Our pal Jim Mueller is having a great August. His reporting this morning of attending a program in which noted car collector and sometime late-night host talked about what was hot and what was not in the world of cars, some wild parties with classic cars as the backdrops, and the famed Concours D’Lemon meet of appalling and quirky old cars coming up, he is in auto heaven. There are no mysteries that Car People will not examine.

By way of contrast, I got a basket of mysteries this month that have made it the strangest August of my life. While that is a bold statement, I am going to say it. The carnival of mystery started in Atlanta, of course, at the big DoD IT show that demonstrated just how strange the future is going to be. The Cloud. Cyber threats. Offensive and defensive tricks that could disable a notional infrastructure. uncertainty about where all this technology is taking us, and whether humans are going to make themselves obsolete.

I was billeted on the 65th floor of the Peachtree Plaza, a modern if slightly quirky circular 73-story hotel with a mirror-glass facade and over 1,000 rooms. The saltwater pool is on the eleventh floor, and was delightful. I gazed out the circular-curve of the windows at the staggeringly lovely view when I guy dropped by, washing the windows. I have worked at some odd things in my life, but this demonstration of cool prowess by a calm young man suspended by ropes from the roof eight floors above me was quite extraordinary.

I never want to work that hard again.

Then, returning to the airport, there was the call about the Turkey Vulture invasion at the farm, and things just got weirder from there.

I got down there expecting the worst, but Edgar the Vulture was striding boldly around the pasture, apparently fine though still flightless, and with him out of the barn. I hustled down and wrenched the doors closed, the first time I have had them shut in years, preferring open access to providing a low-rent Peachtree haven for critters that might burrow under the walls and set up shop. So we will see if my preventive actions keeps Edgar out in the wild where he belongs. In the process of attempting to horse the doors along their mounting tracks, I may have done injury to my leg again, but the job had to be done and switly.

Amid all this was the process of starting a new job, which was complicated by trying to savor the last couple weeks the pool is going to be open- where did the days go so swiftly? I may have overdone it, between the swimming and the barn door adventure. The morning after I got back to Arlington, I vaulted out of bed and kept going, as my damaged leg did not seem to be working properly. I was back to the cane to hobble around. That was eascerbated by the minor but persistant vertigo, which I associated with being in the water so often. I finally asked about how to see a doctor, since I have been accustomed to the rough ministrations of Walter Reed and military medicine for the 38 years. I now have been ejected into the formal halls of geezerdom and Medicare, but it all seemed to work out with the supplemental coverage of TriCare, a system funded by DoD and thus naturally a target for budget cuts just like the Commissaries, which the powerful Supermarket Lobby has been after for years.

It is a lot more expensive than I had thought- between Medicare $350 a month, TriCare $125, and Long Term Care $180, I am frankly startled by an expense that I did not have before and one that everyone else has to deal with in the midst of a major restructuring of the national healthcare system. It is certainly going to take a bite out of Social Security, which is still painfully distant.

Whew. Not to mention the competing circuses of the Olympics and the endless Presidential campaign in the background, the amazing proficiency of the athletes and the bottomless mendacity of the politicians fully on display as Louisiana is inundated by endless rain. It would ordinarily be enough to make one’s head spin, but thankfully I already have that one covered. The vertigo has the real potential to save me a tone on bar tabs, since I normally have to spend cash to feel this disoriented.

And the month isn’t even over yet! What next? Uni-sex bathrooms in all federal Buildings?

Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com