Author Archives: jdtharp

One sick puppy…

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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…

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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.

Memphis or bust…

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Well, no first class upgrade this time, but no matter how great a trip has been I always seem ready to get back to where ever it is that I came from. It’s good to be back with your own stuff and your dog. It’s been an awesome trip. Great food, entertainment, gambling, booze, and even better company. Life is very, very good.

Please report to the podium…

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Usually getting called over for a chat with the gate agent is never a good thing. I assumed it was going to be the usually “we’re in an oversold situation and you get to stay in Memphis” kind of story, but no… The flight is over booked but they’ve kindly decided to give me the bump to first class. It’s nice to see all of the quality time I’ve spent with Northwest over the last two years are paying off in the form of slightly wider seats and a touch more leg room.

Law of Unintended Consequences or: Why Gasoline Should Be Expensive…

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So anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock for the last six months has either watched the increasing cost of gas or at least seen it’s continuing coverage as a “news” event. The minute-by-minute tracking of the price of gas is about as useful to most people as the minute-by-minute stock ticker. It’s kind of interesting to know, but there’s not much that you can do about it.

Over the last couple of weeks, I have noticed one interesting thing, though: My afternoon commute, once a spot on 40-minute trip is now down to a svelte 34-minutes from door to door. Though not scientific in any way, I’m taking this to mean that at least in my little part of the world, the afternoon “rush” (such that it is in West Tennessee) is not quite as busy as it was a few short months ago.

Could it be that there are actually fewer cars on the road? Just released Federal Highway Administration data shows a decrease if almost 10 billion miles driven in May, so maybe this is the beginning of a trend. For those of you thinking this is the beginning of my new life as a tree-hugging, sandal-wearing, granola-eating hippy, fear not… As far as I’m concerned, this is great news because it means more room on the highway for me, less time committed to the daily drive, and gas that’s down a few pennies from it’s highs at the pump. It’s the law of unintended consequences at work and the reason I don’t bitch too much when the price of gas goes up a bit.

What’s the Opposite of “Progress?”

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Congress has an approval rating of 9% and yet somehow something on the order of 95% of individual Members of Congress will be reelected when they run. If there was ever a better case of the people getting the government they deserve, I don’t know what it would be. We have term limits in this country. They’re called elections. If we’re too lazy to throw the bastards out every two, four, or six years, then honest to God, I don’t know what we’re doing here.

Update…

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OK, so it seems that the most likely culprit that sent me to the oral surgeon on Tuesday is some kind of infection. At least that’s the early diagnosis. The authoritative word will come back from the biopsy that he sliced out of the roof of my mouth… Yeah, and incidentally, if anyone every wants to take a hunk out of the roof of your mouth, I highly recommend looking for an alternative course of action.

I don’t know…

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I stumbled into a five sided conversation about baseball this morning and realized very early into it that the best thing I could do was keep my mouth shut, nod at appropriate intervals, and try to escape without being cornered for an actual opinion. I know that sports are what men talk about when they are in a group, but outside of the basic rules, I don’t know a damned thing about them. I don’t know who’s leading the National League or what teams are likely to be in the playoffs.

What’s more, I don’t really care about knowing these things, either. I’ve tried to pay attention, mainly because I like to have something to add to polite conversations, but God, do I find it all so dull. I can talk at length on topics from Ancient Greece, to politics, to pop culture but when it comes to sports, I’m a babe in the wood. It’s not so much that I don’t like sports as much as I just don’t care about them.

Yeah, I just admitted it on the internet. Hopefully they don’t come pull my credentials as a guy.