I MIGHT AS WELL BLOG...
I mean, what else is there to do?

After going to yet another doctor appointment today, I decided that I would wait until after the Seattle Mariners' game before blogging. I was all ready for a nice relaxing night of baseball. Since the M's beat the World Champion White Sox last night, I figured maybe Seattle would be competitive tonight. Yeah, rrrright...it's the 7th inning, and Seattle is behind 7-0. So, I might as well blog! It'll help make this forgettable attempt at a baseball game go by a little faster.
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It's a veritable potpourri of pills dept.: It seems that as my life continues day after day, I'm a-poppin' more pills all the time. Pills for anxiety/depression. Pills to inhibit manufacture of gout. Other pills to help filter out what gout there is in my body. And the occasional hi-powered, hi-octane sleeping pill if I haven't slept well for 2 or 3 nites. Plus aspirin or ibuprofen if my osteoarthritic knees are letting me know they're there. Each nite before bed, I go thru a sort of medical smorgasboard. Oh, and I can't forget to take one more gout pill when I get up, too. They're too strong to take 2 at a time when I go to bed. That's me...I'm a pill-poppin' son of a gun. I guess as long as I'm well enough to ingest more food than pills, I'm okay. Right?
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One less place for the riffraff to go: Coeur d'Alene's Social Security office is a place where you'll see the more ingrained, diehard, standard-type Idahoans. People who aren't rich, who are seeking various kinds of assistance that only the Social Security Dept. can offer. People who aren't dressed up, who often drive old cars, and some of them don't get around so well; life has taken its toll on each of them and they're getting by the best they can. Well, today began the eventual demolition of the Social Security building at 5th and Front in CDA. A high-priced condo will be built on that block. No more Social Security seekers coming downtown now. The more cynical side of me would say this is all part of a plot to keep the po' folks out of downtown CDA, as the Lake City seeks to foster an image of affluence and political correctness when it tries to appeal to outsiders. I hope that's not the case. I really do.
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I almost lost my appetite dept.: Seen in today's Coeur d'Alene de-Press, a want ad that caused me to do a double-take so severe I almost got whiplash in the process. The ad read, quote: "Free to good home. Not to be used as food. Hand-raised, sweet baby RATS." Huh? What? As I mulled this over in my empty head, I slowly came to the realization that "oh, it must mean not to be fed to CATS." Okaaaay...but for a minute there I had visions of little mouse-sized Vienna Sausages. I know times are tough, but I don't think anyone around here is that hungry...yet...(I still have this vision of "sweet rats" in my mind.)
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Songs heard over coffee dept.: Today, Java on Sherman was featuring pop music from the '70s over its speaker system...among the songs I heard, "I'll Play For You" by Seals and Crofts; yeah, they might have been lightweight airheads, but their songs were melodic, agreeable and pleasant to the ears. Then I heard "Lady" by the Little River Band; this Australian group had great pop hits, but their albums also featured a lot of good tunes that radio never played. Finally, "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart", a #1 song by the Bee Gees. I have NEVER heard ANY Bee Gees' material I didn't like. By the way, oldest Bee Gee Barry Gibb came down with severe back problems in the 1990's which forced him to cut the group's performances way back. Barry, "ah feel yer pain". So what the Bee Gees ended up doing, were a limited series of concerts around the world, and each concert was broadcast far and wide so all of their fans could see 'em. Good strategy, that. They made a DVD out of one of those concerts. Rakin' in the bucks, those guys. They make money faster than the average DOCTOR! Or plumber.
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Oh Bury Me Not On The Lone Prairie dept.: My doctor used to be here in CDA. He moved his practice out to Rathdrum. So, I've got a ways to go if I wanna see him. But it gets me out of CDA, which may or may not be a good thing. About a mile or so south of Rathdrum, to the east of hiway 41, a huge relatively flat field is being bulldozed to make way for, yep, another massive subdivision with 72 homes to the acre (hopefully less!), and that's where you can see the old and new Idaho clashing; a field to the west will be green, with mobile sprinkler systems insuring a good crop, while a field to the east will one day be a field no longer. This is not an indictment, it is only a comment. That said, thar sure are a LOT MORE people around here than thar used to be! I'm glad I live in an older section of CDA, where nothing changes. So far, anyway. But I may yet wake up one day to see a Condo tower looking down on my little house.
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A rather quirky period of history dept.: You probably remember when, during O.J. Simpson's trial, Mark Fuhrman said he'd never used the "N"-word, when in fact he did. That was all part of Johnny Cochran's "grabbing-at-straws" strategy to defend "the Juice"; I'd say it worked. I just hope O.J. doesn't carry a knife when he's out golfing with his buddies. If O.J. lost a match, there might be a couple less golf buddies returning with him to the clubhouse. Anyway, around here, way back around the turn of the century, a certain "point" on CDA Lake utilized the "N"-word. It was called "N-word head point". (I'M not gonna type that word here!) Can you guess what that "point" on the lake was?



Yep, here it is, Arrow Point, the former "N-word head" point. I have never actually been on the point itself, so I don't know if it's publicly accessible or not. Probably not, what with so much of the lakeshore being owned by those who want to keep everyone else away. As I sit in City Park looking out over the lake, Arrow Point is what, maybe 2 miles to the south of me? Yet you have to drive close to 20 miles to get to it. I always thought this was an interesting place. Anyway, sometime in the early 1900's, the point's original name was changed to Arrow Point. Which proves that we in Idaho have been racially enlightened for ages, no matter what pseudo-militant-churches have located up here in the past.
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...meantime, the Mariners' game continues. The M's have actually scored 2 RUNS!!! Trouble is, the White Sox have scored 5 more runs. ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz...............blahhhhhh................