barking dog and T9

Our neighbor down the street must have a new dog. It has a bark that would shatter glass. They have quite a menagerie of strange looking dogs so maybe they rescue them or something. One got away the other day...did I mention this before?...and the guy marched down the street cussing Bertha out at the top of his lungs. I mean real cussing.

Today I learned about T9 text messaging. It's a way that the phone predicts the word you're going to write so you don't have to hit the key three times, for example. It's very weird. If you want to write a word with -ing at the end, you hit the side arrow to the left key and then type -ing. It's a lot of work when you could really just call someone with the phone that you already have in your hand.

Regis and I went to the library because last night I read the last book in the house that I haven't read and I already read the ones I got from Betty. The only thing left I could possibly read tonight besides road maps is the copy of Rolling Stone that came in the mail today and it's the every other week lame issue. I wanted to read Ken Follett's Pillars of Fire. It's a novel about the building of the pyramids and I think it weighs twenty seven pounds because the sequel does. Pillars of Fire wasn't on the shelf but I hoisted the sequel and commented to the librarian who was there shelving books that it was pretty heavy. She said, "Yes, hard to read in bed." My thoughts exactly. So, I picked out a couple of paperbacks and went home.

I love to read but I have a terrible time picking out books. These are just a few of my rules:

1. I won't read a book that mentions "sexual politics" anywhere on the cover.
2. I won't read a book that has a partially clothed couple embracing on the cover. Fabio books.
   
3. I won't read anything that's described as a spine-tingling thriller. I'm not fond of murder and mayhem most of the time.
   
4. I don't like books that are too heavy. As in poundage.
   
5. I don't like books about catastrophes, natural or otherwise. Regis and Betty like to read about plagues and nuclear disaster and leprosy. Not me.
6. The only fantasy books I've ever liked are the ones by the author of Wicked. I resisted that for a long time, but loved it in the end. I didn't like Watership Down or God forbid, the Lord of the Rings. I was interested in the hobbits but right away they get into all that sword fighting and crap. Who needs that?
   

You know, I used to be funnier. I read some of my old posts this morning, looking for a poem about being awake and anxious at 3 a.m. I laughed and thought, man, this is funny stuff. Maybe what I'm writing today will get funnier with time. Then again, maybe not.

I just checked. This is my 497th post.

More tomorrow.