Day 524

I had lunch today with Jeff, a classmate of mine from architecture school. We hadn't seen each other for almost thirty years, and it was fun comparing notes on how our lives had converged and diverged since we left school. We both loved Paris and had spent considerable time there. We both wondered how long we were going to keep working, yet had no real plans to retire. We both loved Macintosh computers and had a humongous number of apps on our iPhones. There were differences too. Jeff was a senior partner in a large architectural firm in Minneapolis and had thirty people working for him. I worked alone with two dogs.

When I try to explain what I've been doing for thirty years between bites of a bacon cheeseburger, I realize that I've actually done quite a lot. I've traveled and worked in Europe, learned to fly an airplane, had several successful gallery shows, produced TV commercials with everyone from Richard Petty to Tom Landry, made two documentary films, and written four unpublished books. At the end of the day though, the little room where I currently work is not all that different from the little room where I studied all those years ago across the hall from my friend Jeff. I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.

When I got back from lunch and was getting ready to go back to work, I ended up stepping in a big pile of dog vomit under my desk. One of the dogs had thrown up their breakfast. Maybe the morning storms had upset Dot. It was more likely that the culprit was Dash though. He's the one with the sensitive stomach. I think the dogs birthday dinners the other day might have been too rich for them. At any rate, one or both of the dogs really made a mess of things. When I went in the bedroom, there was poop on the carpet along with more dog vomit. The dogs were evidently sick on both ends. I used up the rest of my bottle of Nature's Miracle trying to get the stains cleaned up. I just don't get it with these dogs. Most of our house has virtually indestructible brick floors. When the dogs get sick though, they inevitably make a mess on the carpets. They won't go anywhere near the bricks when they are sick.

When I went up on the roof today to sweep away the standing water from this morning's storms, I think I spotted where all the bees are coming from. I can't get near it though. Too many bees. Maybe Jeff has his own version of bees and dog vomit. We didn't talk about this though. It was much more fun to talk about Paris.

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