Day 4906

I finished my article this morning, edited some pictures, and sent the package off to SpaceFlight Magazine. The pictures were almost identical to other rocket pictures I've taken. The article was pretty similar to other articles as well. It kind of made me wonder why I continue to do this. I guess I chase rockets for fun. What is fun though? I don't really know.

Today wasn't just warm, it was hot. The temperature got up to over ninety degrees. I guess it isn't Spring anymore. Summer has arrived. It was still nice outside when we took Dawn on her early morning walk, but I should have taken my long walk right after breakfast. By the time I got around to leaving the house, it was already too hot. I'm always slow to change my routines, but it's about time to go back to using the treadmill at the gym instead of walking outside.

I still haven't fixed the screen door, but I did update the Dalmatian Rescue website this afternoon. I do so little web design and maintenance anymore that I'm starting to forget things. The applications I use are becoming out of date as well. Luckily I still remember enough to get things done. It seems strange now that I used to have lots of clients and did this every single day. There are times when I miss the structure imposed by work.

The friend who is selling my model train collection sold a few more things today. Sales have slowed down to a trickle, but it's still a nice surprise when something sells. Why did I collect these things in the first place? It's a mystery. I wish I could find someone to sell my watches. I've really lost interest in watches over the years and only wear the Apple Watch anymore. There is nothing wrong with collecting things, but it can become an obsession. There is always something new and you never seem to have enough. I collect absolutely nothing these days. Too bad it took me thirty years to arrive at this point.

I'm still resisting the urge to climb up on the roof and inspect things after yesterday's big rain. If I keep climbing up on the roof it will have defeated the whole purpose of getting a new roof. The roof doesn't leak any more, so I should just leave thing alone. I wonder how many days it will be before curiosity gets the better of me. Realistically, I'll still need to go up on the roof from time to time. We have lots of trees and branches occasionally fall on the roof that need to be removed. I'm not going to make visits to the roof a regular occurrence though. Those days are over.

Dawn did well at training class tonight. She seems to love this class even though she hates riding in the car. I probably need to find some sort of class as well. At this point Dawn is probably learning more than I am.

Amy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3439

Today seemed like a prelude to Summer. The temperature was over 90 again. I've noticed that some of the sticking doors in the house are starting to shift back to their warm weather positions. The air conditioner runs quite a bit now. It still seems a little early to be sweating on my morning walks, but the weather is weird these days. Janet just got back from Las Vegas and she said the temperatures were just in the 60's out there.

Today was quiet. I got up early and had a bagel and some fresh peaches while I watched old episodes of Have Gun Will Travel as I ate. I did my weekend grocery shopping as soon as the stores opened so I could take my morning walk before it got too hot. This didn't help much. I still got too hot. I can't tolerate the heat as well as I used to. This might be a long summer.

I saw the baby ducks again today. They were twice as big as when I saw them last time, but I only counted seven. I wonder what happened to the other three? Maybe coyotes or hawks got them. I've seen some very large hawks in the area. It probably isn't easy being a duckling when you're a tasty meal for predators. It's possible that I was looking at a completely different family of ducks, but I don't think so. They were swimming in the same place where I initially saw them and the mother looked the same.

I've started exploring options for traveling to Florida. It's a sixteen hour drive, so I'll probably fly. Do I fly nonstop to Orlando or one-stop to Melborne? What about rental cars? Are there hotels near the space center that don't tend to fill up in advance? Planning for rocket launches can be tricky since they frequently get postponed on short notice. NASA warns you to buy refundable tickets and make sure your travel plans can be changed if needed. There are seldom any bargains on these trips. Maybe it would be better to drive.

I wonder if I'll hit the 20,000 step threshold tomorrow. This seems to be my new Sunday goal. If it gets much warmer I'm going to need to think about spending more time in the gym and less time in the park. I enjoy observing plants and animals in the park. I don't really enjoy being drenched in sweat after a one hour walk. The allergies have been pretty bad this Spring as well. I always make sure to take plenty of Kleenex and a bottle of Visine with me before I leave.

There was a turtle in the yard as I was leaving the house this morning. I couldn't find it when I returned. I don't know how turtles get through the fence or how they get out. It doesn't seem to be a problem though. Most of the turtles we see are just passing through. Once we had a turtle that would drink water from a saucer in the yard and would return every morning to eat strawberries we left for it. The turtles stopped lingering when they discovered we had Dalmatians.

So far, so good with the plumbing repairs. The shower head doesn't leak and the toilet is quiet. Next on deck for repairs is the sliding glass door. It stopped sliding ages ago. We just think of it as a large window now.

Ranger is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3096

Summer is noisy. In the morning I'm greeted with a cacophony of lawn mowers and leaf blowers as the lawn care companies descend on the neighborhood to take care of chores that everyone but me seems to have abandoned. The evenings are filled with the sound of Cicadas. Why are these bugs so loud? Their song starts in the afternoon and continues unabated through the night.

I'm pretty quiet myself. The noisy neighbors would never know I'm here. I never play loud music and I don't even make much noise when I mow the grass. My electric mower is very quiet, but it isn't self propelled like a lot of gasoline mowers. I was very tired after I finished mowing the grass today. I've thought about using one of those lawn care companies myself, but they seem expensive to me. I try to tell myself that chores like mowing the grass are just as effective as going to the gym. I'm pretty sure that I burn more calories mowing the lawn that I do on the treadmill at the gym.

The landscaper didn't replace the dead grass today. Why do people make promises they never intend to keep? Eventually, the dead sod will get replaced, but it will probably take ten more phone calls to get any results. The landscaper is probably hoping that that healthy grass will fill in the dead spots and he won't have to replace so much. Either that, or he is waiting until he has some left over grass from another job.

I've been doing some research on the Internet to find out more about the art I'm trying to consign. It's amazing how much information is out there. Pick a subject and you can find out volumes about it in a matter of minutes. Today, I discovered the name of a painting I've had for thirty years. It has a history.    This thing has been hanging in my office for all these years and I knew nothing about it. The only problem about looking up things on the Internet is that a lot of the information is inaccurate. I've been looking up the names of flowers I see in the park for years, and about half the information I find is total nonsense.

I made some updates to an animal rescue website this afternoon. This time the edits worked. I still don't know what went wrong with my upload yesterday. I'm not even going to bother calling technical support until Monday. You can never get a problem resolved on the weekend. I don't know who they hire to work the weekend shift, but they need to take a refresher course in website maintenance.

Dash continues to do well. Three months ago nothing seemed to be working, but now he seems almost normal. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, but that's probably the wrong attitude. You can't spend all your time walking on eggshells. Dash wants us to treat him like a normal dog. No, scratch that. I think Dash really wants us to treat him like royalty. He likes being spoiled.

Hershey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2711

Dot has forgotten a lot, but she hasn't forgotten birthdays. We celebrated Dash's twelfth birthday this evening and Dot ate her birthday cupcake like a champ. I was surprised, since the Sprinkles doggie cupcake was larger than the things she can normally chew. Motivation is everything, I guess. Dot has always loved cake.

I wish she was equally motivated to eat her dinner. I couldn't get Dot to eat dry food at all today. So far, her somewhat eclectic menu has included three thin slices of turkey breast, a piece of cheddar cheese, and two crackers. This isn't enough.

At least Dot has been calm and peaceful today. There has been none of the anxiety we saw last night. We'll never really know what caused yesterday's problems, but I think she might have gotten a pill caught in her throat. Dot wasn't eating food when she took her evening pills, so she might not have swallowed them completely. When we took her outside and squirted some water down her throat with a syringe, the anxiety seemed to go away and we were all able to go to sleep.

The weather has been hot and humid all day. It's starting to feel like Summer. I'm dreading the warmer weather. Dot can't handle the heat and I can't handle the bugs. I've already started seeing an increase in the number of bugs hanging out on the back porch. Since I am unable to close the back door when I take Dot outside, many of these bugs get inside. Nighttime is the worst, since a lot of the flying insects are attracted to light. I keep several strategically placed flyswatters around the house now. I still think the bugs are winning though.

I wish there was some sort of breakthrough I could report. I know it's not going to happen. We will continue taking things one day at a time. There will be good days and bad days and then there will just be little good moments within the bad days. I have a feeling that Janet will be the one who decides when it is time. I'm not really good at evaluating quality of life. I've experienced little good moments within bad days for so long now that it just seems normal to me. I hope I am not fooling myself about Dot. I really think she enjoyed Dash's birthday party tonight. I could tell that she remembered all the other birthday celebrations and at least for a little while, she was happy. That's worth an extra day in my opinion.

Libby is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2654

The bugs are going to be terrible this Summer. I've already been bitten by mosquitoes and chiggers and its only March. I'm a magnet for bug bites while guiding Dot slowly through the back yard while waiting for her to pee. Long pants and socks provide more protection, but it sure gets hot in the Summer. So far, I've found fire ants in the front yard, little sweet ants in the bathrooms, crane flies lining up to get in the back door when I leave it open for Dot, and lots of mosquitoes every time it rains. I haven't seen any cockroaches yet, but they can't be far behind. Dot and Dash are both on a flea and tick preventative, but I found a tick on Dash's face just yesterday. The battle against bugs is relentless in Texas.

The back door is really going to be a problem this Summer. I have to open the door ahead of time before I attempt to take Dot out to pee. If I can't keep her moving swiftly from her bed to the door, she pees immediately. This morning, I stopped just for a second to open the door and she peed all over a large rug next to the door. Jeez, I just washed this rug yesterday. It's a mess. I kept a fly swatter nearby while I was eating breakfast this morning to kill the crane flies that had wandered inside while I had Dot out in the back yard.

Today was surprisingly busy. I had several websites to update, including one that required me to brush up on some tricky code designed to automatically resize the site for mobile devices. It's a shame that I learned to create mobile-ready websites just as my business was starting to wind down. Mobile sites are complex and I don't do enough of them to keep my skills in tip top shape. Every time I get a request to modify a mobile site, I inevitably have to relearn something.

I have no idea what made Dot throw up yesterday. She seemed fine today. Surprisingly, she seemed to have more energy as well, even though the weather was still quite warm. We only walk Dot at sunrise and sunset now. It seems to help. This new schedule has messed up my own eating habits though. I now have to eat my dinner very early.

My accountant wants me to pay online now. I called and asked if I could just write him a check like I have for the past twenty five years and he told me that their office was trying to go paperless. Jeez, could it really be that hard to take a check to the bank? I'm having the same problem with everybody. When AT&T lost my check recently, they tried to get me to switch to online payments too. I get a notice in all my utility bills urging me to go paperless. Paper checks are apparently a thing of the past.

I was an innovator and somewhat of a trend setter for most of my career. Now, I've become a Luddite. I can't stop change from happening, but I sure can complain about it. I liked cars a lot better before they became computers on wheels. I liked it when software was packaged in fancy boxes with detailed printed manuals. I liked shoes better when you could take them to a shoe repairman and have them resoled forever. I liked electronics with soldered components instead of integrated circuits. Everything is ruthlessly efficient and disposable now. It's hard to fix anything. Paper checks may mean nothing to you, but they represent a better world to me.

I have to go to the dentist tomorrow. I decided to go early in the morning, in hopes that Dot would stay asleep while I was gone. It's hard to predict what Dot is going to do though and the dentist doesn't make house calls. Hopefully, I won't have any cavities and Dot won't make a huge mess while I'm gone.

Big Boy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day