"Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf." - Lewis Mumford

Did you hear that? It was Putin reacting to President Obama's financial sanctions against seven Russian citizens.
"Oh, snap!"
Yeah, those sanctions are gonna turn things around right now.

I worked on the truck this morning. I think I have to spring for a new driver's door. After looking at some pics I took with the iPad, the old guys down at the metal shop say the split in the metal (in the middle below the handle, in the upper left corner of the primer area) can be welded, which was good news. But after removing all the glass, the latch, handles, and the window regulator I spent some time looking at the door more closely and it's not good. Somebody at some point did some serious damage to the corner where the lower hinge attaches. That's why the primer. The area where the hinge attaches is all beat up, banged up, and "sprung" so that the door doesn't want to sit in the closed position. This explains why it didn't line up. I think the only way I'll be happy with the final outcome is to buy one of the pricey doors available online. Subtract from that price the money I'd spend trying to make this one right and I'm pretty sure it's the wisest way to go.

We hit 86 here today. Beautiful day. Tomorrow morning I'll fly to Grand Rapids where the temps will be in the upper 30's and low 40's. At the warmest part of the day. Most of the time it will be in the upper 20's and low 30's. I always forget how cold that is. I think, "It won't be too bad," and then I get there and remember just how cold the cold feels.

I got a call this afternoon from the guy who did my pacemaker check a month ago. He said then he was going to try, and today he said he scored me a free gizmo that means I don't have to go every six months for that process. I go in, he lays a sensor over the pacemaker that's hooked to his laptop, and downloads all the data since I was last there. He can see every time the pacemaker kicked in, what my heart was doing at the time, how long the pacemaker worked, and any anomalies in my heart's rhythm. The he punches some keys on his laptop that cause the pacemaker to kick in so he can make sure it's working properly. (That feels weird.)

Once I get this gizmo in the mail I'll set it on my nightstand and plug my cell phone into it. Somehow, in the middle of the night, my pacemaker will send all that data to this little box, from the box to my cell phone, and from the phone to the manufacturer. Crazy, huh? I forgot to ask him if it flows the other way, too. Can they control my pacemaker remotely? 'cause that's spooky.

A Facebook friend posted a joke she heard one of her teenage sons telling his brother.
Why do chicken coops have two doors?
Because if they had four they'd be chicken sedans.
Gotta love a joke that combines farm animals and cars.