Delays in the system

I keep wanting to write my Lollapalooza recap, but I can’t even get motivated enough to dump the pictures off my camera. I’m not so sure I’m as much jet-lagged as I am rock-lagged. I’m old. My body weary.

Making it worse is that I keep getting bad news.

On Sunday, my dog (or technically, I guess, my parents’ dog) died. His name was Duke, and he was a miniature daschund. He was 15 years old, which is pretty damn old for a dog, certainly the longest any dogs we’ve ever owned have lived. According to my parents, he was playing in their yard when he just keeled over, so I’m kinda glad he died having fun.

His failing health — he was almost totally blind, probably about 85 percent deaf, missing most of his teeth (and some of his dental problems led to the most hideous breath you can imagine) and had bad hips — often caused me to ask Mom and Dad if he needed to be put down. Every time I would wonder that, though, I’d see him running (as much as an elderly dog can; maybe it was more of a light jog), barking, playing and just having a big time. Mostly, though, he was lazy (a hard-earned lazy to be sure, but lazy nevertheless), usually resting on the couch, most often with my dad.

I miss the little fella.

And then on Monday, I got worse news when I received a MySpace message from a woman I don’t know. This is what she wrote (in response, I guess, to this picture):

“Anyone ever tell you that you look like Toby Keith???”

I’m guessing she thought she was giving a compliment, but damn lady, you said some hurtful things that you just can’t take back.