Day 136

I don't think I was cut out to be an antique dealer. I got up extra early so I could walk the dogs, take a shower and get the trash containers put out by the curb before I went to the estate sale with all the ceramic Dalmatians. I thought I was early, because I arrived 15 minutes before the sale started, but there were already 50 people in line ahead of me. Annette, who told me about the sale, had warned me that I needed to arrive by 8 AM, but this was really the best I could do. Hey, I'm not a morning person. Most of the people ahead of me in line were antique dealers. They probably get up early every day so they can snap up all the good stuff before people like me even finish breakfast.

Luckily, the dealers today weren't very interested in Dalmatians. The owners of the home has been art collectors and there were tons of original paintings and small bronze sculptures to divert the dealer's attention. By the time I was allowed to enter the house, the two Dalmatian end tables in the living room and an amazing life size terra cotta Dalmatian had already been purchased. The bulk of the collection was still available though and I managed to find several wonderful porcelain Dalmatians that will probably wind up in my own estate sale some day.

I don't go to estate sales very often, but when I do I am always fascinated. I find myself wondering about the people who accumulated these objects during their lives. What did they do and why did their family leave these things behind? The couple who had lived in this house for 55 years had obviously led an interesting life. You could tell that a lot of the art had been purchased in Europe during the 1950's. In the husband's bedroom closet were three well tailored tuxedos and two long tailcoats. Jeez! Who owns their own tailcoat these days? I thought the man might have been an orchestra conductor. He certainly seemed well educated and had impeccable taste. I was so curious when I got home that Janet looked up the man's obituary. It turns out that he sold life insurance and lived to be 96 years old. He must have sold a lot of life insurance because the obituary said that he also gave over 31 million dollars to the UT Southwestern Medical School. Amazing!

After I carefully placed my new porcelain Dalmatian figurines on the coffee table, I returned to the more mundane world of work and computer problems. Our power went out last night and I think a power surge fried something on my mother board. The firewire bus won't work anymore. Ordinarily, this wouldn't be a huge problem, but the Apple monitor I use has a firewire connection. My screen has been freezing up all day. I bet the guy with all the ceramic Dalmatians didn't worry much about computers. I did see one very ancient Dell in the man's garage. It was sitting between an equally old toaster and a pipe wrench.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 135

I took Dash over to the vet this morning for his sonogram and he sailed through the procedure with flying colors. I thought he would squirm around and struggle when the technician moved the probe containing the transducer over his belly. He was a perfect gentleman though. Maybe he knew all along that there was nothing to be alarmed about. The test results showed that everything looked completely normal.

When I had my ultrasound exam recently, the machine they used was as big as a refrigerator. The sonographic scanner they used for Dash was as small as a laptop computer and produced much more detailed color images than the scanner they used on me. Once again the veterinarians are way ahead of the human doctors. Vets were using state-of-the-art digital x-ray machines several years before physicians started to use them. My own vet is already doing sophisticated stem cell therapy that probably won't be available to me for another ten years. It's frustrating to think that even though I'm spending a fortune on health insurance, my dogs are probably getting much better care than I am.

I'm glad it's Friday tomorrow. It's been a very busy week. For the first time in over a month I'm almost caught up on everything. All the client websites are up-to-date, the printer is working again, and even a few long-term projects have been completed. Maybe I'll have time to read a book again. Somehow I doubt it. If the weather stays as nice as it's been lately, I'll probably be spending the weekend mowing the grass, washing the car and planting shrubs. I need to clean the office too. It looks like a tornado hit it.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 134

I wonder why people are so eager to new launch products and services before they're ready for prime time? I called my pharmacy to re-order a prescription this morning and the phone message said their service had been improved. With the old service you could call in a prescription and pick it up an hour later. With the new "improved" service, you have to wait until the next day to pick up your prescription. I noticed something similar on Blogger yesterday. They had improved the interface to make it easier to upload pictures and video. There was only one problem. The new improved interface didn't work and you couldn't upload pictures at all. It took me a while to figure out how to get yesterday's Dalmatian on the blog. I finally just put the picture on my own server and linked back to it. I notice that Blogger has gone back to the old interface today. Good for them! At least they can admit they made a mistake. My pharmacy stubbornly still insists that their new slower service is actually better.

Dash won a ribbon again tonight at obedience class. Other people in the class always seem surprised when Dash wins a ribbon. They shouldn't be. Dash knows all the commands. He just isn't very obedient. He was playing his best game tonight though. I was impressed. Dash probably wasn't very impressed with me. The pollen count was high today and my allergies were terrible. I must have gone through a whole pack of Kleenex sneezing and blowing my nose as we were doing the training exercises.

As soon as I got the printer working again and started printing the Mother's Day posters for our upcoming pet photo event, I ran out of roll paper. I'm getting to be a regular up at Imaging Spectrum where I get my printing supplies. I'm convinced that Epson could just give these large format printers away and still make a profit. Every year I spend more for paper and ink than the printer cost in the first place.

I have to take Dash to the vet tomorrow for a sonogram. It's weird. I had a sonogram myself just a few weeks ago. The two of us seem to have similar medical problems. I had to give up Martinis to give my liver a rest. I wonder what Dash will have to give up.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 133

I saw something on television this morning about how eating chocolate can make you depressed. Not very likely. I'll tell you what can make you depressed. Days where the market closes down over two hundred points can make you depressed. Days where your printer remains stubbornly clogged after three separate attempts to clean the print heads can make you depressed. Days when one of your clients says they prefer a cheesy free template website to the custom site you took weeks to develop for them are a little depressing as well. On days like today, chocolate actually helps. Especially the chocolate covered coffee beans I've recently become addicted to.

When I went to the bank today I saw one of those giant mobile shredding trucks parked out front. Maybe this explains why they never seem to be able to find my account records. I've never really understood the fascination with shredding things. Janet shreds everything as soon as she's read it. I never shred anything. I pack everything up in manila file folders and take it down to the storage room. Of course, I can never find any of this stuff later, but at least I know it's there somewhere.

I just got an e-mail from a friend telling me about an estate sale in the Park Cities this weekend that includes a large collection of ceramic Dalmatians. Some of them are life size. The house is in a pretty pricey neighborhood, so I probably can't afford anything anyway, but I think I'm going to go to the sale. Estate sales aren't really my cup of tea, but I do understand the mentality of those who become obsessed by them. It's not that different from collecting watches. Wanting things that you don't actually need is a bit like getting too near a black hole. It's sucks you right in.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 132

Be careful what you ask for. When I was an ad agency copywriter, I always wanted to do the art direction and photography as well. Now, I can do all these things, but jumping back and forth from one discipline to another often leaves my brain feeling like scrambled eggs. I spent the morning doing research for an article I'm writing for a Brazilian petrochemical company about how front-end engineering design saves money and improves efficiency. This afternoon I worked on a Mother's Day poster featuring Dot wearing glasses and reading a cookbook. In between, I finally managed to finish a Flash presentation I'd been promising one of my veterinarian clients for months now. Each of these things was very different and I don't multi-task well, so it's been a confusing day to say the least.

It would be nice if I could spend my days taking amusing pictures of Dot and Dash, but I'm not quite in the same league with William Wegman and his Weimaraners. Until then, I still need pay the bills by writing very technical ads and marketing materials for large multi-national corporations. Hopefully, this new project doesn't involve any foreign languages. Occasionally, I have to translate my input material from German into English before I can even begin. Since I don't know a single word of Portuguese, I hope the folks I need to interview in Brazil speak good English.

When I was taking the dogs on their evening walk, I noticed that the Texas wildflowers are already more abundant than they've been for many years. It must be all the rain we had this Winter. In two or three weeks the flowers ought to be in full bloom. Now that the stock photo agency is finally accepting my pictures, I really need to set aside some time to photograph the wildflowers at their peak. Everyone says they are going to be quite beautiful this year.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 131

I need to start getting more sleep at night. I fell asleep staring at the monitor while I was working on the computer this afternoon. I don't know how long I'd been sleeping, but Dash woke me up with the a high pitched, frantic bark that usually means "take me outside right away before I pee on the floor." I leashed him up and took him on a walk, even though we'd just gotten back from the Unleashed dog park where he'd gotten plenty of exercise. Better safe than sorry I've learned. Dot was at a rescue event in Grapevine, Texas with a bunch of other Dalmatians, so Dash was alone with me today. Dash never likes being left behind, but he doesn't ride well in the car either, so this is often the only solution. I was actually amazed that he made the journey down to the dog park without Dot in the car with him. With this small breakthrough under our belts, maybe we can try something more ambitious in the future.

Occasionally I daydream about living on the seventeenth floor of a luxurious downtown high rise and spending Sunday afternoons drinking cappuccino and reading the paper instead of walking dogs. I'm not really an outdoorsy kind of guy. I'd rather wander through an art gallery than a field full of poison ivy. The dogs have other ideas though and they usually win. I can't imagine taking Dash to an art gallery. He would immediately lift his leg and pee on something I could never afford. There's a silver lining to everything though. These marathon dog weekends definitely keep me in shape. If all I was doing was gallery hopping and drinking cappuccino, I would probably be twenty pounds heavier.

I actually did get to see Dr. Who last night, since the BBC channel repeats everything they air at least three times an evening. I'm still not sure I like Matt Smith as the new doctor. Something is different about the show this season.  Maybe it has more to do with Steven Moffat replacing Russell T. Davis as head writer than anything else. Even without David Tennant however, Dr. Who is still the best thing to come along since Farscape.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 130

It was an absolutely beautiful day today. Did I take some time to relax and enjoy the exceptional weather? Of course not. It's Saturday! If the household chores don't get done on Saturdays, they seldom get done at all. Did the grass get mowed today? You betcha. Did all the water from last night's rain get swept off the roof? That too. I did the laundry, put clean sheets on the bed, went to the grocery store, made a valiant attempt to find the virus on my A-Drive and still found time to run down to the VCA Animal Hospital and take pictures of Smokey and Deuce, our two new Dalmatians in the rescue program.

As nice as today was, I don't think I'd have wanted to go on a picnic anyway. I'm hypersensitive to poison ivy and I've already caught my first case of the year from Dot and Dash. It never fails. I've caught poison ivy so many times that you'd think I'd develop an immunity to it. Unfortunately exactly the opposite has happened. If I'm anywhere within 40 feet of a poison ivy plant I'll catch it. The park is filled with poison ivy in the Spring and the dogs inevitably get the oily urushiol resin on their fur when they walk through a patch of the plants. They always curl up next to me after I fall asleep. The next morning I'm itching and scratching.

I hope I can find time to watch Dr. Who tonight. It's been such a busy day. Janet and I just got back from a casino party held by another charity group. These events are typically kind of a busman's holiday. We always check out the other roulette dealers and see if we can pick up a few new tricks. There was an old couple dealing tonight who kept dropping things on the floor and mixing up the chips. Sad. In a few years this will be us. I can't believe we're actually checking out other charity roulette dealers. We are better than these guys were though. We're definitely not good enough for Vegas, but if worse came to worse, we could probably get a job as roulette dealers in some dusty little Nevada town.  It's always good to have another skill.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 129

I wish I could find a store that carried authentic fixtures for Mid-Century Modern homes. Just some simple things like faucets, light fixtures and hinges would be nice. Every time I need to fix something around the house, it gets harder and harder to find the appropriate part. There all sorts of everyday items like lighting fixtures, floor tiles, cabinet hinges and door knobs that architects loved to use in the 1950's and 60's which are impossible to find today. I saw these items in hardware stores right up through the late 1980's, but they are gone now. These days it's easier to restore a 200 year old home than something an architect designed in 1955. I needed to fix a can light fixture that had burned out in the kitchen this morning. Ordinarily, you would just run down to the nearest Home Depot and buy a new can light. Today's can lights are all about an inch wider than the ones in my ceiling, so I need to disassemble everything and replace the component parts instead. I finally got the light working again, but it took most of the morning.

I spent the afternoon adding photos of newly available dogs and cats to one of the animal rescue websites I maintain. Even though I've been working with rescue groups for many years, it still amazes me that people can abandon an animal so casually. No matter how effective you are in finding homes for these animals, there is always a steady stream of new arrivals. Most of the dogs I see in adoption programs are friendly, well mannered and would make wonderful pets. You just wonder why someone dumped them in the first place.

I worked on the promotional poster for the upcoming Mother's Day pet photo event this evening with Dot. She's a great little model. You can dress her up, put glasses on her, do just about anything and she just sits there calmly. If only people were this easy to photograph.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 128

I thought I had a doctor's appointment yesterday. At least that's what it said on my calendar. I would have gone, except that I got a voicemail message yesterday afternoon reminding me that my appointment was for 2:45 PM on April 22. That's today. I tend to write things down on the the wrong day anyway, so I figured they were right. When I called this morning to confirm my appointment, they said the appointment was for yesterday. When I asked when they wanted to reschedule, they said there had been a cancellation and to come in at 2 PM this afternoon anyway. OK. I went in at 2 PM and ended up finally seeing the doctor at 4 PM. This pretty well sums up health-care in a nutshell.

One of my German clients wrote me today and asked if I'd like to meet him in Houston for dinner next week while he was in town for a conference. I couldn't tell if he thinks I jet around the country for meals or if he just thought Texas is a lot smaller than it actually is. It would be a piece of cake to meet him in Fort Worth for dinner, but Houston is pretty far away. I really ought to try my best to go anyway. We'll see. Four or five years ago this was a really good client of mine and I remember that their budgets were a lot bigger than the veterinarians I work with these days.

I enjoyed the Project Runway finale tonight. Emilio, Seth Aaron and Mila all had strong collections. On some of the previous seasons I could tell who would win in advance, but this time I didn't have a clue. Any of the final three could have won. Maybe Seth Aaron won because there was a bit more showmanship in his collection. The judges do seem to give a bit more weight to the wow factor in a collection than to whether it could sell in stores. Seth Aaron did deserve to win though. One reason I like this show so much is because it is completely real. This isn't something contrived like Survivor. The contestants on Project Runway truly want to become sucessful fashion designers and they put their heart and soul into it.

I know that most of the Entrecard folks out there probably don't even look at this part of the blog, but if any of you actually are reading this, I've got a question for you. How on earth do find the time to drop on enough widgets to get a consistently high ranking? For the past week or so I've been putting my heart and soul into dropping and I still find it almost impossible to visit more than 200 blogs a day. The whole process is becoming way too time consuming. Even "time savers" like Entredropper and Buckets seem to take almost as much time as manually hopping from blog to blog. Opening a ton of tabs in Firefox inevitably crashes my browser too, especially if you are unlucky enough to load three or four blogs in a row that all have YouTube videos running. Yeah, I know it's silly to be competitive about Entrecard, but it is kind of addictive. At least I'm not spending my days playing Farmville or Second Life.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 127

Today was one of those days where I knew from the start that I wasn't going to be able to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Absolutely nothing went as planned. For starters, I have big print job due tomorrow and the printer wasn't working. Apparently, the printer drivers had gotten corrupted. I couldn't find the install disk, so I hooked the printer up to a different computer. Unfortunately the files I needed to print weren't on this computer. The Epson 4000 won't connect to the office wireless network at all, so I had to burn a DVD to get the files I needed to print over to the computer that was connected to the Ethernet cable and the printer. In the process of doing all this tedious stuff, I discovered that the Epson printer drivers weren't the only things that had gotten corrupted. Damn! It looks like I've downloaded a virus again.

When I took a break from printer hell to let the dogs outside, Dash started digging holes and kept trying to eat something he'd found in the dirt. Eating bark off trees was bad enough, but now he seems to have acquired a taste for grubs as well. I wish that I could just leave the dogs in the yard to play for a while and go about my business. It doesn't work that way though. If I leave Dash alone in the yard for five minutes, he'll inevitably eat something that doesn't agree with him, start vomiting and off we go to the vet.

The client who wanted all the website changes yesterday called later in the day and said he'd found a site he really liked. That sounded encouraging. "Now we're getting somewhere." I thought. Then I took a look at the site he was talking about and thought it was horrible. I'm going to need to learn to love that site though, because it looks like we're headed in the same direction.

The day did have one bright note. I noticed that the the Apple stock I repurchased recently went up 15 points today. Now if only I had never sold it in the first place.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 126

We found out today that Dot won first place in the BaxterBoo pet fashion contest. It's nice to have a winner in the family again. It's been years since I've won an award for anything. When I was an ad agency copywriter, I used to win a ton of awards, but it was mostly because I would always volunteer to take care of submitting the entries for the agency and then make sure to enter a boatload of my own stuff. I didn't have Dot's instinct to go for the gold, so I would seldom win first place honors. I did get a fair share of second and third place trophies though. Dot has all the personality traits you usually associate with a winner. She is serious, determined and seems happiest when she has a task to complete. Dash, on the other hand, has the personality traits you would usually associate with me. He is curious, lazy and never likes to get out of bed in the morning.

I had a meeting with one of my website clients this afternoon. It kind of felt like I had entered the Twilight Zone, because everyone at the meeting seemed to want exactly the opposite of what they said they wanted during our last meeting. Nothing to get upset about though. This happens frequently in my line of work. On projects like this without a firm deadline, drastic changes are almost inevitable. This is why I love rush projects with drop-dead deadlines. If you only have time to do it once, clients are usually very appreciative that you managed to finish the job at all. When there is too much time, everyone and their uncle wants to fiddle with it.

On the way home from my meeting I stopped by a gallery where I used to show and picked up some artwork that Janet and I had purchased last month. The curator asked me if I would be interested in having another show. Sure!  I love having gallery shows. Then I asked whether we could just set a date for the show now, or whether I would have to submit a proposal again like I did the last time. Looks like I'll have to submit a proposal again. The art world is weird. I've asked other artists why they do the things they do. Their answer is usually very similar to mine: because it looks cool! Looking cool definitely won't work as a show proposal though. I'll have to make up some ridiculous story that goes on and on about my influences and motivation and somehow ties everything back to the importance of being green and saving the planet. This is what the art world has come to. Sad. I'll still do the show though.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 125

Mondays are usually pretty quiet around here. I seldom get panic calls from clients on Mondays because this day seems to be reserved for long internal status meetings where everyone tries to remember what they were doing the previous Friday. I don't even try to call people on Monday because they are always in a meeting. While the rest of the world is checking on the status of everything, I usually pay a few bills, do some laundry, answer the e-mail I never got around to reading on Friday, and fix myself a big stack of pancakes.

I'm always amazed how a few simple tasks can eat up an entire day. I wasted quite a bit of time this morning fixing a long extension cord with a short in it. If I thought my time was worth anything at all, it would have made a lot more sense to just go to Home Depot and buy a new one. I also tried out my new "Mister Steamy" dryer ball. I'm almost embarrassed to admit that something I saw on one of those cheesy TV infomercials managed to catch my attention, but when I heard that "Mister Steamy" would put an end to ironing forever, I had to have one. I'm terrible at ironing. By the time I've ironed one wrinkle out of a shirt, I've usually managed to create a brand new wrinkle somewhere else. Amazingly, the "Mister Steamy" dryer ball actually works. Admittedly, my standards are pretty low, but the laundry came out of the dryer looking good enough for me to just put on a shirt without bothering to iron it and wear it for the rest of the day. Now, why couldn't I have invented something like that.

I need to take Dash to the vet at 8:30 AM tomorrow for his annual exam. Normally, I never do anything that early, but Dash's veterinarian only works on Tuesdays and she seems to get booked up weeks in advance. 8:30 AM was the only appointment left. I certainly wouldn't mind just working on Tuesdays.  Maybe if I started having my own status meetings and became more efficient, I could cram all my work into a Tuesday. I doubt it though. There's too much work and I'm way too slow.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 124

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Day 123

I've been waiting all week for the new season of Dr. Who to begin. Whenever a new doctor is introduced, I don't think I'm going to like the show anymore. It usually takes a few episodes for a new doctor to completely win me over. I really liked David Tennant as the tenth doctor, so I wasn't expecting all that much tonight. Matt Smith is really pretty good though and Karen Gillan is going to make a great companion. I still think the first series with Christopher Eccleston as the ninth doctor and Billie Piper as Rose was my all time favorite. I like how the doctor meets Amy Pond as a little girl in this initial episode, and when he sees her again a few minutes later, she's all grown up. That's the thing about time travel: just about anything becomes plausible in a script, once you accept the basic premise.

It would be great fun to write for a show like this, but I would have to go back in time myself to have a shot at something like that. It's certainly not impossible for advertising writers to make the transition to episodic television though. Come to think of it, Donald Bellisario, who was a creative director at the Bloom Agency in Dallas when I was a young writer there, went on to direct Magnum PI and Battlestar Galactica.

Although time travel and directing a hit TV show are nice fantasies, the realities of life are a little more down to earth. I went down to Unleashed this afternoon and finalized the details of our upcoming Mother's Day pet photography event. The holiday photo events are starting to become popular. Hopefully, by the time Christmas rolls around, they will become one of the Dalmatian Rescue group's best fundraisers.

My life as a pet photographer might not be as glamorous as that dashing new Dr. Who, but it certainly beats how I ended the day: temporarily plugging cracks in the shower tile grout with soap to keep the shower from leaking. You might think it would make more sense to just re-grout the entire shower stall.  Probably so.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 122

I wasted an inordinate amount of time today trying to integrate amazon.com with the blog. I like to read, and since the Blogger platform now connects directly with Amazon Associates offerings, I thought it would be cool to add a list of my top 10 favorite books to the blog and link it to the amazon.com site. I forgot that Amazon Associates typically wants to embed a display ad instead of a simple text link and that Blogger doesn't really supported nested tables, which was the only way I could think of the get the Amazon display ads to line up properly. By the time I had gotten the first of the Amazon display ads lined up properly inside a two column table, I had run out of time. I really do have more than two favorite books though. Hey, it's a work in progress.

Early this afternoon, I noticed that Dash was racing around the house with the panicked look on his face that means he is about to throw up. I took him outside and waited patiently for twenty minutes while he did absolutely nothing. As soon as I gave up and brought him back inside again, he promptly threw up on the carpet next to my desk. This has happened several times before. Every time I take him to the vet, they take an X-ray, tell me they see nothing abnormal and give him some Metronidazole. I'll take him back to the vet again, because vomiting is never normal. My guess is that he just ate some horse poop in the park that didn't agree with him.

Lord knows why I chose to buy stocks yesterday when the market was up, instead of waiting until today's big sell-off when I could have bought the same stocks for a lot less. At least my record for making investment decisions at exactly the wrong time is still intact. Somehow this always happens. The market had been rising in a slow but predictable fashion for weeks. The minute I place my order, Goldman Sachs gets charged with fraud and everybody sells. Oh, well.

We've been getting mail today from people who think that Dot won the BaxterBoo fashion contest. I'm not sure how they know this, because the winner isn't officially announced for another four days. I hope she does win. There's going to be a lot of disappointed people if she doesn't.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 121 - Tax Day

I took my taxes to the post office today. The good news is that I'm going to get a refund this year. The bad news is the only reason I'm getting a refund is because the company didn't do as well as I'd hoped. I'm basically just getting back some of what I've already paid in quarterly estimated taxes. I always have trouble doing quarterly taxes. I pay too much in when I'm overly optimistic. On the other hand, when I'm pessimistic about the company's prospects, I usually end up doing better than I expected and find myself having to pay a penalty when I file my return.

There was a long line when I went to the post office. The younger working people stood stoically in line, as if they already expected this sort of thing. The senior citizens standing behind me bitched and moaned loudly about the poor service and seemed insistent on telling the entire world that the post office sucked. It's weird that a bunch of people who have nothing better to do than get ready for the early bird dinner special at Luby's would be complaining the most about having to stand in line, but that's always the way it is at the post office. I didn't want to slow down the line, so I didn't ask for signature confirmation with the certified mail I needed to send. The clerk made me fill out the signature confirmation cards anyway. When I filled everything out and paid for my postage, the clerk hands me back the three cards I had just filled out. "These are your receipts," she said. "Why did I fill out all this stuff if you're just giving it right back to me?" I asked. She just gave me a blank look. I kept my cool though and didn't say a thing. I didn't want everyone else to think I was one of the old people.

Project Runway was good tonight. I'm glad that Mila made the cut to join Emilio and Seth Aaron for the Bryant Park fashion week finale. Not only is Mila from Dallas, she also has a Dalmatian. With those credentials, I've definitely got to root for her to win. Mila has always created crisp, clean clothes that were predominately black and white. After I saw the Dalmatian on tonight's show, it all started to make sense.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 120

The stars must not have been aligned correctly today. All kinds of things went wrong. None of the mishaps were all that serious, but some were definitely a bit surprising. This morning, a client called and said their website had disappeared and had been replaced by something else. Sure enough, when I took a look, the website actually had disappeared. They asked whether I had done anything to their site. Nope, it wasn't me. I asked whether anyone else had access to the server. Yep, quite a few people actually. When everyone had calmed down, we decided that one of these other people with access to the server would probably be a good place to start in solving this mystery. I noticed this evening that the real website was back in place, but I still don't know who took it down. Website maintenance is definitely a lot easier when I'm the only one with access to the sever.

I was just about ready to drop my taxes in the mail when I noticed that something was missing. Back I go to my accountant for the second time in two days. When I was picking up the missing form, I remembered that my new tenant was moving in tomorrow and I still hadn't reconnected the HVAC system. Back I go to the rental property for the second time in two days. I think I also forgot to take my Benicar pill this morning, but that happens so frequently that it's hardly worth mentioning.

The air conditioner did get fixed today, no thanks to Dot, who barked incessantly at Marty the repairman during the entire time he was here. I had hoped to replace the old round Honeywell thermostat with an identical analog unit. Not surprisingly, they don't make mechanical thermostats with mercury switches inside them anymore. I got something that was round and still said Honeywell on the front, but that was where the similarity ended. This thermostat was all digital on the inside. Slowly but surely, the analog world I love is completely disappearing.

Dash was still not on his best game at obedience class tonight. He kept jumping the gun on the recall exercise and he refused to lie down. He also tried to steal another dog's training treats, which didn't go over too well with the other dog. Maybe it just wasn't his day either.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 119

When I run into people I haven't seen in a while, they inevitably ask me what I've been doing lately. Don't any of them read this blog? Every single day I tell people what I've been doing lately, and still they ask.

I've been a web developer for so long that practically everything I've done in the past twenty five years is plastered all over the Internet. Maybe I just need to provide a better road map to my thoughts. If you want to know how I feel about the workplace, my family, and the many cities I've visited over the years, you can read The Road to Nowhere. If you're curious why I prefer dogs to people, you can read Wag. If you wonder why I started rescuing Dalmatians, you can read Petey's Place. If you don't like to read at all, you can still listen to music I've written by going to the Songbook. Oddly, with so much of my life on public display, I still have an unlisted phone number.

I think writing is good for the mind. I write for the same reason that other people do Sudoku puzzles. It helps keep Alzheimer's at bay. Writing ought to be a lot more important in school than it currently is. The simple act of putting thoughts on paper engages the mind in ways that other activities simply can't. I can do complex visual tricks in Photoshop while listening to music. I need a quieter environment when I write. Maybe this is just because I'm not that great a writer. I do think writing is more complex than the visual things I do, however. I love photography and make my living designing websites, but writing is what makes me think.

So I write and I write. And when people I haven't seen in a while ask me what I've been doing lately, I inevitably say "Oh, not much...how about you?"

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 118

I had another meeting with my financial advisor today. He asked me if my goals had changed since the last time we had talked. "No," I told him, "I'd still much rather make money than lose money." He suggested some stocks he thought it would be good to buy this Spring. As luck would have it, these were the very same stocks that my last financial advisor convinced me to sell last Summer. After much discussion, I decided to buy most of them back again, even though the price was considerably higher than when I sold them. I hate investing these days. With interest rates near zero, bonds aren't a great investment anymore. Stocks are all over the place. It's just about impossible to go out and pick a good solid company and then just forget about it for five years. Things change too fast now. You can't even go to the bank and get a plain vanilla CD anymore. A CD will earn you nothing. I guess I'll have to continue to make money the old fashioned way: by trying to please next to impossible clients.

Do you remember when I told you how projects frequently keep changing in the ad business even after they have been approved? I think I mentioned that things sometimes continue to change even after they come back from the printer. Well, it happened again. "Can't we make the printer pay for this mistake," someone said. "Not really," I replied. "All they did was print exactly what we sent them."

I called the power company this morning to ask when I should switch the electricity over to my tenant's name at the rental property. They said it would be better to let the renter make the switch themselves after they moved in. "That way, the electricity won't have to be turned off," the customer service lady said. "But what if my renter forgets to switch the account over," I asked? "Oh, well then you're still paying for the electricity yourself," said the ever friendly customer service representative. Seems like I've been down this road before.

I really envy the dogs. All they do is eat, race around the back yard, chase squirrels, and sleep. They're both sleeping right now. I've probably still got a couple of hours of work to finish before I can even think about sleep.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 117

Dot woke me up this morning barking at thunder. At least I thought it was thunder. When I looked out the window, it was clear outside. Not a raincloud in sight. I turned on the TV to see what was going on and discovered that what Dot was hearing was Texas Stadium being blown up. I don't know why I had forgotten, since it had been on the news for quite a while that the stadium was going to be imploded. I was amazed that the explosions sounded so loud however, since we are almost 30 miles away from Irving where the stadium was located.

Dallas has a history of imploding historic buildings. I remember watching as the old Cotton Exchange building was blown up downtown a few years ago. More recently, the arena where the Mavericks and the Dallas Stars used to play was imploded as well. I'm always sorry to see these buildings go. Surely there is something useful that could be done with them. Texas Stadium was filled with history. In addition to some very memorable football games, there were some fabulous concerts by artists like Paul McCartney, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Garth Brooks and many more.

There isn't much reverence for the past anymore. I think that's a shame. Even the recent past has much to teach us. I really enjoyed the 1970's when Texas Stadium was in its prime. It was a much more innocent time than now. AIDS, urban terrorists, and trillion dollar deficits were all unheard of. Music was still melodic and cars were fun to drive. I miss those times. I especially miss them when I watch the morning news during breakfast and discover that the world is in an even bigger mess than it was the night before.

Today's watch is from the 70's. It used to belong to Alice Cooper. Alice pioneered elaborate, theatrical stage shows and helped to define a sound that would later called heavy metal. I always enjoyed going to Alice Cooper concerts and still think that his 1972 hit "School's Out" is one of the great rock anthems of all time. Times have changed though. I prefer Broadway musicals these days and haven't been to a rock concert in years.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 116

Busy day! The Dalmatian Rescue group is having a casino party fundraiser this evening at Brookhaven Country Club. We had to go up and set up all the tables earlier today, and we'll have to take them down again after the event is over and put them all back in the trailer. These casino parties remind me of the days when I used to play bass in The Fabulous Has-Beens. What I remember most about playing in a rock band was hauling a trailer full of really heavy speakers somewhere, playing for a little while and then hauling all the really heavy equipment back home again. Since I was the bass player and also owned the PA system for the band, I always had the heaviest stuff to carry. With these casino parties we do, the heaviest thing to move is the craps table. A grand piano is easier to move than a full sized craps table. Since craps is always the favorite game at these events, we definitely can't leave it behind.

Janet and I are roulette dealers for these fundraisers. Roulette is actually my game of choice when I'm in Vegas. It's kind of mindless and relaxing, compared to poker and blackjack. It's also pure luck. I see all these players with complex roulette strategies and they don't do any better than anyone else. The only people who do really well at roulette are those who come in, put a huge pile of chips on red or black and just walk away when they win. The longer you play at roulette, the more you lose. If you play long enough, the house always wins.

I'm certainly not winning in my own house today. The shower pan is leaking and I'm even having trouble with things as simple as putting a light bulb in a socket. I still like incandescent bulbs. They have a softer, much warmer glow. Now that everyone is moving over to these new low energy florescent bulbs, you can't find well-made incandescent bulbs any more. I think they make them all in Bangladesh these days. The bulbs aren't even the right size to fit in the sockets and I often break brand new bulbs just trying to screw them in. Once again, I am being defeated by technology.

Hmm. What shall I wear tonight? Casino dealers usually wear outlandish, over-the-top watches. They're usually cheap, but have lots of bling.  Luckily, I have a few of these myself. Maybe I'll wear a cheesy Ice Master watch tonight. Or, maybe I'll wear a silly one, shaped like a guitar.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 115

Dot is a good little watch dog, but I wish I could figure out a way to tell her that not everyone is dangerous. She got so upset barking at the air conditioner repairman this morning that she started peeing on the carpet. I'll look for a repeat performance next Tuesday when Marty returns to install the new thermostat he had to order. It's odd. Dot is real friendly with people when she meets them outside the house. She doesn't like people coming in the house though. Dash could care less. He slept through the entire hour long barking episode.

I went and paid the late fee for my storage space so they would take the padlock off the door. The manager said he was surprised I was late. "You're never late," he said. Wait till next year. I'll probably forget I even have a storage space. Later, when I was picking up my tax return from my accountant, he was telling me how one of his customers had forgotten to pay for their storage unit for several years in a row. "She has Alzheimer's," he told me. Jeez, maybe that's how it starts. First you forget about your storage unit, and then you forget the names of all your relatives.

When I left my accountant's office and was heading back to my car, this guy Steve I used to work with walks out of a nearby Thai restaurant and comes over to say hello. "What are you doing in there," I say, mostly because it wasn't anywhere near dinnertime. "I own the place," says Steve. Wow! That was a surprise. The last time I saw Steve, he was an art director. He's not from Thailand either. I think he was born and raised in Texas. Actually, I didn't even know Steve could cook, but if he was going to get out of advertising and open a restaurant, I would have guessed something in the barbecue family. Hey, maybe the place is fabulous. I love Thai food, so I told Steve I'd drop by for lunch sometime soon.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day