Day 759

The furnace repair folks were over at the house promptly at 8 AM this morning. They worked on the furnace for about an hour and a half and during the entire time they were here, Dot barked incessantly. She worked herself into such a frenzy that she ended up pooping in the front hallway. I tried to keep her quiet, but it really didn't do much good. Dot is so bad about having other people in the house that I hate having to call repair people. I'm sure the repair people don't like all the commotion either. Half of them are convinced Dot will bite them and the other half are just irritated at the noise. I guess it wasn't really surprising that after the furnace technicians charged me $220 and left, the furnace wasn't working any better than it was before they arrived. This has happened before.

Since Dot had already had her little incident in the hallway, I didn't think the dogs could wait for their walk until I finished breakfast. As soon as the furnace truck pulled out of the driveway, I put on their leashes and took them on a belated morning walk. By the time we got back home, Dot and Dash were back to normal again, but it was too late for me to have breakfast. I had already entered the fasting period before my MRI and I couldn't eat at all. It was just that kind of a day. I didn't get anything to eat until dinner time.

The MRI was almost identical to a CAT scan, except it was a lot noisier. The machine makes a noise like a jack hammer while it is running, but you can hardly even hear it, because the technicians make you wear headphones during the scan and pipe in "easy listening" music at volumes even higher than the noise of the machine. The only thing I didn't like about today's scan is that it was one of those "enhanced" scans where they pump you full of dye to increase the contrast of the images. The dye stings a bit when it enters your veins, but it's no big deal. The whole process takes about thirty minutes. Periodically, you hear the technician telling you to hold your breath through the headphones and then it's over. I got dressed again, put all my metallic objects back in my pockets and went home.

Considering that I'd already had some blood drawn yesterday, had some more drawn today at the MRI place so they could formulate the right strength of dye, and will have even more drawn tomorrow for a cholesterol test, I'll well on my way to the Guinness Book of records. I don't think I've ever had as many tests done to me as I have this year.

In between the furnace repair and the MRI, I managed to find time to update several websites. One of the updates involved removing video clips I had shot and replacing them with similar, but fancier looking, clips shot by a local television station. I thought my videos were just fine, but hey; I got paid for putting them up and now I'm getting paid for taking them down. It's a living.

Tomorrow, we're finally going to see the Jean Paul Gaultier exhibit at the art museum. We planned to do this last month, but there just hasn't been time. I think this is the first thing we've done purely for fun since we went to the Pryamid Room for Thanksgiving dinner. At any rate, I'm looking forward to seeing the exhibit. Until then, I'd better go put on a sweater. The house is getting cold again. I can't believe that furnace is actually working worse now that it was before the repair guys came. Maybe Dot was trying to tell me this morning that these guys didn't know what they were doing.

Taylor is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day