Day 4087

I'm still battling seasonal allergies. I went to the pharmacy this morning for a different kind of allergy medicine. I'd been taking Allegra, but a friend told me that I really needed Allegra-D. What's the difference, I thought. The first kind is available over the counter and the second kind you have to ask the pharmacist for after showing him your driver's license and registering with the DEA. What's the big deal with adding a decongestant to this allergy medicine, I asked the pharmacist? Well, you can use this stuff to make meth, he told me. I guess I've led a sheltered life. This was news to me. Allegra-D was also more expensive than the regular Allegra. We'll see if it works. If this stuff can stop my runny nose, it's worth it.

My feet hurt and my nose is running like a faucet, but I can't even feel my second Covid shot. I've had no reaction to the vaccine at all. This is pretty typical. I don't think I've had much of a reaction to any vaccine I've taken. One thing Janet and I both noticed was that that there didn't seem to be much vaccine in the syringe. The needle was very small and the injection just seemed to take a second or two. This was quite different from the Shingles vaccine we'd taken earlier in the year. The Shingles vaccine syringe was quite large and the injection seemed to take forever. At any rate, I hope this stuff works. I've already written my editor at SpaceFlight Magazine and told him I'm ready to travel again.

Our weather continues to be unseasonably warm. I was able to wear a t-shirt on my long walk again and was actually hot by the time I returned home. Dawn enjoyed her shorter walk but she's started eating grass again. Why do dogs like to eat grass? All our dogs have eaten grass at one point or another. Does this mean they are deficient in some nutrient or do they just like the taste? Dawn will only eat a particular type of grass, but there seems to be a lot of it in the park.

I watched the SN10 Starship test flight this afternoon on the Boca Chica live feed. This time the rocket seemed to work perfectly and was able to make a soft landing on the pad. After sitting on the pad for about five minutes, it inexplicably blew up. What was that all about? Was this something Space X did on purpose to test the flight termination device? Did the rocket make a hard landing and damage an engine? Was it cheaper to blow the rocket up than to disassemble it later? Nobody seems to know, but there is a lot of wild speculation. People who like Space X say the test was 99.9% successful. People who don't like Space X say the test was a failure and that the Starship design is flawed. Why am I not surprised that people can't seem to agree on anything.

I just read the fine print on the Allegra-D box. It says not to take the stuff if you have high blood pressure, diabetes, an enlarged prostate, or have difficulty swallowing. Wouldn't it have been easier to just say not to take the pill if you were old? There is also a warning not to take the pills with fruit juice. Hmm. I wonder if my morning smoothie counts as fruit juice?  Maybe I ought to talk to my doctor before taking this stuff. I've never run into a pill that my doctor didn't like, but there's a first time for everything.

I've really got to get started working on my taxes tomorrow. I've run out of excuses and I'm running out of time. I guess it's either the taxes or raking leaves. I'm running out of excuses to finish with the leaves as well. No wonder I'm so eager to leave town and go to a rocket launch.

Maggie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 4058

I went to the bank and paid some bills today, but that was the only deviation from my eat, walk, sleep schedule. If I wanted to punish myself I guess I could go stand in line at one of the drive-thru vaccine mega-sites that are popping up around town. Never mind. I think I'll wait. I had so many bad experiences with my engine overheating in heavy traffic when I owned the old Land Rover Defender that I just can't bring myself to sit in a car inching through a line with the engine idling for hours at a time. I heard that the vaccine is coming to neighborhood pharmacies soon anyway. Truthfully, I'm in no hurry. I'll wait for a while and see if all you people posting about your vaccination on Facebook develop side effects.

The big event of the day was watching another Starship explode on the Boca Chica live feed. I guess it helps to be the world's richest man if you're doing this sort of thing. These huge rockets look pretty expensive. It's easy to forget that the same thing happened with Falcon 9. A lot of those rockets exploded in the beginning as well. This time next year I imagine that things will look a lot different. Practice makes perfect, or so they say.

The lens I bought recently just went on sale. Jeez. If only I'd waited a week. Oh, well. I seldom get lucky with bargains. It's a good lens and I know that I'll use it. The amount that I would have saved would have probably gotten wasted on something else anyway. Maybe I'll use this lens to photograph a Starship in Boca Chica someday. More and more of the launch photographers I know are starting to head down there. There is a growing feeling that this is where the real future is. I'll have to admit that it is pretty exciting to see Elon Musk cranking out gigantic rockets in a bunch of tents down on the Mexican border. This is the Wild West of space travel. You keep wondering what is going to happen next.

Dawn continues to enjoy taking two short one mile walks a day. We've wondered if she might take three one mile walks a day, but we really don't have time to try this experiment. Several short walks seem to take a lot longer than a single long one. Dawn seems happy walking the same predictable path over and over again. Who am I to question this? For the most part, I walk a very predictable path over and over again as well. My path is much longer, but that's about the only difference. 

I have an appointment for a follow up visit with the foot doctor tomorrow. I was ready to tell him that he'd completely solved my problem, but this week my foot has started to hurt again. What a disappointment. I don't know whether the recurring pain is because I'm walking faster now, or because my new shoes are already starting to show some wear. I guess I should be happy that the shoes have made a difference. At my age, there are going to be aches and pains no matter what I do.

I haven't been up on the roof in a long time. I suspect that there is still standing water up there, but I don't feel like climbing up to inspect things. We have a bird bath in the back yard and when the water evaporates in the bird bath I like to imagine that it has evaporated on the roof as well. Actually birds probably splash most of the water out of the bird bath, but that destroys my theory. The roof still isn't leaking and my shoulder still hurts, so I guess we'll just leave things as they are for the moment. 

It's getting dry enough to rake leaves again. That's the last thing I want to do, but we've got to get rid of all these leaves before Spring. I'm sure that raking leaves is actually pretty good exercise, but I'd much rather just daydream while I'm walking along the shoreline counting ducks.

Jasper is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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