Day 3106

Years ago I thought nothing about hitchhiking around the country to save a little money. It was fun. Hitchhiking not only seemed safe, it actually was pretty safe. When I wanted to sell something back in the day, I would routinely run a classified ad in the local paper, confident that the buyer would be a nice, honest person. Times have certainly changed. A friend was trying to tell me today how to sell guitars on Craigslist without getting scammed or robbed. Jeez. There were so many precautions to take that it made my head spin. No thank you. Why would anyone trust someone on Craigslist or eBay these days? It's sad. These once promising marketplaces have become a minefield.

Maybe some of the bright young people who work at Space X still see a world filled with limitless opportunities. I tend to see Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Where has civility and simple decency gone?  We live in a world where people follow the UPS truck and steal packages off your porch. Real estate agents are frightened to show a house alone these days because of all the stories about assaults and robberies. Even police officers have stopped riding in their squad cars without a partner.

Dystopian science fiction has become way too close to real life. I think I prefer the simple minded black and white worlds of Perry Mason, The Kingston Trio, and Leave it to Beaver. Strangely, few people seem to want to follow me back to the 1950's. Hey, I'd gladly trade my cell phone for a world where you didn't have to lock your door at night.

Time only moves forward unfortunately. I still spend my days waiting for the roofer and the landscaper. I actually got a text message this morning saying that the dead grass will be replaced tomorrow morning. We'll see. I'm not going to get my hopes up though. I've heard promises before.

They did the wrong test on Dash's poop at the vet. I'm glad to know that he doesn't have parasites, but I still don't know whether there is any internal bleeding. I'll have to get another stool sample and have them do the test again. I thought I was pretty clear about what Dash needed, but maybe not. Janet says I mumble a lot and people don't really listen to me.

Dash has started eating grass again this evening. We've got our fingers crossed and hope he doesn't throw up tonight. If we're really lucky, we'll all sleep well and his poop will look normal in the morning. I try to focus on simple things like this. The world close to home still makes sense. Everything else is starting to seem like an episode of Black Mirror.

Derrick is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3103

When I took Dash outside to pee last night, the yard was uncharacteristically dark. The security light had gone out again. Jeez. I just had the electrician fix this thing less than a month ago. Dash pooped somewhere, but I couldn't see anything. The yard was too dark. Little things like this drive me nuts. Why is it so hard to get things fixed these days? For what I paid the electrician, that light should have stayed working for years.

When I went to get groceries this morning, I couldn't find any Swiss cheese. The cheese aisle must have had fifty different varieties of cheese, but no Swiss. It wasn't like I was trying to find anything exotic. I was under the impression that Swiss was a very common cheese, but from the looks of the cheese aisle, Irish cheese and Greek cheese are more popular. In case you were thinking that the store was just out of stock, it's been this way for almost three months. The absence of my favorite cheese was just as frustrating as the faulty security light in the back yard. In both cases, I don't know what is going on. Who knows? Maybe there is a tariff on cheese.

I keep looking around the office and wondering if I still need all the stuff surrounding me. Probably not. I'd be more amenable to a major housecleaning, if it wasn't so much trouble. Books are heavy. Obsolete tape recorders and computers are even heavier. It's much easier to just let everything collect dust a little longer. There needs to be a painless way to downsize without dealing with yard sales or Craigslist. I used to be a big fan of eBay, but that seems almost as bad as Craigslist these days. Lets face it. I've become so adverse to dealing with strangers that I'll probably just do nothing.

It's getting harder to find things to photograph on our walks now. The Spring wildflowers are starting to disappear and the animals stay hidden during the hot Summer days. We got up extra early this morning in an attempt to avoid the heat, but it was still uncomfortable. It's going to be a long, hot Summer.  I think Dash had more energy this morning than I did.

I hope I have more energy tomorrow, because it's time to go to the gym again. I wonder what it's going to take to step up my game and go several times a week. It's easy to convince myself that I already get enough exercise walking Dash. It's even easier to convince myself that the traffic is too bad to leave the house. Hey, if I was really concerned about exercise, I could just do planks on the office floor. It's actually pretty amazing that I even go to the gym at all.

The landscaper still hadn't replaced the dead grass. I wonder who I'm going to see first: the roofer or the landscaper?

Boo is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1374

Why do doctor visits take so long? For every minute you actually spend with the doctor, you spend an additional ten minutes sitting in the waiting room. Sometimes, just to create the illusion that something is happening, you are moved from the outer waiting room to a second inner waiting room. It's still a waiting room though, complete with three year old magazines and posters on the wall detailing the symptoms of diseases you never want to catch.

I guess today's verdict was worth waiting for though. I'm still hanging in there. No biopsy required. Just some blood tests and the doctor telling me to keep on doing what I'm doing. The new treatment I've been waiting for won't be approved by the FDA until January 2014 at the earliest. I'm apparently good to go until then.

Since my doctor visit took twice as long as I thought it would, I got behind on everything else. Although I managed to get quite a few things started, nothing really got finished. I dropped some things off at the storage warehouse on the way to see my hepatoligist and got some prescriptions filled at the pharmacy on the way back. That was about it. I'll get caught up on my website work tomorrow. At least I hope I will.

Someone wants to buy my Defender before I trade it in on a new car. Although I might make more money selling the car to an individual, the whole idea makes me uncomfortable. I guess I've heard too many Craigslist horror stories. The dealership knows the car well, since they've been the ones who've worked on it all these years. What they're offering me is realistic. I've afraid that an individual would have buyer's remorse as soon as they discovered the realities of living with a car that has 112,000 miles on the odometer. The truth is that I wouldn't even be considering getting a new car if driving
the Defender was as cool as some people think it is. It's a very old car.

Dash almost caught the armadillo in the yard this morning. I don't know what he'd do if he actually caught the thing, but I don't want to find out. So far, I haven't figured out an effective method of keeping the critter out of the yard. It can dig its way under the fence with ease. Maybe the rain will keep the armadillo away for a while. It's pouring outside now, and of course, Dot is under my desk, convinced that the sky is falling.

Rhett is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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