Day 3918

Did I do anything at all today? It's hard to say. We certainly got an early enough start on the day. It was interesting to watch the sky change from heavily overcast to nearly clear as dawn approached. A thin crescent moon, Venus, Mars, and several bright stars would pop in and out of the clouds as we walked. The heavy cloud cover actually reflected the city light and made things appear a little brighter than they should. Area rowing clubs were already out on the lake practicing in the dark. The sculls had little electric port and starboard lights that we could see in the distance. I wonder why these guys start so early? Cyclists start pretty early as well. Janet and I are usually the first people walking their dog.

We walk early so Janet can take a class at the gym. I have no reason to get up early at all. Usually these early starts just leave me with more idle time later in the day. I used to like watching the news as a drank my morning smoothie, but current events have spoiled that. There's nothing good on the news these days. I just watched the Weather Channel this morning. Come to think of it, the Weather Channel wasn't very encouraging either. Wildfires are still raging out of control on the West Coast and another hurricane is headed for the Gulf Coast. I'm glad that all we have to deal with at the moment is high humidity.

The Sky and Telescope editor told me not to send high resolution pictures to the magazine at this time. He wanted smaller lo-rez images to look at while he was putting the layout for my article together. This gave me something to do today. I downsized all my McDonald Observatory images and got ready to send the smaller files to the magazine. There is no real urgency to this project. As I mentioned the other day, my article won't appear until February of 2021.

I also paid some online bills today and made a halfhearted effort to reconcile my account. I still can't find the missing transaction. I'll give it another month or so. If the missing amount stays the same, I'll just make a journal entry to even things out again. I've done this before. It's a lot easier than fretting over small mistakes.

There was nothing happening on the Boca Chica live feed today. There were still people in the chat room though, all speculating about the uneventful video they were looking at. I hesitate to join these conversations. Spending inordinate amounts of time watching construction workers weld bits of metal to something that looks like a stainless steel grain silo is just an open admission that you don't have a life.

Apple introduced a new Apple Watch today. It looks exactly like the old Apple Watch. It's hard to get excited about Apple product introductions anymore. Do I need a phone that is a little faster? Do I need a watch with three new watch faces? When you are retired, the answer is almost always no. I just wish I could keep my older equipment running forever. As far as I'm concerned, the older stuff is almost always better.

I hate the new Facebook layout. Blogger has a new layout that looks almost as bad. I keep switching back to the older legacy view, but it's getting harder. Now, Facebook will only let you look at things the old way for 48 hours at a time. What's the point in trying to make everything look the way it does on your phone? I'd rather have my computer look like a magazine. Actually, I'd rather just read a magazine. Hey, a Luddite can dream. One of these days I'm just going to go back to writing this journal on paper.

Spot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3911

The days are getting noticeably shorter now. We start our morning walks at the same time, but it's much darker now when we leave the house. The sky doesn't noticeably lighten until we're almost at our halfway point. This morning we completed our walk and had returned home before the sun rose above the horizon. Daylight Saving Time doesn't end until November, so we've got more dark walks ahead of us. I think Janet and I will both be glad when the temperature cools enough so that we can walk at any time of day.

I wrote another letter to my sister today and took it to the post office. These are the only physical letters I write to anybody. Everyone else switched to e-mail a long time ago. Sadly, even e-mail is becoming too much of a bother for a lot of people. Texting is gradually replacing e-mail as the preferred way to communicate. I find all this kind of sad. Communication has become so rudimentary now. I still like a nice long letter and will never resort to using Emojis.

This afternoon we took Dawn to another park to get her used to riding in the car. Janet often does this by herself, but sometimes I go along to see whether having both of us in the car makes things better or worse. Helping Dawn overcome her many fears is a long slow process. She seems eager to go on a car ride now until the car starts moving. It's weird. She's always excited when we get ready to go and eagerly hops right in the back seat. As soon as we start backing out of the driveway, she starts shivering, shaking, and panting excessively. Usually she quickly reverts to acting normally again as soon as we arrive at our destination.

I actually found Clorox wipes today. These weren't genuine Clorox wipes. They were just a poorly packaged imitation that was probably quickly rushed to market by someone who wanted to take advantage of the pandemic shortages. I bought the imitation wipes anyway. These things can be useful in a world where you are constantly wiping down surfaces and cleaning your hands away from home. I still think the pandemic will be officially be over when the real Clorox wipes return to the shelves. That hasn't happened yet.

Janet asked me if I had Zoom on my computer. I guess she wants to learn how to use it. You're on your own there buddy. I have no interest in learning about Zoom or installing it on any of my devices. There is a certain freedom in being a Luddite. To me, Zoom just seems like an irritating way to bring the stress of pre-Covid days into your own home. Zoom is incredibly popular and the company is one of the hottest stocks on Wall Street now, but I have no desire whatsoever to talk to twelve people at once.

There was nothing happening on the Boca Chica cam today, but tomorrow something might explode. Since tomorrow will probably be as boring as today, I'm sure I'll tune in to watch the pressure test. I kind of wish there were live streaming cams everywhere. It would be nice to be able to check and see if there were crowds or lines before I went anywhere. I've become obsessive about avoiding crowds these days. They weren't quite finished filling my prescription when I went to the pharmacy this afternoon, and I had to wait at the store for fifteen minutes. Jeez. I couldn't wait to get out of that place.

Camp is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 3910 - Labor Day

It didn't seem like a holiday today. The park wasn't crowded at all. There were a few families having picnics, but I saw a few yesterday as well. Maybe Labor Day seems irrelevant if you aren't working. They say that more people are returning to work in Dallas than in most cities, but you couldn't prove it by me. I still see a lot more people wandering around in the park than I did at this time last year.

We got a reminder that today actually was a holiday when we discovered that the Dalmatian kennel was closed. We weren't able to visit the dogs today, but maybe we'll go later in the week. I'd still like to see Hank and Luckie before they make the journey to their new home in Austin.

Without our regular visit to the kennel, today seemed even more uneventful than usual. We had a nice morning walk, but we should have started a little earlier. By the time we returned home we were all pretty hot. Dawn went back to bed and I felt like joining her. Doing nothing can be very tiring.

I watched SN6 travel down Highway 4 back to the Space X shipyard and then later in the day watched the 7.1 pressure vessel travel back down the same road to replace it on the launch pad. The 7.1 tank won't fly anywhere. It will just be pumped full of liquid nitrogen until it explodes. These pressure tests seem to be common in the space world. NASA tested an Artemis liquid oxygen tank to destruction at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama earlier this Summer. I'm still waiting until the real Starship makes it's debut. An early version may take off from Boca Chica before the end of the year. I only mention these live feed videos to illustrate how little is going on at the moment. Who would have thought that I could spend an hour watching what looked like a shiny grain silo travel slowly down a country road.

I've noticed that the people who go to the park in the morning are very different than the people who go in the afternoon. The morning people seem very industrious. They are jogging, cycling, and walking dogs. The afternoon people are mostly sitting in hammocks looking at their phones. I identify more with the morning people. Why would you want to sit in a hammock on a 100 degree afternoon anyway? It makes a lot more sense to take a nice walk on a 75 degree pre-dawn morning.

We saw a lost chicken in the park this morning. The bird seemed bewildered to be wandering around in a world full of ducks. A lot of people have backyard chickens in the neighborhood, so this one probably just escaped. We thought about taking the chicken to a nearby rescue that takes almost any type of animal, but how do you catch a chicken when you've got a dog with you? We'll probably never see the little rooster again. It will make a tasty meal for the coyotes who live nearby.

I wish I'd hear something definitive from Sky and Telescope. I always worry that there will be changes at the magazine and my story won't get published after all. I try to be patient with these magazines, but I really need some good news to get me motivated. It's a lot easier to start a new story when I see one of the older ones in print.

Bailey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3909

I didn't sleep well last night. When I woke up at 4 AM, I went outside to look at the Moon and Mars. They were still close together, but would have been even closer if I hadn't gone to bed before moonrise. You don't realize that the moon is always moving until you have a point of reference. When we left on our morning walk a few hours later, I could tell that the Moon and Mars were slightly further apart than they were at 4 AM.

We walked a litle later this morning. There is still a lot of moisture on the ground from our recent rain, so we saw a lot of ground fog as the sun started to rise. Ground fog is pretty and I always try to get some pictures. The pictures never seem to do justice to these foggy mornings. Like a pretty sunrise, it's all over in a matter on minutes.

We saw a Hispanic couple looking at the fruit on the Mexican Plum trees today. We asked if they knew what these trees were and they said they were called Ciruelo. It made sense that the tree had a Spanish name. I doubt that people from Mexico would call these Mexican Plums. The couple said the fruit was edible and that many people liked the tart taste. We took a few ripe plums home with us, but we haven't tried them yet.

The weather was relatively mild today so it was a good day to go up on the roof. I removed the remaining standing water, checked both pumps, and looked for damaged areas in the silicon coating. I found two spots, each about one foot in diameter that could use some attention. Nothing is leaking yet, but I've learned to recognize when the silicon starts to deteriorate. These two areas won't make it through the Winter.

It doesn't really feel like a holiday weekend. Labor Day is usually the time when there are huge back to school sales. The fate of schools is still up in the air and a lot of stores haven't figured out how to deal with customers yet. It's all very confusing. Do you go in the store, arrange for curbside pickup, order online, or just do nothing? I'm increasingly opting for doing nothing. There's certainly no urgency to buy clothes anymore. Working from home has no dress code. When everyone starts dressing like me, I think retail is dead.

I think I'm becoming addicted to the Boca Chica live feed on YouTube. I check in almost every day to see what's going on. It looks like they're getting ready to take the SN6 rocket back to the shipyard and replace it with another test vehicle. It's weird that they just use a state highway to move the rockets. You'd think they'd build their own special track to move the rockets from the factory to the launch pad. This is clearly a work in progress. I'm sure I'll check back tomorrow to see if anything has changed.

I'm not sure if we'll be visiting the Dalmatian kennel tomorrow. We'll have to check and see if it's open on Labor Day. If we do visit, it will be the last time we see Hank and Luckie. They are both going to their forever home soon.

April is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 3900

I like big even numbers. Only a hundred days to go before I've been blogging for 4000 consecutive days. Piece of cake. I'll reach this goal before the end of the year. Can I keep this going for 5000 days? That remains to be seen. I don't even know if I'll live that long. I feel like I've got less to write about than I did in the beginning. I certainly have fewer readers. It's good to have goals though. Even if they are silly ones. One way or another, I'll keep writing.

I thought about repairing Janet's broken Apple Watch today. Hey, I've already successfully fixed two computers. I watched a couple of YouTube videos and it seemed like something I could do if I was careful and dexterous. Parts were available too. I'm not that dexterous unfortunately. Maybe it would be better to take the watch to the Apple Store. Nevermind. The Apple Stores have so many Covid regulations now that it's not not even worth the trouble to go there. Apple repairs are expensive too. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that I could get a brand new Apple Watch at Best Buy for half the price of an Apple repair. It was a discontinued Series Three model, but it was still brand new. I went out and got Janet a new watch. I still may attempt to repair the old one though if I get really, really bored.

We got a late start on our walk this morning. The sun was almost up before we even left the house. The temperature warmed up quickly and I was a little worried that Dawn wasn't going to make it. She did fine though. Actually, she seemed to have more energy than I did. When is this summer going to be over? I've had enough.

The State Fair of Texas has been canceled this year, but they've decided to open the fairgrounds on selected weekends for drive-thru fair food. I didn't realize that the demand for funnel cakes, turkey legs, and deep fried pickles was that high, but I guess it is. People actually seem excited about the prospect of drive-thru fair food. I think I'll pass on this one.

I'm amazed at how many people watch the Boca Chica live cameras. There are usually at least a thousand people from all around the world watching even when nothing is going on. People in the chat speculate about what is happening whenever they see a forklift or crane move. It's fascinating to watch how quickly things change at this facility. They work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This is all so different than NASA. Have I become an Elon Musk fanboy? Who knows. I despise politicians, but I admire people like Elon and Steve Jobs. We need more people like this.

I'm kind of glad i didn't get accepted for the Delta IV Heavy launch now. The launch has already been delayed two times and I would have had to extend my stay quite a bit. Hotel bills and rental cars can add up quickly. I wish I had less expensive interests. When a launch gets delayed it can get pretty expensive. You think "one more day won't cost that much," and then it becomes two, three, or even four days. You hate to leave though and miss everything.

These weeks sure go quickly. Tomorrow is grocery shopping day again. It seems like I just did this. Will I find my favorite cheese? Have peaches returned to the produce department? Such excitement. I can hardly wait.

Mandy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3895

There was no need to go to the gym today. After walking and mowing the grass I felt like I had all the exercise I needed. Around this time of year I start thinking that I might not need to mow any more. I even thought that today. Late August is ridiculously early though for these type of thoughts. The leaves are still on the trees and the Fall rainy season hasn't even started yet. Our grass is often still green in December.

We got a late start this morning on our walk and the park was already filling up with people. We probably should have started earlier, but it was clear that we needed the extra sleep. Without an alarm to wake us, we slept two hours longer than usual. Dawn certainly wasn't interested in getting up. The only thing that gets her out of bed is the sound of her breakfast being fixed. It was a little warmer than we would have liked, but we all did pretty well. I think we'll go back to pre-dawn walks tomorrow.

I wasted a lot of time today watching a static fire test of the SN-6 Starship prototype. It took three tries and most of the day before the rocket motors actually fired. The guys who put this coverage together on their YouTube channel have a lot of patience. There were several false starts today. The rocket would be filled with fuel and then emptied again when something didn't go right. Basically nothing happens for hours at a time and then eventually the rocket fires for about five seconds. Watching these events is definitely an acquired taste. I didn't watch today's tests continuously, but I kept a window open on my browser and checked in on progress throughout the day. I think next week this rocket will fly on a short hop, just like its predecessor did a few weeks ago. If I go down to Boca Chica, I think I'll wait until the program is a little further along. Before the end of the year, Space X is supposed to be making much longer hops with a more polished looking rocket that has fins, a nose cone and two extra Raptor engines. The more I watch this Boca Chica channel on YouTube, the more interested I become in seeing a Starship launch. I'm going to try to make some contacts and see what happens.

When I walk in the park on weekend afternoons, I always see tons of people sitting in hammocks. I don't understand the fascination with hammocks. On a nice day, they're everywhere. Young people string them between two trees and then spend the rest of the afternoon taking selfies and looking at their cell phones. I don't get it. If this is what passes for enjoying nature these days, we're all doomed.

Can you believe it's going to be September soon? What a wasted year. Maybe next year will be better.  The cynical side of me says the virus will disappear from the news right after the November elections. Realistically, I think it's going to be with us for a very long time. New cases keep cropping up in countries that supposedly have already eradicated it. What's going to happen when everyone gets the flu this Fall and thinks they've got the virus instead? The hypochondriac's are going to be panicking. I'm going to continue to keep my distance. Seems to have worked so far.

Janet and I eat a traditional breakfast together on the weekends. Tomorrow it's back to my fruit smoothies though. Where am I going to find uncontaminated peaches. I've got plenty of strawberries, blueberries and bananas, but good smoothie has got to include a peach.

Mickey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3888

The last thing I expected was a thunderstorm today, but here we are. The rain is pouring down and the wind is picking up. As always, I'm worried about a power outage. Thunderstorms and power outages go hand-in-hand in our neighborhood. It hasn't rained for so long that I'm not really prepared. The laptop isn't fully charged and the backup batteries aren't either. Oh, well. It is what it is. Actually, we do need the rain.

It certainly wasn't raining when we took our early walk this morning. The skies were clear with a nice view of Venus and a waning crescent moon to the east. The Muscovy ducks were waiting for us at the bridge and we were kind of mad to see a passing skateboarder try to scare them away. Dawn seemed more tired than usual this morning, but was was very humid. Maybe that should have been our first warning that the weather was about to change.

I noticed that I was about out of collagen powder, so I went to get some more after breakfast. I'm not a huge fan of nutritional supplements, but I've been taking this stuff to help with arthritis and aching joints and it seems to work. Too bad that collagen has become popular recently. It sure seems expensive to me. I also looked for rubbing alcohol again. This is another one of those things that has inexplicably disappeared from grocery and drugstore shelves. Who knows. Maybe all the alcohol is being used to make hand sanitizer now. I finally found a small bottle of the stuff but the store said there was a limit of one to a customer. Jeez. It was just a bottle of rubbing alcohol.

I watched the Boca Chica live feed for a while this afternoon. Space X was doing a cryo test of the next Starship prototype. Basically, watching these pressurization tests is like watching nothing at all. Occasionally you will see some white smoke or a little ice forming on the surface of the rocket, but nothing moves. Probably the most interesting thing is reading all the YouTube comments from other people watching. Everyone is speculating about what is going on, but it is clear that nobody knows for sure. These live feeds are just Boca Chica neighbors pointing their cameras over the Space X fence. Nothing is authorized by Space X at all. This is the exact opposite of how NASA would handle something like this. I like it that a small group of South Texas amateurs is providing the most accurate and up to date information about what Space X is doing.

We're getting lots of thunder and lightning now. Dawn doesn't seem to be bothered at all. She is the first dog we've had that isn't scared of storms. Of course, she is scared of everything else, but she's fine in a thunderstorm. I worry a lot more about storms than she does. A tree may fall. The roof may start leaking again. The power may go out. A lot of things can go wrong. Look what happened in Iowa recently. I can't believe there isn't more on the news about this derecho storm. It was devastating. They say over one third of the state's corn crop is gone. Lots of farms have been destroyed. This is all going to show up in grocery stores later. One more legacy of 2020.

I hope the weather improves tomorrow. There are walks to take and so much more. Just kidding. It's just the walks.

Pogo is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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