Day 3660 - New Years Day

We did manage to stay up until midnight last night. We had cheese and crackers and a little champagne as we watched the fireworks on TV. I can't imagine standing up for hours in Times Square just to see the ball drop. It was hard enough staying awake inside our own house. New Year's celebrations always seem a bit anticlimactic to me. One second after midnight everything still seems the same.

It wasn't as cold as it was last New Year's Day, but it still felt like Winter. After watching the usual 'Year in Review' shows on TV as I slowly drank my morning smoothie, I bundled up in a warm coat and took my walk. While I was walking, several old World War II aircraft flew directly overhead. It looked like they were headed for the Cotton Bowl where there was a rare outdoor hockey game today. Several minutes later I heard a loud explosion. I thought it was thunder, but I checked my phone and there was no rain in the area. Maybe there were fireworks when the planes did a flyover of the stadium. The noise must not have been serious because I've heard nothing about it on the local news.

I sent another query letter to a magazine this afternoon. I've been writing commercially for most of my life, but trying to establish myself as a 'different kind' of writer still seems a bit futile at this point. I'm definitely an outsider in the world of publishing. The magazine world seems very weird to me. Circulations are still dropping dramatically and every year well known magazines disappear. At the same time the competition to appear in these magazines keeps growing. Since I'm trying to write for semi-scientific magazines, most of the writing seems to come from the academic world. If I ever do manage to get an article in Sky and Telescope, I'll probably be the only author without a PhD.

Now that the new year is underway, I need to resume my efforts to fix up the house. There is still one guy who hasn't gotten me a bid yet for replacing the roof. He's had a year to put his bid together. I'd just forget about this guy and assume that he's not interested, but he came highly recommended. I'm sure he'll be too expensive anyway, but I'm determined to get a bid. I also need to get another Oak tree removed in the back yard and either repair the greenhouse or tear it down. Now I'm thinking that tearing the building down and putting up a carport so we could move our entrance to the back of the house might be a good idea. The appliance repairman is on my list too. The washing machine is still making a funny noise during the spin cycle. I've given up on finding someone who can fix the sliding glass door.

I wish the house was maintenance free so I could use the small amount of time and energy I have left to concentrate on going to rocket launches and observatories. You've got to have a place to live though. The house was beautiful when we moved in, but that was a very long time ago. Age is not always kind to old buildings. It's not very kind to old people either.

I'm pessimistic by nature. I generally feel that the glass is half empty, but I'm going to try my best to remain positive about 2020. A lot of good things could happen this year. I just need to remember that nothing is going to happen unless I make an effort. I have a feeling that the days of accidental success are over.

Jasper is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1843 - New Year's Day

It was so cold today. The temperature hovered around the freezing mark for most of the day, while a steady rain soaked the ground. The forecast warned of sleet and slush, but it never materialized. Nothing froze except for me. I thought I'd managed to find little windows of opportunity to walk the dogs on the weather radar, but Dot and Dash weren't quick enough and we got soaked both times. It seemed like I spent a good part of the day cleaning muddy shoes and drying the dogs with bath towels.

Janet went to the gym today, but I didn't feel like driving in this weather and stayed home all day. I'm getting frustrated that I'm still using Lion as the operating system on my desktop computer, so I thought I'd investigate how I could upgrade my system without having to upgrade all my important applications as well. Applications like Media Composer and Pro Tools are very picky about which operating system you use. They are also very expensive. If I was still doing a lot of video work, I'd just bite the bullet and upgrade everything to the latest versions. That seems a bit excessive though when I only do a few video jobs a year. Everything works fine now, as long as I keep using Lion as my operating system. After checking around on the user groups it looks like there is a free maintenance upgrade to my current version of Media Composer that would allow me to move up to Mountain Lion.  Of course Apple has already discontinued Mountain Lion and moved on to Mavericks and Yosemite. Apple has become very frustrating now that they have largely abandoned creative types and want to make all their computers work just like an iPhone.  Not my cup of tea. I don't think I ever want to install Yosemite.

When I'm house bound on a cold day, I do laundry and fix things. I should have stuck with fixing a light switch or something simple. Trying to resolve all my computer problems was very unsatisfying. I downloaded a few things, but didn't have the nerve to install them. I need to do some more research before I start replacing things, or I could easily make matters worse. To tell you the truth, I enjoyed using Apple products a lot more back in the days when everything was running on OS 9. Lots and lots of little companies catered to the needs of creative folks back then. Now that Apple has discovered the real money is in selling phones, they've largely abandoned folks like me. I don't care about the Cloud or talking to friends on Facetime. I don't even care about laptops. I just want a big desktop computer with a huge monitor that will run the stuff I need for work without ever crashing.

The only thing I don't like about compression pants is that you have to keep taking them on and off all the time. They're great for walking the dogs in the cold, but too hot to wear around the house all day. I'm really glad that men never started wearing panty hose. It's a giant pain to get these skin tight things on and off. It would be nice if someone made them with a fly in front too.

It was hard to remember to take the trash out to the curb this evening. It didn't seem like a Thursday at all. It didn't seem like New Year's Day either. When I was younger, New Year's day was mostly spent recovering from New Year's Eve. Now, it seems like a non-event. There used to be four bowl games that you watched back-to-back whether you liked football or not. You started with the Rose Bowl in California and ended late in the evening with the Orange Bowl in Florida. Now, there are well over thirty different bowl games starting in mid-December and going all the way through January 12. The Orange Bowl is called the Buffalo Wild Wings Citrus Bowl now and the Cotton Bowl isn't even played in the Cotton Bowl stadium.

I'd love to see the sun tomorrow, but I don't think it's going to happen. It looks like we're going to have another very cold, rainy day. Janet thinks we ought to go to a movie. Jeez, I haven't been to a movie in a theater in almost three years. It might be fun. It certainly would be more fun than doing laundry and fixing computers.

Jasper is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1400

The rainy season has officially started. It is often this way in late October. It will rain for days at a time. This is typically not good for The State Fair of Texas, which occupies this rainy time slot. I remember going to a Rolling Stones concert at the Cotton Bowl late in October and it poured throughout the entire concert. I thought that Keith Richards was going to get electrocuted playing out in the rain, but the weather didn't seem to faze the band. They were all much younger then, of course.

Dot and Dash hate the rain. It messes with their doggy instincts. If they were practical dogs, they would just go out in the back yard and poop quickly on rainy days. Nope. They can't do this. They have to go on their regular walk, where they get wet and muddy. Light rain makes them mad and heavy rain sends them into a panic. You just can't win on rainy days.

Everything got dirty today. The dogs got dirty, The car got dirty. The floors got dirty. I felt like I spent half the day doing laundry and drying the dogs off. I did manage to get some articles written and got caught up on correspondence, but personally, I would have much rather just taken a long nap. I know there is a ton of standing water up on the roof, but I'm not even going to bother to go up there until I see the sun again.

When I took Dash to the vet for his antigen shot today, he took an unhealthy interest in some guinea pigs that were up for adoption in the lobby. I don't know whether he thought the guinea pigs were small cats or large squirrels, but he definitely though they were meant to be chased and barked at. Sometimes Dash can be embarrassing.

It would be nice if I woke up to a crisp and clear Fall morning tomorrow, but I'm expecting more rain. Although driving in the rain is one of my least favorite things, there are lots of places to go tomorrow. I'll start the day with a tasty omelet at the Wednesday business breakfast meeting. Then I've got to demonstrate a website prototype, and take Dot downtown for her acupuncture session. I have a feeling I'll be wishing I could take a long nap tomorrow as well.

Lucky is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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