January

This has been a rocky month.  Not nearly as  bad as that being suffered by the thousands of federal workers put aside without pay, or worse.  But bad enough.

For the last three weeks, easily, I've had a hacking cough that sounds like I'm a two-pack-a-day smoker. It is slowly getting better, but glacially slowly.  Roughly, say, at the speed that a new thought penetrates Trump's consciousness.  Every morning I wake up thinking well, I didn't really cough last night, so maybe.... and then, thirty seconds into any conversation, I start coughing so badly, I have to hold my breath for a moment.  My wife has pointed out that she knows two people whose problem sounded like mine, and they turned out to have strep throat.  I don't think its that, but damned if I know what it is.  All I know is, I WANT IT TO END.  I've taken Mucinex, I've taken Dayquil.  Slowly better.  Still there.

And the other thing is money.  In a nutshell, when our French exchange student was here, she had problems with her debit card, so we loaned her money.  She said her father would do a bank transfer to our account. That hasn't happened. I like these people, and I don't want to think badly of them.  I don;t think they would stiff us.  The student....might, especially if she finds out that I wrote to her mother  a damming -with-faint-praise note about her American boyfriend.  I like him, but I know how her mother feels about any relationships with one specific guy.  Groups, no problem.  One alone, problem. I wrote the note as a way to say you might want to keep aware of this... especially since I know that the daughter lied about the relationship to her mother. So perhaps she intercepted the note where I said hey, about this money we loaned your daughter..... Or maybe its just that the mother doesn't tend to read email . Whatever,  I might just have to forget about that money.  The odd thing is, that would be okay, so long as we were still friends with these people..  I would hate to lose that.

In about two weeks, first cataract surgery.   Hoping for good results.