what I need
January 17, 2006, 6:01 P.M.

I got the idea from here,
to google �my first name + needs�.

Here are my favorite results.

• ___ needs more balls


• ___ needs to handle the sales end while someone else runs the company


• ___ needs sleep


• ___ needs to make the most of these cycles, and establish goals with corresponding deadlines


• ___ needs to become more tolerant, especially of emotions


• ___ needs healing


• ___ needs some vindication


• ___ just needs a damn good fukin (sic)

I don�t mean to imply that yesterday was a total loss�I did many things right, including eating the proper amounts of fruits and vegetables, as well as drinking around 70 to 80 ounces of water.

Instead of berating myself over the number of things I did wrong, I�m going to keep track of how many things I do right, and try to increase that number each day. That way, eventually there will be no room left in my day for wrong things, will there?

He really went to town on me after that. He laid three separate manipulations on my low-back and hips. He popped everything in my back right into place. He kneaded my neck and shoulder muscles like crazy, and when he finally wrenched my neck�I think I saw god.

Of course, the true test of an adjustment is the next day. And I feel great today. So I guess it still does me good, provided I keep the good Doc from getting lazy and formulaic with the treatment.

�Rumpole and the Barrow Boy� drove me nuts most of the way through; I felt I knew the actress playing �Rosie Japhet�, but could not, for the life of me, place her. Until her very last scene, when she turned to spit an epithet at another actor. At that point, her physical movement and her voice revealed her identity to me. A young (about 22) and almost unrecognizable Elizabeth Hurley. Very fresh-faced, and still a hint of puppy fat around her jaw line. And maybe a factory original nose?

I love looking for familiar faces in those old episodes, and the seasons in this set are from 1988 to 1992, so I�m looking forward playing 'spot the actor'.

If I have a complaint about these box sets, it is that they have the totally typical British sound quality of their era. Which is to say�ghastly. I have to turn up the volume nearly to the max just to maintain an understandable level. And I still manage to miss a lot of what is said.

So it is doubly and triply incomprehensible to me that, given the $100.00 purchase price, the aging target audience, and lousy sound values, A&E apparently felt that subtitles and closed captioning were not warranted. Cheap bastards.

But it's ever so nice to come home and have the house to myself (if you don't count the dog.) Since Spouse has gotten spoiled, dinner-wise, I decided to ease him into the new shift with a couple of real meals this week. Tuesday is pork chop night, so I figured I'd better keep it that way. Baked loin chops, rice pilaf, and green beans, just the way he likes it. It's all reasonably inside my diet parameters, so I get to enjoy it, too.

Once I've had dinner, and done the dishes and put the trash out and bagged up his uniforms and done some general housework, I'll be nicely digested, and able to go down and spend some time on the treadmill. Then, if there's time, a bit more of dear old Horace R., and more walking--the pooch this time. Not far, though. The weather is getting mean again, and it's quite cold and windy out (Just think of that--in Wisconsin, in January--it's cold!)and we even had a sprinkling of snow today. But Miss Thing is a spoiled one, and gets very pissy if she's cheated.