Service Dogs Giving Veterans a New Start

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

Remember when it was impossible to misplace the TV remote? Because you were the TV remote? Remember when music sounded like this?

Remember when social media was truly social? Hey John, how's it going today? Well, this show is all about you. This is Fifty Plus with Doug Pike. Helpful information on your finances, good health, and what to do for fun.

Fifty Plus is sponsored by New Promise Neuropathy. Lose the pain and numbness, get your life back. newpromiseneuropathy.com. And by Honestly Texas Rice. Taste the Texas difference. honestlytexasrice.com. And now, Fifty Plus with Doug Pike.

Doug Pike (0:53)

Well, welcome one and all to Fifty Plus. God, it makes me feel like a ringmaster in the circus. Remember as a kid, going to the three ring circus wherever it was held in your hometown. Here it was in the Coliseum, I believe, which is a long ago destroyed building. I don't, we had even had high school graduations there for almost all the high schools in town. That's a long ways back, if any of you remember that. And I bet you do. In any event, here we are in the present, though. Welcome to Wednesday, whatever lingering heat it may bring. I'm absolutely thrilled, by the way, that this coming week might be our final, final hurrah for temperatures in the 90s for 2026 There's gonna be, I'm sure there will be a couple of days where it creeps up that high. But by and large, I think we're gonna see a general lowering of daytime high temperatures. And I, for one, am ready for that. I was talking to somebody about temperatures and heat and whatnot, and why we're, the weather patterns are changing. And so much of it is because of development. There is so much concrete on the ground now. There are so many buildings with flat, bright roofs that are just reflecting all this heat back into the atmosphere, instead of, say, a pasture or a forest that's absorbing all that heat. And it's just, it's causing problems. Out where I play golf is a prime example. And by the way, all of this asphalt that they're putting on the freeways now, that raises the temperature of the freeway. I can't, I can remember when both sides of 59 were just concrete, even on the hottest day, the temperature in the car might only go to 100, 101, maybe 103 or 104

But now when I'm driving on the freeway going home, especially if traffic is slowed somewhere, all of a sudden in the late afternoon, that inside the car temperature, well not inside, but the outside the car temperature, is about 106, 108 I've seen. And that's with a high outside, an actual air temperature of just about 95, 96 It's eight to 10 degrees higher. And there's no way that wouldn't impact the weather. So anyway, pop up storms for the next few days, and then who knows. Also in weather news, Fay, Tropical Storm Fay, did exactly what they said she would, and is now nothing more than a memory. In her place, however, are two little systems, also way far away from us, but still both with low to medium chances for development. And while lots of us weren't looking, one of the two, the yellow blob yesterday that was all the way over there by Africa, well, that one popped up a little heavier. It's turned orange now. It's still weeks away, probably a good 10 to 12 days if it really gets on its horse. But you just never know this time of year. The US mainland has actually taken tropical weather hits in all 12 months of the year.

January through December, there have been named storms to hit the US mainland. Now, I doubt I'll live long enough to see it, but I think it would be really cool to witness the collision of a tropical storm from the south or the southeast with an arctic blast from the north or the northwest. And it would be really, really cool if it didn't happen here, if it happened somewhere else. I'd just like to see what those two major weather systems would look like if they just bumped heads somewhere other than Houston.

Maybe way inland or way offshore, but definitely not here. In UN news, the president of Iran is on American soil this morning to address the UN General Assembly. And meanwhile, President Trump says we're getting close to a deal to end that war, the war with his country. But the Iranians, well, they have a habit of getting right up to the finish line and then throwing a bucket of nails onto the track.

That's their MO, and it always has been for 45, 50 years. And while that Iranian president and his delegation are here, the US Department of State actually instructed all New York businesses that the Iranians were here, are here, that the Iranians are here, but they are not allowed to purchase any luxury items or in this this kind of tickled me, or wholesale club memberships. In other words, if you flew in with the president of Iran and even no matter what your how, how low your status on that crew, you can't get a Sam's Club membership. And honestly, who would? What would they be doing with something like that? You can't get them to, you're not going to get Sam's Club or Costco to send stuff halfway around the world to you. So no luxury purchases. I'm cool with that.