Day 4555

It was a very slow day. I mostly thought about things I needed to do, but didn't get around to doing many of them. The daily routine is pretty familiar by now. We get up and take Dawn on her sunrise walk. I make the bed while Janet and Dawn are eating breakfast and then I go eat my own breakfast. Out of habit I turn on the computer after breakfast and check my e-mail. I only get one or two important messages a month these days. Since the temperature is getting hotter, I'm making a real effort to start my long walk before 9 AM. The weather is still nice this early, but by the time I return at 11 AM it is already oppressively hot. 

There are still a lot of wildflowers in the park, but most of the animals are in hiding. It's just too hot. I haven't even seen many ducks lately. What I do see is a lot of construction activity. The new concrete trail that they are building is almost completed. The construction company must have a penalty clause in their contract because activity has increased a lot lately. I think the whole project is supposed to be completed by the end of June.

I still haven't run the new dishwasher yet, but I did read the instruction manual today. This thing is way too complicated. If you hold certain buttons for three seconds a sub-menu appears with even further choices. I think I liked the simple round dial on the old dishwasher better. There were just three settings: heavy wash, normal wash, and light wash. You turned the dial to the setting you wanted and that was it. I'll try this thing tonight and we'll see how it goes. It will be interesting to see if the dishes actually get dry. I wish they'd used an electric heating coil to dry the dishes instead of using this "dynamic drying" feature which is just marketing hype for no drying at all. It's easy to accidentally turn the dishwasher on by leaning against it as well. I guess I shouldn't complain. This was the only model that would fit under our kitchen counter.

I found a small hole in the screen wire side of the atrium and sealed it today. Hopefully I sealed the rat out instead of sealing it in. I think it is gone because I haven't seen it in over a week. When I removed the Havahart trap from the atrium I noticed that some of the cheese had been eaten. The clever rat had figured out how to eat the cheese without setting off the trap.

I installed the latest star tracker app on my phone, but didn't have the nerve to upgrade the firmware on the device and test it again. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow. Just like with my phone, watch, and computers, you eventually have to install the upgrades. It's frustrating how often upgrades actually make things worse though. If you ignore the upgrades, your machine basically isn't supported anymore. Since I run an older operating system on my main computer, my browser crashes a lot more than it should. I can't run the latest browsers though because they are linked to the latest operating systems.

Dawn is still leaving the room whenever I try to take a nap with her during the day. She just seems nervous whenever Janet isn't in the house. This is discouraging, but I don't think this behavior is going to change. I don't think she's going to be happy when Janet goes on vacation, but as long as I can keep her eating and taking her meds, we'll be OK. 

I'm already tired of summer and it's just getting started. We've got a long way to go. It's already too hot to mow the grass or do yard work. The air conditioner is struggling to keep the house as cold as we like. Unfortunately I've already used up my travel budget for the year, so I'm stuck here until things start to cool down again. Hopefully nothing else breaks this summer. I'd much rather buy a new camera than another major appliance.

Daisy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day