Day 3168

Things got off to a slow start today. When we woke up there was poop everywhere. Dash woke me up around 2 AM when he needed to go out and pee. Jeez. Why didn't he wake me up again when he needed to do this? This morning, Dash was sleeping beside me on the bed. Nothing seemed wrong at all. This brown trail leading to the back door was particularly hard to clean up. When the liquid mess dried it seemed to turn to concrete. To make matters worse, some of the poop had gone down one of the furnace floor vents. Yuck. We didn't notice until we cleaned up everything on the bricks and still smelled poop.

Sadly, this is just the new normal. Dash can't help himself. I can tell he tries because he is always heading toward the back door when the explosion happens. Senility and incontinence are a bad combination. By the time Dash remembers he needs to poop, it is almost always too late.

The city finally mowed the meadow behind our house today. If they'd been one day earlier, we might have avoided yesterday's unfortunate encounter with the bees. Dash and I took a different route on our morning walk, but we'll return to our regular route tomorrow. There's no point in being superstitious. The bees are everywhere. Dash has actually been stung at several other locations in the park, so it's just luck when we manage to avoid the bees. I just hope we never encounter a snake.

By the time I'd finished cleaning the house, I almost didn't feel like having breakfast. The smell of poop does that to me. I persevered though, because without a decent breakfast I knew I'd just snack on crackers all day. I wish I still got excited about food. As other activities have gradually faded, a really good meal had always been one of my few remaining pleasures.

After breakfast, I picked up some more Phenobarbital for Dash at the vet. There aren't many reasons to leave the house anymore. Even though I did nothing of consequence, the day still seemed busy. In addition to cleaning the floors and furnace vents, I also had to wash the comforter on the bed. Unfortunately, Dash doesn't do a very good job of wiping his butt.

I called the auction house this afternoon to make sure they got the information they requested this weekend. Their e-mail said "please confirm by Monday, August 27" and I didn't want to do anything wrong. The two auctions in October are starting to make me nervous. Everyone seems excited and optimistic, but what if nobody bids?

I have about a week to decide whether I want to apply for the NASA trip. I looked up airfares and hotel rates in Pasadena today. Why are flights to Burbank so much more expensive than flights to LAX? The Burbank airport is much closer to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. At first glance, it looks like a three day trip will be fairly expensive. One good thing is that unlike launches, the date for a spacecraft landing is fixed. The InSight lander will reach Mars on November 26. At least I could save some money on a plan-ahead airfare. I'm getting ahead of myself though. There's no guarantee that NASA would even accept my application and even less of a guarantee that Dash will be healthy enough for me to leave for a few days.

At least the market was good today. If I'm going to have a future as a space launch groupie, this bull run is going to have to continue for a while.

Dot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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