Day 1722

It sure seemed like Monday today. That's what happens when you have a long weekend. Whatever day you return to work seems like Monday. It wasn't a terribly busy day but it had that unfinished quality about it that Monday's often do. I made an appointment at the Apple store to get the battery on my phone replaced. I have serious doubts that I'll actually get a battery installed tomorrow, but you've got to start somewhere. I also ordered a complete set of ink cartridges for the Epson 4880. I've never had all eight cartridges run out of ink at the same time before, but I guess there's a first time for everything. I don't know why I even bother with this printer anymore, since the ink is quite expensive. Maybe deep down I still have a desire to make large Giclée prints like I did six or seven years ago.

I don't think I'll ever sleep normally again. Even if we do end up giving Dot pills to help control her incontinence, we won't ever be able to completely trust her again. Accidents happen. Since I don't have the heart to make Dot sleep in a crate away from the rest of the family, I am resigned to spending extra time every evening preparing the bed with a vinyl drop cloth under several layers of protective pads. The dogs actually like the protective pads that Janet sewed for them, so we had to make one for Dash too. They have a soft terry cloth surface and a protective waterproof back, making them great little dog beds. Every evening they go on the bed and every morning they come off again. There is a spare pad in case there is an accident during the night. I think we've thought of everything. It's just very time consuming.

I need to get a second opinion about my shoulder. I've been putting off doing this forever, since I'm afraid I'll be told that I need surgery. I really don't want surgery on my shoulder, but I don't want an arm I can't lift above my head either. Also, I'm sure that just about any doctor would tell me that the first thing I need to do is stop walking the dogs with a dislocated shoulder. That's just not an option. I don't like hospitals either. Increasingly, hospitals are where you go to get sick, instead of to get better. Just about everyone I know who has had to go to the hospital recently has ended up getting some sort of infection from all the antibiotic resistant germs that infest hospitals these days. My health plan basically consists of avoiding sick people and it seems to work pretty well. My shoulder still hurts though, so I'm faced with a dilemma.

I wonder if the watchmaker has finished with my watch yet? It's not that I need it or anything. Picking it up would just give me something to do on a dead day. Tomorrow I've got my appointment with the Genius Bar folks at the Apple store. Thursday is Dot's physical therapy day. Maybe I'll call the watchmaker on Friday and see what's going on. It's nice to have at least one thing to do every day.

In case I give the impression that I'm sitting around idle, I'm not. There are still plenty of website revisions and updates each and every day. These are getting too boring to write about though, so you won't hear much about these in the future. The fact that I prefer to tell you about dog pee than what I'm currently doing at work tells you all you need to know about my business. Maybe it is time to retire.

Daisy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1497

The furnace is working again. Marty, my favorite technician, came over to the house to work on the furnace. The problem actually did turn out to be a dirty flame sensor, just as I expected. Marty was initially puzzled why this was happening so frequently. After a lengthy call to the manufacturer, it was determined that the problem wasn't with the furnace itself, but with where it was located. Since the furnace is installed in a fairly small laundry room, instead of in the attic or basement where most furnaces are located, it is subjected to much more dust and lint than normal. Every time the pilot light ignites, a small fans turns on, sucking the dirty laundry room air into the combustion chamber. Over time, some of this dust is deposited on the flame sensor and fused to it by the flame. Although this is a clear and rational explanation of the problem, I don't know what the solution is. The furnace certainly won't fit in any other room of the house.

Dot had her spinal X-Rays today. We're still trying to determine the true cause of the ongoing weakness in her legs that is slowly causing her muscles to atrophy. The radiology report was very positive. There are no slipped or ruptured disks. That's good! I'm no expert, but her X-Rays looked fabulous to me. I've seen worse on much younger dogs. It could be that when all is said and done, we find out that Dot is just a very old dog in excellent health for her age. One difficulty with rescue dogs is that you never really know how old they are. A rescue dog's birthday is usually the day you adopted them. Dot could be a mildly arthritic 12 year old, or the world's healthiest 15 year old Dalmatian. I don't think we'll ever know for sure.

The posters I did yesterday were well received. If I created and printed more of these large posters, I probably wouldn't have any of my ongoing problems with clogged ink lines. Of course, the reason I don't have time to piddle around making fine art posters is that I'm way too busy earning a living. If the stock market was as predictable as it was when I initially started investing, I could probably make a decent living from my investments alone. Then I could  go back to making arty posters again. That's not likely to happen though. The world is insane. Market forces are just part of the equation now. Geopolitical issues, monetary policy, and those age old demons fear and greed all get in the way these days. Investing today is not much different that betting on football teams.

When I was a high flying young ad man, I thought I'd be lying on a beach with a drink in my hand by now. That's not likely to happen either.

April is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1447

Our favorite dog park is slowly but surely becoming just like all the other dog parks in Dallas. Aggressive dogs used to be a rarity at this park, but now we encounter one almost every week. More and more people don't even bother to clean up after their dogs and the once pristine grass is now a mine field of poop. Even though the park is huge, the people with nice dogs tend to congregate in one corner, staying far away from the unruly dogs and their inattentive owners in the other corner. The problem isn't the dogs. It's the people. It's always the people.

It's hard to believe it's December already. This entire year has gone by in a blur of uneventful days. I haven't really accomplished much this year. Maybe I'm being too hard on myself though. In today's topsy-turvy world, just staying afloat is a major accomplishment.

We put up the Christmas decorations this weekend. These items are so old and familiar now that the dogs don't pay any attention to them. We no longer worry about a dog knocking over the Christmas tree or wiping the coffee table clean with a casual wag of the tail. Dot and Dash ignored everything this year, with the exception of of two bright red Christmas blankets we got for each of their dog beds. They immediately knew the blankets were for them, and they approved.

Although Sunday may be a bad day to go to the grocery store, it has turned out to be a great day to go to the gym. I love going to the gym on Sunday, because I practically have the cavernous hall to myself. There's no rush either. I can stay as long as I like, without any worries about being late for whatever is next on the agenda.

I guess I'm going to have to resign myself to printing something small every day. It seems wasteful to print a photo and just throw it away, but my Epson representative assures me that this will be far more economical than wasting tons of expensive ink every month trying to unclog the lines. When I asked the Epson folks what the secret was to keeping this temperamental printer running reliably in the future, they told me "Just use it. It was meant to be used." This makes perfect sense. It just doesn't suit my needs. I'd like a printer I can use to make a single huge, beautiful Giclée print once every three or four months. My printer wasn't designed to do this. It was meant to be used in a production environment every day.

Nest week looks busy already. There are three new articles that need to be completed before the end of the week and a brand new website that needs to go live before the end of the year. There are doctors appointments and vet appointments on the calendar as well. One thing I won't be doing this month is Christmas shopping at the mall. When I discovered a few years ago that you could take care of everything with a few clicks on Amazon, that was the end of the mall. The only thing I go to the shopping mall for anymore is a haircut. I haven't figured out how to get a haircut on Amazon yet.

Jada is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1397

Janet asked if I would donate one of my old fine art photos to a charity auction she was involved with. The photo that had originally hung in a gallery show was long gone, but I though I might still have a duplicate print over at the storage warehouse. The storage warehouse used to be a repository for things that were too good to throw away and too useless to keep around the house. Now, it has just become a repository for mysterious objects that I don't even remember buying. I'm always surprised when I go to the storage room now. You just never know what you're going to find.

I eventually found the photo, along with a spare gallery frame to put it in. I found enough other forgotten photos to mount an entirely new show, but I think those days are gone. I'm just not that interested anymore.

I was interested in getting the dogs to the dog park today before the predicted rain ruined our opportunity. We'd never been to the park this early before, but it was still full of dogs and their owners. Maybe the others wanted to let their dogs play before the rain started too. Or maybe they just wanted to get their dog to the park before the big Texas Oklahoma football game started later in the morning. Dash was delighted to finally return to his favorite place and was a well behaved dog for the rest of the day.

I happened to see my old Defender on the Land Rover website today. They were asking almost double what they gave me in trade in for the car. Oh, well. I guess I knew I was selling the car wholesale, but still it was a bit startling to see it priced so high. I still feel like I made the right decision. I didn't feel comfortable driving the unreliable car anymore, so I guess it is irrelevant what someone else eventually pays for it.

Eventually it did rain today, but the afternoon shower was so brief that Dot didn't even notice it. I think she slept through the whole thing. By the time the dogs and I took our afternoon walk, the only evidence that it had rained at all were a few water drops on tree leaves. It certainly wasn't an eventful day, but it was a pleasant one.

Kuuipo is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 998

I got this e-mail last night that said "Congratulations, you're one of the top 100 Twitter users in Dallas." What? I wasn't even aware that I used Twitter very much. Curiosity drove me to the website that made this astounding claim and sure enough, I was listed as number 56 among the city's most active Twitter users. I was right up there with the aspiring musicians and over-the-hill athletes. I wondered how this could have happened, and then I realized that since the Twitter API makes it so easy to turn virtually anything into a Tweet, I had a lot more Tweets than I thought. I'll have to admit that I kind of like Twitter. It's the perfect medium for people like me who like to throw notes out to sea in bottles. I've accumulated a lot of Twitter followers and I don't know any of them. I can tell you one thing. It's a lot easier to deal with 20,000 people you don't know on Twitter than 20 you actually do know on Facebook.

Janet and I met some cute Dalmatians today up at the Dalmatian Rescue kennels. The new guys, Delilah, Annie and Eli, were quite small and all three were completely adorable. Two of the three dogs were still being treated for heartworm disease, but when these little guys get well, they should find homes almost immediately. I haven't seen a more appealing group of Dalmatians since the last group we photographed.

When I went to install the new printer ink I bought earlier in the week, I realized, much to my chagrin, that I had written down the wrong part numbers and had purchased colors I already had. Now, I've got to go back to the printer store and exchange these cartridges for the colors that are actually empty. Some of you probably think that I rattle on way too much about this silly printer, but it has become a symbol of life's frustrations for me. When I first got the printer, I was fascinated by the gorgeous prints I could make. I learned how to make beautiful Giclée fine art prints using wonderful archival papers that would last 100 years. Friends saw these prints and started asking me to print things for them. They just thought my printer was a bigger version of their own printers and never realized how much trouble it was for me to prints things for them. I eventuality realized the printer was only good for making fine art prints, so I spent a lot of time printing my best images and was able to use these images to get invited to show in several good galleries. This seems like a story with a happy ending. It would have been a happy ending if I hadn't come to despise the gallery world. Making it in the gallery world made advertising seem like an honest days work. I've never seen anything more phony and contrived than the business side of fine art. So, there you have it. I had become an expert fine art printer with no desire to participate in the art world anymore. I had no desire to make Giclée prints, but my love of machinery compelled me to maintain the bulky printer and keep it functioning. A love/hate relationship if there ever was one.

Luckily I have no such ambiguities when it come to Dot and Dash. I dearly love these dogs. They ought to have fun at the dog park tomorrow. A cold front blew through last night and it is at least twenty degrees cooler today. Finally, it feels like Fall!  I'm looking forward to the changing of the seasons. This Summer has been a hot one.

Camp is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 761

Even though virtually nothing happened, it still seemed like a busy day. Sundays are always like this. We get off to a late start, and by the time breakfast and the weekly trip to the dog park are finished, it is mid-afternoon. Today, the dogs got a bath at Vheas Laundromutt after the dog park. Last week, the dogs that drooled all over Dash while he was playing caused his coat to turn brown again and the vet suggested a bath after being slobbered on by other dogs. Dash seems allergic to just about everything, apparently including dog spit.

I asked our vet about the strange stains on Dash's coat last week and she said this sort of thing wasn't that uncommon. It seems that some dogs have a lot of bacteria in their saliva that can cause a reaction if other dogs are exposed to it. Even stranger, if a dog has been recently vaccinated, traces of the vaccine can show up in the saliva as well, causing a reaction if the other dog is sensitive to the vaccine. Now we have to add dog spit to the long list of things Dash needs to avoid.

Every weekend, I've been trying to print some new images on my large printer and put them aside for a future gallery show. This activity helps keep the printer lines from getting clogged and may even help me get another show down the road. The new images are actually better than the ones I displayed at my last show. I just need to get my butt in gear and pack them in a portfolio case and take them around to some gallery owners. So, when will I find the time to do this? Maybe next year sometime. It certainly won't happen any time soon.

Janet is off work tomorrow. Her office exchanged getting off on Good Friday for getting off on MLK Day instead. This seems a bit strange to me, but it certainly shows the direction the country is headed. I wonder what Martin Luther King would have thought? He was a religious man. I bet he would have wanted people to keep Good Friday as a religious holiday.

Tomorrow isn't a holiday for me. I've got a stack of website and writing work to finish and I need to drive up to North Dallas for my quarterly review with my financial adviser as well. I hope my financial adviser has some good news to report, but that isn't very unlikely.

Betty is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 608

Do you ever feel that you're spending too much time re-learning things you already know? I do. I wanted to make a few high quality Giclée prints on my new printer this afternoon and discovered that even though the Epson 4880 looked exactly like my old Epson 4000 printer, it was a different beast entirely. The ink was different. The ICC profiles were different. Even the paper path seemed slightly different. Consequently, I wasted some expensive watercolor paper trying to duplicate something I used to be able to do in my sleep. Like it or not, I'm going to have to go back to square one and recalibrate everything. I had the same problem when I switched from Photoshop 7.0 to CS5. Even though CS5 was a big improvement, it was also a big irritation, since a lot of the techniques I had perfected over the years simply didn't work anymore. Sometimes I wish people would simply stop improving things. It's going to take me the rest of my life to master all the features of stuff I already have.

As irritating as new things can be, I still can't resist something new. Today I joined Instagram. I have no idea who actually follows you on Instagram or why, but I do like the little square images the app produces. I took a few Instagram pictures today with my iPhone and was instantly transported back to the days when I shot a lot of stuff using Hasselblad and Bronica cameras. I've always liked the 2 1/4” x 2 1/4” square image format. Somehow I find it easier to compose things inside a square frame. This is probably just one more indication of how rigid and inflexible I've become. Just to prove that I'm really an easy going, flexible guy, I cropped one of my first Instagram pictures back into a rectangle for the blog.

It's time to give Dash another antigen shot. His skin is starting to look really good again, but maybe I ought to start giving the injections myself. These injections are supposed to be given subcutaneously, but the past several times the techs have given the injection in muscle and caused a nasty welt. I wish staying healthy wasn't so complicated. Dash appears to be getting better, but I seem to be getting worse. I'm increasingly convinced that I've got a pretty bad case of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. The last time I went to the doctor, I had them X-Ray my hands, since I thought that I might have sprained or broken my wrist. The X-Rays looked fine though and the only other thing I can think of that would cause this kind of pain is Carpal Tunnel. I really don't want the surgery if I can avoid it. I had a friend who had the surgery and his hands are worse now than they were before. I saw some special far infrared therapy gloves on the Internet that are supposed to help. Maybe I'll buy a pair. Gloves certainly sound easier than surgery.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day