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Getting up this morning was not hard to do. I went to bed early. What else is a single old bachelor gonna do on Sunday night? The one good thing was, and is, presently, the temperature was only in the eighties all day yesterday, and I had to pull a blanket over me to stay warm early this morning. All that will change later today, and tomorrow we'll join most of the rest of the country with some really hot weather.
It's not hot in Montana. My friend Barbara wrote me an e-mail yesterday telling me how comfortable it is there. If I were a rich man I might go visit her for a couple of months just to partake of the cool weather. I tease her about how cold it gets in the winter there, so I guess turn-about is fair play when she taunts me about how hot it gets here. She oughta know, she was raised in D.C., and it's not much different there than here in the summers.
When I got involved in researching probiotics and found out about the benefits of kefir I subscribed to a couple of e-mail discussion groups to learn as much as I could about how to make my own kefir. There is not really that much to learn, but the process is a little scary because making kefir is not a sure thing. Each batch of kefir I've made is a bit different than any other batch. Sometimes I need reassurance that the way the last batch turned out is okay.
These discussion groups ignore most of the stuff I write, and frequently the moderators don't publish my posts to the other members, so my participation in the groups is not really interactive. I receive what posts they do send out, but I'm not allowed to respond. Being moderated is not unusual for me, I don't go along to get along like expected these days. It's still irritating to be shunned.
Currently, I'm even more irritated by the cost of medical treatment in the U.S.A. The problem with me whining about it is that I suspect I have very little trouble getting medical treatment compared to many people. At least I can go to the VA Hospital and get some help with any serious problem. Medicare is just an excuse for the medicos to charge excessive prices above and beyond many people's ability to pay. There is a great shame associated with just needing some medical help these days. Getting sick should not be an embarrassment.
It's unconscionable of the government to spend the taxpayers money to help other countries live according to our standards, and then turn their back when Americans need help themselves. It's bad enough for the poor countries to want what we have and will do anything to get it, but it's worse when our government is helping them to help themselves.
I don't have much to write about today. I haven't been around people too much lately. I've had some visitors, but they don't seem much more encouraged about life in general than I am is. They are themselves fairly healthy, but they're being forced by circumstances to deal with people who are not doing well. I keep getting the impression that some of their people will die soon, and I'll be dealing with their remorse. That's been going on forever.
My lackadaisical attitude may have a lot to do with brown grass. Not only is it really dry here, but the heat in the middle of the country is coming our way, and the lack of rain is just part of it. The weather report this morning did mention a tropical storm out in the Atlantic, but it's predicted to turn north and miss the United States entirely. Farming communities get real grouchy during hard droughts on general principles.
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