Day 598

I got my electric bill today. We've had hot Summers before in Texas, but I can't recall ever seeing an electric bill this high. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. The air conditioner has been running 24x7 for three weeks solid. It doesn't even cool down enough at night anymore to bring the inside temperature down to a comfortable 75 degrees. I guess I could just set the thermostat higher so the compressor would eventually shut off, but I hate to sweat while I work. Impossible deadlines are bad enough, but sweaty impossible deadlines are simply unacceptable.

After watching the DOW bounce around like a billiard ball all day, I can't say I feel any better than I did yesterday. Sure, the market closed up 60 points, but a 60 point gain after a 500 point drop can hardly be called a rally. I can't imagine what's going to happen Monday morning. As Janet and I were eating dinner, a message scrolled across the screen on the TV saying that Standard & Poors had just lowered the nation's credit rating. Hey, another first for the country. Hardly as glamorous as that first step on the moon though. We should have seen this coming twenty years ago when everybody and their uncle started buying houses with a zero down payment. I had a well paying ad agency job at the time and remember driving through neighborhood after neighborhood thinking "Jeez, I can't afford these houses, I wonder how all these other people can?" The truth was, they couldn't either. You simply can't spend more than you make indefinitely, either as an individual or as a country.

Dalmatian Rescue is feeling the money crunch too. We've had a lot of sick dogs this year, so we're having another casino party fundraiser tomorrow night to help pay the vet bills. The plan is to go set up all the tables tomorrow morning, before it gets too hot. I think we could set everything up in the middle of the night and it would still be too hot.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day