Day 3629

Another active Sunday. I managed to put 22,000 steps under my belt today. It didn't hurt that it was a clear, sunny Fall day. Janet and I took turns being away from the house, so someone was always home with Ginny. When I returned from the gym this morning she gave me one of those Dalmatian smiles. This was the first time we'd seen Ginny smile. I think she likes me.

Some days it's hard to take my five mile walk after I've been to the gym, but today I seemed to have more energy than usual. I even managed to clear the water off the roof as well. When I was walking, I saw my first Kestrel of the season. You never see these birds in the summer, but the American Kestrel is a frequent visitor to the park during the winter months. These small falcons always seem to be looking for food. I also saw a formation of White Pelicans returning to their winter home on Pelican Bay. They approached at a high altitude and then descended in a concentric circle. They almost looked like little airplanes on final approach.

I've decided that I like walking toward the end of the day. As the shadows grow longer and twilight approaches, everything changes quickly. If I start my walk at 4 PM, I can go from full sunlight to darkness in less than two hours. Sunsets are always beautiful on the lake on a clear day. As I approached home in late twilight, I was able to see Venus and Jupiter again. Venus was higher in the sky while Jupiter had moved lower. I was surprised at how much their positions had changed since the last time I saw them.

I was also surprised at how well my roof repairs have held up. We have had a significant amount of rain since I made the repairs and so far there have been no leaks. When I cleared the remaining standing water away this afternoon, everything looked pretty solid. I think my technique in applying the silicon material has improved. This stuff is very expensive and I used to apply a thin coat to cover a wider area. That was a bad idea. You need a thick coat to be effective. It's almost best if you just pour the stuff on the roof and let is flow, rather than try to spread it thinly using a paint roller. I'm learning. I have about a gallon to the silicon material left. I'll try to use if wisely the next time we have a really warm day.

We got another pet monitor to replace the one that broke recently. This probably means that we will be fostering more dogs in the future. Ginny needs to return to the kennel tomorrow afternoon. We've really enjoyed having her as a house guest, but she needs to go to her forever home soon. I used to think that it would be impossible for me to foster dogs because I would want to keep them all. Ginny is near perfect, but I am glad she has already found a good home. I don't know what has caused me to become a little less possessive but it's probably a good thing. Maybe we helped prepare Ginny for the journey she has ahead. On the other hand, maybe we just spoiled her. Either way, it was a very pleasant week. I'm going to miss this girl.

Jada is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2597

It feels strange now to have a busy work day. A client called while I was having breakfast this morning and wanted some help getting things working properly on his new web server. I listened to what he needed and told him it was a piece of cake to take care of his requests. Of course when I turned my computer on a little while later, I quickly discovered that making the changes wasn't a piece of cake after all. It never is. I called technical support, sat on hold for a long time, and asked why my quick fix wasn't working. The tech support guy was very patient and answered all my questions. Of course, I didn't ask all the right questions, so I had to call him back again about an hour later. Everything is fixed now. At least I think it is. If I ever need to make these type of changes again, I'll be able to say "it's a piece of cake" honestly.

The weather was beautiful today. For the first time in ages the sky was completely clear for most of the day. I should have gotten up early and looked for Mercury on the Eastern horizon before sunrise, but I was too tired. I'm staying up later now, mostly so I can get Dot to pee outside one last time before going to bed. We can usually make it through the night this way, but it necessitates a long week of going to bed late and getting up early. If it's still clear out when I go to bed tonight, I'll make more of an effort to look for Mercury tomorrow morning. There should be a thin sliver of a waning crescent moon to help guide me to the right spot.

I've been seeing a lot of kestrels lately on our morning walks. It used to be rare to spot one of these small falcons, but they're everywhere now. These birds are lazy hunters and often perch at the top of trees, looking for mice and insects in the fields below. I have a strange relationship with birds. I enjoy watching them while I walk the dogs, but I hate them when they poop on my car. Birds of prey like the kestrel have little interest in hanging around my yard and making a nuisance of themselves. It's the bluejays and the mockingbirds that are the problem.

I've been experimenting with my new WiFi scale and have discovered that your weight and body composition change throughout the day. It's surprising how much a normal meal weighs. I guess you should always weigh yourself before you eat a big meal. I also lose about a pound after I go to the gym. Does sweat actually weigh that much, or do the calories you burn directly translate into weight loss? Hey, I'm a curious person and I have to amuse myself somehow. Somebody needs to invent a scale that automatically deducts the weight of the clothes you are wearing to give you a true weight. For a scale that can measure bone mass and pulse wave velocity, it would seem like this would be a piece of cake. All you'd have to do is weight yourself with clothes and then again without and have the scale store the difference in memory. Nobody makes a scale like this that I know of. When I go to the doctor, I'm always about ten pounds heavier because I'm wearing boots and my pockets are full of cell phones and keys. It always irritates me when the doctor says I've gained weight and I'm just wearing heavier clothes than I was on my last visit.

I've got more website updates to make tomorrow. I think I prefer writing jobs, but beggars can't be choosers. It this point, I'll take any work I can get. Truthfully, I won't take any work I can get. I guess this is just a convenient way of saying that I'm still interested in keeping my business alive. I really couldn't do a whole lot of work anyway. Dot has become such a high maintenance girl that I only have about three uninterrupted hours each day. I'm really glad the dogs were healthy when my business was booming. There was a time when it wasn't uncommon to work eighteen hours a day.

Chloe is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2511

I'm not catching many breaks with this roof. When I went up on the roof to inspect what the repair crews did yesterday, I was simultaneously pleased and disappointed. It looked like the crew had applied the elastomer coating properly, but there was one big problem. It was a windy day yesterday and tons of small leaves had fallen from our Elm Tree and become embedded in the coating before it had time to dry properly. Now the leaves are probably going to be there forever. If I try too hard to rip them out, I could damage the coating. If I ignore the leaves and leave them where they are, they could react chemically with the coating and cause it to deteriorate prematurely. For over 30 years nature has been trying to tell me that nobody should have built a house on this property. The large trees are pretty but the root systems have penetrated our sewer lines, large tree branches have broken off in storms and landed on the roof, and squirrels have claimed the entire area as their own. I think I lost this battle years ago, but it is still discouraging to be reminded about how relentless the natural world can be about reclaiming what it rightfully owns. The forest will be here long after the house is gone.

Security concerns have forced me to have so many passwords that I can't even begin to remember them all. I felt foolish when I couldn't even remember how to add my existing e-mail account to my new iPad. The hosting company had forced me to start using a new more complex password recently and all I could remember was the original one. I ended up having to call tech support and asked them to guide me through the process. This was embarrassing, since I routinely help other people set up their e-mail accounts for a living. Almost every day something like this happens to remind me that I'm not getting any younger. At any rate, when I finally got the e-mail account working, I set it to remember my log-in information, so I won't have to go through this again.

I saw some Kestrels on my walk with Dash this afternoon. These little hawks appear to be thriving in our area. I see more of them every year. They usually sit on the top of trees looking intently for something to eat. I don't have the patience to be a serious birder, but I do enjoy learning a little more about the animals I see everyday. It's an eat or be eaten world out there. Perhaps if we humans weren't at the top of the food chain, we'd be a little more realistic about our place in the world. Hawks know what to do. All animals know instinctively how to keep things in balance, except for us. We seem to think we're exempt from the cycle of life and I'm convinced that this will lead to our extinction.

I wonder if there is anything that would actually change people's minds in this election. Trump supporters aren't swayed by his frequent displays of incompetence. Hillary supporters are even worse. They could care less about the implications of compromising national security or selling favors to the highest bidder. Politics have become like sports. Everyone is just rooting for their favorite team. I don't think this is going to end well, no matter who wins.

I'm old, so I don't think my life is going to change all that much. If I were young, I'd be worried. How did we let ourselves get to the point where the Kardashians have become role models and two self-centered idiots are running for president. What's scary is that one of these two is going to win.  Idiocracy is just a movie now, but in ten years it's going to seem like a documentary.

Dakota is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1048

I need a new car. The old Defender is getting a little long in the tooth and it would be nice to be driving something reliable again. Unfortunately the only car I'd really like is another Defender. For reasons that remain a mystery to me, Land Rover will not be bringing the Defender back to America until at least 2015. I wonder if my car will last that long?

Today, Janet wanted me to take the Defender up to the dog park and I had to run through a NASA style checklist just to make sure the car was roadworthy. After 100,000 miles, things start to fall off these Defenders. I still drive the car almost everyday, but not with other people inside. My schedule is so amorphous that it is no big deal for me to wait two hours for the AAA tow truck.  Other people have places to go.

At any rate, I pumped up the tires, checked for leaking hoses and off we went. I have to double clutch now, since the synchronizers are gone, but I'm getting pretty good at it. The trip was uneventful and the dogs loved the park today. The weather was absolutely perfect. All the bad weather in the Northeast is bringing good weather to the Southwest. Dash was full of himself today. He repeatedly raced from one end of the park to the other and was faster than any of the other dogs. If you've never seen a Dalmatian run, it's a beautiful sight. They are really quite graceful.

When we returned to the house, I had work to do. I wonder when people stopped respecting weekends as a time of rest and relaxation? I get as many requests on the weekends now as on any other day of the week. I would just as soon do nothing on the weekends, but I usually try to get the weekend assignments completed, so that they don't bog me down when Monday arrives. I got two major website updates completed this afternoon. I would have rather watched a movie, but I'll have to admit that last minute website updates still beat mowing the grass.

I saw my first Kestrel of the season while I was taking the dogs on their evening walk. These small falcons are all over the place during the Winter, but I've never seen one during the Summer months. One by one, all the Winter birds and animals are returning. Redbirds have taken up residence in our yard again and one bold Cardinal apparently wants to build a nest in my office. He pecks on my office window every morning and when I won't let him in, he goes and poops on my car. What is it with these destructive animals? I think this bird has been talking to a certain armadillo.

Abi is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day