Breakfast at Sherrie's

I joined the girls for breakfast at Sherrie's this morning. I knew Dix would be only eating half her breakfast and so I mooched off of her. For a while Noreen was talking kitty-corner to me while Sharon was simultaneously conversing kitty-corner with Dix. The sisters appeared oblivious to each other. Strange and very difficult to focus through the crosstalk.

We learned there will be no merit raises this year due in part to the economy and partly because they can. I don't feel very meritorious anyway. I feel fortunate to have a job, insurance, and the health not to need it.

The winds have been brutal. Between fronts I installed a cap on the fireplace chimney. Much less whooshing noise now.

I just finished a couple of entertaining books - Fool by Christopher Moore patterned after King Lear (which is too raunchy to hand down to anybody), and Gods in Alabama , about a murderous girl who I found myself nevertheless rooting for. Now it's Animals in Translation by an autistic, Temple Grandin. Of interest was reading that dogs are now believed to have lived with humans for 100,000 years in earning the position of man's best friend, and they have developed an ability to read people's faces to learn what is going on (unlike wolves who do not establish eye contact) and conversely humans have evolved an ability to read dog language.