Day 4000

Today was a milestone. Yay. I've only got 1000 days left to reach my goal. It's hard to believe that I've been blogging now for 4000 consecutive days. I've never missed a single day. Tornados, illness, travel, and numerous power outages never stopped me. The lack of anything to say never stopped me either. Blogging is not very popular anymore and readers have dwindled, but I soldier on toward an arbitrary and somewhat meaningless goal. 5000 days actually seems within reach. I can do this. If you continue reading, I'm sure something interesting will happen within the next three years.

Today's interesting event was our annual Santa Paws photo shoot. In previous years Dalmatian Rescue has organized multiple Santa Paws events in early December. I don't know why, but people love to have a picture of their pets with Santa. These holiday events have always been popular and are a reliable fundraiser for Dalmatian Rescue. Covid has made holding events like this much more difficult, but we pulled it off. Even Santa wore a mask this year. We only scheduled a single event and reservations were spaced out a bit more, but I think we were successful. 

I think we did a great job keeping everybody safe and people loved their pictures. Everyone was polite and followed the rules. Compared to grocery shopping or going to a hardware store, I don't think having your dog's picture taken with Santa was risky at all. Once I got used to it, wearing a mask all day wasn't that bad either. I wore my good N-95 mask, but just about anything would have sufficed. Nobody was really that close together.

There were no equipment failures today and no dogs peed on the backdrop either. If we do this again next year I'm going to have to replace a few things. One of the stands that holds up the backdrop is on its last legs. The softbox I use as a key light has seen better days as well. My Norman strobes and power packs seem indestructible though. I've used these things for so many years and they still function flawlessly. The aging equipment seemed expensive at the time, but it turned out to be a good investment.

Dawn has absolutely no separation anxiety. She didn't seem to mind that we were gone all day at all. We checked on her with the webcam from time to time and I think she just slept on the bed all day. It would have been nice to get a Santa picture with her, but Dawn hates riding in the car and the kennel can be stressful as well. I think she enjoyed a long, peaceful nap.

Tomorrow, a lot of the photo gear goes back in the storage warehouse for another year. I've already washed the backdrop and it came out looking like new. Maybe when I dig this stuff out again, the world will be back to normal. I certainly hope so anyway.

Ellis is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day