Day 4889 - Mother's Day

Today was mostly a dreary, very wet day. We got lucky and were able to walk Dawn this morning before the rain started. We were even able to give her a very short Sunday outing walk during a short break in the rain later in the day. For the most part, it rained all day though. As you know, I'm not a big fan of rainy days. So far the roof hasn't leaked, but the pumps on the roof have been running all day.

Very little can deter us from our regular schedule, so we had a big family breakfast after we took Dawn on her early walk and then I got ready to go mall walking. It was raining on my way to the mall, but that was a good thing. It washed all the dust and tree pollen off my car. I wouldn't think of mall walking as a Mother's Day event, but there were a surprising number of moms with kids at the mall this morning. There were also quite a few dads taking their kids to the mall alone, presumably to give mom the day off. Maybe I'm imagining things, but the families walking with their kids together all seemed happier than the dads minding the kids by themselves.

Nothing changed at the mall this week. No new stores opened and no existing stores closed. One or two window displays changed, but most of them were exactly the same as well. It seems curious to me that some stores change their window displays every single week, while others haven't changed since I started mall walking. There is nothing new in fashion anymore. Everything in the windows is something I've seen two, ten, or even twenty years ago. I could pick almost any moth eaten old item of clothing out of my closet and I'd be right in style. Maybe I'm being too harsh though. One thing has changed. Shoes. There are a lot of really ugly looking shoes in store windows these days.

When I was driving home there was a show on NPR radio about an explosion of fake scientific papers in the academic world. Up to 20% of scientific papers published these days appear to be fake. Apparently there is great pressure to publish in the academic world and jobs and promotions depend on your publishing history. The people who have nothing to say purchase fake papers. It makes you wonder how much bogus information is floating around out there.

We were planning to skip the Sunday outing walk today and just go for ice cream cones, but Dawn seemed eager to walk. We waited for a break in the rain and took her to a section of the park where there were sidewalks so we wouldn't get muddy. We got lucky with the weather because it didn't start raining again until we were finished walking and back in the car. Dawn seemed happy with her short walk and was even happier when we arrived at the ice cream store. Ice cream cones on Sunday is a nice little ritual that we all seem to like.

I was going to call the roofing company tomorrow morning to postpone next week's roof installation, but the last time I looked at the weather forecast everything has changed and it now looks like the weather will be good next week. I'll check again tomorrow morning and see how things look. I'm beginning to think that the weather forecasts I get on my phone are basically worthless. There are pretty good for telling you what is going to happen five minutes from now, but almost useless for telling you what will happen five days from now. Every time I look at one of these weather apps, the forecast seems to change.

It appears like Axiom is going to wait until the last minute to provide credentialing information for next Sunday's AX-2 launch. I still don't know if I'm going to go. This is frustrating, but almost expected by now. Nobody seems to care that I might have trouble making travel arrangements. I guess I'll just wait and see what happens. Maybe I'll go to next Sunday's launch. Maybe we'll get a new roof next week. At this point your guess is as good as mine.

Lady is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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