Day 2965

The stars were definitely not aligned today. Everything seemed wrong. Dash is still not eating well. I've just about run out of options. Usually if he's not hungry when he wakes up, his appetite will return after a morning walk. Not today. I kept trying different varieties of food and eventually got him to nibble at a few things. He just wasn't hungry though. The tremors have gotten worse as well. Several times today, I noticed that he was shivering a lot. I tried putting a blanket on him, but he didn't seem cold. I went to the vet and got some more Cerenia pills, but I'm not even sure if nausea is causing his problems. I wish Dash could talk and tell me what was going on. His vets don't seem to have any answers.

I received another jury summons this morning. Jury services has taken away my ability to postpone the summons any longer, so it looks like I will have to appear this time. I think I have some perfectly good reasons to be exempt, but none of them qualify. I don't want to catch the flu by sitting with hundreds of people in the jury pool room. I have a sick dog to take care of. A sick person would be a valid excuse, but they don't seem to care about dogs. I don't think they'd even like to hear that I have no faith in the judicial process.

The stock market not only continued Friday's sell off, it had a spectacular crash, dropping over 1,000 points in a few hours. Not good. I'll be the first to admit that the market has gotten ahead of itself, but this is no justification for the largest intra-day drop in history. The business channels had all sorts of explanations for today's crash, but it all comes down to fear and greed. Greedy people pushed the market too high and fearful people are dragging it too low. I hate these wild swings, even though I've seen them many times before. I have no pension or retirement plan. The market is all I have and on days like this, it's of very little use. Ironically, one of the reasons that the market dropped today was the fear that interest rates will rise. Give me a break. Interest rates are still incredibly low. I actually wish interest rates were high. I miss the days when a simple, safe bank CD could earn you 10%.

It looks like I'm going to have to take the freezer apart and defrost the evaporator coil again. The refrigerator is starting to get warm. I guess it's still worth waiting for the President's Day sales, but trying to keep the current refrigerator running for another month is getting real old. I could do the defrost procedure in my sleep by now, but it is still a giant pain in the ass. I've tried keeping the freezer on a warmer setting so the coil won't freeze quite as fast, but it doesn't seem to make any difference. Every week and a half, I'm faced with transferring all the food to a large cooler and taking the freezer section apart to expose the evaporator coil. Hopefully, by this time next month there will be a new refrigerator in our kitchen that will last until it's time for me to be shipped off to assisted living.

Today's events would have been bad enough on a sunny day, but cold temperatures and dismal, grey skies made things even worse. This weather is crazy. Yesterday I was wearing shorts and today it's back to long underwear and a down ski jacket. Oddly, Dash enjoys the cold weather. Even though he had an upset stomach and got me all stressed out with his shivering episodes, he still wanted me to take him on his daily walks. These two walks were probably the only things normal about today.

Zorro is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day