Quackery...

I got a nice letter from my new doctor the other day.

“Dear Scott,

The results of your blood tests were quite good. Your liver, kidneys, complete blood cell count, and basic metabolism were all fine. You are not anemic and you don’t have diabetes.

Your total cholesterol is lovely at 184...”

(And it goes on a bit, full of glowing praise for my blood…)

Whew!

What I thought cool (besides my loverly cholesterol)is that she didn’t make a “follow-up” appointment to tell me these things so she could charge me for it. She took the time to write me a brief and friendly letter.

Very well played.

I’ll have to wave at her next time I see her down at the market…

I’ve been taking my old hippy contractor friend Bruce up into the hills for bike rides. He’s been loving the exercise and the push I give him to “keep up”. I pick him up at his house somewhere mid-ride, and then we hit the logging roads that climb up the mountains to his south. The other day, he got brave and asked the perilous question- “I wonder where this goes?”
We took a trail that was extremely steep up into some thick second growth forests. The trail, of course, had become overgrown (as it had probably just been a skidder for a long ago logging operation). However, someone, a few years back, had walked parts of it with a chainsaw and cut the small scrubs off the road, leaving tiny spikes of small trunks of small trees sticking up dangerously.

It looked like the work of the Vietcong.

Once the trail got too wild and the sun fell behind a ridge, our little adventure had to end. We decided not to try and find out where the trail let us out, but to simply turn around and go back down the very steep hill we had mostly walked up.

A limb stuck itself into Bruce’s front-wheel spokes and rolled him over the handlebars.

He took one of those sharpened sticks into the side of his thigh.

Ouch!

After twenty minutes of letting him stop ouching and complaining about the giant rip in his new pants, we finished the ride out of the trail we were exploring and got back onto firmer (and safer) roadway.

I circled to look at the beginning of the trail we had just rode out of.
“Hey Bruce. I wonder where THAT trail goes?”


Last week, we had some heated days full of warmth and sunshne. Perfect for taking out the new kayak and giving it a paddle aound the lake. To get it there, I mounted a set of wheels directly to the kayak. All I do is drag it down the road, roll it over, go for a paddle, and then flip it over and drag it home. In the water, it looks like I've got training wheels on my kayak and people find this rather amusing.



I’ve been remodeling our kitchen and am waiting for cabinet doors and drawer fronts I ordered (made by a local cabinet shop). The cabinets are home-made and they were maple that had been "washed" in green paint to go with the green formica countertops (that I tiled over years ago). The green tint just made the cabinets look sickly soI put a new oak skin on the old boxes which cost only a hundred bucks verses buying all new boxes for a coupla thousand. When stained and lacquered, you really can’t tell that they are anything but oak plywood boxes. I hope the doors come soon so I can take pictures. Right now, people can see my bowls, my noodles and my choice of cereals...

We've been getting cold rain here this last week which was making Mum awful bored. Yesterday the temps rose a bit and it looks like the worm has turned and spring is wriggling back. I took Mum out with our collection of popcorn, left-over taco shells, old bread loaves and some stale Ritz crackers to feed the geese at the lake. Apparently, the ducks wanted a piece of the action as well…