Day 3502

I did more grocery shopping than usual today. First I got the things I usually get on Saturdays and then I went to the stores where Janet shops and got the things she usually gets. I think I have the easier job, since I typically only go to one store. Janet always goes to several different stores. It's weird to me that with so many things on grocery store shelves, you still can't get the same things in all stores. Some stores have better produce. Other stores have better meat. I don't even bother to look for bargains, but they are out there if you want to take the time to look. It's amazing how much price and variety actually vary.

I had breakfast and all my shopping done by 10 AM, but my efficiency wasn't rewarded with cooler weather. Apparently yesterday was an anomaly. By the time I started my first walk of the day, it was already too hot. I didn't bother to carry an extra camera today. The animals were all in hiding anyway.

Since I finished my chores earlier than expected, I decided to watch a movie on Netflix. The first thing I noticed when I logged on was a notice saying that the price was going up next month. Weren't higher subscription prices one of the reasons their stock took a big hit last week? People don't like higher prices.

I watched a Chinese science fiction movie called The Wandering Earth. I was expecting to hear the actors speaking Chinese with English subtitles, but they had dubbed the entire movie in English. I generally don't like overdubs, but since weren't a lot of close up scenes, you really didn't notice any lip-sync problems. This movie has gotten good reviews and was a big hit in China. It was interesting how the Chinese see an apocalyptic future. There were no aliens popping out of people's chests. There was no breakdown of civil society. Instead, humanity managed to pull itself together to save the planet from being swallowed up by an exploding sun. The premise of the movie was that to escape the sun turning into a red giant, we could stop the earth's rotation, attach 10,000 giant fusion rockets to one side of the planet and propel it out of the solar system on a 2,500 year journey to another star. The movie was well done with special effects equal to anything Ridley Scott or James Cameron could come up with. I'll admit I've been intrigued with stories of the Earth leaving the solar system ever since I read A Pail of Air by Fritz Lieber when I was a kid. I don't think the sun is going to blow up in 2061 though. A little too soon.

I've been eating Cadence Kitchen flash frozen meals all week. These flash frozen dinners are delicious and I've had no heartburn problems at all. I think these meals contain too much salt though. That's probably one reason they taste so good. Restaurant chefs always use too much salt as well. I've been on a low sodium diet for a long time and can really feel the effects of too much salt. I guess it's back to a more bland diet when Janet returns.

The AT&T service technician is supposed to come out to the house tomorrow morning. Coincidently, the Internet has been working fine today. There was one little glitch early this morning, but mostly it's been smooth sailing. I hope this guy can find a problem even when it's not very evident. I hate dealing with intermittent problems. This is like when you hear a funny noise in your car and the noise goes away as soon as you take it in for repairs. We'll see how the service call goes. Hopefully, I'll still be able to go to the gym.

Deuce is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2944

Don't ever get a white comforter if you have an old dog who likes to sleep on the bed. It's amazing how quickly this thing gets soiled. The comforter is too big to fit in our washing machine, so we have to take it to a laundromat. Once you go to this much trouble, you might as well wash everything else as well. We managed to do a few other things, but it was definitely a day for doing laundry. I doubt if things will stay clean long, but right now the bed looks very nice.

The roof is finally dry as well. Since there is another cold wave and possibly snow on the way, it was time to clear away the leaves and standing water. In the summer I would never bother to sweep the water off the roof if it was going to rain the next day. Winter is different. I've discovered over the years that ice buildup is bad for the roof, so I always try to remove any standing water when freezing weather is in the forecast. They say that temperatures will dip into the teens tomorrow. I hope the forecast is wrong.

I had a small victory with the computer today. On Saturday I tried to rebuild my directory and the Diskwarrior software kept crashing. I was ready to buy an upgrade, but I needed the serial number from the old software to get a lower price. I launched the program again to get the number and this time it worked. Go figure. I have an optimized directory now and my hard drive is healthy again. I have no idea why the software wasn't working on Saturday, but luckily you only need to rebuild your directory every six months or so. Blind luck saved me some money today.

While I was cleaning the house this afternoon, I watched a Jay Leno's Garage marathon on TV. Car shows are relaxing. I watch them the same way Janet watches Hallmark Christmas movies. It's weird that Jay Leno and Jerry Seinfeld both have shows about cars now. It must be nice to be able to buy an unlimited number of cool cars. At one point Seinfeld owned 46 Porsches. Leno has an even larger collection of exotic automobiles. I think one of the reasons I started collecting model trains years ago was that I knew I'd never have the money to collect cars. Now that I think about it, Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee might be the perfect way to introduce me to Netflix binge watching. I think all 56 shows are on Netflix now.

I can't decide whether to take Dash to the vet or get a haircut this week. Dash needs his nails trimmed. On the other hand, I need a haircut too. I wish I was better at trimming Dash's nails myself. He's terrible riding in the car now. I can't risk clipping a nail too short either because of the bleeding problem. I was thinking about making an appointment at the vet for tomorrow, but I don't know if it is going to snow. I'm definitely not driving Dash around on icy roads. Jeez. Simple things have become so complicated. It might be easier to just get a haircut.

Betty is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2943

I used to be an avid railfan. I liked to ride trains, read books about trains, hang out in hobby shops, and buy model trains. I built several model railroads, although I never really had a place to keep them. Eventually all three train stores in Dallas went out of business, people I knew stopped collecting trains, my own trains wound up in the storage warehouse, and I completely forgot about my old hobby. Today, I was thinking about the owner of one of those old school hobby shops and thought I'd look him up on the Internet. I wasn't expecting to find anything. The guy is older than me and I thought he retired years ago. Much to my surprise I discovered he was alive and well and owns what is billed as "The largest train store between Chicago and Atlanta." For some reason this made me feel great. It's nice to know that it is still possible for old men to pursue an obscure dream and succeed at it. I don't know anyone in Dallas these days who even knows what a train is, but apparently they are still quite popular in Kentucky.

If this store were closer, I might start hanging out in hobby shops again. Kentucky is a long way away though. I'm not much of a collector anymore either. I really doubt that I'll pursue a hobby that involves collecting things ever again. The last thing I need is more useless stuff. That being said, I hope my friend's store stays in business. I'm going to need a place to sell my trains someday and it sure isn't going to be eBay.

Since I can't hang out in hobby shops anymore, I go to the gym. Hobby shops were more fun, but the gym will keep me alive longer. I've started going right after breakfast on Sunday mornings now. The place is practically empty and there is never anyone on the basketball court. It always surprises me that I am so inconsistent on the court. Some days I can sink quite a few free throws in a row. Other days, I can't seem to hit the basket at all. I was not at my best today and I have no idea why. I was actually in a pretty good mood.

I'm getting closer and closer to binge watching on Netflix. I've set up the account on both Apple TV and the Roku Stick, but I haven't actually watched anything yet. I can't get past the enormous menu. I scan through this menu from time to time and it seems endless. You could spend the rest of your life watching Netflix movies if you were so inclined. I was bored this afternoon, so I looked at the menu again. As always, there were too way many choices. There were several things that Netflix said I had a 96% chance of liking. How do they know that much about me already? Hey, I was thinking about watching Black Mirror anyway, so it might be a good idea to just go with their suggestions.

The weather was nice today, but it is supposed to rain tomorrow. Then on Tuesday, another cold front arrives and the temperatures are expected to drop into the teens again. I wish the weather would just make up it's mind. I don't even know what to wear anymore.

Kasey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2828

I'm going to have to start writing earlier so I can watch the new Ken Burns documentary in the evening. Maybe The Vietnam War is more memorable for me than some of Burns other films because everyone my age grew up right in the middle of that moment in history. This film makes you realize that there is nothing new under the sun. All the turmoil that is going on in today's society was going on in the mid-60's too. Listening to the Lyndon Johnson tapes is amazing. Nobody really knew what they were doing. I guess it is not surprising that no president made tapes in the Oval Office after Richard Nixon. Ineptness sounds so much worse when you hear it on tape.

I'm going to have to go back and watch this entire series on Netflix sometime later. It is an eye opener. Jeez. If I ever get hooked on history and stop watching science fiction, it will be all the confirmation you need that I've become an old man. Children love Dr. Who. Old men read history. My Dad was a voracious reader and always had a tall stack of history books on his bedside table as he grew older. I'm sure you can learn a lot from history, but I'd like to think you can learn from fantasy too. I guess I can be a fan of Ken Burns and still be looking forward to Season Three of The Expanse.

I can't say that Dash loves his new soft cone, but he tolerates it. I think it is much more comfortable for him while he is sleeping. The one good thing about the old plastic cone was that it was transparent. This new one restricts his vision a bit more. He has a little trouble eating out of his bowl with it on, so I make sure to remove it whenever he is eating. The one thing I can't do is forget about him for any length of time while the cone is off. It doesn't take him long to rediscover the dewclaw injury.

The shoe repairman did a great job on my boots. They look as good as new. The only problem is that I know I'll be reluctant to wear them for a little while because they look too nice. I have plenty of clothes, but I tend to wear the same things over and over again. The things I actually wear are incredibly beat up. Maybe the worn clothing is more comfortable, or maybe I don't want to ruin the nice looking stuff. I don't know. I'll probably start wearing the boots again regardless of how I feel. They are the only comfortable off-pavement shoes I have. I'm sure it won't take long to return them to their beat up status.

I've figured out that it takes three days for water to start leaking out of the crack in the shower tiles. A little water must seep under the tiles every time I take a shower and on the third day, enough has accumulated to reach the level of the crack. I sucked the water away again with the wet/dry vacuum but am still unsure how to repair things. Is this a job for a plumber or a tile guy? I think the leak is in the drain itself, but I'm not sure. If I hire a tile guy, it will turn out that I needed a plumber. If I get a plumber, it will turn out that it was just bad grout in the tiles. That's just the way it goes.

I can't decide what I want for breakfast tomorrow. I make a lot of substitutions now. Some of the things I'm hungry for aren't on any menu. Maybe if I'm nice, someone will cook them for me anyway.

Rowe is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2783

I tried to clean up some loose ends today. I called about a long overdue invoice and was told that a check was going in the mail today. Even though I was skeptical about this claim, I didn't feel like arguing. When someone tells you that they put a check in the mail, you have a good chance of getting paid eventually. It's when they claim that they don't even owe you the money that you've got a problem. Next, I called about a watch repair that was two years overdue. When I listened to the recorded message, I noticed that the name of the company had changed. This was not a good sign. I'll have to follow up on this one if the watch repair guy doesn't return my call. I was going to enquire about the estate of a relative that has been tied up in probate for even longer than the watch repair, but I've been told that this kind of delay is not that uncommon. Maybe I'll wait another six months and see what happens.

I've become accustomed to the fact that nothing goes smoothly anymore, but some delays seem ridiculous. Should any type of repair take three years?  Does the little notice on my invoices saying "30 Days Net? mean absolutely nothing? When I was told that it would take 90 days to get a refund on the fraudulent gift card recently, I kept thinking that this really meant six months and a lot of frustrating phone calls. You've got to keep trying though. That's the only way you get results these days.

Dash wouldn't eat his breakfast this morning. He has always been a finicky eater. We keep two brands of food on hand, knowing that if he won't eat one, he will usually eat the other. I knew that we had inadvertently picked the wrong brand this morning when I offered Dash a handful of the other brand and he gobbled it up. Unfortunately, the dry food in his bowl had already been mixed with wet, so I couldn't just put it back in the bag. I put the uneaten mixture in a different container and saved it for later. At lunch, I made a big show of preparing the food he refused to eat at breakfast and served it in a different bowl. This time, Dash gobbled it up. As difficult as Dash can be sometimes, he is still easier to deal with than a late paying client.

I've been wondering why I haven't received any updates for one of the websites I manage. I was going to ask where the updates were and then I noticed that I already had them. They arrived two weeks ago. The delay I'd been fretting about was actually my fault. How could this have happened? It appeared that I had updated my local version of the site, but that the changes had never been uploaded to the server. I still don't know whether the upload had failed or I simply forgot to finish what I started. At any rate, I apologized for the mistake and made sure the changes were actually on the server this time.

The website snafu and Dash's weird eating habits occupied most of my morning, but by mid-afternoon I was dead in the water again. I looked for a movie to watch on Netflix, but the one I chose wasn't nearly as good as The Expanse. That's what happens when you watch a really good series. I want to watch Season Three and Season Four, but they haven't even been filmed yet.

I don't have any big plans for tomorrow. I don't have any little plans either. I guess we'll just have to see what happens.

Lou is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2776

Dash threw up again late last night. We don't know what is causing this. It seems to happen about once every two or three weeks. He almost always throws up in the middle of the night after spending a very normal day. There is usually no advance warning. He just wakes up after sleeping normally, wants to go outside and eat grass, and then throws up. Sometimes he seems a bit unsteady on his feet and we think he must be having another vestibular episode. Other times it just seems like he has an upset stomach. This has been going on for a long time and he has been examined from tip to tail. Sometimes the vets think vestibular disease nausea is causing the vomiting. Other times they think he is eating the wrong food and that we should change his diet. Dash almost always feels better after he has vomited and goes right back to sleep. By the time we are able to get him to a vet, he usually seems quite normal. It's frustrating because something is clearly wrong and nobody seems to know what it is. Last's night's episode didn't seem like vestibular disease at all, but I still couldn't come up with a better explanation.

Dash was fine today. It was almost as if last night never even happened. I know he was sick because I cleaned up the vomit. We also took him on a short walk around midnight down our very dark street in hopes that it might settle his stomach. I remember looking up at the stars as we walked down the street and feeling a bit sad that it wasn't really safe to have an interest in astronomy in some parts of this city. I never would have said this when I was younger, but when I hear sirens and helicopters late at night, I feel much more comfortable just staying indoors.

I had to renew a prescription at my primary care physician this afternoon. This was a bit awkward, because this was the doctor that fired me as his web designer last week. I talked to the practice manager for a few minutes and told him that there were no hard feelings on my part. I even told him to call me again if the younger son screwed up the website as much as the doctor's older son had a few years earlier. Yes, this was the second time this doctor has fired me to turn over the marketing to one of his children. They had to hire me back to repair the damage the first son did. If this happens again, I'm definitely going to raise my rates.

I finished watching season one of The Expanse today. I thought I might be able to watch season two on Netflix, but Google was wrong. The series wasn't available on Netflix after all. Oh, well. I guess I'll have to go back to the overpriced iTunes Store after all. No wonder Apple is so rich. They overcharge for everything. Apple's high prices have always frustrated me, but I keep coming back. I like their phones and computers better, and they always seem to have more of the shows I like on iTunes.

I hope Dash sleeps well tonight. It always worries me when something goes wrong in the middle of the night. With any luck, we'll all wake up early and take another sunrise walk. I'll drink my fruit smoothie, water the grass, and check the mail. Dash will take a long nap, but I'll still need something to do. I'll probably end up downloading season two of The Expanse even if it is too expensive.

Shelby is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2756

I finished writing both my new articles today and spent the rest of the time lying on the bed with my feet elevated. It was nice to have some work to do again, but I don't think it is a good idea to sit at the computer all day. I can literally feel the fluid pooling around my ankles when I sit for long periods of time. Another bad thing about sitting at the computer is that I spend too much time Googling information about swollen legs and ankles. I'm finding lots of similarities between my condition and people who have had minor motorcycle accidents. Basically, if you are a hypochondriac, you should never Google your own ailments.

Elevating my legs really seems to help control the swelling in my legs, but unfortunately the benefits seem temporary. It kind of feels like I've got a quart of water floating around inside me. When I lie on the bed with my legs elevated, the liquid flows back into my body. When I stand up and start walking, gravity causes it to flow down around my ankles again. It's frustrating, but there's not much I can do at this point. It's going to take a long time to completely reabsorb the blood and fluids resulting from a trauma injury like this.

Maybe I need to start watching Netflix like Janet. She needs to rest for long periods of time too, but luckily she enjoys watching movies. Often I find her asleep with a movie still running on the iPad on her lap. I'm growing bored staring at the ceiling, so maybe I'll give Netflix a try tomorrow. Lying on your back with your feet in the air probably isn't the best position to watch a movie, but I'll have to improvise.

Dash threw up again this afternoon. I was hoping that he wouldn't have any problems until Janet and I were both well again. Maybe that was too much to ask for. Dash has thrown up periodically for years. Usually he seems normal again within a few hours. When I take him to the vet they can never find anything wrong and usually just suggest changing his diet. Dash will eat bugs and dead things when he can find them, and eating something bad is often the cause of his stomach problems. Janet and I have been so preoccupied that we probably haven't been watching him closely enough when we take him outside to pee. At any rate, we gave him a Pepsid tonight and hoped for the best.

Dash's upset stomach reminded me to make an appointment for him at the cancer center. His oncologist likes to do a recheck every six months and we are a little behind schedule. Dash has been in remission for so long now that his doctors aren't really worried about the cancer returning. They are more worried about an enlarged heart as he grows older.

When I look at my calendar, it's nothing but doctor's appointments for Janet, myself, and Dash. Hopefully, this is just a temporary thing. Janet is starting to feel a lot better. I'm on the mend too, but dog bites are painful injuries that tend to heal slowly. I'll just need to stay patient. It would be nice if Dash would stay healthy too. We don't need a three ring circus at this point.

Tomorrow, I take my car in for a long postponed service appointment. It will be nice to get that expensive necessity out of the way. Pretty soon, we should have grass in the back yard again too. One step at a time, we're slowly getting back to normal. Just for the record, I didn't see this Great Egret today. I didn't even leave the house. I did see the bird pretty recently though and didn't feel like showing you a picture of my feet in the air.

Sophia is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2230

I feel silly complaining about the weather on a day where the entire East Coast is experiencing one of the worst blizzards in history. Texas has its problems, but we seldom get three inches of snow an hour. Jeez, a grand total of three inches of snow period is enough to shut the entire city of Dallas down. At an rate, if you're reading this in the middle of a snowstorm, please stay safe. I can't think of any good reasons to be out on the roads tonight.

Compared to what I was watching on TV this evening, our own weather seemed almost benign. It was cold, but nothing out of the ordinary for January. It even warmed up enough later in the day for me to go up on the roof and clear the water away. There wasn't as much water as I expected, so a lot of it must have blown off the roof during an unusually windy day we had earlier in the week.

Dot had another accident during the night, but I've become so efficient at cleaning things up that I didn't even wake Janet and Dash up while I was getting Dot fresh blankets and loading the washing machine. When I took the bagged up poop out to a special can by the back fence we're reserved for Dot's accidents, I noticed that the sky had turned cloudy. I'll have to wait until things clear off again to look for Mercury in the morning sky. If there's a clear morning tomorrow, I shouldn't have a problem finding the illusive planet. I discovered recently that there is an app on my iPad that uses GPS and a sophisticated star map to mimic the night sky. You just take your iPad outside with you and point it in the general direction of what you are looking at. All the stars and planets in front of you are correctly identified based on the local time and your location. I've tried using this a few times and it's really pretty cool.

What isn't cool is my Jawbone UP band. Another one bit the dust today, so I went to the website where you describe the symptoms you're having and hope the manufacturer will send you a replacement. I love these little fitness and activity trackers, but they aren't very reliable. The bright yellow UP 24 that broke today is the fourth one I've had so far. They all work perfectly until the day they don't. Sometimes they last a year. Sometimes they last 45 days. Occasionally, a reset procedure will bring the band back to life, but typically when the two small status lights quit working, your band is toast.

I looked in two different stores, but couldn't find a DVD copy of The Martian. The movie was released on DVD several weeks ago, so it should have been on the shelves. Actually, there were very few recent movies on the shelves at all. It was almost as if stores weren't even bothering to stock many titles anymore. I think this just illustrates how fundamentally Netflix has changed the landscape. People don't buy DVD's anymore, they just watch them on Netflix, Hulu, or Google Play. Maybe I should just rent The Martian on Netflix like everybody else does. It would certainly be less expensive. My bookshelves are littered with DVD's I've only watched once. The whole concept of owning something is becoming an anachronism and I'm one of the dinosaurs keeping it alive.

My pants are telling me that it's time to go to the gym again. The problem with Winter is that if you wear compression pants under your jeans and sweaters under your outer coat, everything feels too tight. I get cold easily and I even feel too bundled up inside the house. Going to the gym won't fix all this, but I always need a reason to go to the gym. Tight pants seems to be as good a reason as any.

Chloe is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1975

I should be used to the rain by now, but it still amazes me how wet it's been this Spring. This has to be one for the record books. Today was another near all-day rain, punctuated with small, well-placed intervals where I was lucky to get the dogs out for shortened morning and evening walks. It's not raining now, but I think the weather is just taking a breather. There is even more rain in the forecast for tomorrow.

Previous rainy days this week have allowed me to get caught up on work, so there wasn't really a lot to do today. I finally got my May invoices in the mail, but that was about it.

I contemplated just watching movies on Netflix today, but couldn't find anything I really wanted to see. Instead, I decided to do some more work on my mobile friendly test site. I think I've learned all the easy stuff, because I had difficulty grasping some of the concepts I was trying to learn today. I ended up making a mess of the test site and had to upload an older archived version to get back to square one. I don't know why I'm spending so much time with this, since most of my clients don't seem very interested in mobile anyway.

I thought I try to get through the day without any pain pills for my teeth. Things must be getting better, because it wasn't all that bad. It's probably time to stop taking Ibuprofen anyway, since it isn't very good for the liver. I still had my breakfast banana milkshake, mostly because the dogs love bananas. I always share with them. Even though it took a while to rinse out the food particles, I had solid food for dinner. There was a tasty casserole in the refrigerator that would have been awful if I liquified it and turned it into soup. Everything in moderation, I guess. Once my mouth has healed completely, I'll still use the Vitamix, but I doubt that I've have soup more than once a week.

I wanted to find out if there were any more NASA launches that I could apply to attend and discovered instead that all the NASA websites are offline. There used to be a ton of NASA sites and they're all gone. Budget cuts I guess. As a web developer it would seem like it might actually be more expensive to take a large site down than to simply leave it up and not update it as frequently. What do I know though. The government works in mysterious ways.

Did you know that the Rolling Stone song Can't Get No Satisfaction was recorded fifty years ago yesterday? Jeez. These guys are still touring and selling out huge stadiums too. When I was learning to play to this song in high school, I never dreamed that we'd still be listening to a seventy year old Mick Jagger singing it fifty years later. Yep. The Stones are coming to Texas Stadium this Summer and the show is already sold out. In just a few more years, it will be fifty years since we landed on the moon. Amazing! What have we really accomplished since then? Sure, we all have smartphones now, but I can tell you from experience that life was a lot more interesting in 1969.

I'm not sure how interesting it is going to be tomorrow. My clever phone tells me that there will be thunderstorms tomorrow. Back in 1969, I never knew when it was going to rain until I got wet.

Haley is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1573

The weather forecast was right. It rained all day today. There were a couple of short windows of opportunity were I was able to take the dogs outside to do their business, but basically we didn't leave the house today. A cold front must have passed through last night, because it was about 20 degrees colder than it was yesterday. It would have been a good day to light a fire in the fireplace, if we had a fireplace. It might have been a good day to watch a movie on TV as well, if there was anything I felt like watching. We get hundreds of cable channels, but there are only three or four of them that I actually watch. Half the channels in Dallas are in Spanish anyway. On the movie channels, the same Disney movies, Lifetime chickflix, Apocalyptic action movies, and the perennial You've Got Mail and Forest Gump seem to play over and over again.

This was especially irritating today when I paid my latest cable bill and noticed that it had gone up by 30%. What a waste of money. I should probably drop cable entirely and just stick with Netflix and Hulu. I wish you could buy cable channels à la carte. I watch three or four channels and Janet watches three or four more. A plan that included only ten channels would probably be quite reasonable. 

The cable companies still seem quite reasonable compared to the government however. As I've grown older, I'd had to sign up for several government websites. I tried to visit several of these websites today. Each site has their own peculiar password protocols, so you can't use a common, easy-to-remember password to access all of them. What's worse, each site forces you to change your password every six months. It's ridiculous. Once you do manage to login successfully, you usually discover that all your information is wrong anyway. As I slowly learn to navigate the byzantine complexities of the Medicare system, I realize that this is probably what Obamacare will be like for everybody in the near future. I don't think my parents ever really realized that they lived in the best of times. I think I grew up at the tail end of those days of limitless opportunities. The dream may not be over, but it certainly has tarnished a bit.

On one of our short walks between the recurring thunderstorms we passed a small pale blue egg. It must have fallen out of a nearby tree during a burst of wind. The little bird inside isn't going to make it. It was very cold and wet outside today and incubating eggs need to stay warm to hatch. This unlucky egg was already stone cold. This brief encounter reminded me that nature isn't always kind. Nature still probably has a better batting average in this regard than humans do however.

Dash gets his tenth radiation treatment tomorrow. We will pass the halfway mark this week. Dash has been an inspiration through all this. Even though this has been a very rough couple of months for  him with major surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, he still greets each day full of energy and enthusiasm. In many ways he actually seems happier now than when we started this journey. He gets lots of attention and maybe that's all a dog really wants. Dot is equally amazing. She can barely walk on some days, but she still soldiers on as if she's indestrudtible. If I had Dot's determination and Dash's optimism I would be unstoppable.

Paxton is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day