The other day, while leaving a morning eye doctor appointment and heading to work, I passed by my mother's car mechanic's place. I wanted him to put in a new battery for me.

Except now it's a car dealership. Say what?????

I spent quite a bit of time googling the mechanic to see if I could figure out what happened to him. He was a few years older than me, so I figure he probably retired. He was one of those rare people with next to no Internet presence. I did discover he used to live in a very nice house which was sold in 2016. So I suspect he retired and then moved, possibly back to the old country. Which would be Portugal.

It made me inordinately sad, though truth be told he only worked on my car 3 or 4 times, mainly because it was inconvenient for me to leave my car there, and he didn't have the posh customer waiting room the Honda dealership has. My mother liked and trusted him, and so I used him too. Once I brought him tomatoes from my garden. I guess it's the loss of that link that makes me so sad. Another person who knew my mother is now out of my life more or less permanently.

The demise of the teacup
Between Christmas and New Year's my father and cousin came over one day and I entertained them in the dining room. I wanted to use the darling little dessert plates and teacups I inherited from my grandmother.



I love these dishes but rarely use them. It occurred to me that the dainty little teacups were so quaint and old-fashioned. No one drinks out of them anymore. Still, I love them. The set was made in Bavaria, though my grandmother was Czech. The pattern on each is different.

There are some changes I welcome. Like, my eyes are 100% better. One more trip to the eye doc on Thursday, just to be sure. I'm tempted to skip it and thus save the final $40 copay, but I suppose I should go.

And then there's GPS. I love it, though it's not 100% reliable, and the time it takes to "recalculate" a route means I'm probably skipping past the next turn. A few times it just indicates an approaching road, but doesn't explicitly say "Turn!" so I drive past it and then it recalculates. What the ????

It is raining hard and very dark for 8 am. I guess I won't be walking this morning. I'm anxious to get back on my regular walking schedule, an hour a day.

I have the potential of 2 dates this weekend. Yes, sneaky Patient Saver has let her profile linger on a singles dating site for many months, largely a waste of time, and now 2 dates this weekend.

I don't even pay for it; I went to remove my profile and the site offered to keep my profile up there another year, gratis. Guess they like to hold onto females.

One guy is an eager retired lawyer 9 years older than me (pushing past my age preference limits) and the other a working car mechanic, a year younger than me, bruised from a divorce, who emphasizes he is looking for a friend. Both live nearby. I'm trying to keep an open mind, and really, a friend only would be fine.

I took a quick peak at my investments, given this extraordinary market, and saw that my balances are now up to $985,000, just $15K away from the Big One. Which is all the more amazing considering I've lowed my US stock exposure to 35%. Of course, a correction could erase that quite quickly, too.