Having had some small role in every major natural disaster since Hurricane Isabel in 2003, sitting at home watching Gustav do his thing has been kind of an interesting experience. Actually, I’m not at all sure what I should be doing with myself. I have a bag about half packed as I really had expected to get a call by now. So all that’s really left at this point is to watch and wait. Maybe I’ll get to sit this one out and get all of my information of questionable credibility from the cable news channels. And since the grass is always greener on the other side, I’ll spend the next week wishing I was doing whatever it is I’m not.
Monthly Archives: August 2008
Eunuch…
Winston had his big visit with the vet today and after talking to someone from their office a few minutes ago, it looks like the procedure went well and he came out of anesthesia nicely; always a concern for our stubby-nosed little friends. They want to keep an eye on him for another couple of hours, but I can bring him home after 4:00. The doc assured me that he’s getting lots of love and attention from the staff there. The interns seem to have taken to him, so I suppose he’s in good hands. Now I just have to worry about having him home in my paranoid incompetent ones.
Petsmart…
So if you ever find yourself needed a couple of dozen new friends, I highly recommend throwing a 6 month old bulldog in the truck and taking him to Petsmart. It’s like people come out of the frigging woodwork to come over and check him out. Being the ham that he is, Winston of course enjoyed every minute of it… racks of toys, a nice cool floor to lay on, and lots of attention. Life doesn’t get any better, right?
Blah…
For the first time in quite a while I just haven’t really felt like posting. I actually haven’t felt like writing at all, which is something I really do enjoy for the most part. I’m not suspending the blog or anything, but things are going as well as can be expected with a 6 month old puppy and work hasn’t driven me to the top of a bell tower and I’ve been avoiding large groups of people as much as possible… Maybe it’s just that I’ve been avoiding my usual muse. Whatever the reason, fewer things to bitch about basically = fewer interesting posts. It’s times like this I thank God I don’t actually have to write on command. I’d be out of articles in a month and a half.
The need for speed…
Before drifting off to dreamland last night, I was flipping through the channels and landed on one of the NBC stations showing the Olympics. Not what I’d normally watch, but all I was really looking for was some background noise, so no worries… Until I heard the color commentary refer to the sport I was listening to as “race walking.” Even in my addled state of near-sleep, I was conscious enough to realize that made as much sense to me as “speed sleeping” or “ass sitting.” So, I just had to see this Olympic sport in all its late-night televised glory.
Sure enough, it lived up to its billing. The contestants were walking rapidly around the track… out of the building and around the block… for 20 kilometers. All I can say to that is WTF? Is there some kind of massive movement afoot to launch speed walking as a major sporting event or was this just the ChiCom’s plot to leave us utterly confused and defenseless? I’m not saying I could do what they were doing as I’m fairly sure my knees don’t bend that way, but still, is race walking really what we need in a sporting event that’s going to be beamed around the world?
Destructo…
What the hell is it about dogs that gives them desire to destroy anything at eye level? I mean you send the little bastards to school and they eat the books… Or in this case the better part of a kitchen chair. In a room full of items they’re supposed to chew on like nylabones, squeaky ducks, rope knots, and a bevy of other things in assorted peanut butter, liver, and chicken flavors, why go after the large wooden object that I can only assume tastes like wood? For the most part Destructo has been reasonably well mannered (except for the ongoing obsession with hands), but after Sunday’s little exercise in woodworking, I’ve had to clip his wings. Being at the top of the food chain, sometimes I really wonder why we tolerate animals living in the house.
Grounds…
Few things in life are as rewarding as that first cup of coffee on a cool summer morning. It doesn’t have to even be good coffee, really. Even cheap coffee well made will do the job. But with good beans and a quality machine, it’s almost a religious experience. That’s what makes it so traumatic when a good machine goes bad. My beloved Krups super-machine has broken with the one true faith and begun dumping grounds into the pot. That’s got to be like taking a leak in the holy water, right? Right.
Ok so maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but I’ve been limping along with a machine that makes the bottom half of the pot undrinkable for a couple of weeks now. It’s time to put the old girl out to pasture… and right it off as a disappointing $100 investment. Is it bad that I really want to get one of those industrial-sized machines that they have in convenience stores?
One sick puppy…
Winston has been having a bad 24 hours. He woke up yesterday and seemed fine until I took him outside for my first cup of coffee and his morning constitutional. Yeah, that’s when my little fuzzy buddy became my own personal poop cannon. Not to be too graphic at this early hour, but he was getting some distance on that stuff. Repeat that every three hours or so through the early evening and you end up with one very obsessive Jeff… So, off we go to the open-all-weekend vet that my regular doc recommends. The official diagnosis was “We dunno – Sometimes it just happens.”
With my slight tendencies towards being a control freak and near-terminal need to resolve problems, this was not a terribly satisfying answer. On the up side, they gave my boy a shot of some kind and some pills that are supposed to help get the little fella’s stomach straightened out. So far this morning he seems to be doing pretty well… a little food, a little cottage cheese, and no explosive diarrhea. Fortunately I was already going to be home most of the day today, so we’ll see how it goes.
Scheming…
Is it bad that I have only been back to work for three days and I’m already scheming about where I want to go on vacation next time? In between now and then, though, I have a few obligatory trips I need to make. One of my cronies from the office is getting married in October in Williamsburg so I anticipate being up there for an extended weekend and probably a “pass-through” visit to Western Maryland on my way back to Tennessee. Then of course there is the obligatory Christmas visit. After that, though, it’s pretty much an open slate. Maybe somewhere warm with a rum economy in the spring. If the euro would ever stop beating up on the dollar, I’d love to go back to Europe but I don’t foresee that happening any time in the immediate future.
It’s not so much that I’m out of good ideas as it is that I want to make these trips count since they’re getting to be pretty damned few and far between. One of the biggest problems with west Tennessee is that getting anywhere is an expedition that involves an overpriced airline ticket (for a hub airport, MEM is ridiculously expensive) out of the city or an all day drive in any direction. In the interim, I’m hoping to coax a few old friends to Memphis with the promise of world-class barbecue and… uhhhh… Bible study.
Clean…
After two weeks of waiting for the results, I met with the surgeon again today and he confirmed that I have a clean bill of health. It seems the spot in question was no more than a little surface irritation. So, for tonight at least, all is right with the world.
JEFFREYTHARP.COM 