Yesterday was my first day of putting a shoe on my left foot. Walking hurt like hell at first and I was determined not to go back to the boot. Mountain had given me some Tylenol with codeine (did you know you can buy them OTC in Canada) but I’d left the last two back at my office. I decided I’d drive over and pick them up, figuring if I could just walk on it for awhile it would loosen up and I’d be fine.

So I jumped in the car and headed out. I made my right turn at the end of the block onto Boone avenue and started to accelerate. I tend to drive a little too fast and I was probably up to 40 two thirds of the way to 42nd Ave, where I turn to get to the hiway when I saw movement in the corner of my left eye. A brindle colored dog who might as well have been wearing camo in the gray and brown Minnesota spring was sprinting across the street at an angle that put him on a certain collision course with me. I hit the brakes and he just made it by, I was sure I was going to nail him until the last instant. I didn’t get a great look at the dog, but I think it was a pit bull. It was charging a young kid on a bike. I couldn’t tell if the kid was terrified or if he knew the dog. The people on the other side of the street, who I assumed were the dogs owners were yelling at the dog and it stopped and came back. There was no other traffic so I was going slow and watching in my mirrors. Words were exchanged between the kid and the dog owner. The kid didn’t get back on his bike but just stood there. Maybe he didn’t want to get back on the bike with shit in his pants.

This dog was very lucky. That I have great peripheral vision. That I wasn’t lost in a day dream or distracted by the kid or the natural beauty in the cemetery on the other side of the road. That I still have very good reflexes. That I was driving the Mazda that has incredible brakes and big fat grip the pavement tires. That it was a dry road, no ice. That I hadn’t left the house, say a half second earlier. Any one of those factors changes, the dog is dead. Come to think of it, if those folks were walking around my neighborhood with an unleashed dog that’s that out of control, scaring people like that, maybe I should have accelerated to make sure it was a clean kill.

Speaking of the Mazda, I was blown away by it’s stopping ability, I’ve never driven a car anything like it. I really pounded the brakes. It didn’t squeal and didn’t skid and didn’t break out. At all. It just smoothly and quickly took the speed out of the car. Like a big cat pouncing silently. I love that car.

Earlier this morning, just after I sat down at the computer, I looked up to see a fox running along the back fence. At first I thought something was chasing it, but then I saw that it was following a squirrel that was running on the cable lines twenty feet above. Just before the hunter disappeared behind the pine trees in the corner of the yard, it made a spectacular, but of course futile, leap, elevating it’s head above the top of the fence. I love the foxes that live out there, they keep the rabbit and tree rat population down.

It sucks to be a Minnesota sports fan.

Today’s Strib sports page: Gopher’s men’s hockey loses to the fifteenth seed in the NCAA tournament that the were a favorite to win. The Raptors beat the Wolves by 20. Brittney Davis and Lauren Lacey announced that they are leaving the Gopher women’s basketball team.

Is it a bad sign when your boss’s face turns bright red and she stomps her feet like an angry little girl in response to something you say?

Just wondering.

Went to the toe doc yesterday, he pulled out the wires and removed the stitches and said that in two days I can shower without a plastic bag on my foot, and start wearing a shoe! On the Crohn’s front, things are much better. I guess you could say I’m getting my shit together.

Damn, I amuse myself.

At a neighborhood party last night several people remarked that I’d lost weight. This is always a little awkward for me. What should I say? Of course I’ve lost weight, I’ve been having a Crohn’s disease flare that’s been going on for three months. I always feel like responding, “Why, yes, I’m on the Crohn’s Shit Your Brains Out Ten Times a Day Diet.”

The host of the party, who is the biggest blowhard, conversation dominating dork who has to remind you he went to Dartmouth every other sentence accused one of the other neighbors (not present) of not being “smooth.” This is the guy who, at the last party I saw him at, when a couple of us broke out our guitars and my fondness for country music was revealed announced as if it was some impressive display of pop music knowledge that Chet Atkins was a really good country guitar player. No shit Buckwheat.

Hey, Rich, I’ve been studying astrophysics and I’ve come to the conclusion that the sun’s gonna rise in the east tomorrow morning.

I turned 57 today. How the hell did I get so old! And gray, and balding? Forty years just blew right by. Time seems to be accelerating. By Thursday I’m happy that the week has gone by so fast, but then the weekends are gone in the blink of an eye. And it’s Monday morning and I can’t help but think that I don’t want to go back to work. I want to retire. And you know what, I don’t think it’s going to happen. The mortgage won’t be paid off for twelve years, social security, if it’s even around, won’t start for eight. I’ve got to figure out how I can help the girls as much as possible with college. And I suppose they’re going to want weddings too. I guess I shouldn’t feel like the Lone Ranger though, there’s probably a hell of a lot of us boomers looking at the same problems. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Serves me right though. I pretty much took my retirement from age 22 through 40. I worked part time tending bar and security guarding and being a very marginally self employed artist. I dedicated my twenties to substance abuse and basketball. So when it dawned on me that I needed to get serious because I had two little girls to provide for, I was already behind the eight ball. So I jumped on the corporate merry-go-round, but never grabbed the brass ring.

Don’t get me wrong, I ain’t really bitchin‘. I’m actually as happy as I’ve ever been. I’m in love with my wife, the girls are doing well, philosophy and pharmaceuticals have given me a calm that I’ve never experienced before and really the financial picture isn’t nearly as bad as it sometimes seems.

So bring on the next 57 years!

Ask any Minnesotan. It’s guaranteed. Mid March, the state high school tournaments are in full swing. That’s right folks, true to tradition, we are in the midst of the annual State Tournament Blizzard. That’s my neighbor Ryan, waiting for the bus, nobody told him that school was canceled

One of my coworkers left his house at 7:15 this morning. There were 2 articulated busses, a regular bus and a semi strewn across I-94 the main east west route in through the Twin Cities. It took him an hour just to get down the entrance ramp!

The girls basketball team from Armstrong, Q and L’s school, is going to state. Considering that they had a losing record and were winless in their conference, I’d say they’re the Cinderella team. That’s something they couldn’t do in 2002 when April Calhoun was a senior and voted Minnesota Ms. Basketball and her backcourt partner was also headed for a division 1 scholarship. Their first opponent will be Bloomington Kennedy who beat Minneapolis South, the team that beat the Falcons by about twenty earlier in the year.

I’ve been experimenting with the drop D tuning on my guitar. You tune the lowest string down from E to D, which allows you to play in D up and down the neck with all kinds of open strings ringing out. It’s very cool and very different from the swamp rock country and blues that I normally play. This morning I hooked up Garage Band and was playing it with an echo effect. I’ve never been much for electronic effects, other than a Fender guitar played through an old tube amp really loud, but what I was getting this morning sounded like church music. I may have to go out and get something to plug in so I can get that effect, say at church. I’ve always wanted to do the prelude music, but my repertoire is not exactly sacred in nature. More Saturday night than Sunday morning.

It’s so much fun to have a new concept to work out. If I do this, then this works and wait a second, this works too. Wow and if that works so should this. And all of a sudden there’s this completely new way to get around the fretboard and a new sound that comes with all the fresh chord voicings. Listen to me, I sound like I know something about music. Hah. It’s one of those the more you find out the less you know deals.

I just hate it when people do this.

Lucia’s coming home from school today. It’ll be nice to have her home. Until she starts straightening up my office that is. My daughters are turning out to be pretty creative. Although I guess I always knew that. I’ve been saying that Lucia was born to be a designer. And that Quinn was born to be an actress. Lucia’s proving me out, Quinn hasn’t pursued her theatrical side directly, but that sense of drama and her vision translate into real strength in her other endeavors. Right now she’s doing pottery. When I say her vision, I mean she’s a bona fide visionary. You can tell when she’s describing her latest pottery project, that it’s appearing before her, her eyes are on it and she points to features as if we can all could see.  She’s shown ability in photography, film and is a great writer. Plus she very quickly catches on to any task that requires a combination of mental acuity and dexterity. Playing outside defender in soccer, a position requiring great speed, which she doesn’t have, she used her mind and excellent technique and strength to become a wall allowed very few balls to get down the line.

Lucia is a genius about how space works. As very young child she would make complex symmetrical drawings, casually creating mirror images of little abstract doodles. She’s kind of a minimalist by nature, her work is clean and sparse and right on. With a very well developed sense of how to convey information visually. Plus she’s blessed with discipline and drive. She didn’t get that from me.

We should all be collaborating on projects.