Day 4112

Today was busy. I helped Janet clear away more of the dead Asian Jasmine in the back yard. It's becoming more and more apparant that this stuff is not going to turn green again. My only hope is that the roots are still alive and that we might get some new growth next season. I ran the vacuum cleaner because I promised Janet I would start doing this every week again. I've always thought of dust as a protective coating, but apparently most people don't think this way. The hardest task today was giving the atrium a spring cleaning. It's is almost impossible to pry the broken sliding glass door open wide enough to get inside the atrium these days. If I'm lucky, I can just manage to squeeze through the narrow opening. I'm always afraid that I won't be able to get the door closed again, but with enough pushing and shoving, I"ve been successful so far. I've tried for several years to get the door fixed but parts are no longer available. Nobody makes a replacement for this oversize door either. I never realized how much trouble I was in when the last guy in town who worked on these things died.

The saga of old impossible to replace things continued when I discovered that the video component that I accidentally threw away is no longer manufactured. It's not available anywhere. I even looked on the eBay used market and couldn't find it. Come on guys! It hasn't been that long. It really is frustrating that everything becomes obsolete so quickly now. I've stopped upgrading the system on my computers so I can still run the last stand alone versions of Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite. I'm old school and don't want to pay for subscription software or save my files in the cloud. As a result, I can't use a lot of new software. The industry standard for processing astrophotography files won't run on any of my computers. 

We thought we'd do something different with Dawn today, so we drove her to a different park for her daily walk. This actually worked out pretty well. Dawn is a strange traveler. She is terrified of riding in the car, but is always excited when she arrives at her destination. We had a nice walk. Dawn had lots of energy and wasn't interested in eating grass at all. Janet walked Dawn, because I can never keep up with her when she is excited. I walked along behind and Dawn and Janet were kind enough to wait in the car for me when they were finished. To make the ride home less traumatic, we stopped for an ice cream cone along the way. Dawn loves ice cream.

I didn't take my own longer walk until later in the afternoon. The park was even more crowded today than it was yesterday. On a nice Spring day, it feels like I'm the only one who doesn't believe that Covid is over yet. Luckily, the park is huge and it is quite easy for me to keep to myself. I just don't understand why people like to gather in large groups. I can see getting together with a friend for coffee, but the whole concept of parties has always seemed strange to me. I never had to give up parties for Covid. I never liked them in the first place.

I keep getting messages that time is running out for me to use my 20% off coupon at REI. Today I got an e-mail saying that my discount expires tomorrow. In the past, messages like this would send me directly to the store. Not anymore. I don't need anything from REI. I think it is an encouraging sign that I'm slowly learning to resist the urge to buy. I did get a camera earlier this year and I got that start tracker recently, but I know I'll use these things. The star tracker is practically a requirement for attending the advanced astrophotography workshop later this Spring.

It's going to be a busy week. We'll go visit the rescue Dalmatians tomorrow and then go to the arboretum later in the week. One of these days I'm going to have to go up on the roof. The catkins have started falling from the Oak trees and they can make a huge mess on the roof when it rains if I don't remove them. The catkins are also responsible for the thin layer of sticky yellow dust that covers everyone's cars at this time of year. I like watching all the wildflowers bloom, but a lot of other things associated with Spring are a nuisance. What's the biggest nuisance of all? It's time to mow the grass again.

Doc is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1525 - President's Day

Yup. It did turn out to be a cleaning day. I kind of figured it would. I spent the day doing a host of little things that I've been putting off for months. I cleaned soap scum off the shower tiles. I took the handles off the bathroom faucets so I could clean off the accumulated soap and mold that had gotten inside the fixtures. I cleaned the toilet. I went to Home Depot and bought a new garden hose and spray nozzle to replace the leaky one in the back yard. I cleaned the bird shit off my car again. None of this was very exciting, but since I have the same degree of affection for cleaning toilets as I do for most recent presidents, I guess it made sense to do these things on President's Day.

I finally figured out were to find the serial number on my UP band, so I could write Jawbone and ask them to send me a new one. Then I saw something on the Internet about how to revive a dead Jawbone battery. I followed the instructions and amazingly the band started to charge again. I'd already sent the letter saying that the band was broken, of course. It remains to be seen whether they'll send me a new one.

I don't know whether my shoulder is ever going to get better. I was so worried about walking the dogs and working out at the gym, but it is the simple, unavoidable things that are the problem. Making the bed is a problem. Putting on socks is a problem. I climbed up on the roof today to sweep off some water, and that was definitely a problem. I've had a shoulder that tended to go out of joint for at least ten years. If I was careful, it never really hindered me much. My recent injury was definitely the worst I've had, but there have been others. I can make the muscles around the shoulder stronger, but that's about all. The ball and socket joint has been loose for a long time and will probably always be loose.

The dogs are finally learning to sleep in late. Now that they are mastering this new routine, it's back to work. Janet will return to getting up at the crack of dawn tomorrow and the dogs will be confused again. Maybe we'll all go back to sleep for another hour after Janet leaves for work. It's hard for me to come up with a good reason to get up early. What is the point? I usually have lots to do, but I can set my own schedule. Hey, why get up early when you have the option of staying up late?

I saw my first Daffodils today. I bet they won't last long. This always happens in Texas. The flowers get confused and then Mother Nature lets them know who's boss with one final blast of arctic weather.

Lexi is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1195

Janet's favorite household appliance is the paper shredder. She shreds everything. I, on the other hand, tend to save paper forever. Today, as part of my continuing efforts to declutter my life, I threw away some of the paper that has been accumulating in my office. I shredded brokerage statements from companies that disappeared during the financial crash of 2008. I shredded credit cards that had expired before I even got around to opening the envelope. I shredded disputed medical bills from 1995. How did I acquire all this paper and why did I save it so long? I could probably spend the rest of my life just cleaning out this one little room. Maybe after I get the humongous stacks of paper in order, I'll start throwing away all the keys that don't seem to unlock anything. The big job will be figuring out what the five shoe boxes full of wall wart power adaptors adapters actually power. I seem to have hundreds of these little adapters and no idea of what they were initially used for. Why can't electronics manufacturers standardize their power supplies so one type of wall wart would work for everything? Better yet, why can't they just make things that plug directly in to the wall outlets. It just makes too much sense for this to ever happen.

It was so cold this morning that I had to dig out my Winter goose down ski jacket again. What happened to the beautiful 75 degree days that ushered in Spring just a few days ago? It seemed exceptionally cold when I was sweeping the accumulated water from last night's rain off the roof. I'm tired of sweeping water off the roof. When I was digging through piles of paper this afternoon, I found the original bill and warranty from the last roof I put on the house. The roof was guaranteed for three years and even the materials the roof was made of were only guaranteed for ten years. It's been a lot longer than ten years since I put that roof on.  It's definitely time for a new roof.

I believe in Karma. I'm sure that the Karma gods are still try to extract retribution for awful things I've done in the past, but I think it's about time we call things even and start over with a clean slate. I miss the carefree days when I had no responsibilities whatsoever. Of course, those days were probably when I built up most of my Karma debt in the first place.

When I was cleaning this afternoon, I found a picture of me sitting on a sofa with a Dalmatian I didn't recognize. I asked Janet what the dog's name was and she started laughing. "That's not you," she said. Oh, well. I never was very good with faces. I still don't know who the dog was, or the guy I thought was me, for that matter. The day wasn't a total waste though. I've decided to start wearing boxers instead of briefs. I don't know whether this is a sign of early dementia, or if I've finally acquired some common sense. Boxers are a lot more comfortable.

Chelsey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1174

The leaf blower made its first appearance today. It was a warm and windy day and it seemed like the thing to do. The leaves wanted to blow away anyway and I just gave them a little nudge in the right direction. It's amazing how many leaves the big oak and elm trees in our backyard can drop during the Winter. I wish I could think of something useful to do with all these leaves, but it's not going to be compost. We've tried to plant vegetable gardens at various points in the past, but the neighborhood squirrels, rabbits, possums, and rats relentlessly eat everything we plant. It's just not worth the aggravation anymore. Our yard is next to a large wooded area. Every season, I think the yard is trying to tell us that it wants to be part of the forest too. It just doesn't want to be domesticated.

As we were leaving the dog park this morning, we saw three police cars and an ambulance arrive. I looked around and couldn't see any problems. Nobody appeared to have been bitten by a dog. Nobody had a heart attack. No cars had been broken into. No purses had been stolen. I couldn't see a single reason for such a show of force. The police were definitely there though. Life in the city, I guess. There isn't always a reason for everything.

I can't figure out why our house is so dusty. We seldom open the windows and always use the best available furnace filters. Somehow, the dust continues to get in though. Lots of dust. I tried to dust and vacuum the office this afternoon and it seemed like an impossible task. Layers of dust covered everything. It hadn't even been that long since I'd cleaned the place either. Nature seems to have taken over, inside and out. When I'm fighting these losing battles, I often wish I lived on the the seventeenth floor of a brand new high-rise. Instead of cleaning on Sunday afternoons, I would just take the elevator down to the first floor and have a cappuccino with friends in a nearby coffee shop. This isn't going to happen though. The dogs definitely prefer things just the way they are.

The dogwood trees are in bloom all over town. They are quite pretty. In a few weeks, it will be the azaleas turn to shine. Sometimes I think Dallas has more azalea bushes per square mile than any other city in the world. The entire city turns pink. While the azaleas are blooming, there is often a brief  explosion of bluebells and other wildflowers alongside the major freeways. Then it will be time to mow the grass again. Spring never lasts long enough in Texas.

Maggie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1167

On days like this I realize that I'm no match for Mother Nature. Since it is supposed to be cold and possibly wet later in the week, I took advantage of today's nice weather to get an early start on Spring cleanup activities. It only took a cursory inspection of the house to reveal galvanized gutters that had rusted through, rubber window seals that had dried and cracked, and a lot of peeling paint. The sun, the wind, and the rain had taken their toll, like they always do. I find it harder and harder to stay ahead of the game. Inexorably, the house and the yard it sits in are being reclaimed by the forces of nature.

I remember seeing a short animated film a few years ago that illustrated how cities like New York and Paris would revert to nature if all the people that inhabited them disappeared. In only a few hundred years, the cities were crumbling. In less than a thousand years, all traces of them were gone. We may think we have tamed the earth, but in the end nature always wins.

I'm not comfortable with decay. I wish our bodies didn't deteriorate. I wish my aging but beloved Defender 90 wasn't falling apart. I am continually irritated to see the sun, wind, and rain do their best to convert my house back to the elements from which it came. Wood rots quickly. Metal rusts faster than you think. Constant painting and upkeep just slows the process down. Like Dr. Who said in the Waters of Mars episode. "Water is patient. Water always wins."

There are some good things to this constant cycle of birth and decay. Last week's rain and this week's warm weather have already produced a bumper crop of early Spring flowers. When we took the dogs to the dog park today, I noticed that all the trees had already started to bud. In a few weeks the redbud and dogwood trees will be in full bloom. I will continue to try my best to stay on top of things. We'll plant some new grass next month and hope for the best. I'll put on a new roof which will immediately come under attack from the sun, wind, and rain. Life will go on. For a while anyway...

Nora is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1118

I took some filing cabinets from the office over to a little resale shop that benefits homeless animals. I love this place, because you can donate absolute rubbish and they always act like it's exactly what they needed. They are really doing me a favor to even take this old stuff, but they always make me feel like I'm the one doing something good. I like that. I have a feeling that these folks are just nice, but maybe they're being polite in hopes that I'll eventually bring them something good.

After I got rid of the unneeded furniture, I went back home and tried to thin out the closets a bit by getting rid of equally unneeded clothes. I used to just throw away shirts that I couldn't button around the neck any more. Since most of these tight fitting clothes from younger years are already gone, I have to rely on Janet to tell me which things are hopelessly out of style. If I hold something up and she makes a face, it goes in the throw away pile.

Spring cleaning is kind of like peeling an onion. There are usually layers upon layers of mess, and once you have dealt with the top layer, it just reveals something else waiting underneath. When I removed the filing cabinets today, they must have been in a damp corner, because there was a layer of mildew on the wall behind them. I then had to set up a portable heater to dry out the wall and still haven't finished scrubbing everything down with bleach. I found an old Macintosh laptop when I was cleaning things out this afternoon. I plugged it in and got nothing. Dead as a doornail. When I removed the battery, it was date-stamped 1999. I don't know it it's even worth the effort to try and find a working 1999 Apple laptop battery. Probably not. Even if I managed to get the computer working again, I'm sure it is so slow that I would find it useless.

Dot and Dash had a great time at the dog park today. They both seemed a bit alarmed when we began to take an alternate route to the park. Both dogs started barking like crazy in the back seat. I'm sure they were saying something like "Turn around immediately, this isn't the right way." To quiet things down in the car, we returned to the old route. As soon as the dogs recognized their surroundings and knew where they were going, they both settled down again and were good for the rest of the journey.

I have a feeling that next week is going to be busy. It's time to get the car safety inspected again, and before I can do that, I need to get a new catalytic converter. I have a feeling that the old clattering converter would be a dead giveaway that my emission system isn't up to par. I've grown to hate state safety inspections over the years. They continue to grow more and more complicated. I think I should be exempt anyway, since I don't drive very much. In our state, humans aren't even involved with the safety inspection. It's all in the hands of a computer. They hook your car up to some sensors and the results get sent straight to Austin. In the old days, I could talk my way out of minor infractions. There's no one to talk to anymore though. This automated life really doesn't suit me. It probably won't be long before I have to give a DNA sample just to get my prescriptions filled.

Allie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 529

The charity that I gave my old large-format printer to came by with their van and picked it up today. I threw in another unused printer for good measure, and now finally I've got a little room in the office again. I wonder if these guys will ever actually use the printer? It still can make great looking prints and posters, but it is a royal pain to use. I think they like the idea of being able to print their own marketing materials, but I bet they'll probably keep taking things to Kinkos. That's what I'd do anyway. It's much easier to have someone else do the printing.

If any of you have lower back pain, you have my sympathies. I don't usually have back problems, unless I happen to do something really stupid like finding myself locked in a small fenced in area when I've got a swarm of bees coming after me. I'm pretty sure I threw my back out when I was trying to get away from the bees I was trying to kill last week. I've been hobbling around and feeling like I was 100 years old ever since. Usually when I do this, my back is back to normal in three or four days. If I felt this way all the time, I would be miserable. Again, if you have back pain, I hope you have a good chiropractor or at least some good meds.

My plan of cleaning up the house while I watched the Dr. Who marathon didn't work out all that well. I can't even multi-task well enough to watch TV and clean at the same time. I found myself lying down on the bed with the dogs and watching long segments of the show and then realizing that I wasn't getting anything done and turning the TV off entirely. Luckily, I had seem most of these shows before, so it didn't really matter. My office still isn't very clean though. It was kind of a wasted day.

We'll probably take Dot and Dash to the dog park tomorrow. The weather is already too hot for Dot, but the dogs still like to be off leash and walk around the park smelling things. If today was any indication, it looks like it's going to be a long hot Summer.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 509 - Mother's Day

I think last night's Wine on the Roof party was the most enjoyable of these events I've been to yet. The weather was perfect. Everything was extremely well organized. The award recipients were gracious and after each of their acceptance speeches, nobody regretted giving them their award. It was a nice evening. It hard to believe I've been involved with these things for ten years now. To me, it still just seems like yesterday that we were planning the first one.

Since it was Mother's Day today, the dog park was pretty empty. Everyone was probably having a special brunch with Mom when we arrived with Dot and Dash. The dogs had a great time though. I think they like the park better when it isn't crowded with too many dogs. Dash actually played with a few dogs today and although Dot is seldom playful, she certainly enjoyed the beautiful Spring weather.

This afternoon, I finally threw away about seventy-five pounds of old magazines, advertising samples and ancient financial records that have been cluttering my office. I don't really think I need American Express receipts from 1987 anymore. I don't need advertising samples from companies that don't even exist anymore either. I can't believe I did so much work for Memorex Telex. Where is Memorex Telex these days? Out went years of Communication Arts and EQ magazines, along with a surprising number of of old French Vogue magazines and a few old Esquires and Atlantic Monthly magazines that I must have saved because someone I knew had gotten a story published in them. I saved a few old AdWeek magazines with pictures of a much younger me drinking cocktails at various advertising functions. I threw away a lot more though. The ad agency world and me are ancient history now.

As a result of my efforts, I now have room to store away some photo backdrops and camera equipment that has been sitting in a corner on the office floor for months now. I've still got a long way to go, but I am determined to have a nice working space again by the end of the year. If I was really brave, I would just tell Janet to throw away everything that irritated her the next time I went away on a business trip. I'm sure I would be alarmed when I returned, but I probably wouldn't be missing anything of real value. Everything I need to do my job is on this computer now. It's actually been here for over five years. I am still surrounded by paper, but only because I've spent a good part of my life writing and designing things that were meant to be printed on paper. One of these days, I'm going to have to acknowledge that paper has become irrelevant. My clients don't use it anymore. My bank and my accountant don't want it anymore. The post office still delivers piles of it to me everyday, but I throw 99% it straight in the trash.

I was a big step for me to finally be able to throw away most of my paper ad portfolio. I haven't really lost anything though. The same stuff is already on my iPad.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 432

I spent most of the day using an assortment of rakes, brooms and blowers to wrestle the huge accumulation of leaves in our yard into some semblance of order. I haven't actually gotten rid of the leaves yet, but at least they are stacked in nice piles. Tomorrow, I'll go buy a package of those big drum liner bags and bag them all up. It's amazing how many leaves fall off our three large Oak trees every season. The ones that fall on the roof make little dams that keep the water from draining properly. The ones that fall on the ground kill the grass and smother the ground cover. They also tend to hide a ton of dog poop during the Winter, most of which I found today. The leaves used to blow away naturally after a couple of windy Spring days. Now that all the neighbors have put up these tall wooden security fences, they don't blow anywhere. Without a natural breeze, they just sit on the ground forever until I finally can't think of any more excuses to avoid removing them. I have bought quite a few blowers and gas powered leaf mulching machines over the years, but the machines always break and the leaves keep falling.

I'm not a big fan of manual labor, but if I am forced to work up a sweat, I couldn't have picked a better day than today. It was 75 degrees with a nice breeze all day. I actually got quite a bit done. The dogs got a workout too. We took them with us this morning when we walked the rescue Dalmatians at K-9 University and when we finished that, we took them to the dog park. By the time they got home, all they wanted to do was sleep.

I just finished launching the new website I designed recently for Benny's Dog Resort. This is the first project I've gotten directly as a result of being on Facebook. I hope this is a trend that will continue in the future. It would be nice if social media started bringing me jobs instead of just an endless stream of Farmville requests. Maybe I could get more work from Facebook if a few more people would stop by and like my company page. For a company that's been around more than twenty years, the number of "Likes" we have received is pathetic. Oh well. Maybe some of you guys will stop by and like us.

I know what I like. I like that tomorrow is a holiday. Granted, it's a strange little holiday that not everyone celebrates, but a lot of my clients are off tomorrow and that means I'm off as well. Janet's office is closed tomorrow too, so maybe we can do something fun. On the other hand, maybe we'll just clean the house.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day