Today was a sad day.  The day, for me myself, was not a bad one.  I took Bruce to the vet for a rabies shot and some other shot.  I stopped by the Kangaroo gas station to drop just shy of forty bucks on gas.  I thought about filling up yesterday, but I figured with the Azalea Festival over the weekend that the gas would be cheaper today than yesterday, but I was mistaken.

So Bruce went to Dineen Animal Hospital.  We were in and out pretty quickly, and Bruce actually got a compliment on his Duke collar this time, as opposed to last time when he was ridiculed.  So that was fine.  I came home and got to work, which kept me busy all day.  I was on the phone nigh constantly.

I saw a news report come across the RSS crawler I have at the bottom of my Firefox browser.  It said something about a shooting at Virginia Tech.  When I finally took a look at it I realized it was a much bigger deal than I’d realized.  There were two shootings, possibly two separate incidents, possibly related- it’s not yet known at this time. Someone shot two kids, a guy and a girl, in a dorm.  Then, a couple hours later someone shot about sixty people in a school building.  There are thirty-two or thirty-three dead, including the shooter, and another twenty-eight or thirty injured.  It’s terrible and unfathomable.  I can’t see but that this will change so much in the future.

Look at Columbine and how many school shootings there have been since that happened.  Look at all the changes brought about by that incident.  Clear book bags, metal detectors, police patrolling the halls.  So what’s going to happen to college campuses, places that are generally so open.  People coming and going, working, living, doing research.  And what’s going to happen when, over the next few years, there are more shootings?  What will the do to the college experience my kids will have?

And that has made this a sad day.

Amanda hadn’t heard about it until she called me when she was getting off work.  She said someone had heard something about a school shooting, but didn’t know it was at a college and how many people had been hurt and killed.  Michael saw something about Virginia Tech on ESPN’s news crawler, but thought it had something to do with their football team.

Amanda dropped the Jetta off at the dealer for the 25,000 mile maintenance.  I picked her up and we got some Chick-Fil-A then headed on home.  When we got home Amanda realized that Bruce’s face was swollen, so I called the vet.  They told us it might be an allergic reaction to one of the shots he’d gotten today and to give him some Benadryl and to keep an eye out for any respiratory issues or puking or diarrhea.  While I was on the phone Amanda saw that he had a rash on his chest as well.  He seems to be doing now tough.  Bruce is snuggled up under one of Amanda’s jackets and resting under my left arm against my stomach.  It makes typing this a little more difficult, but I don’t mind.

While Amanda went to get the Benadryl (Michael wanted to get some things from the store so he went too), I went over across the street to Bonnie and Dave Narron’s.  I went to ask Dave if he could take a look at my car sometime soon.  It needs an oil change and the brakes are screeching a bit.   Bruce came with me and Bonnie came home while we were there.  We got to talking and when she realized what year I was born in she decided that she couldn’t be Bruce’s Aunt Bonnie anymore, that she had to be Grandma Bonnie now.  She was born the same year as my parents.  Dave’s actually a few years younger than Bonnie, which I didn’t realize.

Dave’s starting his own maintenance shop soon.  Today was his first day of not working.  It’ll be July or so before his shop is finished.  Of course, he’s got plenty to do in the meantime.

We watched an episode of I Shouldn’t Be Alive about a father and son who were going down an Alaskan river and ended up being thrown under an ice floe.  Not that my experience was anywhere near that, but it reminded me of visiting Aunt Terry when she was married to Ernie.  They had a really large, round yellow floating thing with a spot in the middle that you could sit it.  The circumference on this thing, in my young mind’s recollection, was huge.  I can remember it being flipped upside-down and being under it and the frantic feeling of thinking I wouldn’t be able to get out from under it and not bing able to push it up to gain a purchase of air.  If you could find the seat you could stick your head up in there and get some air, but then you knew you had to swim in one direction or another and hope you could get out from under it before you ran out of air.

My brother Adam almost drowned in that pool if I remember correctly.  Between that and falling out of that barn one time the boy really wasn’t trying hard to get to his troubled teenage years, was he?  He’s doing well now though, and I’m proud of him.

Zach Dotsey
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