Day 2587

I'm always a little superstitious on Friday the 13th., but I'll have to admit there was nothing to be afraid of. Today was a perfectly normal grey, Winter day. I should quit complaining about Texas weather, because with the exception of a few weeks in April and October, it's all bad. I did get to go out for breakfast this morning, because the all day rain that was predicted never amounted to anything. There were a few intermittent showers, but what else would you expect on a dismal, grey day.

I got an e-mail this morning advertising a WiFi scale that measures your weight, muscle mass, bone density, heart rate, body mass index, pulse wave velocity and a couple of other things automatically, instantly sending the results to an app on your phone. How can they measure all these things, just by standing on a scale? I do remember standing on a machine at my doctor's office last year that did a lot of the same things, but I never imagined that it would become an inexpensive consumer product. The scale was on sale too. Naturally, I bought the thing. Ever since I started wearing fitness trackers, I'm become obsessed with tracking everything. This is probably the future of medicine. There are already WiFi blood pressure and blood sugar meters available, with more sophisticated products on the horizon. In a few years, you probably won't even go to the doctor for a check up. You'll just have a medical account in the cloud somewhere where your doctor can monitor all these gizmos. This will be fine by me. You wait forever in the lobby for your doctor's appointment these days and half the time I catch a cold by sitting next to someone who is sick.

Janet saw a coyote this morning while she was walking Dot. Neighbors have reported frequent coyote sighting as well. This makes me a little nervous, because I walk the dogs at dawn and dusk, when the pack is active. I'll have to be a little more careful walking Dash, because he loves to walk through wooded areas. A lone coyote doesn't bother me, but they act differently when they're in a pack. I sometimes hear these animals hunting at night and it's an eerie sound when they make a kill. One year when there were lots of coyotes in the area, the local bunny population declined dramatically. Several neighbors have lost their cats as well. With an increasing number of aggressive loose dogs, snakes in the summer, and coyotes in the winter, I occasionally wonder why I go to the park at all.

I've got to figure out a better solution for walking the dogs in the evening. Morning are usually fine, because Janet walks Dot while I walk Dash. In the evening I walk each dog one at a time. The problem is that each dog wants to be first. If I walk Dot first, Dash gets moody and won't take a good walk later. If I walk Dash first, Dot often poops in the house while we're gone. I wish Dot and Dash understood how difficult this is for me, but they don't. They're dogs. At least Dot's urinary incontinence seems to be improving.

I hope the weather clears up this weekend. If someone ever makes a tracker that correlates your mood with the amount of sunlight you're receiving, I'm sure I'd discover that I don't do well on days like this. Even though I already know the answer, I'd probably buy the machine, because I'd like to see my mood on a graph.

Taylor is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day