Friday, January 1, 2021

Day 4026 - New Year's Day

It didn't really feel like a holiday. I've completely lost track of the days. All the familiar reference points seems to have disappeared. There was no Friday morning trash pickup today. The Rose Bowl is being played at Texas Stadium instead of in California. Were there other bowl games today? I'm not sure. Most of these games are named after corporate sponsors now. Janet's gym was open today, but Walmart and Costco are closed. Dawn doesn't even like to walk in the mornings anymore. It's all very disorientating.

I slept in late and had my usual smoothie for breakfast. I was surprised that I slept well. We stayed up late last night and drank Bellinis and nibbled on a cheese tray while we watched a surprisingly elaborate fireworks show on TV. Why did Dallas even have a fireworks show this year? It was cold and raining outside and crowds weren't allowed to attend anyway. 

At least it wasn't raining today. We were hoping that delaying our walk until about 1 PM would keep Dawn interested. She hates damp weather though and we were out of luck. We walked about a third of a mile and then Dawn froze and refused to walk further. I couldn't really blame her for wanting to go home. It was very cold and damp outside. As soon as we returned home, Dawn jumped on the bed and went to sleep. Janet and I should have done the same, but we have both become addicted to movement. We continued walking.

Yesterday I hardly walked at all because it was raining all day. Even though it was cold and dismal, we walked our usual five miles. It's too bad that Dawn wouldn't join us. We started doing all this walking for her. Maybe Dawn knew that the open meadows she enjoys were all muddy today. Some were covered with water and even had ducks swimming in them. We got a lot of rain yesterday.

When we returned home I was determined to figure out what had gone wrong with my website update yesterday. I basically screwed everything up and ruined my site. Why did everything work on the development site I use, but not on my own server. Eventually, I discovered that some of the server side code I used wasn't supported by my hosting company and didn't do anything at all. So much for all the fancy stuff. I could either abandon my update and upload my old site again, or figure out how to make the new site a little less complex. None of this was my idea of fun, but what else did I have to do today.

I made incremental small changes and uploaded them to see if they worked. I did this over and over again. It took a long time because I really didn't know what I was doing. The more fancy animation I discarded, the better the site seemed to work. After uploading a half a dozen different versions, I finally came up with something that wasn't totally embarrassing. I should accept my limitations. I still like old fashioned static sites and hate all the extra steps you have to take to make a modern website mobile and tablet friendly. I guess what I came up with today will have to do for a while. The website doesn't have many visitors. Very few people will even notice that anything has changed.

I don't know how we're going to get Dawn excited about life again. She seems depressed. I'm certainly no motivation expert. On most mornings I have a hard time getting out of bed myself. Maybe there is nothing wrong with Dawn at all. I tend to overthink things. We'll see how things go in the new year. Janet would like to take Dawn to the training class that Dot and Dash seemed to enjoy. Of course that class has been canceled because of Covid. Can we move beyond Covid this year? I certainly hope so.

Jasper is today's Dalmatian of the Day


Watch of the Day