Day 3218

I was determined to give Dash a walk this morning. I kept watching the weather radar and eventually I saw what looked like a temporary break in the weather. I got Dash suited up in his protective gear as quickly as I could and off we went. We got lucky this time. Even though it rained most of the day, we managed to find 45 minutes when it was relatively dry.

Members of the little circus were trying to reposition their tent when we passed them this morning. They seemed determined as well. Despite the rain, it looked like they were trying to get ready for a show tonight. Lots of luck with that. It think it's time to build an ark. The bad weather going to continue for the rest of the week.

Just before I went to bed last night, our Internet and TV service was restored. Oddly at about exactly the same time the TV started working again, the security light in the back yard went out. The light has been working well for several months now, so I'd almost forgotten that it used to be a big problem. Hopefully the photo cell in the security light and our U-verse service will not be a problem tonight. I need the light so I can see where Dash poops at night and I need the TV so I can watch Perry Mason as I go to sleep.

The leak in the living roof stopped dripping around noon. The fact that this is a small leak will probably make it even harder to find. I keep trying to look at the bright side. I guess a small leak is better than a large leak. It's had to find a bright side to incontinence. Even though Dash got a nice walk today, it didn't prevent him from pooping in the house. Once this morning, he walked toward the open back door, sniffed the air for a while, and then turned around and immediately pooped in the kitchen.

I meant to pay bills today, but yesterday's soggy letters still weren't dry yet. You'd think soggy mail would give me the final push I need to start paying bills online, but for some reason I still prefer going to the post office. Since I couldn't pay bills, I wrote my Luddite sister and told her that I'd become a Luddite too.

I hope my auction goes well tomorrow. There's another auction in December and a final one next Spring. I had hoped that auctioning most of the art would make it easier for me to get rid of other things, but decluttering still seems like a monumental job. We'll see how much progress I've made this time next year.

It was nice to see the market rebound today. I'm glad I didn't panic and sell everything last week. I'm probably just going to have to learn to live with uncertainty. The world isn't going to return to normal any time soon. Sadly, the only thing that seems normal anymore are those old TV shows from the 50's and 60's I watch while I'm going to sleep. It's weird that those old Twilight Zone shows that used to scare me as a kid, seem naively simple now. Rod Serling's little morality plays almost seem like Sunday School stories. Call me crazy, but I still prefer the Twilight Zone to Black Mirror. The Eisenhower years are looking better and better.

Camp is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2584

Dash appears to be in good health. He got a precautionary chest x-ray today to make sure his thyroid cancer hadn't reappeared and his lungs looked clear. When Dash was initially diagnosed with cancer, the oncologist recommended periodic chest x-rays, because if his type of cancer metastasized, it would often spread to the lungs. He's been cancer free for over three years now, but we still give him a check-up every six months. The swollen lymph nodes in his neck have returned to normal as well. After getting his anal glands expressed, which he seems to need every time we visit the vet, we returned home to find that Dot was still asleep and hadn't pooped anywhere. I was pleased at how well the morning turned out.

One of my clients wants to change his domain name and move his website to a new server. I started making preparations for the move after Dash and I returned home. Changing domains and webservers is an easy process as long as you know where everything is located. I had to make a few phone calls to find out where the old and new domains were currently registered and see how much time I had to make the move. I got lucky and ended up talking to a good tech support person today, so I think I have all the information I need. I uploaded all the files to the new server and now all I need to do is find out when the client wants to make the switch, so I can point the domains to the right place. None of this required much imagination or was very difficult, but I was still glad to have something to do today.

Our roller coaster weather has bounced back to the unseasonably warm side of the scale. I had the furnace running this morning when we woke up, but it became so warm later in the day that I had to turn the air conditioner on. Only in Texas will you use the furnace and the air conditioner in the same day. I think it is supposed to get even warmer tomorrow and then another storm system will sweep through town toward the end of the week. I hope we don't have thunderstorms on Friday. Thunderstorms always mean that I need to stay home with the dogs and I look forward to going out to breakfast all week.

Dot seems to be improving in a lot of subtle ways. We haven't had an accident on the way to the back door in the morning for the last four days. There's generally been less leaking during the day as well. I'm hoping that the Incurin is starting to work. What's really surprising is how often Dot is able to get up on her own. I often find her standing up in her pen when I return from running errands and sometimes when she wakes up, she will walk out to her water bowl in the kitchen without any help from me. When she's tired, she still barks for assistance, but there's definitely been some improvement. It's too bad it's so difficult to improve muscle mass in older animals. Dot still has three small tumors that are slowly growing in her liver, but her biggest problem is the severe muscle atrophy in her rear legs. It seems harder for me to improve muscle mass too. No matter how much I exercise, my arms and legs are still too thin.

The new ink for my production printer arrived today, so I guess I'll spend tomorrow unclogging the thing. It's amazing how much time I spend staying prepared. There are always batteries to charge, computer files to backup and archive, and a huge, somewhat obsolete printer that seems to need a lot of TLC. I take such good care of my machines that Rod Serling probably could have used my life as a basis for a Twilight Zone episode.

Tomorrow will be another exciting day filled with laundry to fold and poop to clean up. If you didn't know that Dot and Dash were dogs, it would be easy to think you were reading a mommy blog.

Murphy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1428

While the rest of the city prepared for tonight's expected freeze by bringing in their ferns and potted plants, I just brought in the 24-volt battery from my electric lawn mower. For the past two years I have failed to do this and the expensive battery froze and had to be replaced. This year will be different. Starting today, the battery joins all the other clutter on my office floor and I'll probably trip over it ten times before Spring.

There just isn't enough time in the day anymore. I had a simple agenda today.  All I needed to do was walk the dogs, write a single article, get my November invoices in the mail, go to the gym, and pick up something for dinner at the grocery store. I methodically went from one task to the next and by the time I was finished, the sun had already set and I had to give the dogs their evening walk in the dark. I'm not a real fan of standard time. Things would work out better for me if we had daylight saving time all year long. Hey, I'm not a morning person. I don't care if it's light in the morning, but I definitely need that extra hour of daylight at the back end of the day.

The problem with simple lists is that they're usually only simple because you forgot something. What I forgot to mention in the agenda above was that Tuesday is also Dash's day to go to the vet. Going to the vet is pretty much the same as going to the doctor. It eats up a lot of time. You spend a lot of time waiting in the lobby and a very short time visiting with the doctor. Dash is never well behaved while he is waiting. There is a large parrot in the lobby that he is obsessed with. I don't know whether Dash wants to play with the parrot or eat it, but I can't seem to convince him that the parrot will bite him if he gets too close to the cage.

I worry too much. While I was at the gym, I noticed Dash doing something strange on the nanny cam.  I almost cut my workout short to drive home and see what was happening, but then I noticed that Dash had gone back to sleep again. Staying at the gym didn't alleviate all my worries though. I'm always afraid that one of the old people who go to this gym are going to hit my car. These people are the worst drivers I've even seen. You've really got to be careful when you leave the parking lot. 

Tomorrow, an insurance broker is going to explain Obamacare at our Wednesday morning breakfast meeting by showing us an old episode from The Twilight Zone. That ought to be interesting.

Jada is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1217

The saddest thing about today's bombing of the Boston Marathon is that these horrific events are no longer surprising. Bombings, school shootings, mass murders and other horrors have become so commonplace that they are now just part of the tapestry of everyday life. I have to remind myself that the world wasn't always this way. I grew up in a small town that didn't have a single murder during the entire time I lived there. Neighbors didn't even lock their doors at night when I was a kid. I suspect that those days are gone forever.

The bombs that exploded in Boston weren't the only sign of the apocalypse today. The market had a huge sell-off, with the price of gold falling at an unprecedented rate. This extreme volatility is no longer uncommon either. The world has simply become a volatile and increasingly dangerous place.

If I hadn't turned on the television, I would never have known about all the turmoil however. My own world is quite calm. I walked the dogs, exactly like I always do, and ate a bowl of oatmeal mixed with fresh strawberries, blueberries and blackberries when I returned. I watched an old episode of Dr. Who while I was doing the laundry and cleaning up the kitchen. I paid a few bills, took my quarterly estimated tax voucher to the post office, finished an estimate that was due today, and even got a couple of checks in the mail. It was an absolutely normal day as far as I was concerned.

I hope I can maintain this fragile illusion of normalcy in the days to come. I have no desire to live on the bleeding edge of anything. A simple life like my parents enjoyed in the 1950's would be fine with me. Is this even possible? Probably not. If I'm being honest, I'll have to admit that during the 1950's, my Mom was wrestling with manic depression and my Dad was immersed in the cold war, making secret trips to the Nevada desert whenever there was a nuclear test. Maybe life never was normal.

I still find the innocence of the 1950's alluring however.  I enjoy watching old episodes of Perry Mason and The Twilight Zone as I drift off to sleep in the evening. The world seemed so simple then. It would be nice if we could figure out how regain the innocence we lost. I don't think it's going to happen though.

Dot has to fast for her CAT scan tomorrow. Janet and I have come up with a complicated plan to feed Dash in the morning without Dot knowing what is going on. The plan probably won't work though. Dogs always know what's going on when food is involved.

Krissy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1044

When I was a kid, I used to watch The Twilight Zone every Friday evening. It was one of my favorite shows. At the time, the endings to those shows never failed to surprise me. Occasionally, they even scared me. I've started watching The Twilight Zone again on cable. What a difference a few decades makes. Now each episode seems like a simple morality play, where someone must come to terms with good and evil. These are surprisingly uplifting tales about angels, devils, fear and greed; all with a moral at the end. How could I have been scared by these little dramas? Many of the episodes could be used as Sunday School lessons. Times have certainly changed. Just think about what scares us today.

The other surprising thing about those old Twilight Zone episodes is how good the acting was. You'll see someone who looks a lot like a young Robert Redford, and when the credits roll at the end, it turns out that it actually was Robert Redford. Just last night, I watched an episode where the lead was played by a very young Carol Burnett. I've also seen William Shatner, Charles Bronson, Elizabeth Montgomery, and Burgess Meredith in Twilight Zone episodes. It says a lot about our society today that I've gotten hooked on The Twilight Zone again. It's not because the shows are bizarre or frighting, but because of the simple goodness they now represent.

Today was like watching paint dry. It didn't seem like anything happened all day. I did manage to complete one of my writing assignments, but I saved the others for later in the week. There's no sense in using up all my work in a single day. Things are so slow that I think I'll go to another video editing seminar tomorrow. In addition to chowing down on a plate of free brisket and coleslaw for lunch, I'll learn how to migrate my studio to a tapeless work flow. Actually, I haven't shot anything on video tape for several years, so I guess I'm really going to this event for the barbecue.

The dogs had a new exercise to learn at training class this evening. They had to run a gauntlet between two long rows of sitting dogs. Dot and Dash both did pretty well at this odd task, although I doubt that they'll have much use for this skill later in life. It's weird. Those old Twilight Zone shows seem completely normal to me now, but dog training class occasionally seems a bit like traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. Your next stop...The Twilight Zone.

Ellis is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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