Day 3561

Jeez. It costs more to remove a tree than it does to take a nice little vacation to the Davis Mountains. This was the third time I've had to have the tree guys out this year. I bet they'll be back again. Janet wanted them to remove another tree as well, but the Elm tree was all they had time for today. I hate spending money to make the yard look even worse than it did before, but what are you going to do? Mother nature always wins these battles. These trees get blown down in windstorms or they fall from rot or old age. Mature trees the same age are falling in the park all the time. There's not much I can do to stop this.

At least the Elm tree is gone and I can check one more thing off my to-do list. The tree was located very close to the house, so we can't use a stump grinder to remove the stump. There is too much danger that the stump removal process would break the glass in the bedroom windows. The tree was close to our sewer line as well. One more reason not to get a stump grinder involved. People in the country often burn a tree stump out. Nope. That's not going to work. Sounds like a good way to burn down the house. I guess I'm going to have to get used to living with the unsightly stump.

Treasure's surgery went well. She had three growths removed, but none was cancerous. One growth was a benign fatty lipoma, another was a mammary tumor, and the third growth was scar tissue from an earlier surgery. Treasure should be on the road to recovery soon. What she needs now is a home.

There are a lot of Dalmatians that need a home right now. The rescue group has been asked to take in as many as twenty new dogs recently. This is way more than usual. We've already picked up six of these dogs, but it's a real challenge to find the funds to do something on this scale. Vet bills, food, and boarding expenses really add up quickly. Hopefully the group will find a way to bring all these dogs into the rescue program.

When I was taking my walk this morning, I could hear the tree guys chain saws from a long way away. Chain saws are really noisy. I wonder why people choose this line of work. There is a lot of skill involved to bring down a large tree without destroying everything in the vicinity. There is also a lot of danger. I've known several people who have experienced serious chain saw injuries. For that reason alone, I won't go anywhere near a chain saw. I'm glad there are people who will do this work. If you've got a tree on your roof, you've got a serious problem.

I just upgraded my phone to IOS 13 a few days ago and there is already another update. I guess it doesn't take long for bugs to be discovered. I downloaded the new update as well. I have no idea why it is needed, but it's better to be safe than sorry.

I skipped episode six of the Ken Burns documentary tonight. I'm sure I'll watch it later though. They rebroadcast these things over and over. I still can't decide whether to go see Ad Astra in a theater. Now that I've started taking long walks, there isn't a lot of time for a matinee movie. I eat breakfast, I walk, I do a few unavoidable chores, and I write the blog. Lately, I call that a pretty full day.

Scout is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3557

Every once in a while I go to a restaurant that I thought was terrible just to see if it got any better. Today I went to a place that I remembered as being dirty with rude waiters. The place was very clean and everyone was extremely friendly. I ordered the one thing on the menu that I used to like and it was terrible. What was going on here? Did this place get bought by someone else? It was all very disorienting.

It rained a lot last night, but the rain didn't cool things down. It was still hot and muggy. I knew I would need to go up on the roof and clear the standing water away, but I decided to get my morning walk out of the way first. By the time I returned, I was too tired to go up on the roof and took a nap instead. I kept trying to postpone this task by taking some mail to the post office and updating my phone to IOS 13. Eventually, I turned on both pumps and water came gushing out of the attached hoses. Damn. There was a lot of water up there. I had to deal with it.

I hate going up on the roof these days. It seems like I've been clearing away water forever. Every time it rains, the damaged areas get a little worse. There really isn't a good solution. Since the house is old and has settled, there would still be standing water even with a new roof. To reengineer the roof so it still looked the same but had just enough of a pitch to reliably drain water away is ridiculously expensive. I guess I'll just keep patching things. I'll probably have to go buy a five gallon can of the silicon coating material myself since the roofer still hasn't brought me the coating he promised. Residential roofers don't know how to do a flat roof and commercial roofers aren't interested in doing small jobs like this. They'd rather do a shopping center instead. It's all very tiring. I've gotten bids on a new roof, but nothing seems realistic. This is why I hate rain. If it would just quit raining, I wouldn't have a problem.

Every time I update my phone I get all these messages asking if various apps can connect to Bluetooth or operate in the background. My instinct is always to say no to everything and then the apps quit working. I think I've got everything I use working again, but I keep wishing that people would quit constantly updating everything. I was happy with the way my computer and phone worked five years ago. I really don't care about Dark Mode or a host of new Emojis. As long as I can check the weather and take pictures on my walks, I'm good.

With my five mile walk, a trip to the post office and grocery store, and a lot of manual labor on the roof, I got in quite a few steps today. It will be interesting to see what my regular doctor thinks when I go in for my annual physical soon. I feel healthier than I did last year. I also feel older. Maybe I'm just treading water. Janet and I both think it's important to keep moving. It's amazing how sedentary some people our age have become. It would be nice if I actually liked exercising like Janet does, but I can't complain. Staying active keeps me from wondering about my purpose in life. You don't need a purpose when you are walking. You just walk.

The backyard security light stayed on twice as long as it usually does last night. It was a lot cooler yesterday. Maybe the problem with the photoelectric sensor is temperature related. Maybe the rain washed away some of the spider webs. Who knows. If we still had dogs, I would have replaced this light by now. Some things just don't seem to matter as much anymore.

Rosie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day