Eight Feet Deep

The 2006 Winter Olympics are history and I must confess I saw very little of the games on TV. I can’t really say why I didn’t watch more of the games. I like watching some of the sports such as the skiing events and speed skating. But my attention span is a little too short these days to sit and view hours upon hours of olympic feats.

I’m sorry U.S. skier Bode Miller didn’t win any medals. I kind of liked the fact that he talked in the past about skiing “wasted.” Bigtime sports seems to have an excess of facade. Miller may have been ill-advised talking about it and perhaps somewhat reckless for skiing while intoxicated. But he seemed real. That’s got to count for something.

Just what is the fine line that separates sanity and insanity? Is it all a big judgment call? Is it socially defined? You can have an MRI picture taken of your head and can find a tumor. But you can’t necessarily take an MRI of the head and tell that someone is insane. It’s something to think about, especially in light of what I did Saturday morning.

My friend Sarah and I went on a hike in the woods up in the Big Thicket area of Southeast Texas with a group of nature lovers. To make a long story short it was raining rather steadily when we got to the trailhead and it pretty much rained the whole hour or so we were hiking. Now that in itself isn’t so bad. What was bad was the mud.

We mostly hiked around the edge of a creek with our objective a nice-sized little cliff over a pretty cool ravine with a view. But hiking around the creek subjected us to mud, lots and lots of mud. Coming back down from the hill I exited for quite a distance by way of ass — my ass. I had kind of viewed the hike up until that point as kind of a needless pain in the ass that maybe we should have avoided. But once I did the old slip-and-slide, I was convinced that this was a fun outing.

It was fun but kind of crazy for some folks. Like me. I’m not one given to extremes and I think most other times I would have said: “No thanks. I’m not going to go hiking in a downpour along a creek bottom.” It kind of got to where I wanted to make it up that hill and back just to say I did it. I mean it wasn’t all that huge a hill and in dry weather it would be a relatively easy hike.

The hike might have seemed normal to some people. And some may say about my contentions: “What a candy ass!” But like the razor-thin edge, which on one side lies sanity and the other side lunacy, so lives the figurative expressway that separates those who do from those who don’t. The truth is, one never knows on which side of the highway that they’ll find themselves. Not that it really matters. It’s only life.

A man with the winning name of Septimus Winner wrote that enduring ode to lost canines everywhere: “Oh Where, Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone?” This seems to be the question that millions of Americans are asking with regard to Vivi, the missing whippet showdog, who escaped captivity at JFK Airport in New York.

Yes, Vivi Fever has become the new national obsession and I am happy to play my very little part in it. That bit part is a result of news aggregator, Topix.net, picking up some of my posts about the wayward whippet. Why this online news distributor picked up a post from a blog that is mainly read by four good friends and a couple of prairie dogs is beyond me. But since I have unwittingly (as in nitwittingly) become a voice of authority on this story, people from all over the world are checking out EFD to see if Vivi has been found.

To answer your question: No, Vivi has not been found, not to my knowledge at least.

I don’t know what that means for Vivi. I have read whippets are known to take off and hide for days. Vivi may have stowed away on another plane and could be living la vida in Puerto Vallarta for all we know. I thought that perhaps someone might have dognapped the whippet but that doesn’t seem to be the case as far as what I’ve read. So hopefully, Vivi is safe somewhere having a good dog laugh and will eventually return to its peeps and we can obsess over something new.

Sam Cooke summed it up almost 50 years ago with his song “Wonderful World.”

“Don’t know much about history
Don’t know much biology
Don’t know much about a science book
Don’t know much about the French I took … “

Well, I know a little history and I know how to read a science book. But I never took French and I don’t really know that much biology (with the exception of mammalian reproduction).

I wish I knew a little more science this week as yet another tech writing project is kicking my ass. I look back at high school and college and wish I would have learned more science, along with more math, meteorology, more Spanish, et cetera. Sometimes I wish I had applied myself more to my studies instead of the studious pursuit of the party universe.

But alas, I cannot turn back the hand of time. For if I did — I probably would just piss it away having a good time again. Why change a winning formula?

Just as the blond cable news goddesses doggedly track the missing white girls, I am steadfastly following the disappearance of Vivi the missing Whippet dog. It seems the psychics have arrived in New York to find the Westminster Kennel Club merit award winner, according to the Chicago Tribune. It also was reported that some dog crap has been found that is possibly like that of a Whippet. (Personally, I don’t want to KNOW how they know that)