Day 2584

Dash appears to be in good health. He got a precautionary chest x-ray today to make sure his thyroid cancer hadn't reappeared and his lungs looked clear. When Dash was initially diagnosed with cancer, the oncologist recommended periodic chest x-rays, because if his type of cancer metastasized, it would often spread to the lungs. He's been cancer free for over three years now, but we still give him a check-up every six months. The swollen lymph nodes in his neck have returned to normal as well. After getting his anal glands expressed, which he seems to need every time we visit the vet, we returned home to find that Dot was still asleep and hadn't pooped anywhere. I was pleased at how well the morning turned out.

One of my clients wants to change his domain name and move his website to a new server. I started making preparations for the move after Dash and I returned home. Changing domains and webservers is an easy process as long as you know where everything is located. I had to make a few phone calls to find out where the old and new domains were currently registered and see how much time I had to make the move. I got lucky and ended up talking to a good tech support person today, so I think I have all the information I need. I uploaded all the files to the new server and now all I need to do is find out when the client wants to make the switch, so I can point the domains to the right place. None of this required much imagination or was very difficult, but I was still glad to have something to do today.

Our roller coaster weather has bounced back to the unseasonably warm side of the scale. I had the furnace running this morning when we woke up, but it became so warm later in the day that I had to turn the air conditioner on. Only in Texas will you use the furnace and the air conditioner in the same day. I think it is supposed to get even warmer tomorrow and then another storm system will sweep through town toward the end of the week. I hope we don't have thunderstorms on Friday. Thunderstorms always mean that I need to stay home with the dogs and I look forward to going out to breakfast all week.

Dot seems to be improving in a lot of subtle ways. We haven't had an accident on the way to the back door in the morning for the last four days. There's generally been less leaking during the day as well. I'm hoping that the Incurin is starting to work. What's really surprising is how often Dot is able to get up on her own. I often find her standing up in her pen when I return from running errands and sometimes when she wakes up, she will walk out to her water bowl in the kitchen without any help from me. When she's tired, she still barks for assistance, but there's definitely been some improvement. It's too bad it's so difficult to improve muscle mass in older animals. Dot still has three small tumors that are slowly growing in her liver, but her biggest problem is the severe muscle atrophy in her rear legs. It seems harder for me to improve muscle mass too. No matter how much I exercise, my arms and legs are still too thin.

The new ink for my production printer arrived today, so I guess I'll spend tomorrow unclogging the thing. It's amazing how much time I spend staying prepared. There are always batteries to charge, computer files to backup and archive, and a huge, somewhat obsolete printer that seems to need a lot of TLC. I take such good care of my machines that Rod Serling probably could have used my life as a basis for a Twilight Zone episode.

Tomorrow will be another exciting day filled with laundry to fold and poop to clean up. If you didn't know that Dot and Dash were dogs, it would be easy to think you were reading a mommy blog.

Murphy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day