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There was something special about this morning.

I only caught a brief glimpse of it, as I walked the couple of blocks from my front door to the bus stop, but it was enough.

The sun was uncharacteristically high in the sky and there wasn’t a cloud in sight. There had been heavy rain the night before, so everything from the asphalt to the grass had the slight sheen of moisture. The air was so crisp and clean I could almost taste it - not unlike the first bite of an apple. Thick vapor formed with every breath and my exposed skin tingled from the cold. The riot of greens, reds and oranges was absolutely incredible.

Its moments like these that make life worth living.

I usually spend some time every evening walking my dog, Pogo, and yesterday was no exception. However, this trip to Pratt Park ended with an encounter with a pitbull that broke off of its leash and came flying at Pogo. It managed to viciously latch its jaws onto Pogo’s shoulder and would not let go. Once I realized this wasn’t a typical scuffle, I reached in to intervene - while I managed to separate the two animals, the pitbull did get one last bite in.

It definitely left two decent sized puncture wounds, so I ended up spending yesterday night in the ER making sure I had all of my shots in order. It turns out that rabies is virtually non-existent in the Northwest, but I was told that animal bites like this still have a 40% chance of becoming infected even after medical treatment. Lovely.

The pitbull had one of those choke collars for controlling difficult dogs and had managed to break off its leash in spite of this extra precaution. So unfortunately, I couldn’t honestly say that the owner had been negligent. Still, she wasn’t particularly polite during the whole incident, and refused to give me her home address (apparently a cell number isn’t enough for the police to work with).

Chances are, my hospital bill will be just large enough to hurt my wallet, but not enough to justify going to the small claims court, leaving me with no recourse. Perhaps this would be a situation where Korean-style vigilante justice would be appropriate.

Sarah’s mom is in town visiting, so I’ve spent a fair amount of time this weekend wandering around the city. After a pan handler had approached us for change, she commented that Seattle seemed to have a lot of homeless people and that the city should do something about it.

I just did a few searches and discovered that even though Seattle is the 23rd largest city in the US by population, we’re 7th in terms of number of homeless.

Huh.

I went to school in Philly and I work in Pioneer Square, so I don’t really think twice about bums on the street. Still, I was a bit surprised by these statistics, especially considering Seattle’s liberal culture. This is purely conjecture, but perhaps its the liberal culture that’s the root of the high homeless rate. Seattle is a pretty tolerant city - maybe the stigma of living on the street is blunted here.