Day 432

I spent most of the day using an assortment of rakes, brooms and blowers to wrestle the huge accumulation of leaves in our yard into some semblance of order. I haven't actually gotten rid of the leaves yet, but at least they are stacked in nice piles. Tomorrow, I'll go buy a package of those big drum liner bags and bag them all up. It's amazing how many leaves fall off our three large Oak trees every season. The ones that fall on the roof make little dams that keep the water from draining properly. The ones that fall on the ground kill the grass and smother the ground cover. They also tend to hide a ton of dog poop during the Winter, most of which I found today. The leaves used to blow away naturally after a couple of windy Spring days. Now that all the neighbors have put up these tall wooden security fences, they don't blow anywhere. Without a natural breeze, they just sit on the ground forever until I finally can't think of any more excuses to avoid removing them. I have bought quite a few blowers and gas powered leaf mulching machines over the years, but the machines always break and the leaves keep falling.

I'm not a big fan of manual labor, but if I am forced to work up a sweat, I couldn't have picked a better day than today. It was 75 degrees with a nice breeze all day. I actually got quite a bit done. The dogs got a workout too. We took them with us this morning when we walked the rescue Dalmatians at K-9 University and when we finished that, we took them to the dog park. By the time they got home, all they wanted to do was sleep.

I just finished launching the new website I designed recently for Benny's Dog Resort. This is the first project I've gotten directly as a result of being on Facebook. I hope this is a trend that will continue in the future. It would be nice if social media started bringing me jobs instead of just an endless stream of Farmville requests. Maybe I could get more work from Facebook if a few more people would stop by and like my company page. For a company that's been around more than twenty years, the number of "Likes" we have received is pathetic. Oh well. Maybe some of you guys will stop by and like us.

I know what I like. I like that tomorrow is a holiday. Granted, it's a strange little holiday that not everyone celebrates, but a lot of my clients are off tomorrow and that means I'm off as well. Janet's office is closed tomorrow too, so maybe we can do something fun. On the other hand, maybe we'll just clean the house.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day