Day 2653

I cleaned the roof this morning. There was still a lot of standing water from yesterday's storm. Even with the help of a sump pump, it almost always takes me at least an hour to remove all the water. While I'm pushing the water off the edge of the roof with a big push broom, I fantasize about living on the eighteenth floor of a luxurious high rise condo. It would be nice not to have to worry about water on the roof, trees falling in the back yard, cracks in the Sheetrock, or ants crawling into the bathroom.

Of course this will never happen. I lived in a condo once when I was younger and when I finally sold the place, I swore I would never live in a place with a condo board or neighborhood association again. People should never live this close together. All I remember from those years were the continual fights between neighbors. It wouldn't be practical to have large dogs in a high rise either. Dash is scared of elevators and panics when he has to ride in one. Dot would get us kicked out of the building. An incontinent dog that can't walk and poops and pees all over the place would make high rise living very difficult.

When I was sitting in the park with Dot this afternoon, a guy on a bicycle stopped and asked if I was John Sealander. I didn't recognize the guy, but it turned out he was a co-worker from a long, long time ago. I asked him if he was retired and he said he was still doing a little consulting. When old men tell you that they are doing a little consulting it usually means they are doing nothing at all. I remembered that this guy started his own agency once. I think he even hired me a couple of times when my own company was getting started. He's probably in the same boat that I am now. At any rate, he couldn't be that busy or he wouldn't be riding his bicycle around the lake in the middle of the afternoon. We had a nice conversation and didn't mention advertising at all.

When I called in the power outage a few days ago I noticed that the automated system recognized my cell phone number and associated it with my street address. This is new. I used to have to call in outage reports from a land line. This worked great in the old days because analog phones were powered by the phone line. You could still use your phone when the power was out. Since most land line phones are voice over IP now, your phone goes out when the power goes down. I still like the old system better when you could talk to a real person who could tell you when the repair crews would be in your neighborhood. I'll have to admit that the automated system works pretty well though. The power company even sent me a text when my power was restored. I probably don't even need the land line anymore. The only people who use it are scammers and telemarketers. I routinely block these people, so I'm actually paying for a service I don't want people to use.

I'm going to have heartburn tonight. I didn't even feel like looking in the refrigerator, so I stopped at a taco place next to the post office after I paid some bills this afternoon. Yesterday's Buddha Bowl was much, much healthier, but the greasy taco was pretty good. I can see a day when I'll never use our oven at all. It's just so much easier to pick up a take out meal than it is too cook.

I certainly won't be cooking anything tomorrow morning. I've been looking forward to my Friday breakfast outing all week.

Sparky is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day