA tournament and two more losses for us. Again we only scored 4-5 runs in the first game. In the second game, against a team from Illinois which we play weekly, we lost 13-11. We were down 10-3 going into the top of the last inning and we put up 8 runs, including my hit scoring the go ahead run (though it broke an 0-6 streak for me). In the bottom of the last inning we got the first out, but then they got two guys on and then hit a home run to win.

So I've spent way more time at the pool and driving this weekend than I have playing softball. Not ideal.

Back issues

For the last 45 days or so, I've had some lower back pain on my right side. Though I'm not sure how or why the pain started, it's fairly constant, though it does fluctuate in intensity. While the pain isn't debilitating in any way, it does lead me to display the "old man" walk. What's that? When you get up from a chair, grab your lower back, shuffle a few steps and then start walking normally. It's not fun and fairly annoying.

So with two days at home in between softball tournaments, I took a trip to my chiropractor (or Fake Doctor as LL likes to call him). While the adjustment didn't do too much, the stimulus session on my lower back with ice on top really felt good and I walked home feeling pretty good. Then the muscles started to tighten back up and the pain was worse than before for a little while. Eventually the pain evened out to where it was prior to my appointment. It was a promising trip though and it seems like it will help over the long term.

Today I went back and the adjustment was a little more helpful this time. Instead of stim though, I got a full fledge, deep tissue massage. During the massage and stretching it became apparent that my right hamstring was wayyyy too tight and that I needed to stretch more frequently. Message received.

After the massage, I hooked up with T-Rex Tim for a few beers. TT has a 16 month old son and evaluates companies for his company to buy and keeps insane hours, so it was a rarity indeed.

Off to Orlando!

Rat Tails

When last I left you, Basra was rebuilt after being nearly voided of all rat life and the growth was so abundant, that they took up residence in front of my building again. After a week or two of fighting them off, the vermin were beaten back to Basra. The mission in front of me was again obvious, I needed to take the fight to Basra once again.

Down to only one T-Rex due to over-exuberant neighbors, I was well out manned. While I waited for reinforcements to be flown in via Amazon.com (all of the local stores are out of T-Rex's!!!), I opted to step up the poisoning regimen. This time though, instead of using the little rat poison pellets, which do indeed roll into their holes really well, I used what appeared to be more useful bait blocks. They even had little pieces of dried corn pressed into them.

The thing with using poison though is that you rarely get to see if it worked. Last week I found two dead rats out in the open. Success! My efforts had been rewarded. This morning I headed past Basra after baiting again on Friday before I left for softball and was greeted with the following picture:

There are four dead rats in this picture. Can you find them? It should be a place mat game at a Chuck e Cheese.

In total there were five dead rats sitting out in the open. Pretty damn good. So that's about 7-8 in the last two weeks.

I guess the landlord didn't want his tenants to see the corpses as they were gone by the afternoon. Why he doesn't care about the holes themselves is beyond me.

Anyway, it was a good day in Basra.

Softball Week(end)

First of all, the Bears are 2-0!!! Outstanding!!! Best case scenario I saw for the Bears after four games was 2-2. Now 3-1 is very possible; though 4-0 is highly unlikely. On top of that great news is that the Vikings are 0-2!!! My good buddy Joisey Ken is a Vikings fan, but they are the divisional rivals of my Bears. It's early in the season, but most people thought the Packers and Vikings were 1 and 2 in the division with the Bears third. A two game lead on the Vikings is huge and could mean a playoff opportunity. Wouldn't that be nice?!?!

The softball details:

My second softball team played in Warsaw Indiana this weekend, which is 2 1/2 hours from anything. Warsaw, I found out, is home to five Fortune 500 companies and that's the reason for a plethora of hotels including a pretty nice Ramada Inn. We got a bad draw and had to play a game on Friday night, one of 8 teams I think out of 38 that had to play on Friday night. Though we won, we didn't play our best. In fact, we were trailing 12-1 after 3 innings before coming back to win 21-14. That earned us our second game at 10 a.m. Saturday morning. It was the first game for our opposition and we beat them 13-12 in the bottom of the seventh, though it felt like we were in control most of the game. We won our third game as well, but I don't remember the score, though I remember it was close again. 3-0 going into Saturday night!

The team we were playing on Saturday night, Convicts, plays out of Wisconsin and I'm not sure a team I've played on has ever lost to them, though we end up playing them at least once a year in nearby tournament somewhere. Unfortunately we were sloppy on defense and had piss-poor hitting early and we lost 17-12. Early in the game we had the bases loaded with nobody out and only scored one run. In that situation, on average, you would probably score 4+ runs (the number is bigger than 3 because on average we'd score at least one run an inning anyway). As it turns out, I just read that Convicts was playing in the finals of the winners bracket.

So that meant we had to play at 8 a.m. instead of 9 on Sunday and the sun didn't even rise until 7:20! Without much of a warm up, both teams (we were playing a team that plays in our league on Wednesday nights) were a little sluggish. Though I had three good at bats, getting on twice and getting robbed by the right fielder on a sliding catch, the score was 4-4 going into the bottom of the last inning. Their first hitter hit me a sharp grounder at third that I totally blew using just awful form and lacking any fundamentals. Ugh. Why I do that sometimes is beyond me. The next guy flew out and the next guy hit a slow ground ball to first. Instead of just taking the second out at first, we tried to get the guy at second and the throw hit the runner and everyone was safe. The next guy hit another ball to me at third and I booted that one too! Arrrrghhhhhh!!! It was a relatively easy play where I could step on third at least and maybe even get a second out somewhere. Instead they had the bases loaded with no one out and the next guy just hit a deep fly ball to win it. Crap.

After returning to the hotel for a quick shower, I headed home and got back in time to meet Sausage Andy out for his birthday celebration during the Bears game at a local bar. We celebrated a HUGE Bears victory over the Dallas Cowboys!! 2-0 baby!!!

Wednesday I head down to Orlando for another tournament with my other team. We have a game on Thursday and maybe even games on Friday, I don't know. It's supposed to be in the upper 80's down there with high humidity only one day, but who knows how it will really turn out. It looks like maybe we have one more tournament after this weekend, unless we go to Vegas in December again.

Sooo Busy

Nothing exciting to write about tonight as I've just been working, packing, shredding, moving, more packing, doing laundry and once in a while, eating.

Tomorrow construction starts on my kitchen ceiling where they are reinforcing the floors for the levels above me. Obviously with LL moving in, this is just another stresser for me. I'm hoping I make it to October alive! Just too much going on with work and such. I'll be fine, it's just one of those tougher patches that you go through once in a while. Don't cry for me Argentina.

To make matters more difficult, tomorrow I head to Warsaw, Indiana for a 38 team softball tournament. We actually have a game Friday night and then many games on Saturday hopefully and possibly some on Sunday. After I return, I head back out on Wednesday for a tournament down in Orlando. Geesh, what's the weather even like in Orlando right now? I better look.....

Twenty years ago is a long time, electronically.

As I'm making room for LL to move in at the end of the month, I'm going through a lot of old documents and shredding them. A LOT of old documents. Most of them are bank statements, some of them from 20 years ago. Seriously. I have 20 year old bank statements. It seems that if I have the room to save something, I'll do it. Unfortunately I don't feel comfortable just tossing them in the garbage so now I'm putting my shredder through its paces.

Twenty years ago though, the bank still sent you checks back with your statement and you had to write checks for everything. Though I know I had a credit card, I must have preferred to pay by check, because there were a lot of them. Just to get cash, for the most part, I wrote a check. No ATM's back then.

No ATM's. Tough to imagine based on how often and what you use them for now (deposits, getting cash, checking balances). It looks like I wrote a lot of checks at Jewel (a grocery store) and got cash from them.

Now you can even deposit checks using your IPhone. I'm waiting for the APP that turns my phone into an ATM where I can make withdrawals!

One check I saved was made out to "The pathetic champaign campus parking" enforcement and wrote in the memo "way to go worms" and at the top of the check I wrote "You caught me again! Aren't you proud?!". Boy, I must have been pissed about this $10 ticket. Back in 1988, ten bucks meant more though.

More shredding on the agenda for tomorrow too as I found several files of mutual fund statements for funds in which I'm no longer invested. It may never end....

Probably a little off

Earlier today I had a much more compelling title, but now I can't remember it. Beer will do that to you. Not many beers, just two.

Anyway, changes are afoot in the life of Joe.

Softball in Warsaw Indiana this weekend and off to Orlando next week on Wednesday. But that's not the change.

Construction starts on Friday on my kitchen ceiling where they will be reinforcing the beams in the ceiling as they have done in the rest of the building. Annoying and dirty. Ugh. But that's not the change.

No, the big news is that LL will be moving in at the end of the month!! I'm very happy, but it means packing up a bunch of stuff to make room for her and her stuff. We've rented a storage unit to make the process easier and create room. Still, it's a big process to go through: boxing stuff up, sorting stuff out and determining what stays and what goes and then whether it goes to storage or gets sold.

So my spare time, what little there is of it as work is picking up also, is spent packing and moving. It's cathartic going through things and it's fun to revisit memories. It's a bit of work though and it leaves me less time to come across interesting topics for my blog on the web, TV or out in public. October's arrival will be a welcome relief.

Bears wrap up and then some

As promised, here's some Bears game day talk and pictures.

First, the pictures:

Here are the tailgaters: EMoney, Benny Baseball, LL and George. As you can tell the weather was gorgeous. Almost too gorgeous in fact with bright sunshine from which those of us who are more fair skinned needed to protect ourselves.

Here's a tailgating scene picture. Pretty typical, except there was no need for coats!

The Bears honored the Blackhawks by introducing 5 or 6 of them and the Hawks brought Lord Stanley's cup. If you can zoom in on this picture, you can see Toews holding it up. The national anthem was sung by the guy who sings the anthem for the Hawks and everyone was cheering and yelling during the anthem just like at the Hawks games. Very fun.

Though we were trailing for most of the games, our offense looked pretty good and racked up a lot of yards. If not for 4 turnovers, the Bears would have been up by 20, but as it came down to the end, the Bears were up only 19-14 after a late touchdown. They went for two but it failed. In fact, they had 6 chances during the game from inside the 3 yard line and failed to score on all of them. Not good.

A very bad coaching decision happened on the 5th try inside the 3, which was after getting stopped 3 straight times. Instead of kicking a short field goal for a two point lead with about 8-9 minutes left, he went for it and they got stuffed. Only one fan in my section verbalized that they should kick the field goal. The rest of us, mostly drunk, acted like typical fans and yelled for them to go for it. It's not the smart thing to do, especially if your career is based on wins and losses. If you're a fan though, it was great....but a lousy play call sealed their failure. Later, a much more controversial play went the Bears way and they won the game, but came awful close to losing it.

While at Billy Elliott on Wednesday at The Ford Theater downtown, I ventured into the bathroom and saw this sign. Typical no smoking sign with braille writing below it. So why take a picture??

Because look how high on the wall it is!! That's like 6' off the floor. Can you imagine a blind guy flailing along the wall on the off chance that there's a sign AND with braille on it? Even if he could barely see the sign, why hang it so damn high?

Busy, exhausting weekend

The title pretty much says it all.

Softball on Saturday morning after getting only 5 hours of sleep did not go well. For some reason I woke up at 4 a.m. and had thoughts just racing through my head that prevented me from going back to sleep. I had to get up at 6 anyway to trek out to where our softball tournament was, but the extra sleep would have been nice. As a result, softball did not go well for me or our team. In fact I heard from several people that they felt like it was one of their worst days ever (mostly at the plate) and that was certainly the case for me. Brutal.

Saturday night brought lots of REM sleep though and I was recharged and ready to go for my Bears game day tailgate. Pictures and the story of Sunday to come tomorrow!

What side of the street do you walk on?

Today I was walking down the street and I hustled across the street to get to the sunny side. I know that it's Fall now because I all summer long I've been walking in the limited shade of the buildings to keep cooler. Now the weather is cool so it's back to the sunny side for me. I prefer the sunny side of the street and for the next 9 months, that's where you'll find me!

Doctor's orders

In following up with my doctor entry from the other day, LL sent me two links that are very useful in summarizing various screening test frequencies as they relate to your age. That first link was the most useful, but this one is good too.

On a completely unrelated note, Wednesday night at dinner, before Billy Elliot, there was quite a humorous event. Towards the end of our meal, two women came in and were directed to sit at a table near us. We had a party of six and were probably the biggest table in the place. The women looked at their table, paused and asked to be seated elsewhere. Fine, maybe we were being loud or something (I have been accused of that from time to time). So the host took them to another table. Not good enough. Another table. No. How about the bar? They walk over to the bar. No. They come back and go all the way to the corner table in the back. What the hell is wrong with these two?? Then a busboy comes out with a ladder, sets it up, climbs up it and alters the direction of a light pointing at the table so that it instead points away from the table. Let me set a visual for you here: every table has one light directed at the center of the table from overhead. That's how they light the place and it's perfectly fine and even interesting. At the bar it's the same thing, periodic direct lights from overhead (not as nice at the bar as it is at the tables). But seriously, how effed up do you have to be to get someone to pull out a ladder to alter the light at a pretty upscale restaurant in downtown Chicago? We were howling at them for being so ridiculous, which probably didn't help matters too much. I told the host on the way out that he did a good job dealing with them and all he could do was roll his eyes.

Bears game this Sunday and I'm jacked up already!! First tailgate of the new season and I have to get working on the menu. Should be fun!!

Mining Entry

Just a reminder, those Chilean miners are still in their caved in mine. And I'm getting depressed because the sun is setting earlier. What if it never even rose??

Tonight LL treated me to dinner with her parents (and their friends) and a ticket to the musical, Billy Elliot. If you don't know what the story is about, this kid in England is the son of a coal miner and instead of working in the mines or boxing (he's 11) he wants to dance. It won all sorts of Tony's, 10 I think, but we really didn't see why...unless it was a down year on Broadway.....sort of a tallest midget scenario....my apologies to my midget friends. The lead, who we are to believe is the son of his northern England parents is....get this....Asian. Yeah, the lead was a little Asian kid. The number of other Asians on stage at any point in the show? Zero. Sort of makes it tough to completely get into the story.

Anyway, what I found intriguing is the story of the coal miners in Billy's town. The strike in the UK was finally broken by Margaret Thatcher, with the help of some mines that were not participating in the strike and some that were run by scabs. I say "scab" only for ease as it would be tough to be more anti-union than me. Thatcher wanted to nationalize the coal mines and close the unprofitable mines. Those mine closures would impact over 30,000 miners. This part of the story wasn't clearly communicated in the play so it was a little confusing when the strike ended and everyone went back to work and they were unhappy after not working for a year. They were unhappy because the mines were going to be closed. On the Billy Elliot website, they have a timeline of events if you want something more abbreviated than the Wikipedia entry.

Where's my doctor?

Next March I turn 45 and I was thinking last night while I lie in bed, does that mean some sort of....exam? Or physical of some sort. Shouldn't my GP be calling me? Should I be calling my GP? Do GP's even really exist anymore? I bet they do in the burbs. Maybe I'm thinking more of a family doctor as opposed to a GP per se. At the University of Chicago, I'm pretty sure there aren't any "family doctors" who know everyone in your family and their history and how old they are and when it's time for a check up.

My GP is the head of a department at the University of Chicago, so I have a feeling I'm not on the top of her list. That really puts the onus on me, in a way, to manage my own healthcare. Maybe not in the end, but certainly for preventive care right? If I should get a checkup, who is going to tell me? My GP? She's never called me for anything, so I doubt that she's thinking about my preventative care. I'm guessing I need to figure it out on my own.....probably from somewhere on the internet. Just another thing for me to think about......

Big Weekend

First and foremost, congratulations to Alexis in Amsterdam who got married this weekend! Because of my extensive comments on her blog, I decided to start writing my own. It's morphed a bit, but is still fairly honest to my original thoughts.

Saturday night, LL and I went to Ravinia with my buddy JD and his wife. They live within walking distance of the large, outdoor concert venue, so we just parked at their house and hoofed it over. Unfortunately for us, Train (the band we went to see) must be super popular as the place was sold out! In fact, when we got there around 6:15 or so, there was NO WHERE to sit! The only place available was way, way, way in the back where the signs actually say audibly impaired....or something like that. Ugh. Well, we set up camp while JD went to find a better place. And....success! He didn't find a place, but he found someone he knew who got there at....get this....3:30 when they opened the place up. They walled off a big spot for 15 people or so where they could even see the stage and screens and invited us over. Nice!! Train was really good, but they didn't come on until 8:30 so I can't imagine getting there at 4 just to get a spot on the lawn. Crazy.

Ravinia has some regular stadium seating and then has a huge lawn area. You can bring in pretty much anything from chairs and tikki torches to tables, wine and food. It can be a lot of fun when it's not crazy crowded, but I liken it to the concert version of Wrigley Field: the concert (or baseball game) is going on, but there's a lot of other activity and discussions going on that don't involve the main event.

Hope you had a great weekend!!!

Eggstatic

Today I finally looked up the eggs that got recalled just in case I had any of the bad eggs. After jumping on the web, I came up with this reference article. So I went up to my refrigerator and pulled out one full carton and one with only four eggs. The one with four eggs left was from Dutch Farms, one of the offending suppliers!!! Ugh!!! The Julian Date was 193, right in the heart of the trouble!!! My plant number was P1118 though, not one of the plants with issues. Regardless, I tossed the eggs. Better safe than sorry.

The end of summer is nigh, not because of the dramatic shift to cooler weather, but because we could only finish 11 holes during my weekly golf outing with Bill The Bear, Smitty and Nick (Nick hasn't earned a nickname yet.....other than Markakis...there's a baseball player named Nick Markakis.....I just like saying it....Markakis...Markakis...). The sun is setting around 7:30, so we probably have to stop a bit before that. Sigh. One way for me personally to extend the summer is to show up 2+ hours earlier and play 9 holes before they show up from where they work nearby. Here's to summer!!

The Draft

So tonight we had our fantasy football draft. This year there were only 10 teams instead of the normal 12, so the talent available was better. Plus, I had the first overall pick, so the talent pool should be better when I'm picking. And guess what? The talent pool WAS better. Picking was easier and that was reflected in the time it took people to draft. Rarely did anyone come close to the two minutes allotted per pick. Combine the football with drinking and food, and it was a good time.

This afternoon I was at my Starbucks and had a panic moment. Someone's dog, looked like a puppy, got out of their harness while their owner was inside Starbucks getting coffee. Often people just tie up their pooch while they go inside. Unfortunately, the harness didn't fit well enough and he got loose. Immediately three or four people on the outdoor patio jumped up to corral the dog and the owner bolted from the store. I realized what was happening about 15 seconds later and I raced outside to help along with the barista who was brewing my coffee (partial decaf and it was after 3 so they have to brew it special). When I got outside, the pooch was surrounded and snagged in short order. Lots of people rushed to help and there was no injuries to report.

What ticked me off was that these two 20-something girls were sitting right by the door and they didn't even MOVE. How self-absorbed can you be when a puppy is running loose and you don't even move to help? It ticked me off. If something would have happened to the dog, they would have been read the riot act by yours truly and it would NOT have ended well.