Look At All These Dogs

Wednesday May 20, 2026 14:45

Mitch's new virologist: "Thanks Mr. Fountain for coming in and seeing me today. I have reviewed your tests and scans in detail. The good news is you do not have lung cancer nor do you have any signs of COPD.

Mitch - "I'm a little surprised as COPD is what killed my mother.

Mitch's new virologist: Nope, you are good on those fronts. You do, however have an auto-immune disease called Rheumatoid Arthritis and it is in your lungs.

Mitch: "How do you test for that?"

Mitch's new virologist: There is a specific blood test that generates a marker. Anything over a 40 is consider a positive.

Mitch: "Cool, what was my number?"

Mitch's new virologist: 139

So, two things. First, they are on this early and they are confident that I am not in the five to seven year dirt nap scenario that we all Googled last week. Second, even if we were, and what matters more, is how many of you reached out and gave us a nudge, let us know that no matter what, we would not be doing this alone. I am, once again, mystified ... at how lucky I got with the friends and family I somehow ended up with in my life. I am not going anywhere, anytime soon. Thank You!

Back to business - After my one week hiatus for a stress filled week, let's circle back and finish my four-part piece on what keeps retired people busy. So far, we have talked about keeping hot coffee in the pot, taking well deserved naps and charging things. As I have outlined previously, my finances do not support very much for travel from which I see a lot of from my old RBC mates. It would seem that LM, MM, MB and DL are forever on some foreign shore ... posting exotic pictures that make me just a little jealy? A week on the beach for five grand. A couple of weeks in on a river cruise, twelve grand. Hong Kong or a high speed rail tour of China .... twenty grand. That demands a straight outflow of capital. If you have it, please go do it while you can. Book two or three trips a year and get it out of your system. No one want to be walking around the Parthenon, when your age and the temperature outside ... both start with an nine! After that, your next best bet to ensure long term joy and happiness (in our humble opinion) is a dog. Cats suck neutronium. They drool. Dogs rule.

Nate Bargatze has a funny bit about trying to convince his wife that they need a second dog. According to him, she is resisting because of the extra work. Now, she would have to let two dogs out into the fenced backyard and let two dogs back into the house. "Look at all these dogs everywhere".

Better yet, get two. Milo is under house (kitchen) arrest until his pee pad training is complete. He and Maddie are inseparable except when she needs to escape his irrepressible desire to rock and roll! He chews her ears, her jowls, nose, paws, privates and tail to distraction. At a certain point, no matter how many times Maddie aggressively corrects him, she just has to pull the pin, jump over the wall and hide from the furry piranha. We have a wake up routine, a bedtime routine, feeding them, playing, scolding, snuggling, pulling pee pads, retrieving turds, vet visits and grooming visits. Let's call it 90 minutes every single day.

So I will end this four week spot by telling you why I started talking about what keeps me busy. First, four years into retirement, everyone continually asks how I spend my time? Because, from the other side of the fence, it looks like there will be a big ten hour hole in your day? That important thing (your old job) that you have been doing for eight hours every day, for the past thirty years, goes from at least half of your existence ... to a big fat zero. Like throwing a light switch. Your company, your desk, your workmates will go on as if you never existed. We all know someone who only had work as a reason for getting up in the morning? Guess what happens when you remove that? They fade quickly. You need hobbies. The other reason I wanted to talk about this is these stupid articles I keep reading with headlines like, "We have two million saved. Will it be enough to retire? This fear of running out of money is , what I believe, keeps poeple in the workforce for longer than is good for them. It probably not great for the next generation waiting for those plum senior position either? Most of the hobbies that I have cost next to nothing.

I ride old used motorcycles. I sail, ice fish, look through telescopes, shoot my compound bow, fly my kites and take photos. I have beers with my buddies at least once a week, do home recording, BBQ and smoke meat. There is always a small woodworking project on the go and I keep my various small engines serviced. When all that is done (or even if it is not), I hit a little white ball, find it and hit it again. I cut lawns, shovel snow, plant stuff, dig it back up. Pickle it. Read a book every couple of weeks, play seven instruments badly and spend time with the nicest girl in Guelph. All of that is before I turn on the television set.

So naps, coffee, charging shit and dogs, takes up about six hour a day. Somewhere from the above list, I need to find another three hours. It is not that hard. If you have enough saved to do those sorts of things for yourself, then for the sake of all that is holy ... start doing them. Don't wait until you get the long face from the doctor!

What I'm Reading

I saw an interview with Neil Degrasse-Tyson where he was talking about one of my favourite subjects these days. Why we are not going to Mars. He referenced his book from years ago call Paths to Discovery. There are three (and only three) reasons that civilizations will trade treasure and resources for generational infrastructure projects:
In Praise of Deity or Royalty - Think cathedrals, pyramids, ball rooms
Making Money - Hoover Dam, Eiffel Tower, Columbus looking for a shorter route to China. That sort of thing.
Geopolitics - The advancement of war. The Manhattan Project to develop the bomb. Beating the Russians to the moon. The Great Wall. Swinging dick stuff.
None of the three things listed above are driving man to Mars.! Musk wants to seel shit to the taxpayer. Our species will go back to the moon within the next decade. It might be for second reason above, but that sometime comes laterr. It will be swinging dick stuff and they will be communicating home in Mandarin is my guess.

Quote Of The Week

Teddy Rosevelt - Walk softly and carry a big stick
Donnie Trump - Shout from the rooftops about the size of your tiny wrinkled penis

Our Optimum Week

You will see my points total go straight backwards as the 21st, 22nd and 23rd are Bonus Redemption Days at Zehr's. I have been working all year to built my points total and now the payoff. Free vegetable garden build in the front yard. Upgraded perennials everywhere. Hanging baskets. Annuals. All my fruits and veggies for planting. A couple of new Boston Ferns for the living room. this little piece of heaven in Guelph is going to be spectacular. Stop by and have a glass of wine. I am stocked up!

... and finally

Bombs Away
There are about five spots on my little piece of heaven that attract bird nests year after year. Some years, the whole "Circle Of Life" Lion King thanks happens. You know, building nests, pitching woo, pitching sperm, laying eggs and hatching. It goes good. Some years, tragedy strikes. A raid by some sort of rodentia, abandoned eggs or chicks out for a dirt nap on my lawn. We've had chickadees and sparrows and doves and robins but never blackbirds. They visit my place. Specifically, the water feature by my pond. These grackles arrive like Roman Senators visiting the hot springs in Bath. The locals are all driven away while they flutter and prance and preen with their iridescent gorgets and leave gigantic blobs of white shit all over my waterfall. Eventually, they fuck off and calm returns to to our little oasis.

This year, they have taken up residence in the neighbours cedar hedge for the aforementioned pitching of woo. There's a nest in there. The flightpath when arriving or exiting that nest would seem to go right over my new black car which I have been trying to keep the favourite colour of people from Hamilton. Shiny! I mean big giant white globs of what look like packing foam with green and black chunks in it. I counted 63 of the them on the hood of my car while scrubbing them off with SWMBO's toothbrush. Once again, down the Google rabbit hole we go;
- Baseball bat vs. nest successfully halts that whole generational process
- Blackbirds however are smart and stubborn. That only slows them down
- All birds tend to "lighten their load" during takeoff
- Many birds (but not all) would prefer not to soil their own nest, so they take care
of business just before returning home. I used to employ the same strategy on
the rare occasion when ordered to attend the powdered and perfumed class on
the 5th floor. I would never get back on the elevator without slipping into those
richly appointed executive washrooms and laying down a couple of feet of my
own version of the Keystone Pipeline. Take that Reitsma.
- It's not the black metallic paint that attracts them per se. It's the infrared properties of black paint. They like to popp on warm things. Don't we all?
- What they do not like is bright flashy metallic things. Mr Google recommends
purpose built reflective tape and old CD's on strings. SWMBO has not listened to
those CD's in years anyway! I will let you know how I make out.

Mitch & Maddie

... next week Seema Masala and some more vegetable garden status pictures!

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