Most of you know that I’m a big fan of the U of MN Women’s Basketball team. I’m so bummed out. In the last couple of weeks 5 players have quit the team. No one seems to know what’s going on, but there are a lot of fingers pointing at Pam Borton, the coach. I always thought she was a great coach, but perhaps things were going on behind the scenes. Obviously the girls didn’t like her much!

There are three people and a cat in our fairly small house. The humans are all awake on a rainy gloomy day. The house is silent. My wife and daughter are engrossed in their books and I’m working away at sorting out images for my new portfolio. Every hour or so a riff gets in my head and I pick up the guitar briefly to mess around with it. I sometimes, purely by random chance, even find the notes.

The mystery crocuses under the gas meter on the side of the house are blooming. I saw a bluebird land out in the cemetery while I was the binoculars on the couple who were passing a joint out there. I wonder if they know a Minneapolis cop lives two doors down from us.

I’ve been doing this for over two years now. I’ve gotten into the habit of going back to see what I was up to or thinking on a given date in ’04 and ’05. My ’04 entry for 3/30 says I would never own a car with an automatic transmission, My ’05 entry announced I just bought a car with an automatic transmission.

Just now, as I wind down my 12 hour shift, I was walking as briskly as a person with a petrified bratwust for a toe can, when, as I was absentmindedly playing with a button on my sleeve, it popped off onto the floor. It’s a small plastic button and it must have hit perfectly on it’s edge on the carpet, so it came off the floor high. In stride, I bent down and scooped it out of the air with my right hand. And just kept on walking.

Still got it

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.