Day 106

I got so frustrated with my unsuccessful efforts to get my phone line repaired that I went out yesterday and bought one of those magicJack adapters you see advertised on TV. I asked the guy at Radio Shack if he was sure it would work on a Mac. "Sure, no problem," he said. Did it work? Of course not. After fiddling around with the thing for twenty minutes, I noticed in very tiny type on the side of the box something that said Requires Intel Processor Macintosh. Such a deal. I get local and long distance phone calls for only $19.95 a year, but I have to go buy a new two thousand dollar G-5 Mac to actually use it. Needless to say, I'm back to square one and am still using my old phones with the loud buzz in the line.

I think my dogs have outsmarted me again. For the past week they've been refusing to poop in their regular spot and I've had to walk them all the way past Erykah Badu's house before they finally decide to do their business. I don't think the dogs are celebrity hounds, but if they were they couldn't help but notice that Erykah has been all over the local news lately for parading around buck naked in Dealey Plaza while filming a new music video. Personally, I don't think the naked video shoot is a big deal. There are a lot weirder things to talk about. For instance, what about the humongous bomb shelter buried under Erykah's front yard? It's big enough to serve as a NORAD command center. I watched the contractors install the thing while she was building her house. It arrived early one morning on an oversize 18-wheeler and took several large cranes and excavators to install. If the apocalypse comes early, Erykah would be a good person to know. I think she's going to survive.

I still miss Martini Night. It's been over a month since I've had anything to drink. Even though I'd love to go mix myself a stiff drink right now, I don't think I'll have any problems maintaining my sobriety. It's sad in a way. I've become so used to dutifully doing things I don't enjoy that giving up alcohol becomes just one more thing to add to the list. Maybe I'll thank myself later when I discover that I don't need a liver transplant after all.

It looks like Henry is finally going to get a home. This dog has already survived heartworms, pneumonia and major spinal surgery. I can't think of a dog that deserves a second chance more than this guy. Tomorrow, I'm going to transport him from the veterinary hospital where he has been treated for the past four months to the K-9 University kennels where he will begin his transition to a normal life. As cynical as I've become, I still love a story with a happy ending.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 105

I spent the better part of today waiting for a telephone repairman to come out and fix a bad line at the office. The guy never showed up. This is the second time this has happened in less than a month. Anticipating problems, I asked the AT&T dispatcher this morning if she could give me a time of day when the repairman was expected to arrive. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm not even located in your city. I just turn in the repair order and the first available technician will be there sometime today." Probably the first available technician will arrive unannounced three or four days from now when I'm not even here. That's what happened last time. No wonder people are abandoning their land lines in droves and using wireless for everything. It's just about impossible to get an old fashioned, plain vanilla telephone fixed anymore.

Be careful what you ask for folks. I've been trying for months to get some new project assignments from my European clients. Got an e-mail today from my German friends asking if I'd be interested in writing about one of their Brazilian subsidiaries. Fantastic! Only one small problem. All the input material for the project is in Portuguese.

My rental property is officially leased. I signed all the paperwork this afternoon. Hopefully, this will be a good tenant. They all start out good. Something always happens though. They lose their job. A boyfriend moves in with them. They join a cult. They have loud parties and drive the neighbors crazy. We'll see how this turns out. I've discovered over the years that the best tenants are traveling salesman. People who spend a lot of time on the road and just need a home base usually turn out to be perfect tenants. They're not around enough to trash the place. Once I rented to the activities director on a cruise ship. This guy was hardly ever there at all. He was the best renter I ever had. I guess the holy grail would be to find a renter who never even moved in at all.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 104

If you looked through some of my old journal entries from the ad agency days, it would appear that I did nothing but decide where to have lunch and who to meet for happy hour. Now, I spend my time writing about what I'm working on and telling people how tired I feel. Jeez, what has happened to me. Truthfully, I don't think I've changed all that much. I think the world has changed.

Before globalization and the Internet, even supposedly stress filled industries like advertising moved at a much more leisurely pace. I can recall that a busy day for me used to be scribbling an idea for a 30 second television commercial on a yellow pad and handing it to a typing secretary. That was it. By the time the finished copy came back from proofreading and legal, it was usually a week later. Everyone had an assistant back then. Even the assistants had their own assistants.

I'm amused when I listen to all the pundits on TV talking about the employment crisis and wondering why more people don't have jobs. I can tell you why not enough people have jobs these days. It's a no-brainer. The people who are still working are doing the work of five people. Companies stay competitive by figuring out how to use fewer people to do more stuff. That's the "productivity" we keep hearing about. If we went back to the days when everyone had an assistant, we could be at full employment in no time. Of course, whatever we were making or selling would be so expensive that nobody would buy it.

The combination of a global economy where there is always somebody out there who thinks two dollars a day is a living wage, and the Internet, where all desires are gratified instantly, has killed the goose that laid the golden egg. The only way I even have a prayer of staying competitive is to continually look for new ways to do things faster and cheaper. It's not fun. Like it or not, we're in a downward spiral that won't end until wages have equalized around the world. I don't think my parent's generation realized just how good they had it. Sure, they didn't have computers and iPhones, but they didn't need them either.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 103

I don't always enjoy everything I do, but I do get a sense of satisfaction from a job well done. This weekend went well. We completed the two day pet picture marathon with lots of happy customers, an invitation to return on Mother's Day and no broken equipment. I'm not even going to bother to unpack my gear, because I've got another photo shoot scheduled with one of my clients for tomorrow afternoon anyway. As long as I remember to recharge all the batteries, I'm good to go.

You wouldn't believe all the trash in the park this afternoon. Two sunny days in a row and everyone in town decides to have a picnic. When the party is over, they leave all their used paper plates, empty bottles, smelly baby diapers and lord knows what else on the ground and just drive away. The park was virtually empty when I first moved here. When I used to walk Spot, it was just me and a few bikers who used to hang out here. Then the city spent millions on improvements designed to make the place attractive to everyone. Now, a nice day will bring out thousands of people who leave behind thousands of pounds of trash. Personally, I liked the bikers better.

It's hard to believe that it's almost April. It seems like I just took the Christmas tree down yesterday. I don't know whether time is moving faster or I'm just moving slower. Increasingly, I'm noticing that I'll put something on my to-do list and all of the sudden three months have passed before I get anything done. Work never gets postponed and that's probably why everything else slips behind. There seems to be a desire for instant gratification in the workplace that never used to exist. Nobody is patient anymore. This lack of patience causes even small projects to quickly consume all your available time. Every once in a while someone will ask me what I want to do when I retire. My answer is always the same: absolutely nothing.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 102

I'm exhausted. I started the day by taking Janet to the airport at 4:30 AM. Came home, ate breakfast, took Dot and Dash on their morning walk and then put all the equipment in the car and left for Unleashed around 9 AM to set up for the first day of our Easter photo shoot. It takes about an hour to put the set together and then we're ready for a day of non-stop dogs. We didn't have quite as big a turnout today as we did for Valentine's Day photos last month, but the crowd was steady and we stayed busy all day. A lot of people said they would bring their dogs tomorrow, so I have a feeling that we'll do just as well as we did before. The dogs were actually better behaved today, but that was probably because the park wasn't as crowded. On beautiful Spring weekends, a lot of people would rather be outside than than take their dogs to an indoor dog park. The park will be crowded soon enough though. Mild Spring weather never lasts long in Texas. Before long, everyone's air conditioner will go into overdrive, electric bills will double and it will be another long, hot Texas Summer.

Got an odd letter in the mail today. It was from a law office somewhere in Missouri saying that my Dad was a party to a class action lawsuit against A.G. Edwards. My Dad has been dead for ten years! Actually A.G. Edwards isn't around any more either, since it was taken over by Wells Fargo several years ago. This confirms what I have always thought about lawyers and class action suits. They are a total scam designed to make the lawyers rich. Somewhere near the end of the letter, there was an obscure paragraph explaining that the law firm sending the letter was to receive one third of the total judgement against A.G. Edwards. The lawyers share: 33 million dollars. My Dad's share, may he rest in peace: 12 dollars and fifty cents.

It looks like I've only got another week or two before I have to drag the lawn mower out of the greenhouse in the back yard and start mowing the grass again. This is one or the rites of Spring that I'm not that fond of. The odds are close to 100% that the lawn mower won't start and I'll have to lug it down to the lawn mower repair shop and pay them $130 to fix it. This happens every Spring like clockwork.  Eventually the lawn mower gets fixed, the grass starts growing and then the dogs race around and tear it up.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 101

After 101 days, it's probably time to tell you a little more about the Dalmatians. We got our first Dalmatian on Easter Sunday in 1987. Spot was an amazing dog. He transformed me from an elitist, art collecting architectural snob into someone who didn't even flinch when sharp little puppy teeth chewed up an expensive Paolo Uccello "Tomasa" chair in the dining room. Spot lived for over 14 years and filled our lives with love and adventure. As he grew older, I wrote a book about him and subsequently an obscure publication called The Dalmatian Quarterly asked if I would be interested in writing a regular column for their magazine.

I wrote stories about Spot for over seven years, right up until the day he died. After Spot passed away, I didn't know what to write about any more, so I went to a local Dalmatian Rescue meeting, thinking that this might give me a story for the magazine. Not only did rescuing stray and abandoned dogs give me something to write about, it gave me a purpose I had never found in advertising. Janet and I have been rescuing Dalmatians ever since. I hadn't really thought about how many dogs have touched our lives until I started putting a Dalmatian that we had helped rescue on the blog every day. There were hundreds of them! I haven't even come close to showing you all the rescued Dalmatians I've been lucky enough to get to know over the years.

Dot and Dash were both rescued from animal shelters and you couldn't ask for a better pair of ambassadors for animal rescue. Dash loves people and is always a hit at public events. Dot is the commensurate diva, and has been the photo model for countless public relations efforts. Right now she is trying her best to raise money for the rescue group in a photo contest on the web. If you've got a second, go vote for her right now. If she wins this pet fashion contest on the BaxterBoo website, Dalmatian Rescue will get $250 to help the dogs.

I've got the cameras, lights and backdrops all packed and ready to go for the Dalmatian Rescue Easter pet photo event tomorrow at Unleashed. Since Saturday also happens to be the first anniversary of the indoor dog park, we ought to get a good crowd. I have a feeling that somebody's dog will eat the rabbit ears we got for them to wear and I'm almost certain that one of the larger dogs will think the pastel eggs are balls to play with instead of photo props. As long as nobody poops or pees on the backdrop, I'll be a happy camper.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 100

If I could still enjoy alcohol, I'd crack open a bottle of champagne this evening. There's something to celebrate. The blog has survived for 100 days! Granted, some days were dull as dishwater, but there were a few interesting events along the way. I gained three new clients. I lost the ability to drink my beloved Martinis. The dogs and I were featured twice in the local media. I even discovered a small handful of people were actually reading these posts every day.

Even though I've been a web developer for many years, I knew virtually nothing about blogging when I started writing back in December. I still don't know much, but I have discovered that reading other people's blogs is just as interesting as writing your own. I wouldn't have discovered nearly as many interesting blogs if it weren't for Entrecard. I don't like to start working in earnest until I've finished my morning coffee. Somehow clicking on Entrecard widgets and drinking my morning Joe seems to go well together. It takes so long for the Entrecard widget to change from "drop" to "thanks" that I can usually read the entire first page of a blog while I'm waiting. I've actually discovered about a dozen blogs that I currently follow this way.

When you look at a lot of blogs in a short amount of time you start to notice things. Most people don't update their blog often enough. If you visit a blog once a day, you'd like to see something new at least once a week. A blog that never changes isn't a blog; it's a website. A lot of people have way too many Javascript tracking thingies and weird awards on their blog too. Take some of these things off folks. If your blog takes twenty minutes to load and crashes your browser in the process, you're not going to come back to visit very often. I find most political blogs boring. Ditto for religious blogs that are too preachy. I do enjoy humor blogs though. Especially those who find humor and irony in their own daily lives.

I wonder if there will be anything humorous on Project Runway tonight? As soon as I publish this post, I'm going to go turn on the TV and find out. See you tomorrow folks for Day 101.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 99

Have I mentioned that Dot is scared of rain. Both dogs are huddled under my desk right now like it was some sort of doggie tornado shelter. It's actually a gentle rain with occasional distant thunder, but try convincing Dot of that. She thinks the sky is falling. Dash isn't worried, but he always follows Dot's lead and does whatever she is doing. We've spent a big chunk of this rainy Winter with Dot huddled under the desk as I try to work. Needless to say, I'm really getting tired of all this bad weather.

My leasing agent called today and said that my rent house finally has a tenant. I need to go sign the lease and change the locks on the doors later this week, but basically I can finally take this lingering item off my list. After paying real estate taxes, homeowner's association dues and fixing the inevitable things that break, I still won't make any money on the place, but at least I won't be losing as much as I was when it was vacant. Maybe if the real estate market improves in a year or two I can finally just sell the house and be done with it. That would be nice. I asked my friend Harry recently why he was still working every day when he was already a best selling author. "Oh, I've got to keep working," Harry told me, "because I always make terrible investments." I can certainly relate to that.

No time to cry over spilt milk though. I've got to get ready for the Easter pet picture event this weekend at Unleashed. I wish there was an easier way to pack up an entire studio and move it somewhere else, but I haven't figured it out. Luckily, there aren't any other photo shoots this week, so I'll start packing everything up tomorrow. You can never really predict which cards life is going to deal you. Twenty years ago I was convinced I was going to be the next Richard Avedon. As is turned out, I ended up being a pet photographer.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 98

The tall stack of papers that has been sitting on the edge of my desk is finally gone. Today I performed the annual ritual of handing over all my tax records to my accountant in hopes that he can turn a sow's ear into a silk purse and get me a refund. Some years when I do this, I feel pretty good. The past two years have been abysmal though. I still haven't recovered from the 2008 financial meltdown. Apparently, many of my clients haven't either, because production budgets seem to get smaller every year. Many of my designer and photographer friends share the same story. Our new motto has become "Work harder. Earn less."

When I was at my accountant's office this afternoon, I noticed a whole new row of books on his bookshelf with titles like "Search Engine Marketing" and "Profiting from Twitter." Passive income has become the holy grail for just about everyone. Many of my clients ask me about "monetizing" their websites. I've even tried to do it myself. It's definitely not as easy as it looks. First of all, you have to have a really popular website. If you get 100,000 visitors a month you can potentially make real money from online advertising. If you get 1.500 to 2000 visitors a month, like many small business sites, you'd better just use your site to tell people what you do for a living. Don't believe me? Go get yourself a Google AdSense account and see how much you make the first year. I haven't given up though. Maybe when I retire, instead of supplementing my income by picking up aluminum cans by the side of the road, I'll supplement my income with online advertising instead.

Until that day comes, I'll just keep working. I've got a direct mail campaign just about ready to go to the printer and I'm only about five days away from bringing the first of my three new websites online. Too bad life isn't as easy as Entrecard. I've noticed my Entrecard account is looking pretty healthy these days. I have to remind myself that it's only Monopoly money. Jeez, if I could make real money by mindless clicking on things while I'm drinking my morning coffee, I'd be rich.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 97

Every day is a series of small triumphs and setbacks that allow me to keep score in the Monopoly game that is my life. On an average day, the triumphs and setbacks pretty evenly cancel each other out and I am left standing in exactly the same place as I was the day before. Little things like getting a picture accepted by the stock photo agency or discovering that I have a new blog follower allow me to advance one square. Things like a major computer crash or seeing the dreaded "Service Required 0001001B" message when I turn the printer on will make me lose a turn. If I get a new client, I might advance four or five squares at a time. Every once in a while I will draw the "Go to Jail" card, but I haven't suffered a serious setback like this in several years.

I wish I had a better sense of where I was going. I've never really had a long term goal and still tell people that I haven't decided what I want to be when I grow up. I think I've learned the most during periods of my life when absolutely nothing was going on. Idle curiosity has always been the catalyst that kicks my brain into high gear. If it weren't for the fact that "idle" and "poor" seem to go hand in hand, I'd stay idle a lot more.

I've been busy for a long time. Being busy makes me efficient and productive, but I don't learn anything new. Learning something new isn't as much fun when you're busy. It just becomes one more task to complete. I have so many tasks to complete that I don't really see the big picture anymore. That's why I focus on the tiny triumphs and setbacks. I fixed the sump pump up on the roof today, so I get to move ahead one square. My leasing agent hasn't brought me a lease to sign yet from my supposedly "sure thing" new tenant, so I lose a turn. And on and on it goes. I probably am making forward progress, but it's definitely taking place at a snail's pace. Am I ahead or behind in the game?  Who knows. I do wonder ocassionally if there's even any point to "bringing home the bacon" anymore if I'm not even allowed to eat it.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 96

There was still quite a bit of snow on the ground when we went up to walk the Dalmatians at K-9 University this morning. I don't think Kobe, LeBron and Lance had ever seen snow before. They certainly seemed to enjoy it. All three dogs raced around and kicked up snow like it was some new kind of toy. It was kind of amazing to get this much snow so late in the year, even though much of it had melted by mid-afternoon. The one place the snow didn't melt of course, was up on my roof. Once again, I had to get up on the leak-prone flat roof and sweep it all off.

I'm getting so forgetful. I've had a 4 PM meeting on my appointment calendar for several weeks now. Wouldn't you know, I forgot the meeting entirely this afternoon and went to Unleashed with the dogs just like I usually do. I probably still wouldn't have given this meeting a thought if I hadn't happened to look at the calendar after dinner to see when I have to have my tax information ready to take to my accountant. Oops.

Next week is a minefield of things I could potentially forget. Several projects are due next week. I have a doctor's appointment on Friday, instead of Tuesday like I usually do. I think an animal rescue meeting has been moved to Thursday, although this isn't on my calendar at all. I have to leave myself little notes all over the place to have even a ghost of a chance of remembering all that I need to do in an average week. It's not that I'm disorganized. It's just that I am terrible at multi-tasking. I tend to get involved in one thing and forget about everything else until I get that one thing is finished. I enjoy working. I just don't like scheduling. Luxury for me would be to have an appointment secretary who would keep everyone at bay and continually re-schedule things until I finished what I was working on and then, when one task was completely finished, would hand me something new to do. That's not very likely though, so I'd better start posting little notes around the house for next week.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 95

I couldn't believe it. I was walking the dogs this evening and it started snowing. Wasn't it just yesterday that I was talking about the beautiful Spring weather we were having? This is a typical March day in Texas. One day it will be 75 degrees and everything will start to bloom. The next day there will be a late freeze and kill everything.

It seemed like the only thing on television today was the non-stop coverage of tomorrow's health care vote in Washington. I've got mixed feelings about the health care bill. It's way too expensive and it's going to make life more difficult for small business owners like myself. On the other hand, I'll probably benefit from the changes myself. I'm one of those people they always talk about who has preexisting conditions. The only way I can get health insurance at all is to lease myself from an employee leasing company and then get insurance coverage from the employee leasing company's group plan. Anyone can do this, but it is quite expensive. Health insurance is my biggest single business expense. I spent more on health insurance premiums than I do for equipment purchases. My monthly premium is more than all my utility bills and other insurance payments combined.

If the health care bill passes I won't have to lease my own services from myself anymore, just to get health insurance. I can go out and buy a policy like a normal person. On the other hand, there is no guarantee that this new policy won't end up being even more expensive than what I am currently paying. I don't have a lot of faith that things are going to be any better than they are now when the dust finally settles.

What I don't understand is why so many people who could easily afford health insurance don't have any at all. Artists and freelancers are notorious for not bothering with health insurance. I don't think they have any idea how expensive things can get if they do get sick. Toward the end of my dad's life, when he was suffering from Parkinson's Disease, I needed to take over his affairs. It was only then that I began to realize how truly expensive health care can become. Without good health insurance, a single extended stay in a hospital can wipe out your entire life savings in a matter of months. It's not worth the risk. I'll keep paying through the nose for insurance until someone can figure out how to get my doctor to charge me the same as my veterinarian. Personally, I'd rather be treated by my veterinarian. Many vets are better trained than physicians. Their equipment and techniques are more up-to-date. Did you know that vets are already doing advanced stem cell therapy on dogs that probably won't be available for humans for another ten years? Most importantly, vets are just a lot nicer than doctors and not nearly as arrogant.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 94

Now that the weather is getting nicer, I've started seeing more joggers and cyclists in the park. A lot of these people seem to enjoy running or riding their bicycles in large groups. The runners are nice enough, but the cyclists can get pretty aggressive. One of these days the dogs and I are going to get mowed down by a pack of these type-a maniacs. I don't think these groups are pushing themselves to the limit however, because I often hear them talking to each other as they pass us on the trail. Groups of women talk about their children, their marriage or their divorce. The men just talk about their bicycles.

I don't talk much at all anymore. I used to be on the phone with clients all the time, but now everyone seems to prefer e-mail. Talking still seems so much easier than typing to me, but I dutifully answer my e-mail messages anyway. I still don't understand the fascination with e-mail and text messages. I never understood people's fascination with jogging and bicycles either, so maybe I'm missing something.

To me it makes more sense to get your exercise by doing necessary evils like mowing the grass and vacuuming. And I definitely prefer chatting over a cup of coffee to texting and e-mail. Why do people hire a maid to clean their house and then go join a gym to get the exercise they need? Walking two Dalmatians four to five miles every day provides plenty of exercise, but I've never thought of it as fun. It's more of a necessity. It's been my experience that if you don't give an active dog a long walk every day, they'll find some other outlet for their energy...like chewing up your furniture.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 93

There are days when I think I've got way too much on my plate. I'm designing three new websites at the moment and manage five others. There are several photo shoots every week, and at this time of year there's also a ton of pro-bono design work for the two animal charities I'm involved with. I'd like to work at a more relaxed pace, but with budgets continuing to shrink, you've got to do a lot of work to make any money at all. Experience has made me a lot faster and more productive, but it certainly is tiring. I feel like I'm running on one of those hamster wheels. Round and round I go, but I'm still in the same place.

Maybe if I didn't see the Pelicans this morning I wouldn't have been two hours behind all day. I thought all the White Pelicans that spend the Winter at the lake behind our house had already migrated, but I saw four of them on a log near the shore while I was walking the dogs this morning. I knew this was probably my last chance to get a good photo for the year, so after I took the dogs back to the house, I got my camera, a long lens and and a tripod and returned to the lake. You have to be patient with birds. All the Pelicans were interested in doing were scratching themselves and shitting in the water. Eventually they looked up though and I got a few decent shots.

After I finished with the Pelicans, I went over to one of my clients and took photos of new employees for their website. All in all, I think the Pelicans were easier to photograph.

One reason I like Project Runway so much is that I can relate to the way the contestants never have enough time, but somehow still manage to meet their deadline anyway. Tonight's show was pretty good. I liked the Chinatown inspired dress with the paper dragon detailing, even though it didn't win.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 92 - St. Patrick's Day

It was definitely a green day. Sure, it's St. Patrick's Day, but I've been noticing something else as well. Spring has arrived. Little green buds are appearing on the oak trees in our backyard. The photinia bushes are starting to grow again. I even saw a daffodil. I like this time of year. It's not too hot and not too cold. I wish this mild weather would last longer in Texas, but I've learned to enjoy it while it's here. I really need to set aside some time to photograph the wildflowers when they come into bloom a few weeks from now. They ought to be spectacular this year after the exceptionally wet Winter we've had.

The dogs certainly enjoy this time of year. I try to keep them away from the nesting ducks, but there are plenty of other new smells and interesting critters to keep them occupied.  I think all the dogs at obedience class this evening knew that Spring was in the air. They just weren't that interested in the training exercises. Even some of the very best dogs were off their game tonight.

Suddenly after months of no activity at all, two people want to lease my rent property and another wants to buy it. I'm not sure what I want to do. I don't really enjoy being a landlord anymore, but it might be better to wait until property values improve a bit before selling the place. Probably anything is better than just letting the house sit vacant for another year though. I'm sure I'll find out what my leasing agent thinks about all this right around when I'm sitting down to enjoy my pancakes tomorrow morning.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 91

My financial adviser had some new ideas for me today. To tell you the truth, not a one of them made any sense. When I first started earning enough money to consider investing some of it, I was fairly confident that the money I put away would actually grow. Back then, you could buy a house with some degree of certainty that it would be worth more in five years than you paid for it. If you didn't trust the stock market, you could buy Treasury Bills that earned 11% a year. Even a plain vanilla Certificate of Deposit at your neighborhood bank offered 8% interest.  I used to buy stocks in solid companies and then forgot about them for years at a time, fully expecting both dividends and share prices to increase.

What a difference a financial crisis makes. Today, investing is a minefield. The minute you think bonds are a good bet, countries like Greece go bankrupt. Stocks can drop 10% in a single day on mere rumors. Municipal Bonds? Yeah right. The entire state of California is going under. My adviser likes the futures market. I just don't get it. Nobody really knows what the future is going to bring. When I graduated from college, I was convinced that people would be walking around on Mars by 2010. I never would have dreamed that almost everybody would have computers on their desks more powerful than the one Neil Armstrong took to the moon, but only use them to watch YouTube videos. Who could have predicted that shows like The Real Housewives of Orange County would become huge hits, or that there would be entire channels like HGTV, filled with nothing but shows about real estate.

The future is a mystery to me. That's probably a good thing too. Who really wants to know the future anyway? Especially if it might involve picking up aluminum cans on the side of the road to supplement your social security.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 90

For as long as I can remember, Dot has been trying to catch squirrels. She's only caught one during the past six years. I remember she was really proud of that squirrel and tried to bring the limp, dead thing inside with her. Being the rational human, I promptly took it away, put it in a bag and threw it in the garbage can behind the house. I feel a lot like Dot sometimes. I keep trying to do things that have a slim chance of success to begin with. On the rare occasion I do succeed, there will inevitably be a friend or customer standing in the wings, full of suggestions on how my creation can be "improved." Nobody will ever let me keep my squirrrel.

Today, I was putting the finishing touches on a poster that I thought came out exceptionally well. I was really pleased. As the proof was printing out on the Epson 4000, I checked my e-mail and what do you know...there was a message from my customer with a suggested headline for this poster. Was this headline the same as the one I saw on the large piece of paper coming out of the printer. Nope. Not a chance.

A friend told me recently that he thought the blog was too negative. Negative? Give me a break. This is a simple tale of a boy and his dogs. Sugar and spice and Dalmatians are nice. I think my message is full of hope, but who knows? Maybe my friends are right. They think I've become so negative that I'm not even aware of it anymore. Is the glass half empty or half full?  You'll have to decide that for yourselves.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 89

It was a beautiful Spring day. There was a time when a day like this would have been a good excuse for a picnic or an afternoon at a street fair. Not today. Instead of a picnic in the grass, I hauled a ton of dead leaves and brush out to the curb in anticipation of bulky trash day. I'm not even sure when they pick up brush in our neighborhood anymore, but for the past several days I've been seeing huge piles of everything from leaves and brush to old furniture and rusty water heaters accumulate in front of our neighbor's houses. I figure that bulky trash day has got to be soon. Dallas has cut back on city services so drastically lately that you really hate to miss bulky trash day. If I don't get all this crap out of the yard today, it will probably sit here until Summer.

Unleashed was almost empty this afternoon. It was such a nice day that everybody was probably outside with their dogs instead. I think Dot and Dash liked the quieter atmosphere in the park though. Dash was more playful than I'd seen him in a long time. After the dogs had their play time, we went to Terri Stone's new gallery opening. Janet and I have known Terri for years and it's amazing to see how she's developed as an artist. Her new show is fabulous! I have a few Terri Stone sculptures, but I can't really afford her work anymore. She gets big commissions now and I see her sculptures standing in front of public buildings when I drive around town.

It seemed like everybody in Dallas spent the afternoon at the lake behind our house. The place was a zoo. I think I like the lake a lot better on cold misty days when the dogs and I have the place to ourselves. I can almost guarantee that there will be trash everywhere when we go on our walk tomorrow morning. The city has nice looking trash containers all over the place, but nobody even bothers. They just dump their trash on the ground and leave.

Daylight savings time starts today. This means I won't have to worry about walking the dogs in the dark for another six months. It also means I'll have to re-set every one of my watches.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 88

My leasing agent called me yesterday and said that she thought she finally had a tenant for my rent house. This means I can't put off fixing the leaking toilet any longer, so I went down this afternoon to install a new fill valve. A minor repair like this should have been an easy ten minute job, but as usual, I forgot a few essential things. I should have remembered that I needed to replace all the rubber seals and gaskets along with the fill valve itself. Needless to say, the job took a little longer than I expected.

I got back the double-sided Xemex from my watchmaker today. I was totally amazed to see this thing again, since even the factory authorized service center in Ohio said it couldn't be fixed. David is an amazing watchmaker though. He hand-made a special part for me that is no longer available anywhere. The watch appears to run perfectly now. Oh, I forgot to mention...this amazing watchmaker is also the same guy who broke the watch in the first place. If there's a lesson to be learned here it is this: you should never yell and scream at people when things go wrong. Be patient, act nice, and things will eventually work themselves out. I try to remember this always, even though it is difficult when dealing with healthcare and insurance people.

Last week I felt like yelling at the iStockphoto people for rejecting some shots I happened to like a lot. Well, this morning I looked at those photos again with a more critical eye and you know something...the iStockphoto folks were right. The photos sucked. I never should have sent them in the first place.

Everyone seems to celebrate St. Patrick's Day today in Dallas, even though the actual holiday isn't until next Wednesday. I guess it's more fun to drink on a weekend. I didn't even have a beer today, which only proves one thing: having a lot of willpower and having a lot of fun are two different things entirely.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 87

I thought I'd go to Doctor's Hospital instead of Medical City to get my ultrasound test done today. Big mistake. They were so slow getting me checked in that I could have driven the extra distance and still been home an hour earlier if I went to Medical City instead. Appointment times seem to be meaningless to medical people. You can arrive early, late, or right on time and you're still going to sit in the waiting room for an hour.

The test itself was quick and painless. I asked the technician if my liver looked the same as all the other livers he'd looked at this week and he said it didn't look too bad. This wasn't exactly the answer I was looking for, so asked if he saw anything abnormal. "Well, I did see a little fat in the liver and the texture seemed a bit coarse to me," he answered in a matter of fact tone of voice. It sounded like he was describing a cut of meat in the Central Market meat department.

Maybe I should have been alarmed, but this just reminded me that I needed to pick up something for dinner at Central Market on the way home. I'm glad it's Friday. Even though I usually have the same amount of work to do on the weekends, it usually seems like a much more peaceful kind of work. The phone certainly doesn't ring as much anyway. I do miss having a Martini at the end of the day. It was a nice, relaxing way of saying that work was over for a while. Now that I've had to give up drinking, it seems like work is never over.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 86

I could sum up today's activities in a single sentence. Got up, worked at the computer all day, went to bed. I'm at one of those tedious points in a website where I have to write content for a lot of empty pages, resize pictures to fit the layout, create little animated sequences and then spell check and correct all the stuff I wrote in too much of a hurry. Every time I'm faced with filling a new site with content, I'll wish I'd made the whole thing smaller and less complicated. I guess it's worth the effort though. Lots of pages mean lots of chances for Google to find you.

I wish I could say I finished everything today, but realistically I'm facing four more days exactly like today. After I grew weary of working on website stuff, I ate a quick dinner and went to an animal rescue board meeting. The photo I initially wanted to use for marketing this year's Wine on the Roof fundraiser got voted down by the group and a different photo I'd taken the same evening was selected instead. The photo everyone liked best is cute, but there are several problems. Nobody seemed comfortable that a boy dog was wearing a girl's dress. "Can't you just take his wee wee off in Photoshop," said one of the ladies. Personally, I think it would be a lot easier just to tell folks the dog was a transvestite. People are so picky. Hey, it's a cute picture. That should be enough.

I've got to remember not to eat any breakfast tomorrow morning. I've got to go in for an ultrasound test and the doctor said I have to fast. I wonder why? I understand why you have to fast before you have blood work done, but this is a sonogram of my liver.  Oh well, I'll just eat breakfast when I get home.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 85

I got another new client today. This was different than most, because it wasn't a referral from an existing client. This time I was actually selected out of the blue by someone who happened to notice my website and liked the work I'd done. I don't know why I'm so surprised. After all, isn't this why I have a business website in the first place?  It is supposed to generate new leads and get me work.

I tend to forget I even have a business website though, since the only feedback I typically get from it are a lot of questions about dogs. People seldom write and tell me "Hey, I saw your work on the web today and I'd like to hire you." They're much more likely to ask me things like "My dog just ate a Brillo pad...what do I do now?" Maybe I need to do a better job of telling people that I'm a writer and photographer, because there are a lot of people out there who seem to think I"m a veterinarian.

I don't know what Dash thinks I am. He certainly doesn't think of me as any kind of authority figure. After four years of training, he still won't come when he's called with any reliability. Dash has stepped up to the plate since he graduated to the advanced class however. He seems to understand that more is expected of him now. Tonight at class, our trainer even came over and complemented Dash on his improved performance. Who knows? Maybe in two or three more years, he'll finally learn to heal properly.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 84

The lake behind my house must be the place to go for the local media on slow news days. Some of you may remember me telling you on Day 25 about getting interviewed by the Dallas Morning News while I was taking Dot and Dash for their morning walk. Well, today we got interviewed on our walk again. This time it was Channel 5, the local NBC affiliate. They were doing a feature story for the evening news about people dumping dogs at a nearby city off-leash park and wondered what I thought about the situation. As you might expect, I think it is terrible. There seems to be an epidemic of people abandoning dogs lately. The shelters are full. Animal rescue groups are overwhelmed with people wanting to surrender their dogs. I just don't get it. Sure, the economy is bad, but it doesn't mean you have to give up your dog. Cut back somewhere else folks. Your dog is a responsibility, just like your kids. It's not like an old sofa you can dump by the side of the road.


I watched the news while I was eating dinner this evening and sure enough, there we were. The dogs were as cute as they always are, but I looked a bit like a homeless person who was living under a bridge somewhere. I was wearing an old wool hat pulled down low over my head and I kept mumbling my answers so it was difficult to understand what I was saying. Oh well. What do you expect before breakfast?

iStockphoto has started accepting my photos in their collection. I need to send them at least 250 photos before I can apply to become an exclusive contributer. So far, I've only found the time to send a total of three images. This is going to take a while.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day