Today I took my dog to the vet, and he's in good health.

It was a follow-up to see how he responded to last week's visit that was prompted by fear and uncertainty. He'd been shaking his head a lot, which I took to be sign of an ear infection, but his total disinterest in sniffing the results of my cleaning his ear had me puzzled. With my other dogs, they were fascinated by how the dark streaks on the napkins smelled, something I could only help to sense.

Turns out he had an infection, which has been mostly fixed.

He'd also been panting a great deal, running out of breath, and his jaw sometimes clicks or pops. I think those are all just normal aging things now, and the vet reminded me that he's like a seventy year old man.

The visits, as always, are nearly as entertaining for me as they are a mystery to him. I got to hear one of the office staff read off a list of about a dozen cat names to one of the clients to determine which of them were still around. The answer was eight.

I think eight is a very large number of cats to have.

Today's visit also featured a truly sad and disturbing black lab whose fur was shaved to the skin in three or four places and who had more stitches on her right hip than I've had in my entire life. One of the other people waiting and I talked about it quietly, and we were both reluctant to ask the dog's owner what had happened. The two of us felt the dog, maybe, had been hit by a car or something, but we were afraid of bringing up the subject because it might create a whole host of issues, including highly emotional responses by the owner.

I like looking at the other owner's brand new puppies and am always happy to be sniffed.

I'm trying a new way to blog, a third one, not that I use any of the other ways very often.

I'm hoping to find a way to keep my inspiration and motivation up because I do like to write here even though this isn't a popular blog for others to read. I know the world's moved onto social networking, but I don't like always having to write just short little things.

Mostly, I want to see if the "add pic" works easier than what I've used in the past, so here's a pic of nature finding a way in spite of humanity's best efforts.

 

I'll soon see if it works!

Sure, I make a lot of problems for myself, but I want to get things right. This bad habit shows up whenever I take one of those surveys that attempt to determine what I'm qualified for, how I think, or how I respond to whatever it is they're checking.

I, frankly, just don't know how to answer many of the questions, and since I'm determined to be truthful in all of my responses, I'm rarely happy with my answers.

The questions, themselves, are simplicity itself and are written to determine my feelings. They often ask me to decide how I feel about something and give me the chance to strongly agree, strongly disagree, or take some less dramatic stance or, by using some similar scale, to mark down how important something is to me.

Like I said, the thing is, I just don't know.

My problem stems from my uncertainty. I may think I'm strongly opposed to something, but I worry that my strong opposition may, in fact, only be a moderate dislike. I think I strongly support some pronouncement, but since I only have my own mind to judge these things by and no true absolute, I'm hesitant to mark an answer that may, in fact, be incorrect.

This sort of thing comes up all the time when I talk to doctors or dentists, too. "How much pain are you in?" seems like a pretty straightforward question, but I have no independent scale upon which to base my answer. I worry, a lot, about if what I consider a lot of pain is something everyone else just shrugs off, so I usually limit my answer to the truthful "I notice it."

This answer, of course, helps the attending doctor and myself not at all, but at least I don't worry if I'm misleading him or her, blowing things out of proportion, or acting like some macho asshole.

Pretty much everyone figures out that people really like excitement and drama, and they figure it out pretty soon in life. Some people thrive on drama and do everything they can to make sure their lives are always full of it, but most of us just gravitate toward it.

There's all kinds of things I find fascinating, and many of them remain so in spite of my best efforts to study and analyze them to death.

What I've discovered is, it's damn near impossible for me to enjoy them the way I did at first. Physicists will tell us that you can measure anything without affecting it, but there's a lot less talk about how you change everything just be learning more about it, even without getting embroiled in conversations about the nature of change.

Speaking of which, I'm one of those who don't usually believe in change. It's sloppy language as far as I'm concerned since, for example, if I change my clothes chances are none of the original clothes are still being worn. I've taken them off and replaced them with an entirely new set of clothes and to my way of thinking, unless something stays constant, it's senseless to talk of it changing. I can change my hair, sure, since what I have left of it is reshaped when I change it, and it can be argued that water changes to ice in the freezer, but in most cases I get rid of the old stuff and replace it with completely new crap.

When I say I change the chair in my computer room what I'm really saying is I moved the old and put a new one in its place. There's no "chair" that underwent any change at all.

But, as usual, that's not the point.

I noticed this changing of subject first, I think, in literature and movies. I, like most everyone else, like movies, but when I began studying them I began seeing them in a whole new light. My original, innocent, and ignorant appreciation was lost when I began understanding the craft and could see how plot elements were added to aid in making up the story. It didn't take me all that long to see how a character was introduced simply to move the plot along, and when I began seeing movies and books this way, a lot of the magic disappeared.

Instead of simply enjoying the work, I found my appreciation for it changed, much like I might if I saw 137 magicians all performing a trick that I knew how to do. The first magician would surprise and astonish me, but once I learned how the trick was done, my appreciation of it would depend more on how it was performed than on what it was.

Years ago I read a good book Zen Mind, Begineer's Mind by some Suzuki fellow that talked about this sort of thing at length. I guess it was a Zen instruction book, but his point was that it's downright difficult to keep our sense of wonder if we let our knowledge get in the way. His metaphor, if I remember correctly, was that you can't add anything to a full glass and to get away from that, you have to try to approach things as if you are experiencing them for the first time. If you don't, and pile all your prejudices, familiarity, and understanding onto something, you'll most likely miss quite a bit.

I'm not sure I have any point here other than to note that the more I learn about anything, the more it changes. Things usually change so much that I hesitate to call them by the same name, but there's only so many nouns in English and I usually use them up during my introduction to something. The good news, I guess, is that this sort of change has been a constant since Adam, and just goes to prove that while we can't step twice in the same river, we keep the river's name the same as it stops being a plaything and becomes an example of gravity, climate, and biology.

The biggest downside is that our experts have forgotten their initial joy and wonder and what they can teach us is usually pretty far removed from what we see at first. It's the nature of the breast, I suppose, but it's still a shame that we go so quickly from tickled pink to jaded and cynical.

It's not just me: lots of other people are wondering about businesses and how they do things.

One thing that concerns those who care about quality is how little of it there is in today's marketplace. Instead of creating or selling goods that we'd be happy to consume, companies from the very largest to tiny cottage ones aren't taking the time and effort to produce much of anything worth having. There are exceptions, of course, but just like politicians, pretty much everyone is gravitating toward the golden mean and just making stuff that most people will find palatable.

I don't have any solid evidence for this, not even anecdotal, but anyone making anything quickly learns to cut corners to increase profits. Engineers determine just how little strength is necessary for the product and its shipping, which means we get flaky cardboard boxes instead of the stout ones that could be used as a fort that I grew up with. Buttons, levers, and housing are much weaker than they used to be, back when I guess people made things that felt "about right."

There's no need to use costly ingredients such as sugar or specially grown hops when generic or produced replacements will do since few people will notice the difference or refuse to buy the cheaper product. Yeah, you may lose 5% or so of the market, but those numbers can easily be made up through marketing to those who wouldn't know the difference if it was presented in a Power Point presentation.

Worse, even if you want to sell to the discriminating, corners are invariably trimmed. If organically produced ingredients are desired, they'll often save money on wages, shipping, or some other aspect. If some small percent of goods will perish if kept at a certain temperature, that will be considered acceptable and no attempt made to lower the temperature to ensure a higher survival. Bland fillers will be used to bulk up the volume, or the package will contain a lesser amount to stay competitive, and the consumer is always the one who suffers.

Years ago when Microsoft was introducing some collaborative software, some astute writer noticed that, despite its benefits, it took no account of the actual business world that is inhabited by humans. While being able to share information and documents is no doubt beneficial, most offices are filled with politics, petty disputes, and the quickly-learned realization that one only receives rewards for what is done and who knows it. Having the ability to share information is one thing, actually giving it up or doing so is quite another entirely. I've little doubt that more is hidden, kept private, and restrained than is ever divulged no matter how many tools are available for disseminating it.

People are unwilling, unable, or at least reluctant to ever question their own motives. Sadder, most who even take that step comfort themselves with some rationalization instead of looking brutally at their reasons for what they say or do. Even if someone has a great idea for improving a product, by the time it makes it through the bureaucracy, the defining edges have been cut off, the soul compromised, and ways developed to produce a more widely acceptable result.

It's not anyone's fault: it's the way the world works.

[Note: When I came up with the title, I expected to include a deep and meaningful discussion of high-end vinegars to make my point. Instead, I rambled aimlessly, and I'm uncertain if I made any point at all, salient or otherwise.]

I suspect I'm like many people when it comes to following the 80-20 law, at least as I understand it and keeping in mind that many refers to twenty or so. This law prevents me, of course, from accomplishing very much because it's much easier for me to live in the future than it is to see most things all the way through to completion.

Take now, for instance.

On my projects list, which never gets all the attention it needs, by the way, I have some shelving ready to go up, some fence repair stuff, and various and assorted cleaning and organizing projects. Instead of working on any of those when I catch a minute or hour of time, I'm planning, wondering about, and researching mortar to build an elevated brick planting area. It wasn't my idea, but my sister took my plan, expanded and changed it, and this is what she came up with.

I'd love to have such a thing. Earlier attempts at growing rosemary and the like pretty much ended in disaster when the dogs discovered the fragrant herbs growing in the yard. The smell, naturally, draws them in and they proceed to do what dogs do on things they find noteworthy, rendering the herbs pretty much useless for human consumption. Those that weren't chewed up, dug out, or otherwise thrashed beyond recognition smell like nothing more than dog piss.

So, an elevated bed might help. Since I'm thinking of only a foot or so high, it's not like they couldn't get to the plants, but maybe they'd give them a pass because there's easier places to go, ones that don't involve jumping.

While I have brackets, two screw guns, assorted levels and hardware components ready to put up the shelves, that project no longer interests me. That isn't to say it's no longer a necessity, just that I've grown bored with it now that it's reached the hairier final step: completion.

The replacement boards for the fence are all freshly painted and ready to go, but plugging in a saw or two and trimming the various pieces to fit must be a herculean task because I'm putting it off. Part of that may be, of course, because cutting the pieces might be inexact or even ruin the perfect plans that I hold in my head. I'm frequently hesitant to pull the trigger and see what the reality is.

So, while things pile up that are almost done, I avoid doing them and concentrate, instead, on what's next.