The closer the Kennel gets to becoming a reality, the more nervous I get about the future. And it's not even that I don't think becoming a minority partner in a promising, ongoing business isn't a good thing. It's a very good thing, but it's also very different from what I know and what I'm used to. I don't do Change well.

And on the highway of life, I seem to be coming up on the Change off-ramp. Those big green signs are everywhere lately. The Boss asked me today to check out what the monthly payments would be on a gigundis amount of money over a twenty-year period at the interest rate that they've been discussing. This means not only that Change is coming, but also that it won't be paid for while I'm still around.

I'm not sure what that says about my retirement money, which is all I'm in it for anyway. I'm not interested in working harder now unless I get to live a good life later on. If I'm going to have to work harder forever just to pay off a loan, I'm going to feel as if my good nature is being taken advantage of. (I know that's true, but as long as I get my share out of it I don't care.)

Julie told me today that the Tim and the Boss had such a good meeting about all this last night that they were actually civil to each other — and to her! — before, during and after. I found that to be the most astonishing bit of news I've heard in a long time. Those three people have such a mutually antagonistic relationship that I was almost sure it would cause the whole deal to implode before it got this far.

Either I was wrong, or Julie is wrong, or the planet has started revolving in the opposite direction. The last seems the most likely, but who knows?

Of course, I could still be written out of the whole deal. After all, I'm not putting any money into it. At first they said they wanted to "reward" me for my loyalty and hard work over the years. Then they started wrangling among themselves about how much that loyalty and hard work was worth. It wouldn't be a shock if they decided those qualities were overrated.