Ten-Finger Exercises

a record, if nothing else

I was going to skip tonight, and then I noticed my views just went over 10,000! 21 over, in fact. Wish I'd noticed who to give the big prize to. Oh well, maybe I'll just have a quiet celebration myself tonight. How does rum and Coke sound? With lime, of course.

Met a new patient today, the third new one this week who lives more than 30 miles away. It's nice to get paid for driving and seeing beautiful scenery, but I haven't noticed our gas allowance going up. Gas today was $4.15 a gallon.

I have two new ones to see tomorrow, both nearby. One, however, is someone I know, a nurse from the hospital, younger than I am. Her husband just died of cancer last fall, and now she's close. I knew she had breast cancer a few years ago, and treatment for it. It must have come back.

Let's see if I can't think of something that is funnier than all of that. A co-worker was telling me about his evening. He'd waited up for his teenage daughter who was out on a date, and he heard screaming from the back yard. He rushed out and saw twelve little eyes in his garden, a mother raccoon and five babies eating his newly planted vegetables. He said he grabbed a broom and ran at them, chasing them all up a tree, giving each one a little smack on its butt. But then he saw all the little eyes just staring down at him, and knew they'd be right back in the garden as soon as he went inside. So he got the garden hose and sprayed them all until they jumped out of the tree, up the fence and out of the yard. He hopes that will do the job.