Category: Bad news
R.I.P., Lori Cohen

My friend Lori Cohen went west on Saturday after a long battle with cancer.
“Doc” was my chiropractor, and she spent a lot of time and energy saving me from myself, so much so that she tried to get me interested in yoga to lighten her load a bit (sorry, Doc).
We shared a wide variety of interests — food and the preparation thereof, exercise to burn off the attendant calories, Santa Fe, Vespas, lefty politics, snark, and so on.
The final stage of her illness came on as we were beginning the transition from Bibleburg to Duke City, and I wasn’t able to give Doc as much attention as she deserved, having given so much of hers to me over the years.
But I did drop by on the day she was selling her beloved blue Vespa LX 150, to take it for a short test ride, make sure everything was in working order, and see how she was bearing up.
After I rolled the Vespa back into her driveway, Doc said she wanted to take a final spin on the scoot. The cancer had brought her quite a bit of pain, and limited her use of one arm, so I wasn’t eager to sign off on the ride, noting that if anything got horribly sideways her longtime friend and caregiver Jeff Tarbert would beat the shit out of both of us, but mostly me.
But Doc wasn’t going to let that final opportunity pass her by. She climbed aboard, twisted the throttle and putt-putted off up the hill. She didn’t fall off until Saturday.
My thoughts are with her many friends and family.
Shhh! (Part 2)

Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment) doesn’t know it yet, but his repose is about to be disturbed yet again.
The movers are supposed to show up with all our crap today, and you know what that means: the terrifying sounds of Unauthorized Personnel Operating Within the Perimeter.
Sigh. And we had just gotten back to what passes for normal around here, if your idea of “normal” includes a small satchel full of soiled clothes, no cooking/eating gear, and less furniture and electronica than one might find in the average Motel 6.
R.I.P., Robin Williams
There should be a law against really funny people doing themselves in.
I’m talking the harshest possible punishment here: Bring them back to life and make them be funny some more.
That’ll teach ’em.
Hump Month

I know, I know, the term is “Hump Day.” But it’s gonna be Hump Month around here, and maybe even Hump Quarter, because Herself has gone and landed a new job — in Albuquerque.
Ay, Chihuahua.
It will be a homecoming of sorts. We met and married in Santa Fe, but left New Mexico for Bibleburg in 1991 to take care of my mom, who was developing Alzheimer’s and had begun acting nearly as outlandishly as me. We’ve lived in Colorado ever since, either here (twice) or in Weirdcliffe (once).
We’ve been in residence at the ultra-chic Chez Dog in the upscale Patty Jewett Yacht & Gun Club Neighborhood for going on 12 years now — 12 years! — and I figured we were all done moving, that my years of rocketing pointlessly around North America like a turpentined ferret had finally come to an end.
I’ve lived in two countries, 11 states and 18 towns that I can remember, and in several of those towns more than once. Hell, I’ve lived in five different houses right here in Bibleburg. And the appalling state of three of them is none of my doing, no matter what you may hear from the few neighbors who survived.
Well, looks like we can toss No. 19 up there on the Big Board. Some people around here insist on having actual jobs, my shining example to the contrary notwithstanding, and next month Herself starts work as a technical librarian in electronic resources and document services at Sandia National Laboratories.
And me? Well, God willin’ and the creek don’t rise — which it appears to be doing as we speak — I’ll keep doing what I’ve been doing since 1989, to wit, annoying the readers, staff, advertisers and ownership of various bicycle publications. My primary residence will always be a Mad Dog state of mind.
