Day 3494

After breakfast this morning, I went and got groceries for the week. Usually Janet cooks on the weekends and I eat leftovers during the week. No leftovers this week. Janet is on vacation with her sister and the refrigerator is empty. I'm not much of a cook so I got some more of those Cadence Kitchen flash frozen meals. I was real excited when this concept was initially introduced, but I'd almost forgotten about the stuff. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the company had added a bunch of new dishes to their repertoire. I will be eating Pesto Shrimp, Creamy Arbol Chicken, and Pulled Pork with Pineapple this week. Did I fix any of these things tonight? Nope. I just had a hot dog.

The backyard birdbath sculpture is back together. I took the pieces over to the Creative Arts Center where my friend is teaching a metal arts class. I thought it would take weeks to fix the sculpture, but she welded it back together on her lunch break. I was surprised that the Creative Arts Center has been around since 1966 and I'd never even heard of it. It wasn't that far away either. There was some really impressive work on display and a ton of interesting classes that were open to anyone. Maybe I should take a class. Or maybe not. I am very ambivalent these days. It's nice to know that a place like this exists. At any rate, if I ever feel the urge to carve stone, fuse glass, throw pots, or learn to weave I'll know where to go.

There is so much information online about the Apollo Fiftieth Anniversary that I have become overwhelmed with facts and figures. I read the articles and watch the YouTube videos wondering why it took fifty years for the world to become interested in this stuff. Probably as soon as the anniversary is over people will forget about the moon again. When I read some of the biographies of people who worked on the Apollo program, I'm amazed at how young many of them were at the time. Some of the engineers manning the consoles at mission control weren't much older than I was. I never realized when I was in architecture school that there were people my own age working on the space program. Of course there were many people my own age fighting in Vietnam as well. All these programs about the Apollo 11 Anniversary are making me realize that 1969 was a long time ago.

I took my morning walk an hour earlier than usual today. It didn't make any difference. It was still way too hot. If I was smart, I'd get up really early like I used to when I walked Dot and Dash. Unfortunately, I'm still enjoying getting a good night's sleep. You can't really walk and sleep at the same time. I'm trying to convince myself that sweating profusely is good for you. Who knows. Maybe it is. I do drink lots of water when I return home, and I always wear a hat now, so I'm probably OK.

I wonder how long I can avoid mowing the grass. It's starting to get long again. I'm ready to patch the tears in the roof coating but the roofer hasn't delivered the silicon yet. There's a new Dalmatian that needs to be photographed too. I guess I'll start by getting more fresh fruit tomorrow morning. I'll eat a peach and then decide what to do next.

Beemer is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 3370

I'm glad I saw Apollo 11. The film got mixed reviews, but I think that anyone who is old enough to remember the event will agree with me. This wasn't just a movie, it was a time machine. The 65mm footage of the launch itself was spectacular, but what struck me the most were all the little details that brought the sixties back to life. Everybody smoked back then. It was amazing to see how many of the engineers and technicians at mission control were smoking cigarettes and pipes. Each of the flight controllers had a black rotary dial land line phone next to their console. Reporters were calling in their stories using pay phones. Some were typing on small portable manual typewriters. The men had crew cuts and a surprising number of women had beehive hairdos. This is exactly the way it was. It's funny how modern I thought the world was when I was in college. Back then I couldn't have imagined the world we live in today.

You can forget a lot in fifty years. As I was exiting the theater, a couple of older looking guys were commenting on the film. "How old were you when we went to the moon," one guy asked. "I was 8," his friend replied. "I was 6," the other guy said. Good grief. I must be really old. I was in college when the launch happened. The guys ahead of me at the theater looked old enough to be retired and I was at least ten years older than them. I not only remember Alan Shepard and John Glenn's first flights, I remember Ham the monkey. I was pretty young at the time, but I even remember Sputnik 1 in 1957.

When I went to the theater this afternoon I realized I was totally out of the loop. The guy at the ticket counter asked me to pick a seat on a touch screen. "I can't just go inside and sit where I want," I said. "No," said the attendant. "You have to pick a seat first." I guess even going to the movies is done on your phone now. You can get your ticket and pick a seat in advance. That explained why some of the best seats were already taken, even though the theater was almost empty when I went inside. I was so confused that I ended up sitting in the wrong row. "But it says Row G right on my ticket," I said to the guy next to me. "No, this is a G-Rated film," he explained to me. "Your seat is over there."

Later today, I watched another short film on my computer called Seattle is Dying. What a contrast. Apollo 11 was an incredibly optimistic story about one of the greatest achievements in human history.    Seattle is Dying is basically a cautionary tale about how civilization is literally crumbling under our feet. I guess that's the difference between 1969 and 2019. I used to live in Seattle. It was a great place in the early 70's. Seattle used to be called the Emerald City because it was so beautiful. The city now has one of the highest crime rates in the country. Drug abuse and homelessness are out of control. Parts of the city look like a third world country. Citizens don't feel safe anymore. You wonder how things deteriorated so quickly. It's sad. No wonder I would prefer to live in 1969.

It was nice to have a break from the usual Sunday chores today. I didn't really miss going to the gym. I'll catch up on chores tomorrow. The only useful thing I did today was make some temporary repairs to the balky French toilet. I've discovered that there's a weird little rubber piston in the flush mechanism that causes the toilet to run if it gets dirty. Periodically, I take the piston assembly apart and clean all the parts with alcohol. This usually fixes things for a few months.

Dash had a good day. He was still as slow as molasses, but he really enjoyed his outings in the park. The weather was beautiful and there were lots of things to smell. I wish I could do a better job of keeping him from stumbling. I do the best I can and we're still walking, so I guess that's all that counts. I evidently didn't do a great job of cleaning him up last night when he pooped either. He still had a brown tail when I woke up this morning.

I promised myself that I'll get started on my taxes tomorrow. I don't always keep my promises though.

Allie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 3130

Persistence pays off. The roof has finally been repaired. Lord knows how long I've been complaining about this roof. I'm sure the time is measured in years, not months. I'll have to wait until the elastomer coating dries completely before I can inspect things, but at first glance, it looks like the guys did a good job. I really hope that these repairs work. I'm tired of having problems with the roof. I'm tired of complaining too. Truthfully, I'd like to forget about the roof for a while. In retrospect, I wish the roofers had told me in the beginning that the high-tech membrane roof wasn't appropriate for my type of building. An old fashioned tar and gravel roof would have worked much better. That's ancient history now. The roof is what it is.

Every year on this date I grow nostalgic about the moon landing. I feel really old when I hear adults who aren't that young themselves talk about viewing the landing with their parents when they were seven. I was in college at the time. 1969 was a great year. The moon landing and Woodstock both happened during the same summer. I miss those times. There was a spirit of optimism that had nothing to do with political parties. We were a country then. Now we're just a bunch of warring tribes.

We had our second consecutive day of record heat with temperatures topping out at 108 degrees. They say the heat wave should peak tomorrow when temperatures could reach 110 degrees. We're also setting new records for electricity and water usage. I hope the power company can meet the demand. I'm not sure that Dash could handle a power outage. We were without electricity for four days in July when we first moved here. It was miserable. Even without a power outage, I worry about the air conditioner. It's been running non-stop for several days now. I had an HVAC company as a client once and they told me that there were an unbelievably number of air conditioner failures during Summer heat waves. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. This oppressive heat can't last forever.

Our morning walk went well this morning. We got started before sunrise and there was a nice breeze. I shortened our route and we only walked about half the distance we usually do. This seemed to do the trick. Dash was normal when we returned home. The roofers got started early too. They were up on the roof before I left for breakfast. It was smart to get started early. The temperature was only 87 degrees at sunrise but quickly rose to triple digits within a matter of hours.

It goes without saying that I stayed inside most of the day. I did go out for breakfast and got some groceries on the way home, but that was about it. I ordered the same meal I had last Friday, but it tasted different. There must have been a different chef this morning. I don't know why consistency is so important to me. Breakfast was actually fine. I just wish it was exactly the same as last week.

We're setting the alarm to get up extra early tomorrow. It's going to be the only way to give Dash a decent walk.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1975

I should be used to the rain by now, but it still amazes me how wet it's been this Spring. This has to be one for the record books. Today was another near all-day rain, punctuated with small, well-placed intervals where I was lucky to get the dogs out for shortened morning and evening walks. It's not raining now, but I think the weather is just taking a breather. There is even more rain in the forecast for tomorrow.

Previous rainy days this week have allowed me to get caught up on work, so there wasn't really a lot to do today. I finally got my May invoices in the mail, but that was about it.

I contemplated just watching movies on Netflix today, but couldn't find anything I really wanted to see. Instead, I decided to do some more work on my mobile friendly test site. I think I've learned all the easy stuff, because I had difficulty grasping some of the concepts I was trying to learn today. I ended up making a mess of the test site and had to upload an older archived version to get back to square one. I don't know why I'm spending so much time with this, since most of my clients don't seem very interested in mobile anyway.

I thought I try to get through the day without any pain pills for my teeth. Things must be getting better, because it wasn't all that bad. It's probably time to stop taking Ibuprofen anyway, since it isn't very good for the liver. I still had my breakfast banana milkshake, mostly because the dogs love bananas. I always share with them. Even though it took a while to rinse out the food particles, I had solid food for dinner. There was a tasty casserole in the refrigerator that would have been awful if I liquified it and turned it into soup. Everything in moderation, I guess. Once my mouth has healed completely, I'll still use the Vitamix, but I doubt that I've have soup more than once a week.

I wanted to find out if there were any more NASA launches that I could apply to attend and discovered instead that all the NASA websites are offline. There used to be a ton of NASA sites and they're all gone. Budget cuts I guess. As a web developer it would seem like it might actually be more expensive to take a large site down than to simply leave it up and not update it as frequently. What do I know though. The government works in mysterious ways.

Did you know that the Rolling Stone song Can't Get No Satisfaction was recorded fifty years ago yesterday? Jeez. These guys are still touring and selling out huge stadiums too. When I was learning to play to this song in high school, I never dreamed that we'd still be listening to a seventy year old Mick Jagger singing it fifty years later. Yep. The Stones are coming to Texas Stadium this Summer and the show is already sold out. In just a few more years, it will be fifty years since we landed on the moon. Amazing! What have we really accomplished since then? Sure, we all have smartphones now, but I can tell you from experience that life was a lot more interesting in 1969.

I'm not sure how interesting it is going to be tomorrow. My clever phone tells me that there will be thunderstorms tomorrow. Back in 1969, I never knew when it was going to rain until I got wet.

Haley is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1313

It's hard to believe that it's been 44 years since we landed on the moon. I still remember those grainy pictures of Neil Armstrong slowly exiting the Lunar Excursion Module like it was yesterday. I was in college at the time and watched the landing in the ballroom of the university student union because I didn't have a TV of my own in the rooming house where I lived while going to architecture school. Those were good times. The Summer of 69 was a magical period in history when anything was possible. A month after the moon landing was Woodstock. Jimi Hendrix and Neil Armstrong defined my world. A few years later I graduated, completely convinced that both the moon landings and the spirit of Woodstock would last indefinitely.

I was wrong of course, but I'm certain that the optimism I felt during the Summer of 69 contributed to my early success. It was easy to get a job back then. I was hired as a junior designer by a well known architect in Seattle. I was given an opportunity to make documentary films. Nothing really seemed like a struggle. I don't think I would have fared nearly as well in today's world.

I still can't really tell you how the kid who thought he was going to be the next Richard Avedon wound up taking pictures of Dalmatians instead. It's been quite a ride though and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Actually, taking pictures of Dalmatians is quite enjoyable. Janet and I photographed one of our new rescue dogs today. Sterling is a young guy who seems to be filled with the same exuberant optimism I felt in 1969. It was hard to get a good picture though, because Sterling wouldn't stay still. Hopefully, I captured the happy boy that he is. He should find a home quickly.

Later in the afternoon when I took Dot and Dash on their afternoon walk they both heard a loud thunderclap off in the distance. The noise triggered their storm phobia and I could barely hold on to them as they tried to make a hasty retreat back to the house. I tried my best to get the dogs to slow down, since this was exactly how Dot lost a nail last year. It never did rain very much, but the thunder alone was enough to convince Dot and Dash that the sky was falling. I got under a blanket with them and watched a cooking show on PBS until they calmed down.

I made another attempt to figure out what was wrong with the garbage disposal today. I took the faceplate off the control panel for the oven and other kitchen gadgets and tried to trace the wiring for the disposal. No loose or burned wire found. Everything seems completely normal. The disposal still doesn't work though. I added making an appointment with an appliance repairman to next week's to-do list.

It's hard to say whether the dogs will get their Sunday trip to the dog park tomorrow. The mornings start out clear and sunny and then by mid-afternoon little thunderstorms start springing up all over town. We'll see what happens. So far, it's been a nice weekend.

Lady Jane is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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