Thursday, June 3, 2010

Day 170

It was an odd day. I'm supposed to be a guest this weekend on the Horror Movie Show podcast, so I was trying to review the films that are going to be featured on this week's episode while I was doing my other work. As I've mentioned before, I'm not the world's best at multi-tasking. It was kind of distracting watching old 1990's horror films while I was doing my weekly website updates. I did manage to get everything finished though. One thing I noticed was that "scary" theater release horror films of twenty years ago are a lot more discrete than your average police or hospital drama on prime time television today. Everything is so explicit these days. I think I like the old films better.

I found a cool little app for my iPad today. It lets you watch real-time weather radar anywhere in the world. I'm going to get a lot of use out of this one because it will give me a "heads up" on when to expect Dot to come and hide under my desk. There were storms all around us today, but strangely we didn't get a drop of rain. Dot is terrified of storms. I'm sure they're much scarier to her than old horror movies. I've tried everything I can think of to calm her, including a special Anxiety Wrap that looks a lot like a tight fitting dog sweater. I was skeptical of the Anxiety Wrap at first, but a veterinarian friend told me she used one for her dogs and that it actually worked. The wrap does seem to calm Dot during storms, but I have to remember to put it on her before the storm arrives.

Even though it didn't rain today, we had a power outage anyway. I think the power in our neighborhod is less reliable than some third world countries. I have my computers connected to a backup battery and a surge protector, but they don't always work. The frequent surges and outages have caused me to burn up several power supplies. It's irritating, but there's not much I can do. I hate to complain to the power company. The last time I complained, they sent a tree crew out and severely mutilated one of the large oak trees in my backyard, saying the branches came too close to the power lines in the alley behind the house. This once beautiful tree was given such a severe haircut that you can even see the lopsided thing from Google Earth.

I'm going to give the phone company one more chance to fix my beloved kitchen wall phone. The repair guy is supposed to come out tomorrow. I'm sure Dot and Dash will bark continually while he's here. They're great little watch dogs, but repair people aren't very fond of them. Oh, well. I doubt the guy will be able to fix the problem anyway.

Dalmatian of the Day

    Watch of the Day