There has been massive flooding throughout England, mostly along the Severn and Thames… One of my company’s other offices has been closed, maybe flooded, though I can’t tell you for sure because the news isn’t very complete. Mostly, there are pictures of flooded areas, and statements like, “We told the council that there were drainage issues, but they didn’t do anything about it.” or “It would take digging up the entire town to fix the drains. How are we supposed to have kept this from happening?” or other types of finger-pointing and laying the blame, with silly and often grammatically incorrect headlines. Along the rivers, there isn’t a lot that could be done – I mean, it’s the highest the rivers have been in 60 years, and there is only so much that you can actually anticipate. However… Brighton Road in Croydon, very near where I live, flooded, and badly. It is no where near a river. It is somewhat low-lying, but, the reason it is flooded is that it simply has bad drainage, which could have been and should have been fixed a long time ago. Now, people are without water and power and there is E. coli and cryptosporidium floating around as water treatment plants overflow…

Oh, well - Ray and I aren’t worried about ourselves for any number of reasons: We are on high ground with good drainage. We have kayaks and can escape with all the animals even if the water managed to get that high. And, most importantly, USAA insures all of our stuff. We have already considered most of the possible, really bad scenarios, and we would be just fine.

We picked up our Suburu Legacy with a 2.5 on Friday afternoon. It's nice – all leather, 6 disc changer and it goes up hills when we want it to. Ray is lamenting that he is finding a 10 year old Suburu nice. While I don't necessarily agree with him, sometimes it is a slap in the face to realize just how far down our standard of living has fallen.

Of course, we got Book 7 when it came out. No, I didn't go to the store at midnight, we had it delivered from Amazon. I really enjoyed it, though the first half felt like delaying tactics for the big stuff at the end. It was a satisfying end. Some of it, I'd guessed already. Some, like Snape's motivation, was a surprise.

It's a pretty nice day here, so Ray and I are going to go for a ride shortly. We are also trying desperately to find a pool so he can get swimming again. He does kind of have a tri coming up in 2 weeks and he hasn't swam since he got here.

To go off on something completely unrelated… I was thinking of a conversation a couple of weeks back. Someone asked if I had done something she didn't approve of. I had not, and I said I had not. She replied, "I think you are fibbing." I didn't actually say what I wanted to at the time, because I was too pissed off. I don't think she actually understood how much of an insult that statement was, and I don't think I could have told her without being very cruel. So, I will say it now: I don't actually care what people think. I will not lie to anyone just because I think they will disapprove of something I have done. I will not lie to anyone to make myself sound better. I don't care what you think. If I don't want to answer, I just won't. I will not lie about it. I am aware that most people think a "white lie" is perfectly acceptable. Or that "fibbing" or "bending the truth" is okay as well. I don't care about your moral justification for it. I know that in your world view, it is perfectly acceptable, and I am not going to attempt to persuade you otherwise. My point is this: I don't care what you think, ergo I will not lie.

Well, things have been going along here, the same as normal. Emma is getting better and better, though the way this works is all really odd… Even though there isn’t NHS for pets, everything is treated the exact same way. Here’s the thing: We took her in, initially, to find out what was wrong, and found out about the broken toes, etc. But we had to bring her back in two days to have her bandages changed and for the doc to check on her wounds. We’ve had to keep bringing her back in for this every 2-3 days until Tuesday, when they decided that her wounds were healed enough that we only need to worry about the broken toes. Back home, Dr Strasser or Dr Livaudais would have looked at her, had Thomas bandage her and told us to change the bandages every couple of days, and shown us how to wrap it, if necessary. Then we would have brought her back in 2 weeks to see how the toes are doing. And we would rather do it that way! We have the basic skills to change bandages, clean wounds, etc. Additionally, to get spare bandages for her, we had to ask the pharmacists directly because they weren’t on display. (The last vet tech did not wrap it correctly and the whole thing came undone.) The pharmacy guy gave us a step-by-step list of things to do to change her dressings, to make sure we did it right. It’s just a little odd. But, Ray thinks that it’s because of NHS, and the fact that they can go to the doctor to have a dressing changed every two days that 1) the pharmacy wouldn’t need to sell very much gauze wrapping and 2) the general public wouldn’t know how to properly dress wounds. I don’t think the vets here did a really bad job or anything (except for this last time), but I really feel our vets back home would have done better. I think the vet techs are better trained, and the MDs themselves had a better outlook on the way things are done. The ones here were surprised that Emma’s teeth were cleaned every 6 months. (They needed to be cleaned that often, no matter how much we brushed them, gave her CEP treats, etc…)

Anyway, we are going to register with a different NHS practice for our human medical care, since the last office we went to was so crappy. Hopefully, these folks will do better.

Got to run now!

Emma is doing much better now… We’ve already spent £450 in trying to get her better. And she still has to be brought by the vet for bandage changes, etc. It’s absolutely ridiculous the amount we’ve had to spend because of those incompetent idiots at the kennels. We won’t make that mistake again, for two reasons. One, Agata has said that she would be more than happy to stay here over the weekend if we need to have the dogs looked after. And, two, we are getting a new car that can actually tow a caravan (trailer)! I don’t know how long that link will actually work, so I will just tell you:

It’s a silver 97 Subaru Legacy estate with 82000 miles on it and a 2.5 liter engine and AWD… It actually has some pick up and can go up hills! We will pick it up on Friday. Abbie got to test ride it, and thinks it’s a good car, so we will listen to the dog, and get the car.

Marcee headed home yesterday morning, of course, amidst concerns that the plane would blow up or fall out of the sky or something else would go wrong. But, she was flying US Airways, so I think the only real concern was whether or not they could manage to take off at a reasonable time. I haven’t heard from her, but I assume she made it back ok. I did manage to get around to uploading all the pictures she took to my picasa account since she doesn’t have one. I’ve also begun uploading some of the pictures that I took from her stay, but I haven’t got very far. I do think I got some really nice shots of some of the riders, but I haven’t uploaded them yet… I will get there eventually.

I should probably explain this last picture, from stage 1, which Ray took. I got a bit annoyed because I had walked off to get a crepe and when I came back, the fat woman in pink next to me had brought her granddaughter up in front, right where I’d been, next to Marcee. This meant I had lost my spot right up front and could not take any pictures. This wouldn’t have bothered me if the little girl actually cared about bikes, or racing, or any of it. But, she didn’t. Nor did the grandmother. Just as the old woman had no right to force her way to the front, she should not teach her granddaughter that just because she is a child, she can push her way up front. It really pissed me off. And I didn’t do anything because Marcee likes kids. But I was, and still am, really pissed off because I’d waited there quite a while for that spot. Little brat. Don’t get me wrong – if the kid had been interested, I would have been the first to let her through. (We’d done the same for one little kid who had wanted to see the Grand Depart and another mother who really wanted to get her kid interested, though he was terrified of the crowd.) But she didn’t. It was just some local family who saw something to go see. It was really screwed up.

Anyway, that’s about all for now. Ray and I need to go shopping – we are out of soda and toilet paper.

So, good things, bad things...

Good thing:

On Sunday, Marcee and Ray went to ride the end of stage 1, first thing in the morning, before everything got shut down. Ray comes back to the room and tells me, "We rode with Ralph or maybe it was Rolf? Sorenson or Sorensen or something like that. He's ridden in the Tour before!" My eyes go wide at this... "You guys rode with THE Rolf Sørensen?!?" And he wants to know how I know who he is... I recognized the name because in 2005, Lance refused to year the yellow jersey because Zabriskie had only lost it in a crash, and the point was made over and over that in 1991, Greg Lemond did the exact same thing for Sørensen. He signed a hat for Marcee:

Anyway, the bad…

We had to board the dogs while we were gone. Ray read some reviews, etc, and decided to try a place called Windmill Farms, not far from where we live, so we dropped them off on Friday afternoon. We got a call on Sunday morning that Dingo had “had a go at Emma”, and Emma was limping and had a couple of bites, but that she wasn’t seriously injured. We might want to make an appointment with the vet when we got back, but she was okay.

We picked up the dogs on Monday afternoon when we got home, and Emma was torn up and absolutely covered in bites, on back and front legs, her nose, her eye, her ear, etc, and the front paw was infected. I took her to the vet, and they had to have me bring her back this morning (Tuesday) so that they could sedate her and take x-rays because they suspected the foot might be broken. Well, it is. It is broken in two places and she has a dozen bites, one of which was far too infected to have been the day-old wound that they said. I am highly doubtful that Dingo could have done this to Emma. I strongly suspect that it had to be another dog. Even if it had been Dingo, it would had have had to happen as soon as she was dropped off on Saturday afternoon considering the severity of infection.

We have no proof of this, though. I think that we should call this damn place and demand that they pay for the vet bills. Ray doesn’t because he feels 1) we have no evidence that it wasn’t Dingo and 2) we have no evidence that Emma was treated so badly or her wounds ignored, especially since they called us. If nothing else, I would like to find out something about the licensing agency for kennels and complain to them… The jerks let my dog get hurt.

Quick note while waiting the next 14 mins for the freezer pizza to cook in the oven before heading over to Canterbury...

Wow! The Tour is cool so far... We saw Le Grand Depart for Le Tour de France in, ironically, Trafalgar Square! It was really funny. Then, we saw the Prologue today, which was a really short (8k) time trial. It was cool to see the riders that close up. We got there around 7:30 AM, and no one was waiting. So we took a spot next to some fellows that had been there since 9PM the night before. And it was a great spot!!

Anyway - that's all I've really got time for. I will post pics as soon as I have a chance. (I actually filled up my entire 2GB card!!)

So, Marcee was supposed to get in this morning at 8:30AM. Before we went to bed last night, I checked with US Airways on line and it said that the flight would be delayed by about 30 minutes, but would still be able to get in 30 minutes early, or something like that. I just figured that I would double check on the way out the door in the morning… What a bad assumption. I checked several websites and they all said that it was “Delayed” until ~2AM. So, I set about trying to find out what is going on with the flight. First, I tried their on-line chat, and the person on the other end says that it looks like it is on time. That would be kind of odd, since more than one website says it is delayed. So, I ask for a local phone number and speak to someone who looks up all the info and says that it is delayed and will take off at 3AM, landing at 3PM GMT. Hmmm… Oh, well. Since Ray is sick and I am fighting off what ever he gave me, we went back to bed. Then, when I got back up around noon, I checked again, and they have cancelled the flight, though when I called with Marcee’s record locater number, she said that the flight was only delayed and that it would take off at 10AM EST. I asked what they had done with Marcee and found out that they rebooked her to tonight’s flight. Poor Marcee!! She has been afraid to get on an overseas flight, and worried about this whole thing, and what happens? Oh, well. She will still get her in time for our 4^th of July cookout. :-)

I have to say this, or I am just going to burst from not saying it… NHS is one of many things that is wrong with the UK and the biggest reason I will not vote for a democrat in the next election… Say “no” to socialized medicine because it causes systemic problems within a country – like, say, allowing fundamentalist terrorists into the country with no work visa just because they are medical students or doctors… This is just part of what happens when you don’t provide motivation to people to excel. It’s why socialism and communism can never truly succeed. If everyone is treated the same, despite their skills or qualifications, if I work my butt off just to pay more taxes to support some lazy jerk, what is my motivation to continue working as hard as I can?

One other thing… By putting this here, I will be obligated to do something about it. Agata wants to do a tri. And she wants me to do it with her. Ah!! We are going to try to find a pool and start swimming on lunch. I am actually going to get off my butt and try to do a tri.