Day 603

The heat is really starting to get to people. The talk at dog training class tonight centered around broken air conditioners, shifting foundations, and hot water coming out of the cold water tap. We're close to setting an all time record for longest number of days above 100 degrees. I'm amazed our own air conditioner hasn't had any problems. It's been running 24x7 for weeks now. I just hope it will just hang in there for another month. By mid-September, things should start cooling down again.

I think my broker is getting sick of all my questions. He is encouraging me to use the company's real time site, so I can see what is happening as it happens, instead of calling him all the time. I need to explain that this would probably only make things worse. If I could always see what was happening to my portfolio in real time, I'd probably have twice as many questions. Something must be working though. All the major indexes dropped between 4 and 5 percent today and I held my losses to less than one percent.

I had to take a stool sample to the vet today to complete Dot's yearly exam. I took a plastic bag with me on our walk this morning so I could gather a sample. Unfortunately after I put the bag in my back pocket, I forgot it was there and ended up sitting down on it as soon as I got back in the house. Yuk. At least the bag didn't break.

I bought Adobe Lightroom yesterday when I discovered there was a special one day only sale on the Adobe website offering the software for 50% off. I was real pleased with myself until I downloaded the software and discovered it was almost exactly the same as Apple's Aperture 3.0 which I already had. With all these powerful ways to organize my pictures, I'm going to go out and start taking some new pictures. I've taken very few personal pictures this summer. My favorite time to go shoot is on cloudy bright days with no shadows. Right after a rain is perfect. We haven't had many of these days recently.

I fixed a couple of Janet's watches this afternoon. Somehow, this slow delicate work seems peaceful compared to my usual fare of racing to complete a 1200 word article to meet an end of day deadline. It's amazing how much faster my writing has become, now that budgets are lower.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day