Feb 23

9:44 AM Fire Marshall has come and gone. The crazy old lady mgr is accompanied by two reasonable maintenance men. The marshall walked in and hit smoke alarm and walked out. Dogs are in the car waiting to go to park.

I know I go to pieces and I am neurotic. I had a lot of problems the first year I lived here. The lady mgr would come inspect by herself and found all kinds of things wrong. Some were real and some weren't. Anyhow, off to the park.

This is funny. I went outside and the neighbors were chatting. Marilyn and Oda Mae were complaining that they did all this tidying of clutter and the fire marshall never looked at anything.

I called Judy and coordinated our visit to the dog park. Then we were joined by Gracie's mom, alas. The park was medium comfortable. Now for a nap. I can barely walk.

Came home and slept for a long time. not much on the telly tonight. The dogs are asleep. They got some exercise today. Laid out my clothes for tomorrow.

BOOK REVIEW
Robin Marantz Henig *A Dancing Matrix --- Voyages Along the Viral Frontier*
This book is all about viruses. It explains what a virus is. A virus is not alive. It has either DNA or RNA and must get into a living cell to reproduce.
The theme of the book is that new diseases are the result of "emerging viruses" Viruses are mostly not mutating. [The flu virus makes little changes every year but it is still the flu. And a virus may go from one species to another.] More and more we are going where no man has gone before and finding a virus there. The AIDS virus has probably been around for one hundred years. One suggestion is that it has been around America for a long time. One reason it was not recognized is that people were sick all the time anyhow. Only when other diseases had been cleared up did AIDS become visible.