Saturday, January 23, 2016

Day 2230

I feel silly complaining about the weather on a day where the entire East Coast is experiencing one of the worst blizzards in history. Texas has its problems, but we seldom get three inches of snow an hour. Jeez, a grand total of three inches of snow period is enough to shut the entire city of Dallas down. At an rate, if you're reading this in the middle of a snowstorm, please stay safe. I can't think of any good reasons to be out on the roads tonight.

Compared to what I was watching on TV this evening, our own weather seemed almost benign. It was cold, but nothing out of the ordinary for January. It even warmed up enough later in the day for me to go up on the roof and clear the water away. There wasn't as much water as I expected, so a lot of it must have blown off the roof during an unusually windy day we had earlier in the week.

Dot had another accident during the night, but I've become so efficient at cleaning things up that I didn't even wake Janet and Dash up while I was getting Dot fresh blankets and loading the washing machine. When I took the bagged up poop out to a special can by the back fence we're reserved for Dot's accidents, I noticed that the sky had turned cloudy. I'll have to wait until things clear off again to look for Mercury in the morning sky. If there's a clear morning tomorrow, I shouldn't have a problem finding the illusive planet. I discovered recently that there is an app on my iPad that uses GPS and a sophisticated star map to mimic the night sky. You just take your iPad outside with you and point it in the general direction of what you are looking at. All the stars and planets in front of you are correctly identified based on the local time and your location. I've tried using this a few times and it's really pretty cool.

What isn't cool is my Jawbone UP band. Another one bit the dust today, so I went to the website where you describe the symptoms you're having and hope the manufacturer will send you a replacement. I love these little fitness and activity trackers, but they aren't very reliable. The bright yellow UP 24 that broke today is the fourth one I've had so far. They all work perfectly until the day they don't. Sometimes they last a year. Sometimes they last 45 days. Occasionally, a reset procedure will bring the band back to life, but typically when the two small status lights quit working, your band is toast.

I looked in two different stores, but couldn't find a DVD copy of The Martian. The movie was released on DVD several weeks ago, so it should have been on the shelves. Actually, there were very few recent movies on the shelves at all. It was almost as if stores weren't even bothering to stock many titles anymore. I think this just illustrates how fundamentally Netflix has changed the landscape. People don't buy DVD's anymore, they just watch them on Netflix, Hulu, or Google Play. Maybe I should just rent The Martian on Netflix like everybody else does. It would certainly be less expensive. My bookshelves are littered with DVD's I've only watched once. The whole concept of owning something is becoming an anachronism and I'm one of the dinosaurs keeping it alive.

My pants are telling me that it's time to go to the gym again. The problem with Winter is that if you wear compression pants under your jeans and sweaters under your outer coat, everything feels too tight. I get cold easily and I even feel too bundled up inside the house. Going to the gym won't fix all this, but I always need a reason to go to the gym. Tight pants seems to be as good a reason as any.

Chloe is today's Dalmatian of the Day
Watch of the Day