Day 2654

I miss having a favorite restaurant. The days of having exactly the same thing every Friday morning for almost three years in a row are gone. I drift from place to place now, trying something different every time. Occasionally, I think I've found a new home, but I've had trouble staying loyal for more than a month at a time. Nobody seems to make things the way I like any more. The eggs are either too runny or too hard. The pancakes are too thick. And the bacon is too flat and crispy. I'm not trying to expand my horizons or be adventurous. All I want is a place where I can enjoy eating the same thing over and over again. Maybe this is impossible now. I've noticed that there is a lot of turnover in the restaurant business. Every time someone gets a new chef, the recipes change a bit.

Absolute consistency is my holy grail. When I walk Dash in the morning, I find it strangely comforting to see certain cars in the neighborhood leave for work at exactly the same time every morning. When we pass the tennis court on our walk, there is very often a brown pickup truck that turns a corner and passes us. On Friday morning, the garbage truck typically arrives exactly when I leave the park and head down my street toward home. Often people I don't know wave as I pass by. We've been repeating these patterns for a long, long time. The clockwork precision of repeating events makes me feel oddly connected. I'm sure a lot of random stuff happens as I walk by, but I only notice the consistencies.

I got the telephoto lens I've had my eye on for the past month or so. This is a great lens, but it kind of bothers me that many modern lenses no longer have an aperture ring on the barrel of the lens. A lot of them don't have a focus or depth of field scale either. You can still change the f-stop within the camera, but I'd still like to be able to use a lens completely manually. I guess I've got to keep up with the times. I'll have to admit that these new lenses are much better optically than the ones I used to use with my old Nikon F. Who knows. Maybe you'll see some better bird pictures in the days ahead.

I wrote another letter to my sister today. I'm definitely not keeping up with the times with her. I wish more people would revert to quaint old fashioned things like hand written letters. I guess I'd like it if doctors still made house calls and kids still liked electric trains too, but hand written letters are a start.

I tried to catch up on odds and ends this afternoon. I called the roofer again and made an appointment for the landscaper to come out and take a look at our back yard. Dot did pretty well today, although it was to hot to walk her during the day. The days are getting longer, so we can wait until after dinner now. All in all, it was a good day.

The skies are clear, but I'm too tired to go out and look at the stars. There's supposed to be a comet that will be visible through binoculars in the pre-dawn sky this weekend, but I bet I'll be preoccupied trying to keep Dot from peeing on the floor. We'll see.

Smiley is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day