Limeys Make the World Go 'Round...No, That's Not It...

This could only mean one thing, right? I've used up almost all the limes!
(Click on the photo to embiggen...)

Just What They're Looking For

I've grown so accustomed to using this blog to release pent-up (and not-so-pent-up) emotions. It's hard not to let it be an easy outlet for my anger, fear, joy, loneliness, happiness, sullenness, emptiness, or angst. But there are some things one just shouldn't share with a blog or, rather, with the rest of the world. Some pieces of our personal lives should remain private, hidden, and shielded from public view. But that's increasingly hard to execute.

This is not news to most readers, I know. It's probably not news to me. But today I am thinking about the value of anonymity or, at least, the desirability of anonymity. Try as we might, we cannot maintain anonymity the way we once could. Online searches of Google or Intellius or dozens of other sites can give us details about people that we probably shouldn't know and certainly shouldn't want to know.

The identity of people posting messages on blogs or in chat rooms or simply responding to email messages is not private. With certain modest skills and basic tools at hand, one's most private electronic communications to one's innermost circle can be fodder for YouTube or FaceBook or god knows what else.

By the time it occurs to you that your identity, your entire life, is available for public view, it's probably too late. Your secrets are out.

A would-be employer is reading your personal medical history with interest and horror and is busy deleting the job offer she had just written. Details of your visit to an abortion clinic as a teenager are being reviewed by investigative reporters, their neighbors, and your minister's mistress. Your long-ago-expunged arrest record for DUI in the idiocy of your youth finds its way onto your employer's desk at M.A.D.D. headquarters. Your sordid affair with a married biological weapons specialist in Second Life is thrown in your face by your spouse and your fellow members of the board of Amnesty International.

The hardest part of facing the fact that there is no anonymity anymore is that people you trust may be feeding details of your life to recipients who are hungry for the slightest shred of damning dirt. Either that, or you're growing paranoid. But you better not let that cat out of the bag; it could be just the tidbit they've been looking for.

More Kidney Tales

My sister called me earlier this evening and left me a voice message expressing concern about my 'kidney disease' post of last night. I haven't called her back because I was out having dinner and buying vegetables and then came home and, to my surprise, decided to watch the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics. And now it's late.

Well, sister, I wouldn't worry. The phrenologist didn't seem overly concerned and neither will I be. It's still not even certain that he's right. More tests will determine that. He says, if he's right, I am at stage 3 of the disease, "moderate decrease in kidney function." He says the goal, if he's right, is to limit the severity of decline in function, so that I can plan on dying of old age before I have to have dialysis or a transplant. I told him my plan, at present, is to die relatively healthy at age 96 after being hit and killed instantly by a speeding bus. "So," I told him, "your job is to make sure that happens."

I'd be lying, of course, if I said this unexpected pre-diagnosis did not bother me. It's particularly annoying since the doctor who sent me to the phrenologist said it appeared that the over-the-counter arthritis pain remedy I have been taking was responsible for the unhappy blood test results and that my kidneys seemed to be functioning normally. But such is life.

Anyway, I'll find out more next week, after I deliver large orange vats of refrigerated urine to the phrenologist's office.

Ellie, if you read this: you must know something of this, right? Tell me what you know, OK?

My Advice

Lots of things have taken my time, both personally and professionally, during the last several days. There have been too many issues requiring too much energy and too much concentration...I've just not been able to concentrate the way I should.

I'll post more information within the next several days. After the issue of the hotel failing to open in time for our upcoming client event has been resolved. After the phrenologist's surprise announcement that I have kidney disease has been tested (more orange pee jugs). After the too-soon box-packing sessions for our upcoming office move have begun.

I want to retire and kick around the country. I want it so badly I can taste it.

My advice to you: work for someone else...someone who can provide insurance, retirement, and a good salary. Working for yourself is worthwhile only if you make a shitload of money. And I don't.

California Bag Check

We tried to pack light for our California trip, but we got carried away. The checked bag fees were just outrageous.

Sharing California

OK. I will post some pictures. But they're not the full story. That would be too...something. We spent most of the weekend in Santa Rosa, CA. But my photos from SR were mostly bad shots of a badly decrepit, badly ignore house. Not happy stuff. So, I'll share some other ones.

• Starting from the most recent photos, backing up to before we left Dallas:
  
• Sacramento Airport Inside Shot
  
• Exterior shot of State Capital in Sacramento
  
• Inside our room at the Hawthorne Suites, Sacramento
  
• On the road from Santa Rosa to Sacramento
  
• Another on the road
  
• "Grape Trees," as I like to call them
  
• Our very first computer, a 1985 or 11986 version of a Compaq, with floppy disk and 10 meg hard drive
  
• Russian River Pub
  
• Another Russian River Pub shot
  
• Back in Dallas...my way of cooking spaghetti and sauce

California

We spent Thursday afternoon waiting on the court-appointed conservator, a sloppy woman dressed in an unattractive sleeveless knit shirt and shorts, to meet us at the house and deliver a set of keys. If I'd had to guess her profession, I'd have said she had retired as a dishwasher for a diner. She was to meet us in "half an hour" but she did not arrive until an hour and a half after our call. She is a loser from all perspectives.

Yesterday, we went through boxes and boxes and boxes, finding mostly old papers that should have been shredded and discarded years, even decades, ago. But there were some very interesting photos here and there and some information that revealed a family history of good fortune and pressed luck.

We did get out for lunch at The Russian River Pub, which was a delight, despite the traffic. We needed the break.

Dinner last night was at a Mexican fast-food joint down the street. Then we went to Trader Joe's to pick up a few odds and ends. We'll go back this morning to buy sushi, which we'll take over to the badly neglected house and put in the refrigerator until lunchtime.

I'm astonished as how badly the house has been treated. After, and perhaps long before, my mother in law died, her son who lived with her just let the place go to hell. It's a shame. It was a decent little house. Now, it will cost a fortune, that no one in this family has, to rehab it. So, the old place will probably be put on the market "as is," and it will fetch a fraction of the price it should.

I wish I could spend six weeks here, just cleaning up the house and yard. At least some cleaning and a coat of paint would help bring it back to its glory days.