Day 1481

I took the Christmas tree down today. The dogs got their first bath of the year as well. I guess 2014 has officially started. We didn't make it to the dog park after all. There were simply too many errands to run. We may not make it tomorrow either. According to the latest weather reports, it is supposed to be very cold tomorrow. I don't expect much sympathy from my friends up North however. Even though it is expected to be well below freezing tomorrow morning, we are still one of the warmer places in the country. I'm just glad I don't live in Minnesota right now.

The large printer is clogged again. This printer is so frustrating. It is too heavy for me to get it out to the car alone, so taking the thing to a repair shop is problematic at best. There is little point to having one of those repair people who come out to your office take a look. These guys have no magic bullet. They'll just say that I need a new print head and charge me $1500. What I really need is someone who will just change out all the ink lines. Unfortunately, this seemingly simple task is virtual impossible due to the way Epson designed the printer. I've really grown to hate this printer, but I still want it to work properly.

I'm beginning to wonder why I ever got AT&T U-Verse service. In theory, there are several hundred channels, but on closer inspection there is never anything worth watching. They play the same movies over and over again, so it doesn't take long before you've seen all the ones you like. My favorite stations are the same way. I used to like watching the NASA Channel until I discovered that they have a very small inventory of broadcast material that they play over and over and over again. All they want to do is put something on so they don't have dead air. I hate all the reality shows like Storage Wars, Duck Dynasty and Pawn Stars. There are literally dozens of channels filled with this crap. Even the oldies channels that play black and white episodes from The Twilight Zone and Perry Mason have run their course. I'm beginning to realize that I've seen all these shows before. It's almost as bad as when I used to watch Fawlty Towers on PBS and realized that I'd seen Basil try to catch Manuel's pet rat before the hotel inspectors could find it at least ten times. Maybe I ought to just read a book.

The leaves have all fallen off the Oak trees in the back yard by now. The thick carpet of brown leaves is actually kind of pretty and effectively covers all the dead grass. On the down side, it also covers the dog poop, which is much harder to find now. I stepped in some today and will probably continue to step in poo until Spring. I used to spend endless hours raking leaves, but I think I'll just leave them all on the ground until Spring and then hire someone to haul them away. I've finally decided that life is too short for raking leaves.

Hunter is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day