Saw the podiatrist yesterday, and surgery is scheduled for Thursday; but I'm ambivalent and may cancel. Last time it was for multiple plantar warts; now one of them has returned... it was hurtin' when I saw him before the holidays but he did his trim maneuver while he checked it, as is his casual custom - he does a fast shaving slice with a scalpel. The foot's felt fine since then, frankly; it's not growing back fast, or just yet, but we know it will.

Finished reading the first two of these three Philip Kerr books in the "Berlin Noir" trilogy - well, it's great stuff but I'm taking a break with Clifford Simak's City, a story he started writing in the 1940s which concludes in a pastoral, far-future Earth populated only by robots and the Dogs (who talk). One kindly robot predominates; that would be Jenkins on the cover. (No, not Mr. Jenkins.) All the humans gradually migrate away through a teleportation / transmogrifier to Jupiter. I knew this illustration from long before I read the book - in elementary school I'd borrow my friend Mark's older brother Bruce's "Tom Swift, Jr" books, and I saw this one in his room, too. The writing level was over my head at that early age, but we really liked the cover. I did read it eventually, but that was a long time ago, and since then I found this true edition in a used book store.

Just as I was trying to explain the car wash ruins in "Bagdad Cafe" to G, my brother J sends an article all about them: "The L.A. Car Wash", from the Fall 1996 SCA Journal. The very first photo is like the style shown in Bagdad, that California town on Route 66 which is now bypassed by the I-40. I suppose I should have a picture here, too; but the above was the result a special favor asked at work - I have no easy scanner access.