Day 3055

The trains are gone. My friend and I loaded box after box full of memories in his SUV and then he drove away. Admittedly, some of the memories are fading, but I enjoyed acquiring these things. Back in the day, my friend owned one of three train stores in Dallas and I was one of his best customers. Twenty-five years later, he owns one of the few remaining train stores in the entire country and I'm just a guy trying to downsize.

As I loaded the models onto a wheeled cart, I was surprised at how many I had. I'd totally forgotten about a lot of them. Actually, we couldn't fit everything into the car, but I made a sizable dent in the collection. My business must have been doing really well back them. I couldn't afford to buy this much useless stuff today. Actually, the models probably got me some business. I used to hang out at train stores a lot and met some interesting people. The owner of Cessna collected model trains. So did a lot of other rich old men. Most of these people are dead now. I don't know what people collect these days, but it certainly isn't trains.

I passed a classic car show in the park on my way to the storage warehouse. Back when I was collecting trains, I would have stopped at this car show. Old European sports cars were almost as interesting as trains. I drove a Citroën SM in those days. I thought my next car would be a Ferrari, but of course that never happened. Over time, my interest in cars, model trains, and even watches waned. I don't collect anything now.

Probably as my interest in dogs increased, my interest in other stuff decreased. I still like tools, however. That's something I share with my Dad. My Dad was surrounded by his tools until the day he died. If you're going to acquire something, you might as well make it a tool. Tools can be used to make a career. My tools of choice have always been cameras and recording equipment. Unlike model trains, these tools have always paid for themselves.

It was a beautiful day today. It's time to start wearing shorts again. Pretty soon it's going to be time to stay indoors. The furnace doesn't come on any more in the morning. I think another Texas Summer is on the way. I hope Dash can handle the heat this summer. He does fine on his morning walks, but he's already starting to get tired when it warms up in the afternoon. It's only going to get worse. We may have to scale back to one walk a day.

The gym was virtually empty when I went this morning. You have to be careful what you wish for. I enjoy going to the gym when it isn't crowded, but it's been so empty lately that I'm starting to worry that it might close. I don't want to look for a new gym. I like being surrounded by old familiar things. That's probably why it was so hard to get rid of the trains.

Patches is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3053

I was hoping that the weather would improve today, but I didn't get my wish. We got more rain. It was far too wet this morning to take Dash on a morning walk. I guess I could have gone out for breakfast, but it seemed too wet for that as well. I made myself a large bowl of oatmeal and listened to the rain on the roof as I drank my morning coffee.

It's easy to get cabin fever on days like this. Work doesn't keep me busy anymore. Daytime TV is terrible. And you can only do so much laundry. I wish I could go to sleep as easily as Dash. Since I was wide awake, I absentmindedly flipped back and forth between the news and business channels, looked at Facebook, and perused photo and electronics catalogs in search of new gear that would change my life.

Janet subscribes to Netflix, Hulu, and Acorn.tv, but I can't bring myself to watch a movie. There are thousands of books lining the walls of my office, but I can't bring myself to read a book either. The last book I really enjoyed was A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. I'm sure there have been great books since then, but few have reached out to me. I think a lot of reading is instigated by recommendations from friends. Dash doesn't recommend many books.

I didn't feel like getting groceries today, but when the rain finally subsided late in the afternoon, I went out and picked up a pizza for dinner. There's a neighborhood pizza place that makes pretty good thin crust pizza. I'll probably have heartburn tonight, but who cares. On a rainy day when you can't find any motivation, sometimes a pizza is the only thing that will do.

It would have been a good day to go to the storage warehouse and organize the collection of trains. Like I've said before, I can talk myself out of virtually anything on a rainy day. I don't have any choice tomorrow. I've run out of time. I'll be glad when I put this chore behind me. It's depressing. I felt the same way when I had to sell my beloved Citroën SM. There are so many things that I was planning on dealing with later. Unfortunately, it's only a matter of time before "later" becomes now.

Dash finally did get a walk when Janet came home from work. I even saw a patch of blue sky just before sunset. Lets hope we get a few more weeks of mild Spring weather before Summer arrives. The only good thing about Summer is that my roof might finally get fixed.

Crosby is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1611

It was a quiet day. Since I haven't run out of food yet and had no appointments, I basically just stayed around the house all day. The dogs got their walks, but the car never left the driveway. It was good that there were no writing assignments today, because the website revisions I needed to complete just about overwhelmed me. I have a couple of clients who only seem to look at their website twice a year and then make a ton of changes all at once. I'd rather make small incremental changes every week than do a huge makeover twice a year, but I don't get to make the rules. Let's just say that I had a lot of changes to make today.

It was also time to get the water off the roof again. It was a good day to do this, since the weather was nice and there is no more rain in the forecast for the rest of the week. I need to get the roofers to come out and inspect the roof this Spring, while it is still under warranty. There are no leaks, but there are a few spots that are already starting to show significant wear. With my luck, the roof will start leaking again the day after the warranty runs out, so I'd better get this issue addressed while I still have a chance.

I need to remember to call my insurance agent and take the Citroën SM off my policy, since I no longer own the car. I tend to forget things like this. When I quit using the fax machine and removed it from my office, I forgot to remove the fax line from my phone bill and kept paying for it for another year. I paid the cable company for HD channels for quite a while too, before I finally realized that Janet and I never watched things in HD. Standard definition is just fine if your eyes are bad. I always forget to file a protest about real estate tax increases, even though some of my neighbors do this every year. There's just too much to remember. It's hard enough to remember the dog's pills everyday and taking out the garbage on Thursday night.

Some of the videos on my YouTube channel have arbitrarily been set to private. I never changed any of my settings, so I wonder what this is all about. Since I mostly use my YouTube channel as a place to store videos for clients who don't have their own YouTube acount, this has already created problems. A number of embedded videos have already gone dead. When I went to my account to fix things, I discovered that the whole interface had changed. Why does Google love to continually change things? It drives me nuts. It much harder to embed videos in websites in custom sizes now because Google seems to have taken away the scaling tool. I eventually got all the client website videos working again, but I never did figure out why they had been marked private in the first place.

I haven't made the bed all week. I haven't unmade it either. I just sleep on top with the dogs. They seem to like things this way, and it's easier for me as well, since I don't have to make the bed every morning. If Janet ever took a really long trip, things would probably slide downhill in a hurry.

Maybe I'll go out for breakfast tomorrow. I know it's not Friday yet, but I'm really getting tired of oatmeal.

Lady is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1466

I think I could spend the rest of my life just getting my ducks in a row. Now that I know I'm losing the aircraft hanger where my Citroën SM has been safely ensconced for the past decade, I'm scrambling around trying to figure out what to do next. Can I find parts? Can I find a mechanic? Can I find a buyer? One way or another, I've got to get the car running reliably again. Nobody in their right mind would ever buy a non-running Citroën SM. When you open the hood on this thing, you quickly realize that only the French could come up with something so mind-numbingly complex. The transmission is in front of the engine. There are inboard disk brakes, and you have to take off the right front wheel just to change the battery. The steering, brakes and suspension system all operate from a central hydraulic system. If there is a leak, the car sinks to about an inch above the ground and you can't even turn the steering wheel. After sitting ten years in storage, I'm almost certain that the hydraulic system has a leak.

Breakfast was definitely the high point of this day. I love having two poached eggs, served over a bed of spicy pulled pork, peppers, and hash browned potatoes. I linger over three cups of coffee while I eat this delicious Friday morning treat and then I start my day. For one reason or another, everything moved at a snail's pace today. Articles took longer to write. The grocery store was crowded. And the dogs weren't very interested in walking. I blame this all on the weather. After two balmy days this week where the temperature reached 70 degrees, it is turning cold again. A cold front blew through town around mid-afternoon and I'm afraid Winter has returned. Bad weather slows me down enormously. I don't like inclement weather at all. If I could find somewhere where the skies were always blue and the temperature was always 70 degrees, I bet my productivity would double.

While the rest of the world has probably finished their Christmas shopping by now, I haven't even started mine. It just doesn't seem like Christmas is just a few days away. We've got the tree up and a pretty wreath in the hallway, but some days I just forget they are there. It could just as easily be August or February. Maybe I'll get in the spirit of things this weekend. I certainly hope so, since I'm definitely running out of time.

I hope it warms up enough to take the dogs to the dog park on Sunday as well. With the ice storm and a busy holiday work schedule, Dot and Dash haven't had a dog park outing in almost a month. I can tell that Dash really misses these opportunities to be off-leash and mingle with other dogs. Even though he got to spend the night in a fancy hotel and join us on one of our Santa Paws photo events last week, it's not the same as going to a dog park. To heck with a White Christmas, I just want a warm Sunday.

Lexi is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1465

The incompetence of government agencies continues to amaze me. I got a letter today saying that it was time for me to renew the vehicle registration on my Defender 90. What was all that paperwork I signed when I sold the car? Surely these guys must know by now that I no longer own the Defender. I get dozens of letters from Medicare and I have yet to understand any of them. I bet you could reduce the cost of healthcare significantly if you just fired all these useless letter writers. Even the dogs have their problems with government bureaucracies. Every year, Dash gets a letter from the city saying that his city registration has expired. This always takes place about one month after my vet issues Dash brand new registration tags. It's no real surprise that the ObamaCare website doesn't work. Nothing in government at any level works. I have no faith in government anymore.

Does anyone want to buy a Citroën SM that has sat untouched in an aircraft hanger for ten years? The car ran great a decade ago, but I suspect that it will take quite an effort to get it running again. I'm sure the fuel lines and gas tank are gummed up and will need to be removed and cleaned. I've done this once before and it's not an easy job. All five suspension spheres will need to be replaced. The car will certainly need a new heavy duty battery and probably new tires as well. Hopefully, no corrosion has taken place in the engine itself. I loved this car when I bought it in 1972, but in recent years it has become an albatross around my neck. The mechanics who used to keep the car running smoothly have all retired or moved on. My favorite mechanic is now a DJ on a local jazz radio station. Parts are next to impossible to find these days. Even ten years ago I was scared to drive the SM around town because I knew that there were no more new body parts available worldwide. If I had unlimited resources, I would ship the car off to SM World in California and have it completely restored. Unfortunately, I haven't had unlimited resources in a long, long time. Even though the car is highly collectible and Jay Leno has one, it's time to sell the thing.

I've had a lot of cars over the years and the complexities of keeping old cars running are one of the main reasons I switched to collecting watches instead. Watches are little and you can keep them in a drawer. I enjoyed watches for a while until they began to fall apart just like my cars. A good watch needs a watchmaker just as much as a car needs a mechanic. Watch repair is expensive and time consuming. In the long run, I don't think I will be any better off with watches than I was with cars. They all break eventually. I think Janet will have the last laugh at my obsession with collecting stuff. She has no interest in collecting things and prefers travel instead. Travel is all about collecting memories and in my experience, memories tend to get better over time. Eventually, the memory is better than the actual experience was. She'll have great memories, while I preside over a kingdom of rust.

To keep my body from turning to rust, I went back to the gym again today. Another week of regular workouts and I'll be back to where I was before the ice storm. I don't enjoy exercising that much, but I do enjoy seeing progress. Hey, I finally got the large printer working again. That's progress. The city hauled away most of my downed tree limbs this morning. That's progress too. Surprisingly, something seems to happen almost each and every day. There's always some sort of progress. Who knows, maybe one of these days I'll sell the Citroën SM too.

Ranger is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day