Tuesday, May 25, 2021

Day 4170

We've had every type of weather imaginable today. Pounding rain, high humidity, pleasant breezes, a little sunshine: take your pick. The heavy rain came early and it was relentless. It overwhelmed the pumps on the roof, but luckily the roof still didn't leak. In my younger days I would have climbed up on the roof during a dry spell and unclogged the pumps, but I'm just not up to it anymore. The roof will have to wait.

I'm going to have to come up with an alternative to watching television while I eat breakfast. Not only is the news unrelentingly depressing, the commercials are even worse. I seem to see the same seven mindless commercials over and over again. Most of them are for pharmaceutical products that will probably end up killing you in the long run. Even the business channels have gotten weird. I'm tired of hearing about bitcoin and non-fungible tokens. Nobody really understands these things, but everyone has a story about someone who got wealthy by buying or selling them. Young people seem to love bitcoin, but today's blockchain millionaires seem a lot like the Dutch tulip moguls of the 1600's. I'm old, so gold, boring blue chip stocks, and old Perry Mason movies make more sense to me.

I had to change the sheets today, which is always difficult with Dawn. It takes me a long time to make the bed now with a bad shoulder and weak knees. I usually try to make the bed while Dawn is eating breakfast, but when I'm changing the sheets I can never get finished in time. When Dawn finishes her breakfast she runs back to the bedroom and hops on the bed again. It doesn't matter to her whether the bed is made of not. I could shoo her away easy enough, but I don't want to make her even more fearful of me. I usually just let Dawn sleep on the bed until Janet returns from the gym for lunch and then Dawn goes out to the kitchen again. I eventually got the job done today, but it never used to take this long.

The more I hear about the post-pandemic surge in travel, the more hesitant I become to even try to return to Kennedy Space Center. There are plenty of launches this year, but hotel prices are rising rapidly, rental cars are scarce, flights are full, and everyone is encouraged to plan ahead. You can't really plan ahead with rocket launches. The dates are always changing. Maybe I'm just making excuses, but this doesn't seem like as much fun as it used to be. I'll be glad when everyone has taken their post-pandemic vacation and life returns to normal.

My long walk was certainly normal today. The skies had cleared, my foot wasn't bothering me, and I managed to complete my full six miles. It was still humid outside, but there was a nice breeze and I felt comfortable. There weren't a lot of people out today because of the recent rain and I pretty much had the park to myself. I like days like this. Even all the ducks were in their regular places, so they were easy to count.

I stopped taking famotidine last week because I thought I was taking too much of the heartburn medication. Bad move. Now, everything seems to give me heartburn. Even my breakfast smoothie gave me problems this morning. I always expect that my doctor will provide a solution to problems like this when I go in for a physical exam. He never does. I complain about feeling tired and having heartburn and he checks my vital signs and tells me how healthy I am. My blood work and EKG were perfect this time. So why do I feel so tired? If I made an effort to be vegan, I probably wouldn't have heartburn at all. Unfortunately, I love spicy food and have very little willpower about eating.

There's going to be an eclipse of the moon early tomorrow morning but I suspect that I will miss it. The forecast predicts cloudy weather with a chance of rain. The moon will be near the horizon anyway, which makes viewing difficult even on a good day. I"ll probably have to wait until I get back to West Texas to enjoy the night sky again.

Ranger is today's Dalmatian of the Day


Watch of the Day


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