Day 1727

When I go to the gym, I warm up for twenty minutes using the hand bicycle. Most people start by jogging around the track or using one of the treadmills for a while, but the hand bike works for me. I spend so much time walking the dogs that my legs are fine. It's my upper body that need work. All I do with my arms and upper body is type. The first five minutes on the hand bike are murder. My joints ache and my arms are sore. Then my body starts to warm up and I get into a rhythm. By the end of the twenty minutes, I'm daydreaming as usual and I've almost forgotten that I'm using the machine.

That's the way it is with most things in life. I hate getting out of bed in the morning. When I wake up, all I want to do is roll over and go back to sleep again. I do get up though. I get up at the same time even on days when I have had little sleep. By the time I've made the bed and prepared my morning coffee, life seems bearable again. After walking the dogs and eating a leisurely breakfast, I've almost always forgotten how much I disliked getting out of bed just a few hours earlier.

The dogs probably felt this way today. Dot and Dash both got a bath this morning and Dash suffered the additional indignity of going to the vet to have his anal glands expressed. As much as the dogs protest these occasional trips to the local dog washing emporium, they always feel better afterwards. They stop itching and scratching for a while and concentrate on more important things like begging for treats. A bath is kind of like a thunderstorm for Dot and Dash. As soon as it's over, they totally forget it was something to worry about.

Before going to the gym today, I watched the new Dr. Who episode that I taped last night. This show, which involved taking Clara to meet Robin Hood, was much more entertaining than last week's awkward trip inside a Dalak's head. I think the scriptwriters are getting used to writing for Peter Capaldi. One of the benefits of watching your favorite shows using a DVR is that you can skip all the commercials. Maybe I'll start watching more shows this way. Either commercials are much worse than they used to be, or I've just lost my tolerance for them. They break up the narrative and are generally irritating. I can't believe that I spent a big chunk of my life writing these things.

My new phone is kind of mysterious. Even though it looks identical to the phone it replaced, there is something different about it. The phone runs IOS 7.1.2, just like the old phone. The same apps are installed. So why does it act so differently? I bet that Apple has updated the firmware of its later model phones. It doesn't really matter anyway. The iPhone 6 will make its debut in a few weeks anyway.

Dot had another good day today. No accidents at all! Maybe the pills are starting to work.

Chief is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 846

It's hard to get an early start when your dogs don't want to get up either. Dot and Dash have been my alarm clock for many years and when they don't feel like getting up, I'm always off to a late start. Today, we got started on our morning walk so late that I had to resort to eating cereal for breakfast. I'm a slow cook, so sometimes just eating cold cereal for breakfast will give me an extra forty-five minutes.

I don't know why I was in a hurry anyway. Not a lot happened today. I was a bit embarrassed that I complained so much about my bill with the electrician the other day. When I was writing checks this afternoon, I noticed that I had paid a similar bill for almost the same amount in 2008. The electrician hadn't raised his prices after all. They were always high. I wonder why this bill seemed so high and the earlier bill didn't? The only thing that I can think of was that I was making a lot more money in 2008 and being overcharged for something wasn't as much of a big deal. Oh well. Fair is fair. I paid the entire bill, even though I'd told the electrician two days ago that I wasn't going to.

I got a call from the accountant's office today. It looks like even though the company billed out twice as much as it did the previous year, I'm still going to have a tax loss. Bad investments and healthcare expenses largely offset any gains I made with the company. I don't know if this is something to celebrate or not. So, there's no big tax bill this year, but apparently I didn't make any money either.

Life goes on though. I have a new business meeting tomorrow. With any luck, I'll get an opportunity to design another website that I can continue to maintain in the future. I write new articles almost every day and make a deposit at the bank every two or three days. I'm just going to have to resign myself to the fact that even though I'm busy and often tired, I'm not making as much as I was fifteen years ago.

I saw today on the news that Facebook bought Instagram for a billion dollars. My first thought was a sincere hope that Facebook doesn't end up ruining Instagram. They're ruined plenty of good ideas before. Hey, I love this little app and use it all the time. My second thought was that I sure wish I had invented Instagram. Probably everyone in that entire company is a millionaire now. Amazing! This simple little photo sharing app on my iPhone is worth more now than the entire New York Times Corporation.

Livy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 623

Every once in a while I wake up feeling like I'm going to fly like an eagle. Most days a feel a lot more like a pigeon. I hunt and peck. I make a little money. I never end up flying very far from where I started. I typically have a hard time getting up in the morning. Sometimes I stay in the shower until all the hot water runs out. Let's just say I don't start the day singing a rousing chorus of Good Morning Sunshine.

All this being said, I do manage to get a lot done when I finally kick myself into gear. Today I made revisions on just about every website I manage. I finished a couple of articles, took Dash to the vet for his bi-weekly antigen shot, and picked up another month's supply of meds for myself at the pharmacy. The day was a pigeon's dream.

I've been hearing a lot lately about Facebook's new privacy settings. They evidently let you individually select which people you want to see various posts that are on your wall. Sounds like a lot of trouble to me. Facebook still doesn't have the filter I want. I wish they had some kind of zip code filter. I would use it to filter out my neighbors. Increasingly, people I see almost every day are asking me if I saw their Facebook message. Why don't they just tell me in person? It would certainly be a lot easier, because I almost never look at that messages section of Facebook.

I'm keeping the back yard really wet, in hopes that the Fescue seed we planted this weekend will sprout and cover some of the dead patches. So far, the only result of this frequent sprinkling has been two muddy dogs.

Tessa is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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