Day 1994

Yay. I fixed the furnace all by myself this morning. Don't even ask why we needed the furnace running on the first of June. Texas weather is weird. The last time the HVAC technician came out to the house, he showed me how to fix one of our most persistent problems. In a typical year, I usually have to schedule several service calls because the furnace won't stay lit. The gas comes on and then shuts right off again. It's usually a faulty heat sensor that is causing the problem. At first, technicians would replace this sensor. Then one day, a helpful technician told me that the sensor wasn't broken, it was just dirty. He took the thing apart and sanded the heat sensing element with a piece of fine sandpaper. Good as new.

Eventually I got tired of paying $90 for someone to sand this little metal thermocouple and asked if I could do it myself. It was easy enough to remove the dirt and scale from the metal. Getting the sensor out of the furnace was the problem. When the technician came out to install my fancy WiFi thermostat earlier this year, he was nice enough to take me step-by-step through the process. Amazingly, I remembered his instructions this morning and I fixed the furnace myself. I could have just waited for things to warm up though. By afternoon, I had the air conditioner running.

Dash's blood test tomorrow is complicated. Not only does he have to fast, he has to take his thyroid medication exactly four hours before the test is done. Since his appointment is at 9:30 AM tomorrow, we have to get up at 5:30 AM to give him his pills. Since Dot and Dash would never wait until after 9:30 to have their breakfast, I need to drop Dash off at the vet immediately after we finish our morning walk and then return home to feed Dot. I'll then eat my own breakfast and return to the vet to pick up Dash again. Luckily, this particular test only has to be done once a year.

I worked on another mobile friendly website today. My strategy so far has been to make sure I know how to convert a client's website before I even mention the subject to them. Every website is different and some have proved quite difficult to convert. I don't want to promise something that I can't deliver. When I've got a site that functions properly offline, I'll ask the client if they'd like to convert their website to a mobile friendly version. Some folks are really happy that I'm looking out for them and others don't even know what a mobile friendly site is. I'm certainly not making much money doing all this work, but it is a necessary learning experience. In the near future, all websites will be done this way, so I only have a limited amount of time to get up to speed.

It's hard to believe that it's June already. The year is almost half over and the only things I can remember are Dot's spinal injury, my wisdom teeth, and lots and lots of rain. Hopefully the second half of the year will be far less stressful than the first. I did enjoy getting invited by NASA to view that satellite launch in California, but even that trip was marred by an unfortunate car accident. I've got a birthday later this month, but that just makes me even older than I am now. In just a few more days I will have posted something on this blog for 2000 consecutive days without missing a single day. That's probably a bigger deal to me than my birthday right now. If Dot continues to get better, I'll be a happy camper. The rest of the year can just slide by.

Charlie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1629

I saw a dead possum in the neighbor's yard while I was mowing the grass this morning. I wonder what killed it? It didn't look like it had gotten run over by a car, so I began to suspect poison. I'm always worried about the dogs getting into something poisonous. Lots of the neighbors put out rat poison and insecticide. Others use powerful herbicides to control weeds. The park maintenance crews often use herbicides themselves. The park has its share of crazy people as well. I wouldn't be surprised to discover that someone had put out poison just to harm animals. At any rate, I try my best to make sure the dogs don't eat anything in the park. I can keep them away from most things, but I'm having trouble with all the horse poop in the park. Horse poop is disgusting, but I guess it's pretty safe. Especially if you see it come out of the horse. Dash loves to eat horse poop. It is a never ending battle to keep him away from the stuff.

The yard looks nice now. I mowed both the front and the back today. I've been postponing mowing the back yard until the roots on the new St. Augustine grass got fully established. The grass needed to be mowed however, since it had already grown taller than the Liriope ground cover. If the roots aren't firmly established by now, they probably never will be. After the grass was looking nice, I tried to find the remaining creeping vines that almost strangled the trees last summer. These vines are everywhere and wrap around tree trunks and branches, creeping up the tree until they have totally taken over. I think I've ripped up most of the vines, but they'll all be back by July.

Today turned out to be a good day to go to the gym. Most of the machines I typically use were empty and there was nobody using the basketball court. I think there were only five other people in the entire gym. I've gotten back to the point where where I can do my full workout again. Next step is to try and do this more than once a week. Three times a week would be ideal, but I'm still too busy for that. Work has slowed down a bit though, so twice a week ought to be pretty easy now. Maybe this Wednesday would be a good day to start.

I got gas today and noticed that the price had gone up again. I got a letter yesterday telling me that the rent on my storage warehouse will be going up again when my contract comes up for renewal. Prices for everything keep going up and up, but I get nothing but grief when I try to raise my own prices. Probably this just proves that people need gasoline for their cars and warehouse space a lot more than they need writing. The storage warehouse folks could probably charge whatever they want. I think I'm the only long term customer they have. Just about everyone else rents for a month or two when they're desperate for space. People that just moved to town or just got divorced seemed to like storage warehouses. I've had my space forever though. There have been five different managers of the warehouse since I first started storing stuff away that I couldn't bear to part with.

It's hard to believe that it's June already. The dogs got their monthly heartworm pill this morning. The air has started to turn hot and muggy and insects abound. The Summer heat is brutal and lots of things break. You always hope that your air conditioner keeps working during the Summer months though. The air conditioner is essential.

Charlie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 912

The hailstorm last night was even worse than I thought. In the light of  day, Janet's Land Rover looked pretty well demolished. The hood looked like someone had spent ten minutes banging on it as hard as they could with a hammer. The windshield was broken. Some of the taillights were broken. There were even some serious dents in the doors. I'll bet that the insurance adjusters are going to be very busy today. There are probably thousands of cars like this all over town. It's weird. Janet and I will probably both have loaner cars at the same time. My own car is still a long way from having its own extensive list of repairs completed.

Luckily, there's one thing that does appear to have reached its conclusion. The buyer of my rent property got their loan approval this morning. We are scheduled to close tomorrow. I never dreamed that buying and selling property would become so complicated. The last time I did this, the whole process seemed much, much simpler. Oh, well. At least selling a house is safe. If you sell something to a stranger on Craig's List, you have to worry about getting abducted or killed.

Can you believe that it's the middle of June already?  I've got to remember to pay my quarterly estimated taxes tomorrow. Next week, it's going to be my birthday again. Seems like we just did this not too long ago. Jeez, where does the time go.  I've still got a few Christmas thank-you letters that I haven't written yet.

I hope the buyers enjoy my rent house. I still have a lot of fond memories about that place. I guess it would be hard not to have good memories. I was younger, healthier, and had a glamorous ad agency job when I lived there. I didn't have Dalmatians though. I didn't have a dog at all. On balance, life now is much better.

Daisy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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