Day 880 - Mother's Day

It's been a while since Mother's Day had any real significance for me. When my Mom was still alive, she would constantly exhort me to become a better person, to be kind to the less fortunate, and to rise above misfortune. Much of what she told me went in one ear and came right out the other. I wasn't the best of sons. Mom never gave up though. To her dying day, she continued to send me weekly letters full of wise and often cockeyed advice on how to improve my life. Sometimes I wonder if she'd approve of the final result of her efforts. I never became a priest like she once wanted. I never joined the Peace Corps either. I guess the one bright spot would be that I am kind to animals.

I finally finished moving everything out of the old storage room today. The room is completely  empty. Yay! Even though this tiring and somewhat meaningless activity wouldn't have carried much weight with Mom, who loved to have yard sales and give my Dad's stuff away, I'm glad it is finally finished. Now I've just got to get everything organized again. I went and bought some more industrial shelving this afternoon, but didn't have time to assemble it. Just getting everything moved was enough for one day.

It's been so rainy this week that the dog parks were closed, so I took the dogs on an extra long walk this morning. In addition to our regular journey through the park, we also walked through the neighborhood, checking out who had bought a new car or sold their house. The new houses in the neighborhood are much bigger and fancier than the older ones. Oddly, the size of the families living in these palatial homes are smaller than the families who used to live in the small frame homes they replaced. I grew up in a simple frame house. We all shared one bathroom. I don't think my Mom would have approved of these new McMansions.

The power went out this evening, which was odd, since there was only a gentle rain today. We've always had problems with power outages in our neighborhood though. When the power finally came back on, I noticed that the U-Verse TV's went through this complicated re-boot process that seemed to take about ten minutes. I also noticed that the backup battery for my computer's UPS power supply is dead. That gizmo didn't last very long. I only bought the uninterruptible power supply a few years ago after another power outage completely fried my office computer. Mom probably did know best. She had no interest in computers.

Haley is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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