Ed is taking the Toyota Highlander to the body shop on Monday and thus commences my isolation from the world because he will be using “my” car. Installing two new doors on the passenger side will take Elvis at least 10 days.

Meanwhile, Ed made some more commitments and said we should take it in on Saturday, so he could have Monday free to do stuff with my car. I said no. I have already re-arranged an appointment to accommodate him. I don’t mind being no. 2 on his list, but no. 5 isn’t working for me.

Meanwhile, our treadmill has electronic problems and seizes up when I use it. I stop it and reprogram it for my speed, which was jumping from my setting of 2.6 to 3, to 3.5, to 4, to 2, back to 2.6 miles per hour and I adjust my gait to keep up. If I wasn’t fit, I’d have hurt myself by now. Hiccup hiccup hiccup. If it doesn’t fix itself right away, I reach the stop button, with some difficulty because I am bouncing around, and it scrunches to a halt. If the readout says 00, I reprogram it. If it says ERR, I turn it off and then turn it on again, and make a note of how many minutes I have done so I can add enough minutes to reach my goal of 30 minutes. Today the machine seized up about 5 times, but I managed to get in 26 minutes before it seized again so I said okay, that will do. I have to get Ed to make time to go with me to a shop in Punta Gorda that sells used treadmills. And I do hate it when the phone rings at the same time the machine decides to go into spasm mode.

I haven’t been watching the Olympics. When it’s all over, I will use You Tube to see some of the skating.

I am appalled not only at the tragedy of another mass shooting by the deranged gunman in Parkland, Florida, but at the non-stop saturation coverage which is nothing but a pack of media wolves milking the shit out of it. The NRA has legislators in a stronghold grip and Democrats as well as Republicans cave to it. Trump spoke cloyingly of his feelings for the victims without once using the word “gun”, and Paul Ryan of hypocrite fame said “now is not the time to politicize guns”. Really?

We took an old friend to dinner last night at the Blue Dog, low on ambience, lots of noise, but great food. I had the wedge salad, but I won’t be doing that again. It is tasty enough but the chef built the bacon/cheese/shrimp ingredients around AN ENTIRE HEAD OF LETTUCE, and it is served with a carving knife stuck in the middle of the lettuce. And cutting through it wasn’t easy. Hello? Too much lettuce folks.

Them’s me thoughts.

xx, Teal