Squeak and the vet's office met each other for the first time this morning. Squeak wasn't sick - she just needed her nails trimmed and the vet wanted to give her a physical exam as well. Squeak was pronounced a very healthy, 100 gram, well-behaved, six year old sugar glider.

The vet's assistant thanked Squeak for not biting her. That was a remarkable thing. Squeak was understandably frightened by the strange surroundings, and tried her best to resist the whole experience, but her resistance never took the form of aggression. She tried to squirm out of the staff's hands. She squeezed her hands in fists while the vet was trimming her nails. But she never bit. She never attacked.

Squeak is a good girl.

A long time ago, at my previous job, I began a tradition of wearing a necktie every Friday. It was actually Tina that came up with the idea, but I don't remember why she first suggested it. Colin and Nathan and I were supposed to participate, but I was the only one who actually followed through with it. I carried it on long after Tina's joke was forgotten. It became my personal tradition. The time or two that I showed up for work tie-less on a Friday, my co-workers noticed.

At state hospitals, neckties are usually worn by managers, directors, and doctors - not guys at the front desk (not that anyone objected to my neckties).

I tried to continue my tradition into my present job, at the county hospital, but it just isn't working as well. Fridays are the slowest days at the clinic. We don't schedule any patients at all past noon, so I'm behind closed doors in the office for the second half of the day. My neckties don't have quite the same impact. Today, since I was in the office all day, I didn't bother with a tie. I even wore jeans.

I made the decision today to end the tradition. I could move necktie day to another day - Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the busiest clinic days - but it just wouldn't feel the same as a Friday. Part of the joke (but I don't think it was Tina's joke) was that I was dressing up on "casual Fridays."

The tradition is over.

On my way home from work today, I realized that I have become a DVD snob. Phillip and I wanted to see Kill Bill, Volume 2 when it was in theaters, but something kept coming up and we never did. It was released on home video last Tuesday, and I knew that without having phoned ahead to reserve a copy, I didn't have much of a chance of finding it on Broadway Video's shelves its first Friday afternoon. To my surprise, they had one copy that no one had snatched up - it was on VHS. I decided to wait for the widescreen, digital clarity of DVD. I rented Hellboy instead.

Petrina, la vida es hermosa. Temo el futuro.

I'm enjoying Ian Fleming's "James Bond" novels - as prime examples of the genre. (In much the same way, I don't enjoy Westerns, overall, but I admire The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly as a great movie.) These Bond novels are violent at times, sexist at times, racist at times, and not very favorable toward homosexuals (although, I suppose, at least Ian Fleming felt a gay couple could exist as successful hitmen - maybe that's something). It was 1956 - I keep that in perspective. Not everyone was as enlightened as Jack Kerouac.

There is one (minor) thing that bothered me in Diamonds Are Forever today. I don't really feel that American characters should speak in British spellings, even in a British novel. An American should speak like an American, and not say things like, "It's a tourist centre now." or "I'll meet you at 11.30." It's like hearing someone speak in the wrong accent.

I worked in the office all day today, and will be there tomorrow. I'm learning some important, lead-level things. That's pretty exciting. It also means that I'm getting plenty of exposure to the "classic rock" on KJR. Today, I heard Sara, by Stevie Nicks. That's another great song, both in its lyrics and its instrumentation. It's difficult to explain this, but the song somehow sounds as if the musicians were enjoying themselves a lot.

¿Usted trajo su cuestionario (la página con los preguntas)?

I'm remembering a dream I had this morning.

I was going through Customs with a large toy Volkswagen - a classic Beetle. The customs inspector was examining the model car and discovered that part of the front fender and running board was hinged. If you pushed the car in just the right spot, that hinged section would drop away slightly - it didn't open anything, though, and it didn't seem to have any purpose. I knew about it, but didn't know what it did. The inspector was extremely curious about it, though. He kept pushing other parts of the model car. He opened its doors. He opened the trunk. He kept going back to that hinged section of fender and running board. I wasn't worried - I wasn't smuggling anything, after all. Suddenly, the customs inspector discovered that by opening doors and pushing the hinged section in the right order, the whole side of the car dropped away and revealed two hidden compartments. I was as surprised as the inspector. Inside one compartment was a banded stack of paper money, like from a bank, and several flat tubes used for holding coins. In the other compartment was two more stacks of paper money and several filled tubes of coins. The inspector and I decided that the toy car once belonged to a bank courier who had simply forgotten that the money was there. I was free to go. I gave some of the money to the customs inspector, and I counted the bills as I walked away.

In a hundred more pages, more or less, I will finish Ian Fleming's Diamonds Are Forever, a book not quite as exciting as the previous three James Bond novels. When those hundred pages are read, I will have completed another three books for the Seattle Public Library's "Summer Reading for Adults," a contest that ends in three days. Will I read a hundred pages in three days? Maybe. The point is, though: I will finish this novel. So, I'm turning in my second entry "on credit." I won't get a second latte, but I will get a second chance to win that "Booklover's Basket."

This is what my second entry says:

Author: Jack Kerouac
Title: Lonesome Traveller
About the book: In his usual non-stop style, the master of the Beat Generation tells stories of his life in Lowell, Massachusetts, his odd jobs, and his writing.

Author: Evelyn McDaniel Gibb
Title: Two Wheels North
(Chosen as my favorite)
About the book: An amazing, true story of two teenaged boys who, in 1909, bicycled from Santa Rosa, California to Seattle - 1,000 miles in 54 days - to see the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition.

Author: Ian Fleming
Title: Diamond Are Forever
About the book: The fourth "James Bond" novel - Bond and his friend Felix Leiter chase diamond smuggling, horse-race fixing, Mobsters across America.

(The first entry was recorded here on July 7.)

I listened to a lot more "classic rock" today than I normally do. All of the songs I heard today were, of course, familiar to me, and I enjoyed hearing them, but I'm not a fan of the "classic rock" or "golden oldies" radio format. I used to think my distaste for it was that I didn't like the idea of restricting oneself to only the familiar - but that's not it. After all, I spend a lot of time re-listening to my old, familiar CDs. No, what I don't like about "classic rock" radio is that their selection tends to be so narrow - to me it's like listening to three "Greatest Hits of the 70s" CDs over and over and over, day after day.

With that rant out of my system, I heard American Pie, by Don McLean, today. That, in my opinion, is a great song. It is a work of poetry. I'm serious - I realize that many people dismiss it because 1) it's been over-played (but not quite too much, thanks to its 9 minute or so length) and 2) so many people have discussed its meaning (look it up on the internet - there are scores of web sites out there). It is precisely that second reason that makes it such a masterpiece. Like the best Bob Dylan songs, the overall meaning is understood, but analyzing individual lines provokes discussion, thought, trivia, and debate.

(It's accepted that the song itself is a history of rock-and-roll, which McLean felt had declined after "The day the music died" - which most people seem to feel was the day the plane crash killed Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and The Big Bopper. Much debate centers around who or what is or was "Miss American Pie," however.)

("The jester sang for the king and queen / In a coat he borrowed from James Dean / In a voice that came from you and me" From other parts of the song, it's clear that the jester is Bob Dylan, whose roots were in folk music, and who became the voice of a generation, and who posed for the cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan in a red jacket similar to the one James Dean wore in Rebel Without A Cause, but who are the king and queen? Are they John and Jackie Kennedy? Or is it a reference to the time Dylan played for Queen Elizabeth and was criticized for not dressing properly?)

Besides all that, it's hard to imagine any 9 minute rock song becoming a #1 radio hit these days. Rap, maybe, Techno, maybe, but not a rock song.

Because one person's on vacation, and another person called in sick, I'm working in the office instead of the clinic. I feel restless and out of place. I want to be where the "action" is. I don't feel like I'm in the hospital here in this cubicle. I want to meet the patients - ours and the random lost ones. We're listening to KJR - a "classic rock" radio station. I've been reminded of something I decided a long time ago: that Take The Money And Run, by The Steve Miller Band, contains the worst set of song lyrics I've ever heard. "They headed down to old El Paso / That's where they ran into a great big hassle"

I got home from Lopez Island about seven o'clock this evening. I'm tired.

Betty and Cheri were great company on the drive up, and on the drive back.

Traffic was stop-and-go all the way from Seattle (milepost 166) to exit 230. (What town is that?) We got to 50 MPH a couple of times, but mostly it was 40 or less. We pulled into the ferry terminal parking lot at 9:10. The ferry left at 9:30.

John and Wayne picked us up at the Lopez terminal. It was dark when we arrived at Lynn and Adam's property. I went to bed upstairs in the turret later that night, and woke up Saturday morning to discover Puget Sound was our back yard.

I got to know Betty, Cheri, Wayne, John, Bob, Shannon, LuAnn, Natalie, Lynn, and Brian a whole lot better. They got to know me a whole lot better.

I discovered that the watch Phillip gave me is water resistant, after I forgot to take it off before I entered the hot tub.

I drank more wine that I normally do.

I went with Natalie, Wayne, Brian, and Bob to the Lopez Island farmers' market.

I saw only one of the famous Lopez Island rabbits.

We got a lot of church business taken care of.

Traffic was a lot better on the drive home, except for Everett.

It was a terrific weekend. I'm feeling sad that it's over and that tomorrow is Monday.