Today I learned of the death of an old friend from during my time in New York City. We both worked at two places together, and it seems that the extra time he spent working on one big project (in a park I won't name now) resulted in excessive exposure to asbestos. He apparently died of a related cancer. We were all offered checkups at a specialized hospital but I don't know who took them up on it (we were young and foolish and immortal in the 1970s.)

I've had some contract work keeping me busy today; the only accomplishment around the house was washing some dog bedding and running the dishwasher. AND - I've always used cleansers that didn't scratch up things, and then cleanser got hard to find for a while so I broke down and bought Ajax (and it says it doesn't scratch now.) I was astonished that Ajax easily removed what I thought was a permanent discolored area in the sink.

Dorothy, another dog anecdote: Cookie has been unmoved by the puppy-strength settings on the Invisible Fence collar, though she seemed to understand the beep it made meant something. So I went back to the dealer and she increased the collar to pitbull strength, since the pit part of the pup seems to be at play here. And when I took her out into the yard this time she not only heard the beep she felt the little shock (it's like strong static electricity) and jumped away from the boundary. This happened several times in different parts of the yard, and now she's staying a bit back from those areas. As time passes she'll figure out how close she can get; most dogs experience some "shrinkage" in the yard until they fine tune their understanding of the collar. Pepper does fine and I'm sure Cookie will figure out that where the other dogs go, she can go.