Day 525

I'm somewhat of a hermit these days, so having lunch with someone two days in a row is probably my equivalent of being a social butterfly. Today, I had lunch with my watchmaker. Ostensibly, the lunch was to resolve a few website issues, but we mostly just ended up talking about the trials and tribulations of owning a small business. Somehow I keep thinking that someone who fixes high-end Rolex and Omega watches might be in a bit more of a secure position than someone who designs websites, but you never know. Globalization, consolidation and declining profit margins are making things difficult for every small business. My watchmaker is faced with a growing number of manufacturers who are starting to do their own repair and service work at the factory, while I'm faced with companies like GoDaddy offering website services for so cheap that nobody has any use for people like me anymore. My watchmaker and I are both still in business though. We are good at what we do. It's just not as easy to make a living as it used to be.

It is unbelievable how bad the weather has been recently. When I was eating dinner this evening, I watched the news on TV about multiple tornadoes hitting the Oklahoma City area. We are actually under a tornado warning right now and I think they have spotted funnel clouds forming near Forth Worth. We have never had a tornado in our neighborhood, but the warnings are frequent this time of year. I always worry that if a tornado does hit, there is no place to hide. We basically have a house with no protected interior walls. There's just a lot of glass that would offer no protection at all. I can't really imagine getting both dogs in the bathtub and putting a mattress over our heads. I can't even get the dogs to go near the bathtub on a clear, sunny day.

Maybe the storms will clear away the bees. I finally discovered exactly where the swarms of bees I've been seeing on the roof are coming from. They are making a large hive on the East wall of our house up under the eaves. I don't know much about bees though. Maybe the rain will make even more bees start calling our place home. It's just one more thing I need to deal with this week.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day