Day 1950

This may be shorter than usual. Our power just went out. There's a big storm headed our way, but it hasn't even arrived yet, so a power outage with no wind and no rain is a bit unusual. A feather could knock our power out though, so I'm not terribly surprised. If I'd known this was coming, I'd have charged up all the device batteries. The laptop is only half charged and the phone is even closer to dead than that. I do have the little generator now, but it's so much trouble to hook everything up, that I'm hoping that I can write fast and get this posted before everything goes dead.

The power outage wasn't the only thing that caught me by surprise today. I didn't have a clue that a big storm was headed in our direction. It was clear and sunny for most of the day. Since the weather was nice, I thought it would be a good time to get the water off the roof. I spent two hours getting everything cleaned up. That was a total wasted effort. In two more hours the storm will be here and the roof will fill with water again. I think the roof must have sagged a bit in the center, because a few years ago there was never this much standing water after a hard rain.

There wasn't really that much to do today. After I finished sweeping the water of the roof, I got groceries, filled the car with gas, and listened to a few more tutorial videos about responsive web design. Creating adaptive, mobile friendly websites might seem easy for a hard core coder, but the learning curve is going to be pretty steep for a visual designer like me. I'm curious whether I still have it in me to learn something difficult and new, so I'm going for it. Ask me in six months whether the experiment was a success.

It's harder to keep an eye on Dot now that she's feeling better. She wants to move around, but she's still pretty shaky. I try to maintain a balance between giving Dot some freedom around the house, while still being able to get to her quickly if she looks like she'd going to fall. I had to put her in her pen while I was up on the roof, but for the most part she wandered around the house on her own this afternoon. She's really a lot happier if she has a little freedom. We can't overdo it though. She was pretty tired after her short evening walk.

The first wave of rain has already arrived and we're starting to hear thunder and lightning now. The dogs are getting restless and my backup batteries are getting low. I've got both dogs penned in the office with me. We have two small camping lights and each dog has their bed. It seems cozy to me, but Dot and Dash still look nervous. I definitely don't want Dot to wander off in the dark house and trip over something. This seems as good a time as any to call it a day and get under a blanket with the dogs for the rest of the evening. This usually calms them down. I sure hope the power is restored before morning.

Mattie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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