I looked up civil traffic violations and found that they commonly include speeding, parking in no-parking zones, running red lights, failing to obey traffic signs, driving in the wrong lane, driving without a seatbelt, and driving too slow on interstate highways. So it looks like the worst-case scenario, Stacey will have to pay $572, but not go to jail. Aw, too bad! She probably never did in the first place, after all.

We suspect they’ve been stealing some of our mail at the UPS Store. Little things like samples and small wins such as the CD I just got from Kiwi. So we’ve been weighing the pros and cons of getting a PO Box, having the mail delivered here, or using some other mail service. The problem with the PO Box is they don’t accept UPS & FedEx and a lot of the sweeps won’t let you enter with a PO Box. Bad economy or not, I enter hundreds of sweeps a day, I win something every few days, and that all stopped when we got this box last June. Amazing coincidence, huh? Yet we got a lot of stuff at the Carmichael box, so they don’t all steal. If we do go with another mail service place, we’ll only sign up for 6 months to test them out. Another reason we’re hesitant to get mail here, not that we don’t trust Jesse, is that when we move it may confuse the carriers with one name being forwarded from one place while another isn’t.

It’s been nice and quiet. I wonder if Brandy had her puppies yet. We saw a jackrabbit earlier. It’s deer season again, too. Haven’t heard the coyotes howling lately.

Now would be the ideal time to go to Italy while no one’s hiring and before we get a dog, not that Jesse wouldn’t keep it up at his place if we did, but we don’t have money for the new luggage we’d need or for food. And of course if he hadn’t gone and lost his passport, that’d help, too! He keeps saying he’ll find it. I keep saying he should call the American Embassy. He’s as good at losing things as I am with languages. Then again, why take a trip that’d cost us hundreds? Especially if one of us isn’t very excited about it.

My ear and teeth are both doing better. We’re now pretty convinced that a big part of the pressure problems I was having with the ear was due to the extreme elevation in Oregon, but now that we’re down here in Cali, it’s been getting better over time.

It’s too soon to say how effective the Restore toothpaste is, but the tooth that broke up in Oregon didn’t fall out completely and it’s black and ugly. The rest are yellow as hell, but that’s cuz I have a cup of tea every day. It’s part of my diet regimen to have Oolong tea.

It’s so sad that Farrah Fawcett is dying and she’s only 62. She’s got anal cancer, the poor thing, and her son, in jail for heroin, was allowed a supervised visit to her.

For some reason I regarded her as a stuck-up, conceited individual for the longest time, then over the years I’d see her in a scattering of interviews and decided she really isn’t much different than the average Jane. It’s still kind of sad cuz even though Kate was my favorite angel and I quit watching the show after she left, Farrah was a huge icon for many of those within my age group.

Bendejo’s eating regular rat food right now. The other one just wants junk.

The last dream I remember wasn’t a pleasant one. Tom and I were vacationing somewhere (I think) and he was off browsing in one store while I was in another. Two female employees came to detain me, insisting I was going to steal something, though I sure wasn’t. I was simply browsing. I said, “Look, I’ve just been diagnosed with breast cancer (I didn’t like that part), my mother has breast cancer, my father has a bum ticker, so I don’t need this crap!”

Yet I continued to wait and wait and it eventually got dark. I worried about Tom who would certainly be getting worried about me by now, wondering where the hell I could be.

Then the manager stepped in and he said, “I think you’ve been wasting poor Jodi’s time. You can go now.” And I literally took his hand and kissed it.

Then I asked this other lady if she could page Tom for me to let him know where I was. She said yes, walked through a tiny pool of water that was about 3” deep, picked up a hose that sort of looked like a dryer hose, and paged “Arthur.”

“Arthur?” I asked. “That’s my father’s name. Why are you calling him Arthur?”