August 27 1998, Thursday

Kim's Mother and Stepfather, Chuck, showed up randomly, chatted for awhile, and then went out to Zingerman's (a very expensive local deli) and picked us up a whole bunch of quality deli food.

Mother had yet more good fire-related news to report. She just learned that her insurance is paying to have the inside of her house completely repainted, something she was going to have done anyway. (Prior to the fire, I'd thought the old paint was absolutely fine and that she was neurotic for wanting to have it redone, but if it's free I say go for it.) I wonder when the insurance windfalls will ever be depleted.

Right now Kim is giving massages to a couple mechanics from the Marathon gas station next door. It's some sort of barter arrangement in exchange for service they've performed on her Volvo. I suppose it should be weird for me to have my girlfriend spending quality time running her hands over a couple greasy, hairy, unknown blue collar guys, but I don't care. I know from the experiencing of installing a manifold gasket in my Dodge Dart that bending over an engine all day can make a guy's back and legs throb in agony.

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n other news, now there's a site devoted to linking the supposedly best online journal entry of a given day from amongst a pool of many online journals. It would be even more chinese if it should turn out that the narrative was somehow consistent across a bunch of online journals.

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ack at Kim's House, she was just finishing up with the second of the two auto mechanics. They'd both been Middle Eastern guys, and this last one was interested in having me upgrade his 486 to Pentium status, though it was hard to understand him through his thick accent and limited computer knowledge.

Kim said the first mechanic (the second mechanic's boss) had invited her out to Middle Eastern food and had told her she is "sexy" while she worked on him. It's this sort of thing that makes Kim want to concentrate her practice mainly on middle aged women, even if, philosophically, she'd like to have a diverse clientele.

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or long stretches of the night, Sophie the Dog ran around scratching herself and rubbing against things. She was making such a commotion that I started itching myself. Examining Sophie, we found her skin had become covered with hives. Obviously she was having some sort of allergic reaction, but we couldn't figure out what was causing it. Perhaps all our packing and moving has stirred up dust mites. Or possibly she's allergic to some of the deli food I gave her for dinner. Kim gave Sophie half a benadryl and the poor dog eventually settled down and went to sleep. Kim says this sort of problem has happened before.