Day 2096 - 9/11

I left the house this morning fully intending to try the new restaurant. I came to an intersection where if I turned left, I would be headed toward the new restaurant and if I turned right, I'd be on my way to my regular place. The left lane of the cross street was bumper-to-bumper cars as far as the eye could see. The right lane was practically empty. I turned right and headed back to familiar territory. This is probably how I found my Friday restaurant in the first place. If I turned left, I would pass three schools on my way to the new restaurant. In the other direction there were no schools and very few cars. I always tend to follow the path of least resistance.

This reminded me of the Dr. Who episode called "Turn Left" where Donna Noble has to go back in time at a critical moment and convince an earlier version of herself to turn left at an intersection to reverse a chain of events that was going to destroy the world. I don't think turning right at my intersection this morning will cause anything drastic to happen, but it did make me wonder how today would have turned out if I turned left instead.

I probably made the right choice. I didn't have time to experiment today. When I got back from breakfast, there was barely time to take a quick shower and check my e-mail before it was time to take Dot to the cancer center for her Ultrasound scan. The oncologist said that the tumor was stable and not growing, so it was safe for Dot to discontinue her chemotherapy. She agreed that Dot looked stronger and wants us to monitor Dot's condition with a follow-up Ultrasound scan every two months. Sounds good to me. I'm really encouraged to see that Dot is getting stronger again. Admittedly, we're taking baby steps, but this is so much better than seeing her slide even further downhill.

It was a very different day fourteen years ago. We hadn't met Dot yet, but she was a very young puppy on the verge of becoming lost and abandoned. I hadn't started blogging yet and wasn't eating very healthy either. I'll always remember looking at the kitchen TV in stunned disbelief as I watched the twin towers fall while I ate a plate of French Toast floating in a sea of maple syrup. I would soon learn that I was on the road to diabetes and needed to change my ways. Watching the Today Show while eating that big plate of French Toast was the end of innocence in so many ways. The world has never been the same since. Dot found Janet and I through the Dalmatian Rescue organization and her story had a happy ending. I don't think the world was as lucky as Dot. We are still facing almost all the same problems we faced on September 11, 2001. Two wars certainly didn't help much. In retrospect, we should have left dictators like Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi in place. They were the only thing keeping a population of zealots that were still living in the Middle Ages in check. We've opened Pandora's box, and as the world descends into chaos, I'm not sure that anyone has a plan to close it again.

I certainly don't have any solutions.  There are too many of us on this planet and we keep making more. We are consuming the planet's resources at an alarming rate. Some of use are living in the twenty first century while others are still living in the fourteenth century. This can't end well. It really shouldn't be surprising that I prefer the company of dogs. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if that giant asteroid hadn't wiped out the dinosaurs sixty five million years ago. Maybe the dinosaurs would have done a better job of things.

Shadow is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day