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Most dogs have fairly simple needs. Keep them well-stocked in food and water, give them a comfortable place to sleep, provide their daily allotment of walks and scritches, and they'll be happy. Coonhounds on the other hand have an entire Maslow's hierarchy. It's sometimes difficult to tell the difference between the bark meaning “I'm hungry” or “I have to pee,” and the one meaning “I'm suffering from spiritual emptiness due to feeling like my life lacks purpose.”

Monday, October 21st

3:02pm: After over a week waiting to hear back from the engine company on warranty service for the bad lifter, they said it's out of warranty cause it's been more than 6 months (I'm pretty sure it's been something like 6 months and 1 day at this point since they got that engine), so there wasn't really a whole lot of point in waiting for them anyway. The owner of ATC is out today, but he will be back in tomorrow, and then we can formulate a plan for fixing the lifter and finally getting moving.

Today has been quiet. The wifi at our hotel has been down cause apparently the phone company is doing some work on the lines, so haven't been able to get much done. Monkey has actually given me some peace and quiet, which has been nice, but I'm sure he'll rouse any minute. Last night, I had to turn the lights off and get in bed around 10pm just cause it was the only way to get him to understand it was quiet time.

1 day and a wake-up left in quarantine.

Update 3:12pm: Monkey has, in fact, woken up.

Saturday, October 19th

The last week has been mind-numbingly dull. Have mostly hung around the room. Monkey has been very needy, which I can understand cause he's missing his friends. Though he seems to decide every time I get out of bed that I need to be taking him out and not doing anything that isn't paying attention to him, so I haven't been able to get any work or much of anything else done, since I only get any peace when I'm laying in bed not doing anything. Though I did finish setting up our WriteFreely instance and put my past logs online. Today I installed the permanent wiring kit for the dashcam, so the next time someone decided to give us trouble, we should be assured of having a recording of it. Our mechanic is still waiting to hear back from the engine manufacturer on whether they want them to fix the Dimetrodon't lifter, or if they want to warranty it again. If the Dimetrodon needs another engine replacement, I don't know what we're going to do. May just have to say fuck it and deal with it as it is.

4 days of quarantine left.

the trivial case

how many ways can you arrange nothing

sit with nothing for a while and it's clear there's more than one permutation

Tuesday, October 15th

Quiet, uneventful, boring day. I can't really do anything except hang out in my room on my computer. I took Monkey out now and then to do his business, but I can't really take him on any long walks to any parks or hiking trails where there might be other dogs, cause he has to stay away from other dogs during his quarantine. We did make a trip out to Wal-Mart this evening and got some much needed supplies delivered to the car, and I brought in all of our various bins of stuff off of the roof, so that's done at least. I still don't see a refund from Staybridge on my card, not even a pending one, so I may have to call them if I don't see it soon, and if that doesn't work, I'll have to put a chargeback on my card. They did very quickly charge a $250 extra cleaning fee. I can't imagine what that could be for, but I really don't feel like arguing with them about it. I talked to my mechanic today, and he said they'd been in touch with the engine maker and sent them the info they'd requested, but hadn't gotten a response. He said he was going to call them to let a fire under them and let me know the result by end of day today, which he didn't do, so I guess I'm calling him again tomorrow. 8 days of quarantine remain. This would be a good time to contact the Iowa DMV to see if they'd be willing to give us temporary plates for the Dimetrodon. If they won't, that will make our return journey a lot more interesting.

Monday, October 14th

So we got kicked out of our hotel. And Monkey needs to be quarantined for 10 days. And we had to move to 2 separate rooms at the REDACTED, which is nowhere near as nice, but was at least a lot cheaper. And Staybridge had the decency to say they'd refund the rest of our stay.

The day started out quietly enough. I woke up super early, took the dogs for a walk, got breakfast, then went back up and actually managed to get back to sleep. We woke up a bit later and did some work. Monkey was barking a lot, and I got a call from the front desk saying people were complaining about the barks, and wanting to check that I hadn't left him in there alone. I confirmed I was in there with him, and we started giving him some attention to quiet him down while I made an emergency dog toy run. All pretty peaceful.

Things started to turn south about 2:30pm when I got a call from the front desk saying they needed me to come downstairs to discuss an issue with my reservation. I thought maybe they wanted to ask about us having three dogs, and I could explain to them that Spider was a service animal and there would be no further problems. I came downstairs to find a cop waiting for me, who was soon joined by an animal control officer. I guess they saw our Jeep parked outside and asked the Hotel about it. They came up to the room to look at Monkey, and explained that the owner of the dog from yesterday had filed a complaint that he had attacked and bitten her dog (he had, but in his soft-bite playful sort of way. He definitely didn't break any skin or do any real damage) and that state law required them to declare him a dangerous animal and he needed to be kept in quarantine for 10 days so they could verify he didn't have rabies, and we couldn't leave Ankeny or have him around any other dogs. After verifying that they weren't planning on killing Monkey not putting him on some kind do lifelong dog offender registry, we made plans to get a second room where we could keep me and Monkey separate from Molly and Spider during his quarantine. They also warned us, that based on their interactions with the dog’s owner—which I didn't get the impression they particularly enjoyed—that we would probably be hearing more from her, probably later after the quarantine was over.

I went back down to the front desk to arrange this, and was told that between not telling them about Spider (it turns out I did have to tell them even though he's a service dog) and finding out that Monkey was a dangerous animal, the hotel manager had decided to ask us to leave. The lady at the front desk was pretty nice about it. I asked and verified that we would be getting a refund and that we weren't being put on any kind of blacklist, and started getting our stuff out to the car. We booked two single rooms through BringFido at the REDACTED, which doesn't look quite as nice, but they allow multiple pets, have kitchens in their rooms, and are a lot cheaper.

As I was loading the last of our stuff into the car, a Suburban White Lady was hanging out at the side entrance watching me and asked me if I was taking off, which I thought was a little odd, but didn't think too much more of it. We got the last of our stuff and Leo and the dogs into the car, I strapped it all down, and it seems that as I was getting into the car and trying to get Molly to let me have the driver's seat, the power to my dashcam got disconnected, which is a shame as what happened next is exactly the sort of thing it would be good to have a working dashcam for.

As we were pulling out, the Suburban White Lady flagged us down and walked in front of the car to keep us from stopping. She said we weren't allowed to leave Ankeny and asked us where we were going. I told her, as politely as I could, that it was none of her fucking business and to please leave us alone. She did not seem inclined to do this and we said we would call the police if we didn't leave, which she just responded to by saying she had friends at the police force and was friends with the owner of the dog Monkey had tried to hump yesterday. We pulled out, and their vehicle pulled out to follow us. We parked elsewhere in the hotel parking lot and called the cops. They parked nearby and stayed their until the cops arrived, then left before they could be questioned by them. We have a statement to the cops about what happened, then we pulled off, not just making the 5 minute drive to our hotel, but taking a more circuitous route to make sure we weren't followed. I really hope we don't have to deal with these people anymore. We could have resolved things amicably, but now they have declared war.

We finally got to the REDACTED, and I have to say, compared to where we were, it's a shithole. My room has one tiny bed on one of those weird raised up rack bed frames that you only see in crappy hotels. The kitchen looks like the one we had in our house when I was 5, which was already out of date then, and had absolutely nothing in terms of plates or silverware or pans or anything else. There is not a single lamp and the overhead lighting is absolutely horrible. They gave us some impressively large rulesheets with a list a mile long of things they could kick us out for. Also, they only do housekeeping once every 2 weeks. It's going to be a long 10 days.

On the plus side, Leo was able to get some little portable LED lamps ordered from Target that seem to be doing their jobs okay. Monkey was initially wondering when we were going to go back home, since we clearly weren't home if Spider and Molly and Leo weren't there, but he's settled down now.

Also, I talked to ATC, and it sounds like the Dimetrodon's engine manufacturer was open today. My mechanic said he was going to call them, then call me and let me know what they said before the end of day today, which he hasn't done, so I guess I'll call him tomorrow. 10 days is definitely enough time for the Dimetrodon to be done, so we can look forward to getting it back when this quarantine is over.