Day 4400

Every 100 days I feel a little closer to my goal. Only 600 days left. As daily blog entries go, today was a good one. We met Jack this afternoon at the Dalmatian kennel. What a wonderful dog. Jack is good looking, has a great personality, and is smart as a whip. Janet and I had fun trying out different commands with him. He knew everything. Jack can sit, stay, lie down, and give you a high five with his paw. He comes to his name when he is called and even heels on a leash remarkably well. We couldn't think of anything he didn't already know. I would have loved to take Jack home myself, but we don't have the energy or the money for more than one dog anymore. Jack is definitely a keeper though. I'm sure he will find a fabulous forever home.

Today was pretty busy. In addition to visiting with Jack, Charlie, and Oliver, I finally took the Christmas stuff back to the storage warehouse and picked up a few things I forgot on Saturday at the grocery store. Dawn got a nice sunrise walk and it wasn't even terribly cold this morning. I should have quit while I was ahead on the walking front, but I stubbornly took my long walk anyway after we returned from the kennel. My feet weren't being cooperative today and it was pretty windy as well. Not a very enjoyable walk, but I did manage to get 20,000 steps.

I did absolutely nothing with the star tracker today. I need a rest. If I was really ambitious I could have taken it outside tonight and tried to actually track something. It was a clear night so it might have worked. I find it difficult to do more than one thing in an evening though, and usually that thing is writing the blog. When I'm out at the observatory it's worth staying up really late to write the blog after my stargazing is finished. Not here in Dallas. The light pollution makes the viewing experience so miserable that it's not even worth the trouble to go outside. I'm sure I'll use the star tracker and eventually take many more pictures of the night sky. There is no hurry though. One thing at a time is my motto.

A guy wrote me out of the blue today and said he'd like to buy our house if we ever decided to sell. Strangely, this happens every five or six years. These people aren't your normal real estate investors. They are architecture buffs who already seem to know a lot about the house and its semi-famous architect. Janet and I have no interest in selling, but it's nice to know that there are people out there who are actually interested in preserving the house instead of scraping it so they could build another ugly McMansion. Dallas as a city had no respect for architecture at all. A lot of really nice examples of mid-fifties houses and commercial buildings have already been torn down.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do tomorrow. If I hadn't already been to the orthopedic surgeon twice about my feet, I'd make an appointment. There really isn't a lot I can do about the foot pain. Bone on bone contact is always going to hurt. I could take steroid shots which a terrible thing to do long term, or I could try a wide variety of pain killers. I'm not a fan of pain killers. Some pills are fine. Taking Benicar to lower your blood pressure is fine. Taking Metformin to lower your A1C is fine. I'm not to sure about pills that just mask a condition rather than actually changing anything. A little pain is useful to show you your limits.

Dawn is back to normal now. We may never know what she ate that gave her diarrhea, but we're going to be watching her more closely now. There's way too much poop from a wide variety of animals to tempt her in the park.

Dolly is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day