Day 3724

I managed to fix the furnace by myself and didn't need the HVAC guys after all. I did need an electrician though. I bought a new security light yesterday, but didn't have the nerve to install it myself. The light is on a pole where the electricity comes into the house. I'm clumsy enough that I don't want to get anywhere near a high voltage electric line. It's worth the money to have an electrician do the foolish, risky stuff. Luckily, the electrician was able to come out this morning and when he finished installing the new security light, I asked if he had time to do a little more electrical work. I had him rewire a few things so I can now turn on the roof pumps from inside the house. This will be a huge improvement. I've grown to hate going out in the rain just to turn the pumps on and off.

I got a haircut today and now feel ready for my trip to West Texas. I asked the folks at the observatory if they were considering canceling their Spring Break activities because of the coronavirus. Nope. The show will go on, but they did say they bought some extra hand sanitizer. It looks like I will be very busy, conducting tours during the day and helping with star parties at night. I hope I enjoy this unique experience. As a rule, I don't enjoy driving long distances. Jeez. I don't even enjoy working. The people at the observatory are extremely nice though and the dark night skies on Mount Locke are hard to beat. Hey, I may even learn a little about astronomy.

I finally assembled all my tax records and took them to the accountant. I always burn a copy of my Quickbooks Pro files to a CD and give this to the accountant as well. It turns out that they had just updated their office computers and none of the new workstations had a CD drive. It made me feel old.  Apparently nobody uses CD's and DVD's anymore. "Why don't you just e-mail us the files," the office manager told me. Duh. Why didn't I think of that?

It doesn't look like this blog is coming back to Facebook any time soon. They have never responded to my inquiries.  It remains a mystery why I have been banished from their platform. How can a blog about rescuing dogs and attending rocket launches be considered offensive by anyone? And why did it take them ten years to decide I was violating their community standards? What are these community standards anyway? I see absolute crap on Facebook every day. I'm kind of the Mr. Rogers of the blog world. Why pick on me? Not that is really matters. I survived the collapse of Klout, Google+, and MySpace. People are still reading the blog. Surprisingly, blog traffic hasn't diminished all that much. A year from now, I'll still be writing and probably won't be thinking about Facebook at all.

When I went up on the roof this afternoon to clear away the water, everything looked pretty good. My patches were solid and so far there have been no leaks, even though we got a lot of rain. It's too early to do a victory lap, but I'm feeling pretty good. Hopefully, the repairs I've made will prevent further leaks until the weather gets warmer and I can power wash the roof and apply the rest of the silicon coating.

The April issue of Spaceflight magazine is out and my article looks good. This is a good reminder that I don't really need Facebook. There are lots of places to share my story. The important thing is just to keep writing.

Rory is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day