OK. News news. What's new? Dog! Dog is love. Dog is love and love is new. I have Dog. In my heart. And on my bed. Kino has come to live with Erin and myself, and she brought a good deal of my stuff with her as well. Maybe too much stuff. Well, definitely too much.

I flew to Reno last weekend and met my mom, a proud owner of a new 6.6 liter, one ton GMC pickup with Allison gearing and deluxe haul package, who helped me unstuff my 5 x 7 foot storage space and re-pack it into her trailer. From there it was a mere three-hour drive to the I-80 summit, some 30 miles away, where we were promptly turned around because we had no chains for the trailer. It was raining.

Since the safe road was being closely guarded, we had no choice but to go the more risky, less watched route up the serpentine 89, past lake Almanor and down the deserted byways of the mountains into Red Bluff, the what should have been three-hour leg of our journey neatly accomplished in something like eight.

Suffice to say we made it to PDX intact, mom, dog and all. And when I say "all", I mean all my stuff. Fabulous chests of treasure and jewels which I've paid $50 a month to store in Reno for over two years when unpacked became mostly... old photos, LPs, some miscellaneous bike rack parts, an old judo gi? What the hell is all this crap?

Clearly I've been tricked. My wealth of gold transmuted into worthless crap by some evil efreet. Or maybe some sneak-thief stole into my storage space, extracted what I'm sure must have been my very valuable possessions (why would I store anything else for so long and at such cost?) and as a prank replaced them with... what is this? Old vitamins? A box full of charcoal? Half-used pastels?

I need some boxes so I can haul this stuff off to goodwill.