I recently bought a huge white minivan, an “upgrade” from my usual 4-door sedan. There were two main reasons for this. One was that Parkinson’s was sometimes making it difficult to get in and out of my last sedan. The other was that I never take day trips to the Appalachians any more because my Great Pyrenees dog, Bear, starts whining whenever he’s in the car for more than an hour. It took me awhile to figure out why he was whining, but I eventually concluded that he was just unable to get comfortable, since he barely fit in the back seat of that vehicle.

So, now I have a vehicle that I can more easily get in and out of, and a huge cargo area where Bear can get comfy on his old bed. Bear seems to enjoy this, but I haven’t taken him anywhere outside the city yet. That’s something I need to test before I start testing the ability to stay overnight in the van (which I covered last week).

But before THAT, I’m going to try to get LASIK. Being a photographer wearing glasses can be quite annoying at times. Assuming I get around to actually making the LASIK treatment happen, and assuming said treatment works out as expected, I’m hoping to go to the Canadian Rockies some time this summer. But I’d be flying for that trip, so Bear would not be joining me. Unless he gets a job as a flight attendant.