Day 3380

The smallest change in Dash's routine can cause havoc. We definitely shouldn't have changed his diet. He had another bad case of diarrhea last night. I think the canned food we fed him was too rich, because the last time we tried this brand the same thing happened. Our options are getting smaller. Dash is getting extremely picky about food again and we've got to keep him eating.

Things are better today, but I feel like I've gotten no sleep for the past 48 hours. Life is beginning to seem like a perpetual boot camp. We were initially happy when Dash chose to sleep on the floor last night but it turned out to be a bad choice. He slipped off his dog bed which was protected and ended up pooping all over the carpet. It's a lot harder to clean the carpet than small things you can take outside and hose down. One of the things we hosed down last night was Dash. He was covered with poop.

Maybe I got a little sleep last night. It's hard to tell. There was lots of laundry to do and a liberal amount of Nature's Miracle was used to sanitize the carpet. Dash got another bath this afternoon and the carpet is drying out. Dash is eating the food he rejected a few days ago and we had a nice walk. Basically, all is well. I'm still tired though. Very tired.

One of Dash's vets recommended clindamycin as an antibiotic to treat his gum infection. I guess I failed to tell him about Dash's diarrhea problems. Clindamycin has an FDA black box warning saying that it can cause severe diarrhea and even colon damage. Hmm. Might not be the best drug to take at this time. There's got to be another alternative without all the side effects. For the time being we'll continue the oral rinse we use every evening. I'm not sure it works, but it's better than nothing.

I went up on the roof today and was pleased to discover that the warmer weather is causing the standing water to evaporate faster. It was fairly easy to clear away the remaining standing water from our recent rains. The only problem with Spring is that pollen from the trees mixes with the water and creates an ugly brown mess. The sticky brown water stains the elastomer coating, making it harder to find potential tears that could cause a leak. Nothing is easy these days.

I've got another auction coming up in early April. I was all excited about the first series of auctions in New York last year, but now I just wish the whole process was over. I can't decide whether to put a reserve on this lot. I don't want this stuff to sell for nothing, but I don't want it back either. The auction house has been encouraging me to tell my friends about the auction. Not very likely. It's been years since I've had any art buyer friends.

Dash has been sleeping like a baby all evening. This probably means he'll be awake later tonight when I'm trying to sleep. I'll be happy to take you outside to pee little buddy, but I'm not looking forward to cleaning up diarrhea again.

Chloe is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2280

We got off to a late start this morning. I woke up at 7 AM, which meant it was really 8 AM because of Daylight Savings Time. Dot couldn't wait that long. She needed to go outside immediately and before I could get her harness attached, she peed on the living room rug. It wasn't her fault. It was her old, slow companion. I hate it when she has an accident just because I wasn't alert enough to see the signs. She does try to tell me, but it doesn't always work in the morning when I am sleep deprived and haven't had my coffee yet. At any rate, it wasn't a big deal. I sprayed the rug with Nature's Miracle, took it outside and hosed it down and left it to dry in the sun. The rug will live to serve another day.

Dash got a bath today while I went to the gym. I don't think either of us really enjoyed the experience. Janet always asks if I had a good workout and I don't even know what that means. She really enjoys going to the gym, but to me it's just a way to moderately reduce the chance of having a heart attack. It's kind of like taking statins and blood pressure medication, except that I sweat more. It would be nice if I enjoyed these workouts, but that would be out of character for me. It's rare that I enjoy anything these days.

I definitely didn't enjoy going up on the roof for the third time this week, but maybe the third time is the charm. According to the weather forecast, we are supposed to have clear skies and warm weather for the next four or five days. I probably should get the landscapers out to refurbish the back yard before the rainy season is completely finished. Last year, we planted the St. Augustine grass in March and the Spring rains really helped it get established before the Summer dry spell and underground grubs killed it again. It wouldn't hurt to call a tree trimmer as well. Now, that the Oak and Elm trees are starting to bud, I'm starting to see more than a few dead limbs.

The park was really crowded today. It's always this way on warm, early Spring days. Dash can smell food from quite a distance, so he's always trying to crash someone's picnic. It's a shame that there are so many loose dogs in the park on weekends. When Dash sees a loose dog, he immediately turns around and wants to go home again. Our afternoon walk got cut short this way today. It's been many years since Dash was attacked, but he has never forgotten. A single loose dog can ruin his day.

I bet we'll be walking the dogs in the dark again tomorrow. I looked outside around 6 AM this morning and it was still quite dark outside. I should of gotten up then and taken Dot out to pee, but I didn't. No worries about repeating this mistake on a weekday. The clocks have been re-set and we'll all be up at the crack of dawn whether I like it or not.

Wyatt is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2183

We're making progress. Our broadband service was finally restored today and the humidity in the house is down to 38%. When the technician called to tell me that everything had been fixed, I asked him what the problem was. "We found four separate faults in the fiber line to your house," he told me. "That sounds pretty major," I said. "Was service out for the entire neighborhood?" "No, it was just you," the guy said. It figures. Our house just seems to attract problems.

I stretched the soiled photo backdrop out on a long clothesline this morning and sprayed it with the Nature's Miracle enzyme. It was a nice day, so it didn't take long for the muslin cloth to air out and dry. I think it looks and smells much better, but Dot and Dash beg to differ. They are still real interested in the cloth backdrop when I take them outside. I'll see what Janet thinks. You can't dry clean or wash these hand painted backdrops, because all the paint will come off. I'll clean the backdrop again tomorrow and hopefully by next Saturday it will just be another large, somewhat dirty piece of canvas. I'm hoping for the best. The last thing you want is the smell of pee when you're shooting a long sequence of pet pictures. If one dog has marked the canvas, all the other dogs will want to pee on top of the same spot to claim it. That's just the way dogs are.

Even though our U-Verse service is working again, I'm still tempted to switch to Time Warner. I checked prices today and their top of the line bundle is about 40% less than what we are currently paying right for U-Verse. Cable providers are tricky though. They are masters of bait and switch tactics. You sign up for something and then you notice a few months later that you are paying quite a bit more. None of the cable providers include taxes in their pricing either. It's amazing how many weird and often expensive local and state taxes they can get away with adding to your bill. No wonder so many people are just watching Netflix and Hulu on the Internet. So far, the Internet has managed to escape most of the ridiculous taxes the utilities and telecom providers tack on to your bill.

The evil bird that poops on my car has returned to spend another Winter taunting me. I know it's the same bird every year. I wonder how long birds live? I think that parrots can live 50 years or more, but what about Blue Jays and Cardinals? This bird always poops on my car and never on Janet's. It drives me nuts. I've tried everything to scare the bird away, but nothing seems to work. I really thought rubber snakes would do the trick, but this bird has no fear of snakes. It even pooped on one of the rubber snakes yesterday.

I thought I might be able to see Comet Catalina this morning, since it is currently located very near the Moon and Venus in the pre-dawn sky. It turns out that the comet was fainter than expected though, and I wasn't able to find it with binoculars. I'll try again tomorrow morning, but I suspect that the glare from cars and streetlights will pretty well mask the faint sixth magnitude object.

Work continues to be slow this month. Maybe this is the new normal. I certainly hope not.

Humphrey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2145

Such a long day. Unrelenting rain and incontinent dogs isn't a good combination. There was no avoiding the rain this morning. We took as short a walk as we could get away with and we all got wet. Dot did her business immediately, while Dash insisted on walking through the rain to his favorite spot. Dot, of course had to follow, because she didn't want to miss out on anything. Did I mention that we all got wet.

I didn't go out for breakfast at all this morning, because the weather was terrible and both dogs are terrified of storms. There wasn't much left in the refrigerator, but since there were still a few eggs, half a bottle of milk, and a loaf of bread, I made French Toast. It was actually pretty good. It was a good thing that I had lots of work to do, because I was more or less housebound.

I was supposed to get a FedEx package today, but it never arrived. The FedEx website said the package was on the truck for delivery by the end of the day. As the end of the day approached, the status changed to "Pending" and then to "Unable to Deliver. Customer Unavailable." This last message was posted while I was eating dinner, about ten feet from the front door. The driver lied. He didn't make an attempt to deliver at all. I was here the entire time. It was raining pretty hard, he was probably behind for the day, and he just didn't want to get out of the truck. This has happened before. I wish he had just told the truth. If the message had said "Had a bad day. Screw it. I'll try to catch you tomorrow." I would have understood completely.

One of the reasons it was a long day is that Dot had another messy accident on the carpet this morning. I always place her dog bed right next to my side of the bed and then place a much larger waterproof protective tarp on the other side of the dog bed facing in the general direction of the back door. Sometimes Dot gets confused when she wakes up and heads toward the bathroom instead. There just aren't enough tarps to protect the entire house, so it is not uncommon for her to poop in odd places during the night before I can manage to wake up, get out of bed, and point her in the right direction. We're going to have to buy another bottle of Nature's Miracle enzyme cleaner this weekend. We're going through this stuff pretty quickly now.

The only upside to this dreary day was that I did manage to get a lot of work done. I added thirty new pictures to one of the websites I manage and still had time to finish two articles. I still have three additional articles that I was planning on writing next week. If this rain continues, I may end up writing them this weekend instead. Working still beats sitting around waiting for the rain to stop. There just isn't that much to do on a rainy day.

I hope FedEx delivers my package tomorrow. I'll probably have to wait till Monday though. The odds of getting a package delivered on a rainy weekend are pretty slim. I hope the dogs are content to sleep in tomorrow morning. The way the weather looks now, there aren't many reasons to go outside.

Puppies are today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2075

I feel poor. After paying a horrendous batch of August bills and watching the Dow plunge 531 points in a single day, it was easy to feel a bit discouraged. The stock market is right back where it was in 2011. Four years of gains have been erased in a single week. I just wonder how all this is going to end. Everything is getting more expensive, but wages aren't going up. The stock market rises and falls on political unrest instead of market fundamentals. Everybody wants a job, but fewer and fewer people have marketable skills. It's a mess.

Dot pooped in the house again. This time I was ready for her. I quickly moved a rug out of the way, held her harness so she wouldn't fall, and made sure she did her business on the brick floor instead of ruining another rug. We need to move some of the rugs around. She often poops while she is eating because food makes her excited, but unfortunately the biggest area rug we have is right under her food bowl. We need to start buying Outright by the gallon. Without enzyme cleaners like Outright and Nature's Miracle, many of our rugs would have been totally ruined by now.

I think we're just going to have to learn to live with Dot's condition. You can't leave her outside in the yard to do her business because she can't stand on her own. I can spend half an hour outside holding her harness, but she just won't go until something makes her bark or gets her excited. The challenge now is just looking for the best ways to control the damage. I talked to Dot's oncologist today and she agreed to discontinue the Palladia pills for another two weeks based on the initial results we have witnessed so far. Dot may not be any stronger, but she is definitely feeling better now that we have stopped the chemotherapy for a while. When a full month has passed, we will scan Dot again and see whether discontinuing the Palladia has caused the tumor to grow. Until then, we'll just hope she continues to grow stronger.

I managed to finish almost everything this week. My writing assignments have been turned in. Websites have been updated. Bills have been paid. And new piles of poop have been cleaned up. I'm ready for the weekend. My breakfast restaurant was kind of quiet this morning and I managed to snag one of the three good parking places. For some inexplicable reason, most of the parking places have been re-striped so they are about a foot narrower. Only a smart car of a Mini will fit in these small slots, but that doesn't keep the F-250 pickups from trying. I usually park far away to avoid door dings.

I tried again to get the big rug that Dot soiled yesterday clean. I've washed the rug thoroughly with a hose, but it's going to take about a week for it to dry. Janet already bought a replacement rug, but I'd like to see if I can clean the rug anyway.  I'm sure this is going to happen again. If the rug wasn't so stiff, I could probably take it to a laundromat and wash the thing in one of the big commercial washers. I don't think it would fit in the machine though. You can tell that my brain isn't being fully utilized if my big problem of the day was dealing with a poopy area rug.

We're invited to a party tomorrow. I'm always apprehensive about parties, but we'll probably go. There's a fine line between being a little reclusive and becoming completely anti-social and I don't want to cross it.

Cookie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 539

Today was the day I was supposed to take Dash to the vet. Unfortunately, I canceled the appointment yesterday. I thought Dash was well again, since he has seemed absolutely normal for over two weeks now. So what happens this morning? His diarrhea returns, he poops on the carpet and throws up his breakfast on his morning walk. These were exactly the same symptoms that caused me to make the appointment in the first place. I called the vet again and tried to get my appointment back, but of course someone else had already taken it. Now I've got to wait until next week to get Dash in for a check-up again. This time I'm going to keep the appointment, whether he seems sick or not.

I drove up to Carrollton after breakfast to pick up the missing check that turned up yesterday. I guess I could have waited a few more days and the check would have come in the mail, but I'm a superstitious person and I didn't want anything else to go wrong. Airplane crashes aren't the only things that happen in groups of three. I think a lot of things go wrong in threes. Hey, why take chances.

Cleaning up runny dog poop on the office carpet and driving across town to pick up the check definitely put me behind this morning. I had made plans to go to an Avid Technology editing seminar later in the day, but I never managed to get caught up in time to make a second trip across town. By the time the dogs had finished smelling every tree on their evening walk, the seminar was half over. I guess it was no great loss that I missed the presentation. I had been thinking of getting Avid Media Composer for an upcoming video editing project, but the project went away when the client decided to edit it themselves.

I guess I made progress today. I went to the pet store and got a new bottle of Natures Miracle to get rid of the smell in my office. I got another watch article written. I put a little money in the bank. Tonight we'll see if Dash can hold his dinner down. I hope he feels better. My guess is that he's been eating too many June bugs in the back yard, but with a dog like Dash, it could be anything.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day