Day 4138

I had to scramble to get our walks completed before the rain began today. I took my long walk immediately after breakfast and actually made good time. When Janet returned from grocery shopping, we took Dawn on her short one mile loop. Less than half an hour later it began to rain pretty hard. It continued raining for the rest of the day, but it felt good to get most of our major chores out of the way before the deluge began.

It's still raining and I think we got some hail at one point. It could have been a lot worse however. Other parts of North Texas saw tornados. We didn't even have much wind. The two pumps on the roof are working well today, so all is well. I'm continually grateful that Dawn has no storm phobias. Thunder and lightning don't bother her at all. She just freaks out if I'm in the kitchen with her.

The park was pretty empty when I walked this morning. I guess a lot of people didn't want to risk getting wet. I don't want to get wet either, but I've grown to depend on a multitude of weather apps on my phone. I never take selfies, but I do check the weather a lot. Sometimes the weather radar lets me down, but everything worked perfectly today. Hopefully this storm will have moved well to the East by tomorrow when I need to do my own grocery shopping.

My missing package has mysteriously reappeared. It has taken 12 days for it to move from one post office in Indiana to another post office in Indiana. I suspect that it was thrown in the wrong bin and was only recently discovered. The post office assures me that all is well though. The package is on the move. Maybe if I'm lucky, I'll get it sometime next week.

I didn't wake up in time to watch the Crew-2 launch live on the Space X stream, but I watched the replay later. What a beautiful launch! This would have been a great one to see in person. When I see the pictures some of the other launch photographers take, I can't help being a bit envious. I've got to figure out how to get credentialed again. Sometimes I ask photographers I know what their secret is, but nobody has revealed it yet. I'm sure it all depends on who you know. That's how it works in every other aspect of life. Why would it be any different at NASA?

Dawn didn't eat her breakfast this morning. We left the food out and she ate everything normally around noon. When I fixed her dinner this evening, she didn't eat that either. About an hour later when I wasn't in the kitchen, she wandered out and ate everything. Now that Dawn is becoming more confident, she is starting to set her own schedules. There is nothing wrong with this. It is actually a good thing, but it is a bit unnerving for a person like me who had a fixed, inflexible schedule for almost everything.

There are some large, older houses near the halfway point of my daily walk. They were probably built in the 1940's and I've always liked them. Today I noticed that one of my favorite houses was being demolished. This is a trend in our part of town. Developers will buy a house on a large older lot, scrape it, and then put up two large homes on the same lot. There never was a lot of respect for history in Dallas, but   now the old buildings are disappearing faster than ever. I'm sure our house will be scraped someday. It's a shame. A decent person would restore it instead.

I hope I see blue sky in the morning. It's grocery day tomorrow and my list is pretty long. Janet and I have a system on groceries. She buys the things that require a discerning eye and I buy the commodities. It's hard to go wrong when you are just buying beer, laundry detergent, and toilet paper.

Wyatt is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day