Day 212

I got my car back today. My mechanic told me I was lucky. "Usually, when we see this kind of thing," he said, "the car catches on fire." Great!  If faulty oil cooler hoses were a problem, I wish someone had given me a "heads up" about it, so I could have replaced the hoses before they broke. I guess I really was lucky that my car didn't catch on fire, but it was hard to be all that exuberant about the situation when I knew I was paying $1000 for basically replacing two rubber hoses. "It was mostly labor," the service manager said. "The hoses were hard to get to."

I shouldn't complain though. The Land Rover folks treat me well and they've kept my car running for a long time. Truthfully, car repairs are a bargain when you compare them to something like health care. If car repairs were like health care, my mechanic would fix my car and then tell me I could never drive to Houston again. This is what I hate about health care. They charge me a ton of money, give me a few pills and then tell me I can't eat bacon or drink martinis. What fun is that?

Dash probably thinks the same thing whenever I take him to the vet, but all he can do is bark about it.  He narrowly avoided going back to the vet today when an angry Mockingbird dive bombed him on our morning walk and pecked him on the butt. I think Dash is the Rodney Dangerfield of dogs. He gets no respect from other animals. Dot, on the other hand, is respected by everyone. She's very quiet, but all she has to do is give an animal a certain look and they don't mess around with her. Dash and I both know that the women run the show in our house.

With my car back in the driveway and a happy ending to the goat story, life seems to have returned to normal. I've still got to figure out how to replace the client I lost this week, but I'll eventually think of something. When I was young, I could get clients just by being charming. Needless to say, that doesn't work anymore.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day