here's the long-short of the july 4th weekend recap:

flew to ABQ-NM friday afternoon and discovered upon arriving that we (my brother & i) were going to house-sit for his best friend for the weekend. cool w/me b/c tommy has an awesome new pad he built himself out near the foothills. and the house is huge; the kitchen/dinner area alone is the size of my entire apt! tommy also has a sweet 60" sony widescreen in his living room (which is also the size of my apt!). so it's us, my brother's 4 dogs, and tommy's 2 dogs. all good.

saturday rolls to a great start. b-fast @iHop; new ink @StarTattoo; off to Los Lunas for microbrews @Tractor Brewing. back to tommy's where my brother and i begin the early evening grill-out festivities. my sister, her fiance, and her HS friend/realtor show up and we eat, drink and be merry until the sun sets. they leave then the Tanoan fireworks launch nearby. that's when all hell breaks loose...

the dogs (all 6 of 'em) go crazy from the loud explosions and run wild back and forth from one end of the backyard and back inside the house nonstop howling and barking the entire time. they're freaking and we're trying to calm them down. my brother notices that sixx is suddenly missing from the pack of dogs running crazy... so he's screaming for her as we turn the house upside down looking for her. moments later he realizes she's not there and must've jumped the 8ft wall surrounding the backyard during the mad panic.

so we search around the house in the pitch black calling for her to no avail. he jets in his Bronco hoping to find her down one of the many roads. later i (& his dogs) join him and we drive and drive for hours hoping she recognizes the sound of his truck. nothing. 6AM sunday my brother and his dogs are out driving thru all the nearby neighborhoods. nothing. i join him in the afternoon and we drive and drive more little residental roads. nothing.

spot a flyer for a found missing dog lost at the same time sixx disappeared. sadly the description doesn't match. check w/the pound. nothing. created "lost dog" flyers to place around a 2 mile radius. no calls. sixx was my brother's first dog. he picked her up when she was a puppy from the shelter just over 2yrs ago. by sunday evening things were dismal. we didn't do much of anything at that point electing to stay in and barely utter a word.

monday wasn't much better as the sinking feeling of losing sixx for good set in. managed a decent meal at Blue Corn Brewing Company opting for the microbrew sampler to loosen us up and start talking again. made some stops looking for a new DVD player i bought for my brother and chilled the rest the evening. didn't get shit for sleep.

up early for my 8AM flight back to chicago and right back into the office for the afternoon shift. fucking depressing to say the least. what a way to remember my 4th of july 2004 vacation in new mexico. i feel for my bro... sixx is an awesome dog.