Wayward Landlubber

     I started smoking pot in about my 18th year. It was not love at first sight, more of an occasional dalliance. Alcohol had place of honor for a while. At some point it became clear to me that the famous slippery slope to heroin abuse was a rightwing trope. People did not use the word trope at that time, there were more colorful descriptions, bullshit would be one. Since that time, so long ago, we have seen changes in alcohol, and the public houses you can go, "where everybody knows your name". Beer is now, more often made locally, or regionally. Taverns are now pubs, Stewart sandwiches and pickled hard-boiled eggs, have been replaced by bistro food or other edible delights. Wine is much better, and produced in American Viticultural Areas that are not dominated by California. Even distilled spirits are being produced by local craft distilleries.       More recently Marijuana has, in smarter states, been legalized, usually regulated by the same people who regulate fermented

     One does not need to travel far to find a canine obedience school. I would be SHOCKED to see a feline obedience school. Dogs are like having an adolescent child, cats are like having a teenager.       She was not supposed to be for me. I had expressed an interest in having a cat, but Pinky and I were living on my little 27' Bayliner. We had a covered slip, and were adopting to marina life. A cat living amongst the ducks, geese, and other assorted wildlife that teemed around our marina, would be problematic, I thought. But there was Pinky, standing outside of Moreland Veterinary clinic pointing to a picture of a cat in the window with a sign that said, "needs a home". "Why not"? The cat in the picture was no longer available, but there was a difficult to place cat. She had, the nurse suspected, been a feral cat and had suffered abuse. What was more important was that she had feline immunodeficiency virus, though she was asymptomatic. Bottom line--she could n