Lots has happened over the past month, but nothing with any major life lessons or repercussions, so the idea of blogging about it has been daunting. I'm afraid I'll just get caught up describing the mundane details and it'll be a long, boring post. So I keep putting it off, and then more small things happen that I want to write about, and, well, let's just say it's a cyclical thing.

I rescued a dog yesterday. Sort of. I mean, as it turns out, the dog was missing for a total of four hours, and he was in my custody for about 3:45 of those.

I was walking Otto on Saturday morning, and found a dog in the middle of the street. No collar or leash or anything. He was awfully cute- all white and fluffety, and he kept following us and squeaking. Yes, squeaking. Not yipping or whining, but squeaking.

I didn't want him to get run over, even in our low-traffic area. So I knocked on a few doors. Only two answered, neither recognized the dog. So I took him back to our place. He was pretty stinky and a little dirty, but not like a ratty street dog.

And thus began my long adventure, which Aaron has deemed "The Case of the Found Dog," a la Encyclopedia Brown.

To sum up: First, the dog humped Otto's back repeatedly, and Otto took it like a bitch (sorry for the language, but honestly- Otto tries to act tough, but if he ever went to jail, we know which position he'd take). Then we spent half an hour coaxing the dog into the crate, which required 2 hot dogs, us crawling on our bellies, and a broom;

I then took the 25 pound dog in a crate into an adoption place where they told me to go to the city shelter; lugged him back to the car and to the shelter, where it was determined that he does not have a microchip, and that my options were to leave him there where he could get sick or hurt by another dog, or back to my place; begged the shelter guy to carry the dog back to my car because my arms couldn't take it anymore.

Then I took photos of the dog, made a flyer, got them printed and photocopied (did you know that Kinko's doesn't charge for the first 20 copies of flyers for lost children or animals?), put up flyers at Petco, the shelter and an animal hospital (it was a little satisying to put up "Found Dog" flyers amid all the "Lost Dog" ones); came back and Aaron and I suited up for our quest.

I put on my sneakers and bike helmet, Aaron packed a backpack with the flyers and a stapler. We rode our bikes about a block either way, which was pretty major for me. I hadn't ridden a bike in about 20 years, but had been wanting to, so Aaron bought me a bike for my birthday! It's a Diamondback, but all I really cared about is that it's little and red. I picked it out at the bike shop, where I happily embarrassed myself in front of the staff by proving that the phrase "It's just like riding a bike" is a fallacy.

Six flyers later, we passed by some neighbors; I asked them if they recognized the dog, and sure enough, they said someone around the corner was asking about him. So off we rode, trying to figure out which corner house they meant (I'm not very good at listening to directions). This, I think, is where Aaron made the Encyclopedia Brown reference.

We found the house and there was an older Mexican man sitting in a truck in front of the house. Now I'm no racist, but this is like the second or third guy in our neighborhood that I've seen just sitting in a truck, seemingly going nowhere or waiting for anything. I'm just saying.

As I hopped off my bike, he said very mournfully, "Do you have my dog?" I was all "Yes! I do!" He didn't speak very much English, and when I said "Why wasn't he wearing a collar?" He just looked confused. Then he pointed to the house and I asked "I should talk to your wife?" He goes "No, my wife died. Ask my daughter." As I went to the door, he started talking to Aaron about how his wife died and now his dog was gone. It was all very strange and sad.

Anyhoo, the daughter was there, and she was SO relieved to hear that he was okay. Turns out she took off his collar to groom him, and he wandered away. Apparently they leave him off leash with the door open a lot, but he's never escaped away before. We think he may have been in some kind of male dog heat, which would explain the humiliation that Otto had to endure. His name, we know now, is Toby. And his owner is awfully nice, so that was a happy ending.

And today I took Otto jogging in Balboa Park for the first time. It was so beautiful. Driving to a park seemed like a big investment- I had gotten used to jogging to the park that was two blocks from our old apartment, and that was just a crappy little ghetto park. This one is a proper park, with a lake and everything, and is really only a 5-minute drive. The loop around the park seemed to be about 1.5 miles, so we did two lazy laps and enjoyed the view.

Of course, I kept trying to convince myself that this is still a byproduct of fake suburbaness- after all, it's clearly a manmade lake inside a manmade green area next to a freeway. The purist in me thinks I should see it as a pale imitation of real wildland and all that is good and natural about the world. But honestly, I'm very easy to please. Give me a quaint little New England town where you can see fudge being made through big picture windows; give me thatched roof cottages outside of London; and give me sparkly lakes in the middle of LA, kids bicycling and old people sittingon lawn chairs in the shade, and my heart goes "Awww."

I still think this falls into one of those terms I never really understood- a simulacra: an imitation of something that no longer has an original, or never had an original in the first place. Like Disneyland as an imitation of a perfect American city that never existed. Well, today's suburbs are an imitation of a 1950s America that was never as idylllic as we make it out to be, but it sure is nice to see people out on a sunny day having a good time.

And in other Sarktale news: I turned 31, went to New York, and am having doubts about my career. 'Tis all for now .