Spreading Mayonnaise

My day started by taking my dog to a specialist for more tests. Unfortunately, just as she was prepped and on the table and "emergency" came in. My poor, drugged dog needed to be dragged out of the scanner and put on hold for a couple hours while the other animal was dealt with.

So I waited... and waited some more while the tests were actually being done. Finally the vet delivered the results. Long story short, they needed to act right then and there. Today. Immediately.

I tried to be rational. I collected all the information I could, and asked all the questions I could think of to make sure I understand both the short term and long term options. It broke my heart, but I even started asking about the monetary costs.

I know that someday keeping my dog alive might not be financially feasible. It destroys me having to include that in my decisions, but I know that there's no other choice. it's a hard choice, but I know how to deal with it.

Not too long ago a friend of mine was faced with a similar situation; his cat had feline HIV. The animal's fate was set. The only questions was "when" and under what circumstance. Back then I was the compassionate voice of reason, balancing the rational and the emotional to help my friend make the best choice for his pet.

And luckily I still have my own advice to fall back on - even though today it seems more like mantra than anything else.

I will know when it's my dog's time. She will let me know. If you're a pet owner, you probably understand without me having to explain it further. If you don't understand ... well, I'm sorry. I just don't have it in me to explain right now. Current circumstances are leaving me far too emotionally taxed.

While my dog was going through the procedure to repair her heart, my wife called. Another disaster has struck.

My landlord, who has struck me as a bit a douche nozzle since day 1, apparently didn't check the local laws regarding habitations. The short story here is that the apartment is illegal. It was illegal to convert this basement into a living unit to begin with, let alone rent it out.

This *might* mean that I'm totally out of a place to live. I'm hoping it can be resolved in some mutually beneficial fashion - like he can petition the zone bone for some kind a variance. For now I'm going to be cautiously optimistic and hope for some pleasant resolution. If not, well, today will go down as a strong candidate for the worst day of my life.

Depending on how the fates weave, I might lose my dog and my home.

But wait, there's more.

In my first marriage, I had two dogs. When we got divorced we made the difficult but practical decision to split the animals apart. Each of us took one.

Since my first wife was the co-owner of my dog at one point, I felt it appropriate to let her know about what's happening. I sent my ex and e-mail giving as many details as I could. And the reply was devastating.

The other dog has cancer and is also battling for her life.

Will we lose both our dog's at the same time?

I don't want to imagine how things could be any worse. In fact, I just want to crawl into bed and hide under the covers for 100 years.

Everything happened today.

My dog has been behaving odd lately - not eating her food among other things - so I took her to the vet. The vet performed all kinds of test, got the animal's records from the old vet, and decided to hold on to my pet for a couple of hours for more tests.

At the end of it all I found myself staring at a bunch of X-Rays of my dog's interior thinking, "shit, I can't read X-Rays; I wish my wife were here." She's no vet, obviously, but her medical background exceeds mine by at least an order of magnitude. I really needed help following what the doctor was saying.

In fact, I still don't really know. My dog seems to have a heart condition, and her liver is swollen for some mysterious reason. The vet's instructions: get this dog to a specialist ... before the weekend.

That doesn't sound good. Or it certainly sounds urgent.

I only have today off, so maybe my wife could take the dog to the specialist if I pleaded and begged and maybe slept on the couch so my snoring wouldn't bother her.

Except today my wife got the call ... she now has a job and will start tomorrow. Her new job title: Interventionist. She travels from school to school intervening with problem children. Or maybe that's children with problems. I have to admit, I don't really understand what her job is. That might be because she really doesn't know what her job is. Sometimes it's hard to tell until what a job is until you've been doing it for a while.

And then to make everything complicated ... somebody's mother has died. I *should* know who somebody is, but I really don't. I really have trouble keeping track of people. I barely know the people I work with!

Still, this death throws another wrench into the gears. My in-laws are going out of town to attend the funeral, leaving a gaping hole in baby-sitting coverage for my nephew. That means my wife has to step in ... except now she has a job ... so ... gah!

I really don't know what's going on anymore.

Shit is going on all around me and I just can't see to keep track of it.

Tomorrow I have to take my dog to a specialist. Can he mend her broken heart? If not, who will mend mine?

Canned food. From now on she get's nothing but canned food. No more nasty dry kibble.

While the rest of the nation has a three day weekend, I get to work two days out of three. At least I get sunday off.

This is the joy of working in the food-service industry. What are holidays for everyone else tend to be your busiest work days. Everybody wants to eat out on a holiday.

I suppose the good news is that my boss has the confidence to keep me on the schedule for these busy days. If I really sucked he would bring in somebody a little more competent.

In the mean time, I have today off, so I get to enjoy one of my favorite passtimes: watching tennis. In particular, I get to watch the US Open.

In the past I was fortunate enough to live close enough to New York and have time off from work so that I could actually attend the Open. I would drive up in the morning, since play starts at 11:00 or 11:30 or so, and stay for the day session. After spending a whole afternoon watching live tennis, I would head home. Usually I would visit the Open twice during the tournament: once during the first week and once during the second.

And today, I miss it.

I think it's been five years since I've been to the Open, or seen any live tennis for that matter. I should really do some research and make it a point to catch some live matches next year.

My new favorite player is the Polish sensation Agnieszka Radwanska for no other reason than she's Polish ... and she's good.

She's been on my radar for a couple of years - first as "oh, look, a Polish tennis player" - but over time she's just gotten better and better and has gone from "up and coming" to "arrived."

Now she's a top ten player. Her next opponent is Venus Williams. I really want to see that match, but I'm pretty sure it's tomorrow. By the numbers Venus and Agnieszka are pretty close to equal, but I really think the numbers are deceptive here. Venus has an established track record and should be considered the favorite. Agnieska will have to prove herself.

Oh well. I guess I'll just have to read about it.

Two resourceful high school students have done a rather clever investigation of some sushi in New York city. Apparently many of the stores and restaurants have been caught selling product that was not what it claimed to be.

The article does point out that the sample size of the girls' experiment is a little small to draw dramatic conclusions from, but it IS larger enough for one to be "concerned." Clearly more investigation needs to be done.

As someone who has worked in restaurants and grocery stores, I'm going to wager a guess - total guess - that the fault lies not with the stores and restaurants, but with the suppliers. Somebody far up the supply chain is pulling a fast one, but nobody has noticed all the way down.

I know from experience that certain kinds of fish can be very difficult to distinguish from others once they are cut. That is, fillets from two different fish can be almost next to impossible to tell apart, depending on the fish.

If an switch is made far enough up the line, and a fish gets mislabeled, the nobody would notice it ... ever.

From this statement on John McCain's website:

It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman's memory of war from the comfort of mom's basement, but ...

WTF does Dungeons and Dragons have anything to do with ... well, anything? And WTF makes the McCain camp think insulting D&D players (with the trite "mom's basement" cliche and essentially calling D&D players cowards) is supposed to accomplish. Seriously, WTF? Why is there a reference to Dungeons and Dragons in this statement?

I guess McCain is really trying to win over the Monopoly crowd. I here the Chutes and Ladders voting block is on the fence too, so insulting D&D players should go far in winning them over.

More than half of randomly surveyed adults -- 57 percent -- said God's intervention could save a family member even if physicians declared treatment would be futile.

I'm not even going to try to argue against this stupidity. I say that anyone who wants to put their faith in the healing powers of the divine should simply do so ... and never see any doctor... ever, including a dentist. In fact, they shouldn't even take aspirin.

In a few generations that 57 percent number should drop waaaaay down.

This speaks for itself .... you decide what it's saying.

Since W took office, I've been increasingly disappointed to the point of outright repulsed by the republican party.

I am a registered independent. I like to believe that whenever I have to choose between the republican and democratic candidates for an office, that I can ignore party affiliation and make some informed and objective decision. Increasingly I find that more and more impossible because the republican party embraces some positions that I cannot tolerate.

Perhaps the most revolting thing about the new republican party - something that has come dramatically to the forefront - is their ability to spew absolute nonsense and falsehoods, yet still expect people to accept it.

Wow! Did you hear that?

In the 21st century, nations don't invade other nations.

What chutzpah! McCain says it, and with such conviction. How can anyone hear those words and not think "This man is trying to deceive me?"

The problem is, that statement classifies as pretty low level political rhetoric for the republican party. For eight years the republicans have spewn a continuous stream of lies and deception. They've been blatant about it. There press releases are saturated with Orwellian double-speak. Anyone with two brain cells should be able to see through them.

As long as this continues I cannot possibly support the republican party, making me a de facto democrat. I'm not really happy about that, believe me. I feel so sticky and unclean. But I really have no other choice.

Seriously ... my whole day pretty much just disappeared.

I get up, feed the dog, and go to work. Once I get to work I make myself breakfast.

I like to get to work a few minutes early so I can eat breakfast "off the clock". For some reason I just feel guilty about taking that 15 minute break early in the day just to stuff my face. I mean, they ARE giving me free food, so the least I can do is not make them pay me for taking and eating it!

I also feel guilty about asking somebody else to prepare it. I'm a cook! That's my job. I cook food. Why should I ask somebody else to cook my breakfast for me? Ok, I know the answer to that. The answer is: because I would be in the way. When the folks working the line have orders to prepare it's really much easier for everybody if I ask them to make me something rather than go back there and make something myself. However, this morning, I arrived before the restaurant was open! There were no orders waiting to be made, so I just went back there and made my own meal.

So the point is that a few more minutes of my day were consumed (ha-ha, get it? consumed?) by me making my own breakfast ... and eating it.

And then I worked a nine-hour shift.

I came home, took a shower, fed the dog, and then took her for a brief trip outside so she could pee and poop. After that, I had to hustle over to the laundromat so I had clean work clothes for tomorrow.

By the time I get home, thirteen hours of my day have passed since I'd gotten out of bed that morning. I finally have time for my daily internet routine.

Check both e-mail accounts. Read the news. Read the blogs. Check all the bulletin boards.

I suppose that's me time, but sometimes it doesn't feel like it. Sometimes it really does seem like a task. Could I skip the reading my e-mail for a day? Maybe. Probably not. Could I skip the news? Maybe. But I feel that one has a duty to stay informed, especially about important topics. Could I skip the blogs? Sometimes. I suppose this is partially recreation. Some of the blogs I read, however, and more about keeping on top of the news and staying informed. Some of them are personal - keeping in touch with friends - but not all of them.

By the time it's all done, 14 hours of my day is gone. Pretty soon I'll be going to bed. I have about six hours of things I *want* to do, and only a couple of hours to do it.

I know. I'll whine about not having enough time on my blog first. Once that's done, maybe I'll read.

I spent some time this morning in the laundromat, reading about witch hunts in fifteenth century Europe. The hunts originated when Pope Innocent VIII commissioned the writing of the Malleus Maleficarum - a how-to manual for identification of witches with horrific details on how to exact confessions via torture. This book, along with plentiful funding for witch-hunters, led to a massacre of countless innocents; not to be confused with the Pope who started it all.

One particular village slaughtered around 150 people - mostly women, many of them children, amazingly well documented - for the crime of witchcraft in a single year. Disturbingly, such was the norm for villages all across Europe. Multiply 150 witches per year by all the villages in Europe for a few years and you get (as a rough order of magnitude) ... hundreds of thousands? Millions?

Pope Innocent VIII died in 1492, the allegedly illegitimate father of 16 children. As his death neared physicians attempted 3 "transfusions" to save the ailing pontiff, resulting in the death of three young boys who "donated" blood. (See here, last paragraph).

And that was the same year Columbus discovered the Americas.

When my wash came to a stop I put my book down and loaded my wet things into the dryers. An older woman came pretty much out of nowhere to advise me that dryer number 5 ran hot and would dry my clothes off faster, thus saving me a few quarters. I had my doubts - because I always have doubts - but loaded my clothes into machines 5, 6, and 7, just to see what would happen.

Human beings, in general, believe what they're told far too easily. On the one hand, there is some benefit. When someone is told "don't eat the red fruit because they're poison," it's beneficial to believe the source without checking. Even if the source is wrong, no real harm comes from believing the bad information. On the other hand, failing to check facts for oneself leads to an abundance of bad information floating about, like "the earth is flat", "witches cause rain storms", or "Barack Obama is a Muslim."

Or for that matter, dryer 5 runs hot.

After 8 minutes dryers 6 and 7 stop spinning, but dryer 5 is still going strong. In fact, I have time to paw through my laundry from the other two dryers, extract the dry pieces, and combine what's left into a single dryer before dryer 5 completes.

The woman's advice wasn't bad, but her facts were wrong. Yes, it's advantageous to use dryer 5, but not because it runs hot. It runs long, giving one a few extra minutes of drying.

It was not long enough to save me any quarters, however. I still needed to run the vaunted dryer five a second time.

Nevertheless, the issue remains - people fail to check the facts. When presented with a supposed truth people are more likely to simply accept it, rather than verify it first. Failing to test the validity of supposed truths can result in horrible consequences, like the slaughter of a hundred thousand witches.