Two left feet

So I get a text from Wagman today, something is wrong, only getting a ten day old cached copy of your blast. 

Settle down Steve, everything is okay, the reason you are seeing that is that I actually have not written for ten days. 

Truth be told, I have been extremely busy. 

Sorry.

Actually I haven't taken a day off in about three months,  

So let's look at the wayback machine. 

I stopped chemo in early July, knowing I would not be able to function in Santa Barbara, Albuquerque and Santa Fe if I was still throwing up every day in the trashcan.

Shows went well, I end up getting home last Wednesday afternoon but get a call Thursday, the client I flew to Jackson Hole in the Lear Jet with has sold her lodge and needs an emergency content inventory appraisal.

Like right now.

I have to drive up to her digs in Los Angeles, spend two days forensic accounting and then an additional five days preparing a report, which shipped out Sunday. Painstaking work but financially rewarding. Stayed in Joseph and Linda's beautiful Casita for a night. She made a lovely chilean sea bass. 

Unbelievable flurry, would have crushed a lesser man. 

But now I am home, totally whipped.

Leslie said that we had visitors over the weekend while I was gone. A raccoon stopped by one night with two cubs. Next night she came back to our upper porch with five of them, she said they were awfully cute although our cats didn't necessarily think so.

Sunday was Leslie's birthday and she wanted to go out to soak in the hot springs. We booked a new place for us, the Onsen, a Japanese spa. 112° out there, should be lovely. 

We leave Sunday afternoon and as we are getting on the 15 north I hear a thump, which is followed by four beeps from my dashboard and then a tire light signal.

We drove to the Sinclair Gas in Temecula and I put money in the air machine before realizing that it had no tire fitting at the end, someone had cut it off. 

Tire is dead flat at this point but we nursed it to another gas station.

I filled the right front tire and rolled the car back slowly as Leslie inspected it. 

Lo and behold, there was a rock stuck in the tire, sort of like it had melted in. 

We could hear the air whooshing around it.

Have never seen anything like it but it has been really hot here.

We managed to find an open tire store on a Sunday afternoon, the Firestone on Margarita and Steven replaced our old tire, which could not be fixed. 

We drove the next hour and a half to our destination, only to find the Onsen was shut tighter than a drum.

Leslie yelled and another guest, a sort of beaten up looking roadie for a death metal band, let us in. 

Said the customer service there was lousy. 

Had to keep the door shut because homeless people kept trying to sneak in. 

Was glad at that point that I had my concealed carry. 

DHS has always been a bit dicey.

We spent a half hour calling the manager and she finally called us back. 

Gave us a key to a room with no air conditioner remote. 

Leslie complained and we got a new room but the a.c. had not been turned on and the room was well over a hundred degrees. Nothing like a hot room in the desert.

Rooms and grounds were honestly quite nice but the service was atrocious.

Manager sort of apologized and said that she had a problem getting decent help out there.

We finally got the a.c. unit turned on but it did not cool down until four in the morning. 

I jumped in the pool, which helped a little bit and we finally ate birthday dinner in our warm bed. 

I got up early the next day and saw that there were foreclosure papers newly taped to the pool gate.

Place was lovely really, someone put a lot of money into it but obviously poorly managed or maybe somebody was just having a really bad day. Will never return, to be certain.

We left fairly early the next day, stopped by and saw Kaplan, bought a beautiful monumental Rookwood vase painted by the early artist Matt Daily that he had found the day before in Indio..

We then went to the Belgian restaurant Leslie likes in Ranch Mirage, Si Bon. 

I had lobster crepes, hers were duck confit in a Mexican truffle sauce. 

I thought it was delicious, Leslie's mushrooms were a bit sweet, hopefully we can give them another try.

We then continued home up the mountain, now safely back with our two cats Nico and Tiger.

I was back at it today, buying paintings and selling paintings. 

It has been a whirlwind of late. 

Got my teeth cleaned today by my dentist herself. 

You want a great dentist in Fallbrook, try Robin Mells. 

I paid a guy for some scrap gold and sent a painting to the Postal Annex for shipping tomorrow.

This afternoon I had a meeting with a cancer resource center in Temecula. 

I want to volunteer to talk to new cancer patients about my forty one year experience dealing with the disease. 

Told them that I would be happy to man a phone. Will see what, if anything, comes of it.

I don't know if you have seen me walking lately but I have had a serious limp for three months and it ain't pretty. I had a meniscus, anterior cruciate and medial collateral tear in 1979 and I have been bone on bone ever since. And now the arthritis has taken over. Probably need a new knee but going to see if I can get an x-ray and shot at Scripps Green on Friday to keep me going.

My last three chemo infusions start September 2. Wish me luck. I am still not unpacked from New Mexico and at this rate it might be October before my house and shop is in order. Can't work when I feel terrible, especially in the extreme heat.

See the shot at the very top? Put my shoes on in the van and something didn't feel right. Remember Eugene Levy in Best in Show with his two left feet? That was me. Helps to put them on the right foot, or in this case the left one. What a shmegegg.