REAL procrastination is watching a hungry bear walk up to you while having a picnic, and not running because hey, you've got the rest of your life.

My friend Jenny sent me this today via Facebook. Could just as easily be Sun City.

Most of the new traffic signals they install here have the countdown walk/don't walk lights for pedestrians. I like those because they function as a pre-yellow yellow when I'm driving through the intersection and assure me I won't really be spending an eternity waiting for it to turn green when I'm waiting at a red light.
But I'm surprised that those countdown lights don't function uniformly. At some intersections the main light changes to yellow as soon as that pedestrian light reaches zero. At others there's a delay of several seconds between zero and yellow. You'd think they'd want that standardized.

I worked in the rose bed this morning, cutting off the dead blossoms and fertilizing. My hands always get scratched up doing that job but I sure like the fragrance.

I don't know what to do about Jack. We've had him almost two years and this shouldn't still be a problem. Greyhounds are extremely relaxed dogs on the outside, sometimes called the 40 mph couch potato. True to the breed he spends most of his day sleeping, waking up long enough to plop himself down in another spot. They're not an expressive breed and unless there's food at stake they rarely pay you much attention. Think the opposite of a Retriever. (Greyhounds an autistic dog breed?) But that doesn't mean they don't get attached to someone, in their own unexpressive way. And apparently Jack is attached to me. I suppose it's not surprising because I take him for his a.m. and p.m. walks and typically put his food down. Which is why I think the ongoing problem is what dog people call separation anxiety. I was gone for about two and a half hours this afternoon, first at Starbucks to do some writing and then to the gym for a light workout. When I got back he had soaked his bedding. Again.

Al, our first Greyhound who succumbed to Valley Fever, could have the run of the house in our absence without problem - hours at a time. We quickly figured out we couldn't do that with Jack or we'd come home to wet spots on the carpet, and sometimes at the bottom of whatever piece of furniture he chose to anoint. So we got a large kennel that he goes into whenever we're gone. And he continues to wet that bedding. It has nothing to do with a full bladder or bladder control issues. We've worked that angle and he's not that old.

It's not just washing bedding every day or two. There are associated problems when a male dog relieves himself, even when he's in a kennel. And there's no discernable pattern. Yesterday, for example, when we were gone several hours for church and lunch he was fine. Today Pam's at work, I leave for a couple of hours, and.... When I left to go to Seattle last month - trouble.
heavy sigh.
In between his racing career (lots of dogs around) and coming to live with us he was in a home with other dogs. He may just be intolerant of being alone.

I'm re-reading a book that's a few years old but made a big splash when it hit the market. Best seller. It's a quasi-theology book in which the author makes a case for his particular view of how things will turn out in the end. I can't remember reading anything this sloppy, except for the first time I read this book. To say he plays fast and loose with key biblical passages is an understatement, and he ignores major sections that don't fit with his scenario.
There's plenty of bad theology out there. But this guy's got a reputation as a thinker, as someone with credibility. I'm beginning to think he's a player who wrote what people want to read for the sake of increasing his ratings and selling books.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, the Supreme Court Justice not his father the writer/poet, said that if he wanted to make a whole lot of money and had no scruples about how to do it, he'd get into religion.