February 23, 2006
Dear Everyone:
I forgot to mention last week that I got my new tooth. This would be the crown to replace the molar which sort of shattered on me about 4-½ weeks ago. For the past week I’ve had to remind myself that it’s OK to chew on the left side.
Yes! The left side has been liberated! Go ahead and chew!
The simple pleasures are always the best.
Speaking of teeth, “Jeannie” took her cat, Myrna, to the vet a few weeks ago. For those keeping score, Myrna is the ragdoll cat, so called because when you pick one up, it goes as limp as a rag doll. Lucy is the Maine Coon Cat.
Myrna kept getting some form of kitty laryngitis, wherein her normally quiet voice would vanish altogether. After considerable investigation, it was determined that Myrna had some badly-decayed teeth and needed to see the kitty dental surgeon.
Kitty dental surgery does not come cheap. Nor is it easy on the cat. “Jeannie” had to keep getting up in the middle of the night to administer pain medication. Anyone who has ever tried to sneak a pill down a cat’s throat knows that this is not easy.
Myrna’s follow-up visit was last Saturday. “Jeannie” told me that everyone at the vet’s office loves Myrna because she has such a mellow disposition. Any ordinary cat would fight to keep its mouth closed if you wanted it open. But Myrna was just like: “You want to poke around in my mouth? OK. Opening wide now.”
Myrna is doing much better now and will continue to improve as long as “Jeannie” brushes her teeth every day.
Getting back to my teeth, the best day for me to go to the dentist for the new tooth was on Valentine’s Day at 8:40 in the morning. (They offered the Friday before at 7:10, but I didn’t think I could make it that early.) The only problem with going at 8:40 was that I’d get back to the office around 9:30.
Between 9:00 and 11:00 in the morning, there is no
parking available at work.
All the parking spaces have been taken.
These days, if you want to find parking in
The reason for this is that they are improving the parking situation at work. The way they improve parking is by taking parking spaces away. They close off one parking lot. Then they repave it, possibly replacing some walkways and trees that weren’t really necessary. Then they re-stripe the lot with all standard-size parking spaces. One of the problems with parking before was all the compact spaces that had originally been put in place. Two SUVs can easily take up three parking spaces because they park in compact spaces and no one can fit between them.
As soon as a new-and-improved parking lot is opened up, they close the next one. Eventually, there will be over 800 new spaces. But in the meantime, I have seen some pretty creative, not to mention desperate, parking. After 11:00, the people who came for a morning meeting have left. And people going to lunch early are on their way out. Plenty of parking spaces until people come back from lunch and people coming to afternoon meetings arrive and fill up the parking lot again.
Then, around 3:00, the people who started work at
6:00 are beginning to head home.
Since they arrived first and took all the closest spaces, those
spaces reappear. So if I
have something heavy to take out to the car, I’ll wait until 3:00-ish.
Then I’ll go to where my car is parked and drive it around to
But on Valentine’s Day, Somebody was smiling down
on me. As I drove back to
the office with my new tooth, I figured, “If you don’t at least look,
you’ll never know if there was a space.
Someone could have just pulled out to go to their dentist or
doctor.” So I pulled into
This got me into my office a good quarter-hour earlier than would otherwise have happened. So I was able to make a call to my customer in El Segundo in plenty of time. When I told her about the parking space (she’s been here many times), she said: “Quick! Run right out a buy a Lotto ticket!”
But if I did that, I’d lose the parking space, wouldn’t I?
Love, as always,
Pete
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