Day 1813

If anything happened today, I certainly wasn't aware of it. It's been so chilly lately that I think my brain has gone into hibernation. I haven't even bothered to cook breakfast for the past few days and have been eating a bowl of Swedish Muesli that Janet picked up at the Ikea store instead. Even though the stuff has the consistency of sawdust and is basically uncooked oatmeal, it is surprisingly good when mixed with fruit. I suspect that I'll revert to my old habits as soon as the bag runs out. I'm definitely not driving all the way up to the Ikea store for a bag of cold cereal.

Whenever the weather turns cold, the air in our neighborhood is thick with the smell of wood smoke. So many people are burning a fire in their largely unused fireplaces that it is often hard to breathe. I've never understood the fascination with fireplaces. They're drafty, dirty, and unless the chimney is properly screened, they provide an open invitation for critters to come into your house. I can smell all types of wood burning when we take our morning walks. Since this is a city, people buy "designer logs" at the supermarket. Pinyon Pine is popular. So is Mesquite. All these exotic smells just make the dogs sneeze. I find it ironic that the people who like to burn a fire are typically the same ones who hate coal fired power plants and automobile exhausts. They certainly don't mind turning logs into charcoal and soot though. Fireplaces are just a more romantic kind of air pollution.

I had to fill out a bunch of new patient paperwork in preparation for my dental appointment tomorrow. I don't understand why there isn't a central repository for this information where doctors, dentists, surgeons, and other medical folk could just download your medical history whenever they needed it. I've seen a lot of doctors and I'm convinced that I've filled out this same information at least a hundred times. Sometime you have to fill out the information multiple times for the same doctor, because they want to update your file every year, or more commonly because they lost the paperwork you filled out the last time you saw them. I've gotten so tired of filling in the list of medications I take, that I've pre-printed a list of all my meds and just staple it to the patient information form. Some parts of today's form were embarrassing. Especially the part that asked "When was the last time you saw the dentist?" I left the entire Dental Insurance page of the form blank because I don't have any dental insurance. Maybe I'll get some later. It's always easy to get dental insurance because it doesn't really cover that much.

Work was slow today. Or maybe work was normal and the entire day was slow. Cold Winter days can be disorienting. I'm hoping that my brain returns to normal tomorrow. I'm also hoping that my teeth turn out to be normal as well. New x-rays and a cleaning is OK. A root canal, not so much.

Greta is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day