Day 4466

Dawn wouldn't eat this morning so I had to get out the canned food. If you have a finicky eater, you always keep a little canned food in reserve. I finally got Dawn to eat and do her business, but she is not a happy camper. Despite my best efforts, she still seems stressed and nervous. I think she's given up hope that Janet is going to return and thinks she's stuck with me now. I wish I could convince her that this is all just temporary, but it's hard to convince a stubborn dog of anything.

Other than trying unsuccessfully to cheer Dawn up, it was a fairly uneventful day. I took my long walk, wondered how to eliminate my foot pain, and eventually got the star tracker out again to try to answer the manufacture's questions. The weather was quite warm today but it was really windy. I felt like I was going to get blown off the trail at some points. I walk so slow when my feet are bothering me that I don't know if it even counts as exercise anymore. You've got to keep moving though, and walking is still a great way to fill an empty day.

One of the big selling points of the star tracker was how easy it was to use. I've just about concluded that this isn't true at all. This thing is actually very hard to use and if you don't do everything exactly right and in the proper order it will crash on you. The one encouraging thing is that the software gets better with each new release. I'm probably just not used to being a Beta Tester. I think I finally found the information that Benro wants to document my many crashes, but that's as far as I went today. I still haven't taken the tracker outside at night.

I should have been down at KSC for the Artemis-1 roll out today but I wasn't even invited. Most of my rocket photographer friends were there. Why was I overlooked? Nevermind that I couldn't have gone anyway. NASA couldn't have possibly known that I was here in Dallas caring for a very nervous dog. I tend to overthink things like this. There's probably a reasonably explanation. All I know is that it took me a long time to become accepted as a member of the Kennedy Space Center press. I'd really hate to start over again at this point.

I had a virtual meeting with my financial advisor recently and for the first time I can remember he talked about moving some of my assets into gold. This has never happened before. There has been one crisis after another over the years but maybe the current one is even worse than I thought. I really don't think Putin would nuke a Western country because it would mean the end of the world. Crazy men do crazy things though, so who knows. I remember growing up in an era where all people thought about was nuclear war. People built fallout shelters in their backyards and every other Twilight Zone episode seemed to be about some kind of nuclear disaster. I remember doing the duck and cover exercises in grade school although they wouldn't have helped much. If you are really worried about nuclear war, you need to move to a remote rural area with favorable prevailing winds immediately and start stocking up on canned food and fresh water. If you wait until conditions get worse it will be too late.

I'm not going anywhere because I still think in the long run sanity will prevail. Until then I'll just keep on keeping on. I took this week's trash out to the curb tonight and I'm really hoping that Dawn's appetite will return in the morning. All things considered we've done pretty well, but she's still Janet's dog.

Allie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day