Progress...

The old man called a couple of hours ago to tell me he had been transferred back to the rehab center. That's a good sign.

I was lucky enough to be visiting my dad in Manhasset today when the doctor was making his rounds, so I suffered a kind of information overload with regard to my dad's status. The long and short is that he's going to need a couple of weeks more of antibiotics to clear out an infection, after which he'll go back for additional treatment.

Me, I have a gig starting next Saturday, the 15th, in Houston, for most of the following week, so I plan to take off on Tuesday or Wednesday for home. I gave a moment's thought to perhaps taking my time and making it a bona fide three-day trip, but that probably won't happen. First, I'll probably want to rest for a day before starting an interpretation job, and second, there's no real percentage in taking one's leisure, especially as there are few places where you are welcome with a pooch. Before owning Shiloh, I had been subconsciously aware that dogs are not particularly welcome out in public in American society, but over the past couple of weeks, that knowledge has become conscious and is reinforced daily.

I drove over to Bayville this morning, just because I hadn't done so in several decades, and on a whim, turned into the public beach. As I pulled into the parking lot, I kept my eye peeled for a "No Dogs Allowed" sign, and not seeing one, proceeded to the end of the lot and parked. There, I spied a sign explaining the nesting habits of certain birds and how important it was to leave them alone. There was one comment about dogs on the sign, to the effect that, if it was legal to have a dog on the beach, it should be kept away from nesting areas, "or better yet, left at home."

I jumped out of the car with Shiloh and we made our way to the shoreline, me with a plastic bag in hand to address a credible Worst Case Scenario and Shiloh with her nose to the ground, enjoying the strange new scents. I have led, half flung the dog into the Long Island Sound (I, on the other hand, only got my sneakers wet), and Shiloh took it like a trouper, which is to say, she got wet and "kept going without complaint," like a member of a theatrical company (a member of a troupe, or a trouper), as opposed to a member of a military or paramilitary troop (a trooper), which is my - you should excuse the expresssion - "grammar-police moment" for the day, but I digress...

Through the grapevine I have learned that the launch of the most recent Proton-M from Baionur came to an abrubt end about 135 seconds into the flight when the second-stage engines shut down due to an apparent servo failure, causing the rocket to come back down and crash in an uninhabited portion of Kazakhstan. That's gotta suck. Then again, that's a part of my life that's apparently over and done with, as there are no realistic prospects in sight for ILS to use U.S.-based interpreters in the future (not to mention that my multiple-entry visa for such gigs just expired).

* * *Back in the day, my dad was on the cutting edge of the video revolution, except that he backed the wrong horse (there's a Sony Beta machine up in the den, with a bunch of home-recordings of telecasts). I spent some time earlier this evening introducing Shiloh to some classic Luciano Pavarotti, who died yesterday at the age of 71. The guy had a voice, but Shiloh really couldn't care less. Too, one of these days, I'll have to get ambitious and find out how to clean the heads of a Beta player, since the quality of the playback was noticeably noisy and the machine probably hasn't been cleaned in a decade or more.

Now it's off to address some accumulated email, after which, it's to bed!

Cheers...