Visiting the vet

We took the dog to see the vet yesterday. My wife was worried about a little bump by the dog's right ear, which turned out to be nothing. While we were there, the dog also underwent treatment for worms (trying to force pills down her throat), vaccinations for rabies and other dog ailments, and a general checkup.

We discovered that Mocha (aka the hound of the Baskervilles) weighs a mere 40 kg; the poor vet had to lift her up whilst weighing himself so that we could determine this (in order to know how many anti-worm pills to give).

We also left behind a fair amount of the national debt.

Here is the dog herself in all her glory:

One gets an idea of her size when one considers the size of the couch behind her.

The photo was taken from my new (as from February) mobile phone, a Nokia 6288. At first, I really hated the phone, as I couldn't get it to do anything. The manual seemed worse than useless, as it told the user all kinds of information, everything but what I wanted to know. But after a while, things settled down, and I started to learn how to get the phone to do what I want it to do.

As I have reading glasses, I find it difficult to see who is phoning me when I'm not wearing the glasses. I discovered that I can take photos of people and then attach those photos to the person's contact record; now, when someone phones, I can see their picture and so know who is calling.

The phone also has a video call function which seems like more of a gimmick than anything else. I tried it with someone in the next cubicle, and it worked well enough, but of course it only works with other phones that have the same option. My son was always ragging me about my previous mobile phone, which admittedly was a very old model (but good enough for me). Even though he too has had his phone updated, he had to admit the other day that my phone is much better than his.

A mobile phone is one of the few items about which a man is prepared to brag that "mine is smaller than yours". With this new breed of phones, it seems that this trend is actually reversing.