Day 2545

Everything seemed so busy today. The restaurant was crowded when I went out for breakfast this morning. There was a long line at the pharmacy when I went to pick up a prescription. Even the AT&T store was crowded when I went to exchange a broken TV remote control. I asked the pharmacist why she thought there was such a long line today and she said today was the day when all the Christmas parties started and people were running their errands early so they could go to a party tonight. Could be. I wouldn't know. I haven't been to a Christmas party in years.

Here's how life has changed. I've exchanged TV remote controls before. These things seem to break frequently. It used to be that the store had a big box of remotes back in the stock room. They'd give you a new remote out of the box and throw the bad one away. Now, a guy fills out a lengthy requisition form on an iPad and they ship you the new remote from somewhere in California. When the new remote arrives, you are supposed to return the defective remote in the same box and ship it back to California. Wouldn't it be easier to just keep a box on remote controls in the back of the store?

While I was filling out my application for a new remote control, the sales guy casually mentioned that my U-verse service was going to be discontinued next year. Did I want to sign up for the new replacement service? Jeez. It's taken me years to get U-verse to run reliably. Now that everything is finally pretty dependable, they're discontinuing it. "I'm sure you'll like our new fiber optic service even better," the sales guy told me. That wouldn't be hard, since I never liked U-verse at all. I would have discontinued U-verse several years ago if it weren't for the fact that Time Warner is even worse.  Who knows. Maybe the new fiber optic service is great. I bet I'm going to have problems getting my office network working again though. It's almost inevitable that some of my old equipment won't want to play nice with AT&T's new equipment.

I've been trying to get ready for tomorrow's photo shoot. The first problem is always finding everything. Equipment I don't use very often has a tendency to disappear. It's important to have enough fully charged batteries to make it through the day as well. It's fairly easy to remember the camera batteries. It's the little things like the batteries for the flash triggers that I tend to forget. I always buy a new backdrop before these Christmas photo shoots, mostly so repeat customers won't have the same pictures year after year. When Janet and I unfolded the new muslin tonight, it didn't look like it was the right size.  We measured everything and it was the exactly same size as last year's backdrop. Maybe my eyes are just playing tricks on me.

I was working on a new article today when I realized that the subject seems very familiar. I looked through my files and it appears that I wrote exactly the same article last Spring. Did the client forget that we'd already covered this subject, or am I the one who's missing something? I sent the client an e-mail saying that we'd probably done this already, but I haven't heard anything back yet. Hope I didn't talk myself out of a job. This article would have been very easy to write.

I'll be real glad when these holiday photo shoots are over with. Each year, the equipment seems heavier and my aches and pains get worse. I thought last year might be my last, but here I am again. Janet is staying home this year, so I wont have to worry about Dot. All I have to worry about is whether I make it through the day.

Greta is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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