Day 2805

What a surprise to wake up to blue skies. If the rain is over for us, maybe it will stop soon in Houston as well. It was such a nice day that it seemed like a good time to do something different. Instead of doing our normal chores, Janet and I went out to lunch together and then went to a museum.

I almost never eat lunch anymore. Three meals a day is way too much for me now. After I took Dash on his morning walk, I just had a small bowl of fruit, instead of my usual enormous breakfast. This seemed to do the trick. I was hungry at lunch. Maybe I should just eat lunch and skip both breakfast and dinner. After my meal, I felt full for the rest of the day and just had a small salad for dinner.

While we were at the museum I was interviewed by a reporter from a French newspaper. This seemed a bit odd. I can't imagine a French newspaper sending a reporter all the way to Dallas for this show. Maybe she was on her way to Houston to cover the hurricane and was just killing time in Dallas for an afternoon. Who knows. I can't say that I'm an art expert or even a Dallas expert, but I answered her questions as best I could. I thought the woman was German until she corrected me. All Europeans speaking English sound German to me.

For some reason nothing leaked when I took a shower this morning. This was a mystery to me, since it leaked a lot yesterday. Maybe this was just an omen that today was going to be a good day, but I'm still curious about what is happening under the tiles. Why would the shower leak yesterday and not today when  all the variables were exactly the same?

Janet bought some of those little solar powered garden lights for the back yard and when they arrived today, I discovered that the instructions were in Spanish. I had a little trouble putting the things together, but I must have done something right because they lit up this evening when the sun went down. The only problem with solar garden lights in our back yard is that we don't get any sun. The thick tree canopy is the main reason the grass doesn't grow well. We'll see how long the little lights continue to glow. I'm guessing that two hours from now they'll be dead.

When we went to the museum there was an app you could download to your phone that described the exhibits. There is an app for everything now. I remember when museums had little tape recorders and headphones you had to rent. None of the visitors were the least bit surprised by the app. They seemed to expect something like this and were all holding their phones up to their ears as they walked through the gallery. Maybe I should have become an app developer. Never mind. I bet the percentage of seventy year old app developers is just as low as seventy year old web designers.

When Janet is home from work, every day seems like Sunday. It's kind of disorienting. I had some website updates to make today and I thought I'd save them until Monday morning. Then I realized that it was already Tuesday. It's going to be hard to remember that tomorrow is Wednesday. Nothing happens on Wednesday anyway.

Duke is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2211

It was an enjoyable day. For the first time in a long time we didn't use our holiday time to clean the house or do chores. Instead, we went to a nice restaurant for lunch and spent the afternoon visiting a museum. We weren't gone a long time, because you can't really leave Dot a long time, but it was nice to get out of the house for a while.

Dallas has quite a few interesting museums. I've visited the Sixth Floor Museum in Dealey Plaza several times. It's a great place to take visiting relatives. If you have any interest in history at all, you will find this museum fascinating. The same can be said for the new Presidential Library on the SMU campus. That's where we went today. You can see the controversial Florida ballot made famous by "hanging chads" and the confusing placement of candidates. After looking at this strange ballot, it seems pretty plausible to me that Al Gore really did win the election. There is an interactive theater where the audience can listen to opposing viewpoints on a variety of issues like removing Saddam Hussein from power or providing aid to Katrina victims and then decide what you would have done yourself. Everyone in the theater has a touch screen where they can select what issues they want to explore and what questions whey want answered. All the responses are tied together using a computer and the entire theater decides what to do in real time. Very interesting. As a visual person, the coolest thing was the huge multimedia display in the ceiling of the main lobby. The photography was amazing and very beautiful. If you haven't seen this, you ought to.

I remember going to the Frontiers of Flight Museum at Love Field for a Christmas party once. Another memorable Christmas party during my ad agency days was held at The Dallas Museum of Art when the Pompeii Exhibit first came through Dallas. Apparently renting big museums for Christmas parties is a thing in Dallas. I'd still like to see the Perot Museum of Nature and Science. It may take a while though. My desire to do things is very low.

I don't think I was the only one who had a good day today. Dot seemed very perky. It was probably because of the weather. If light deprivation causes depression in people, it probably does in dogs as well. Today was bright and sunny. The combination of cool, brisk temperatures and bright sunlight is something almost all Dalmatians enjoy. Dot actually started to run when she saw a squirrel on one of our walks. Well, she wasn't really running, because Janet was holding up her rear legs with the harness, but you could tell that the desire was still there. Even on bad days, there is something about Dot's attitude that says "don't count me out yet." I just hope I can maintain Dot's steely resolve when my own body starts to fall apart.

Tomorrow, it's back to early pre-dawn walks and banana smoothies for breakfast. Dot has an appointment to visit her oncologist for another of her periodic cancer re-checks. It's time to take the Christmas tree down and put the decorations away for another year as well. It's going to be a busy week.

Hunter is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day