We got up this morning to find that we had a death in the family. One of the neons over night died. The little bugger had been swimming a lot by itself lately. We were thinking he was just being a loaner. But this morning he's floating. The drifters as expected keep swimming up to him trying to take bites out of him.

Its interesting. Lately I've been contemplating my own mortality and how my family will deal with things. I've got no large or little life insurance. At one point I and my wife had very good life insurance policies. But our financial resources being as they are, we eventually had to let them go. Sad, for if we could of held out another couple years the policies would have become self supporting.

My disability income ends when I do. There is no consideration for family members in the SS department. You die, your family is on their own. I don't think the old "guess I just won't die" attitude is going to be the best plan. I'll need to work on this some.

We've found a new way to walk Riley the monster dog. My wife has a hard time controlling the beast when the 70 pound all muscle dog decides he wants to go and say hi to another dog. She pretty much fights him but eventually you know the dog is going to win. Originally, we tried hooking his leash to the wheelchair but he would cut in front of the chair and than get the leash caught in the chairs wheels. Than we decided to shorten up his lead. We now use 4 large carabiners (sp) to lead him with. We connect them to the back of my chair's seat. The length is long enough that he can walk to either side of me. Works great!! Plus Riley figuredout rather quickly that he can't pull me and the chair. The one time he tried the rear tire of the chair clipped his paw. Ever since than Riley goes where I go.

Plus there is always a nice slack on the lead now. Another advantage is my chair will go up to 8.5 mph.So we've been ending our little walks with a nice 2 block run and gentle walk back to the house afterwards.

I'll be back................