Meeting the revolution

It was hot, and the grass ditch I lay down in beside the blacktop two-lane for a quick nap was quickly filling with water in the usual surprise afternoon thunderstorm. The rain water was more like bath water, and the grass, already hot from the midday sun, and my body at a constant 106, quickly heated the rain water to hot tub comfort. But as good as it felt on my creaky joints, I knew I couldn't lounge for long in what had fast become a rushing stream, unless I wanted to become the catch-all for the neighborhood slime and trash which soon would be washing toward me.

So I got up thinking that it would be nice to afford a hot tub one day, and wandered off to a less wet part of central Florida -- under the porch of the house across the street.

Vacationing in Florida has its benefits, but if you walk down the wrong street, you could be faced with a battalion of dogs in walkers careening at you with the all the grace of a pup on a pogo stick, and then there's the rain. It comes and it goes like a tantrum.

But it's still a nice place to visit. There are the dogs in their Ford Crown Victorias (the best selling car in Florida) whose heads don't reach past the head rest, so it looks like nobody's driving them, an assumption further supported by the nearly out-of-control driving habits of these old dogs. And then there's the young dogs with sunroofs open to make room for the latest high-hair (fur) from a salon called Betty's Curl Up and Dye. Central Florida has it all.

I'm not in a hurry to go back home, sitting here under the porch out of the rain and shaded from the sun, with a fewer-than-average ambient flea count and relatively empty bladder. Life is pretty good.

It gives me a chance to ponder the effect Napster is having on our lives and I decide it's bigger than individual-serving Purina. It's going to revolutionize the way music is distributed world wide, and the fat boys (economically speaking) who run the record companies will lose biggest which makes my tail wag. Napster is one more example of how the Internet has changed our lives, and those of us with arthritis know this very well. Information and support are now clicks away.

The immutable fact of Napster and the Internet, and all the other revolutionary changes in our lives, like fewer side effects, COXX-2 inhibitors, DHEA, Condroitin, anti-lock brakes, and widely available rice milk (which according to some is better for us than dairy milk) is that we have more time to think about our emotional and psychological well-being. More time to sit under the porch, out of the rain, and figure out how to make ourselves better. More time to sniff a new dog and make another new friend. More time to resniff the old dog you didn't used to think smelled so good. More time to change our minds.