After holding out, I finally went to Berkley. It was night time, so I guess it doesn't really count as a true visit, since I really couldn't see anything. But a friend who lives there, Alisa, said I should visit, so I did. Some person who lived above her had taken a lover, a homeless guy. This is all par for the course in Berkely. Anyhow this guy lived in his car. In the car was also a male and a female dog, and they conspired to make baby dogs. So the dogs have nine puppies, and they are all in the backseat of this car parked out front. Being Berkely, somebody walking by decides to get involved and opens the car door, which had been left with the windows partially down. So the dog goes to defend its puppies and attacks the interloper and bites him. Then animal control gets called and they show up and take away the male parent dog. That is just when Alisa got home, found all this out and decided to take in the puppies and female dog, even though her building doesn't alllow dogs. But she felt morally bound to rescue them from the pound.

And Alisa was really into dogs, so for about five days things were going ok, even though the mother dog, who was basically feral, bit someone who came to visit the puppies. And the homeless lover was happy too, since Alisa bought puppy chow for the dogs. So this whole thing is going along fine, minus the dog bites, until one day when every one is out and the homeless guy decides to camp on the sidewalk out front awaiting return. And the landlord happens to show up and say, hey, pal, move along. And the homeless guy responds that he's just waiting to see his dogs, which, in case you lost the thread here, the building doesn't allow. So the set up of the visit is that Alisa has nine puppies and a feral dog, and now is the only chance to see them, because they are getting evicted.

Predictably, the dogsare cute. They are only about a week old and all jockeying for nipples on the mother dog, or bitch, as we say in the dog trade. Alisa's roomates were also par for the course in Berkley, one about to join Burmese freedom fighters in the jungles of norther Thailand to write some free newspaper they produce on a jungle xerox machine, trying to cast off the yoke of oppression in Burma. The other was about to go to Hong Kong, which isn't really that radical, but it was kind of dangerous, since flights that hold 400 people were going over with 4 people on board, in light of the panic about SARS.