Introducing Miss Cari

The 4th of July is here and gone. Today's weather remains hot as a firecracker and as I write this, the mercury has broken the century mark. Good old summertime in Western Montana.

Independence Day this year has a lot of special meaning as this was the first 4th since I escaped the nursing home. I'm very fortunate to be free and my heart aches for my brothers and sisters that are still incarcerated in institutions all over this country. How can a disability of any kind keep people from living life the way they want? Institutional life is no way for anybody to have to spend any significant portion of their life! Today I emailed Montana's congressional delegation in regards to passing a piece of legislation that could potentially free tens of thousands of people in nursing homes. To learn more about the Community Care Act you can visit the ADAPT web site.

We had an enjoyable and relaxing 4th of July holiday. Since it was going to be a hot afternoon, we decided to go to the movies and sit in the confines of the air conditioned theater. We saw the Transformers and I must say it was a lot better than I was expecting. The special effects were awesome and the storyline was pretty decent. After the movie, we went out to eat at a nice local restaurant. I had the pork tenderloin and it was very good. The evening was ended over at the Southgate Mall where we watched the city fireworks display. It was cool to have them go off right above us. Couldn't think of a better way to spend the day.

There is a new edition to our family that I would like to introduce you to. Her name is Cari and as the picture shows, she is the cutest little five year old fawn Pug. Last week our vet called us and said there was a Pug that was most likely going to the pound. Course we couldn't let that happen so she has come to live with us. She is an absolute sweetheart and she already has taken to cuddling with me.

I got a new laptop computer for school and it has really been working out well for me. It has a built in speech recognition program that allows me to type by voice. What a freedom it is to be able to type much faster. That will really be nice when I have a long college paper to hammer out. Today's computer technology just blows my mind.

It's time to go grab something cool to drink and kickback and watch some movies. Stay cool everybody and I'll return next week.

Peace,

Mark