Crash, drownings, chipmunkzilla! What is an ordinary day these days? Can we really trust our instincts to see where the signs are pointing? Do I ask a lot of questions for a one-eyed fat man? Read on ...

We dressed Jake, the Jack Russel in an argyle sweater and harness and took him and the mutt Tala for a walk in Groton State Forest.... leashes OFF! I rounded the corner first to see Jake dashing off across a small pond, skittering across ice that was so thin it was bouncing and flexing under his weight. Luckily he comes when he's called, but the elevated level of reactivity on my part was rather surprising to Sue, who didn't know why I was so excited. Okay, so the dog didn't drown, but that's not the point: somehow, fate likes to come full circle and bite a man in the ass... or at least threaten him with a lawsuit or something... keep reading.

Back in the car, we headed up toward Marshfield, and the conversation at one point went like this:
dan: whoah, oh shit!
sue: what?
dan: uhhh, almost hit the little rodent.
sue: what rodent?
dan: it uh ran across the road in front of the car.
sue: what was it?
dan: i'm gonna say "squirrel", but the first thing to come to mind wasn't that.
sue: what did it look like?
dan: like a really pumped up chipmunk or compressed weasel with no tail, or a marmot or hyperactive miniature prairie dog or ...
sue: right. i didn't see a thing.

After turning east on Rte 2, off in the distance I noticed a large garbage truck with something going on around the tailgate. The truck was almost 1/2 a mile away on one of the rare long views between Marshfield and Joe's Pond. The activity seem confined to the lower part of the truck, though it wasn't clear what I was seeing. We were driving much faster than the truck, so I rapidly gained on it, and realized quite suddenly that a full-size dumpster had fallen off the back and was tumbling along the road behind it:
dan: hey, look at that.
sue: what?
dan: the dumpster fell of the garbage truck.
sue: oh my god, it's like the rat.
dan: the what?
sue: the little thing we didn't hit.
dan: in what way?
sue: i didn't notice it until you pointed it out.
dan: you would've noticed the tumbling dumpster... oh look, it ended up right-side up.
[we pass the truck, which has stopped]
dan & sue: woooooah....

at home later: CNN minor headline: bird flu virus may kill millions in great pandemic - no vaccine available.

So we go get the mail. I get the current issue of my college alumni magazine - turns out an epidemiologist (class of '68) is lecturing on the coming worldwide pandemic of avian flu virus, worse than AIDS and Ebola combined, sometime between 2 months and 2 years from now.

Also on CNN: A guy jumped to his death from the empire state building. It closes with the following statement: "It is 1,454 feet to the top of the Empire State Building's lightning rod." How callous! Can you imagine: "Over 40,000 have died this week from the N4H5 avian flu strain in North America alone. And did you know that One ladybug can eat over 2,000 aphids in its lifetime?"

And finally, we heard a story from my stepson Nick about a girl in town, whose family argues so much that the only time they actually managed to really have a vacation, they were arguing so bad that before their car was out of St. Johnsbury they had to turn back and cancel the trip.

As the day wound down, we looked up how much of various pharmaceuticals we currently own that we'd have to consume rather than succumb to the flu. Suddenly on the the cats (Twitchy) fell off the loft onto a high shelf w/ my beer stein collection. She knocked of a stein that I traded Pete Rochat my entire Mets baseball card collection for. When you tip it up and finish the last swig, the ceramic bottom is thinned in a line drawing of a naked barmaid with big titties. The base shattered, although the barmaid is intact.

It's the sign of the end times.