Today's picks

February? March? No, I forgot...it's April.

The picture with the sun looks like a shot from Ideals magazine (who remembers that one?). The other one is looking down my driveway from my deck. Silver Lake Mountain later emerged from the fog.

Doctor Knee

I had my follow-up appointment with my orthopedist this morning. I had to wait more than an hour to see him. That's unheard of for me--none of my doctor's keep me waiting that long. He spends a lot of time with each patient, however, and has a lot of patients. He will give you a very detailed answer to any question you ask. His answers to my questions were: Yes, the cartiledge in my knee is torn but not only slightly. No, there's not much that can be done about it. If I want to I can have surgery but all he would do is "trim it up a bit" and that wouldn't really fix it much. What I can do is see him when it starts to hurt more and he will give me more cortisone shots. I should continue to take an anti-inflammatory. There isn't really one that won't upset my stomach but maybe I should take a lower dose than the 600 mg. of ibuprofen I have been taking, trying a dose that will work. He will give me Celebrex if I want, but since there's been a link between that drug and heart attacks we both agree I do not want to try that. Good-bye doctor and thank you for your time.

We got about 4" of heavy, wet snow at Silver Lake yesterday. Much less than the 6-15" predicted. How can you predict 6-15"? Which will it be, 6 inches or 15 inches? I'd say that's really covering your ass, wouldn't you? Anyway, it sucks to have snow on top of mud, that's about my least favorite thing on the ground. And it's cold. It really perked up the dogs, though, they played swap the spit with each other for about 2 hours on the couch last night, after being outside for an hour. Tess finally stood in the yard and barked non-stop for 15 min. before I called her in, reassuring her that the boogey man had indeed been scared off. Who knows what she's barking at when she does that but it seems to be high sport to her.

I just got a call from my friend who's the director of the regional network. He wanted to tell me that he just got a new puppy. He described her to me: her father is a boxer and her mother is a slut. From his description of her physical attributes I said she sounds like Mr. Potato Head of the canine world. He's very proud of her but hasn't named her yet. He's only had her since Friday and is discovering what I discovered with Tess: we have completely forgotten what it's like to have a puppy. They get into everything, they pee and poop all over the place, and they chew on everything. He said he got to work today and noticed she had ripped a hole in his pants. I don't envy him the trials and tribulations of having a puppy but I do envy the joy of watching and cuddling a puppy. Jenica and I had a lot of fun watching Tess grow up.

It turns out that the land for sale near my house is only a lot, 144' x 155', out on the hardtop (half a mile from my house). Asking price is $12,000 can you believe it. I don't know who owns it. Realtor is not sure you can build a house on it but they're trying to make sure the buyer will be able to. Give me a break. My friend Fred thinks Stewarts should buy it and put a convenience store there, since he retires this summer and will be spending his summers there. I said maybe I should sell organic produce and the Sunday NY Times. Or my friend's horrible boyfriend could have a bar there. Or maybe it just won't sell because who in their right mind would pay $12,000 for a lot that size that maybe you can't even build on?

Since I finished cataloging the topographical maps I had to do for Saranac Lake (and before they send me 20 more to do) I'll move on to the next project. I just have to decide what that will be. Clip art DVD's? Toys for a grant? The toys are truly boring--a set of multi-colored, wooden building blocks. Totally unimaginative. Another toy is something I can't even figure out, some sort of bucket thing that demonstrates the principles of physics to children. And people think catalogers are boring!