Day 4333

I can now cross one more medical exam off my list. I saw the urologist today and got a good report. I don't have to see him again for another year. Sometimes I can't decide whether routine yearly exams from every doctor you've even seen in your life are just a way to pad doctor's incomes, or if they are really necessary. I guess they are necessary. Most of these exams are to check for early signs of cancer. So many of my friends have had cancer that I'm all for early detection. In the early stages, cancer often has no symptoms. By the time you realize something is wrong, it can be too late. I only have one more exam this year and then I'm done. I'll have to call the dermatologist and schedule that soon.

The only problem I had today wasn't with my body, it was with my car. I had a hard time starting the car this morning, which is usually the sign of a bad battery. It was very cold this morning and I haven't used the car in almost a week, but still it's probably time for a new battery. I don't want to get stranded on a cold day. I was determined to avoid the Land Rover dealer this time and went straight to the Interstate Battery store on the way home from the doctor's office. I was convinced that batteries would be less expensive there and they were. Unfortunately, I was told that the store couldn't put batteries in Land Rovers, along with several other makes of late model cars. Evidently, changing a battery on my car causes several security circuits on the car to lose their settings and only the dealership has the codes to reset things properly. I'm screwed. Remember the problems I had with the "service required" light on my dash? There are lots of other things that try to force you back to the dealership.

I still didn't want to go back to the Land Rover dealership, so I called an independent garage that works on Land Rovers. Usually you have to drop off your car at this place, but they said they could put in a new battery for me while I waited tomorrow afternoon. I'm going to go ahead an do this even though I could probably squeeze another month or two of life out of the old battery. Batteries don't give you a lot of warning when they die. I've been stranded before and it can ruin your day. Hopefully, the car will start tomorrow when I take it over to the garage.

My feet didn't hurt at all this morning when I took my long walk. Go figure. There is not a lot of rhyme or reason to this. Some days my feet are painful and other days they are not. Since I do virtually the same things day after day, this doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I'm not a podiatrist though and I do walk a lot. I'm just going to chalk this up to old age.

Venus is so bright right now that I thought I was looking at an airplane coming toward me while I was taking out the trash tonight. The light didn't move though, so I checked a star chart when I got back in the house. It was definitely Venus. Friends out at the observatory say that Venus is bright enough now to cast a shadow. I've even seen pictures that prove it. You'd never see this phenomenon in Dallas. There are too many street lights and left over Halloween decorations casting their own weird shadows. I really miss the dark skies of West Texas, but I've pretty well resigned myself to waiting until next Spring to make the trip. Milky Way season is already over and it's starting to get cold up on the mountain. I definitely don't want to make the long drive in the Winter. I've heard too many stories about stranded motorists on icy freeways. 

I guess the big event tomorrow is getting a new battery. It's not very exciting, but I'll regret it later if I don't do this now. Maybe I'll ask these guys what they'd charge for several other repairs I'm going to need within the next year. It wouldn't be hard to beat the dealership prices. I hope my car will last until car prices become reasonable again. Right now they are insane because of low inventories caused by the chip shortage. Even used cars have gotten way too expensive just because there are so few cars available. You never know what is going to happen next. Maybe next month there will be a battery shortage.

Ginger is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2651

It's hard to believe that it's still snowing in some parts of the country. The temperatures reached the high 80's here in Dallas. Unfortunately, this is already too warm for Dot. I'm dreading this Summer. Dot never liked hot weather even when she was young and healthy. Now, high temperatures are punishing. Even though there was a nice breeze, Dot had trouble on her afternoon walk. She seemed exhausted. We had to stop and rest several times, even though all we did was walk to the end of the block and back. We probably should have just stayed home, or waited until dusk when the temperature started to drop.

It looks like working on weekends is going to be a regular occurrence. I don't really mind. It just seems odd. Years ago when I was busy all the time, I never worked on weekends. Now, when virtually nothing happens at all, weekend gigs are common. It's not so much that my clients have changed. The entire workplace has changed.

The park was full today since the weather was so nice. There were hammocks everywhere. I still don't understand the popularity of hammocks. To me, enjoying the outdoors means taking a hike or paddling a kayak. Apparently, an entire generation thinks that enjoying the outdoors means lying in a hammock while looking at Snapchat on your phone. Older people still hike and bike, but the young ones are all lying in hammocks.

I'm surprised at how predictable Texas wildflowers are. Often if I look at a previous years blog post, I'll find a picture of exactly the same flowers I'm seeing now. Today, the Blue-eyed Grass emerged. The little blue flowers were everywhere. I don't know who named these things. They aren't in the grass family at all and the eye in the center is yellow instead of blue. Next week there will be a whole new batch of wildflowers to photograph. Things are starting to get colorful.

It was overcast this morning, but the sky cleared completely by sunset. This was a pretty good evening to look at the stars. Tonight there was a conjunction of Mercury and Venus that was visible right after sunset. After dinner, I took my binoculars to a nearby hill to look for the planets. I found them both, although if I'd waited another ten minutes they would have been lost in the haze near the horizon. Venus was a thin crescent and Mercury just looked like a bright star. I need to start looking for Saturn now.

It just occurred to me that I hadn't seen any White Pelicans this Winter. These large migratory birds are a common site at the lake and usually arrive in late Fall. I didn't see any this year. It's probably too late for them now. They usually continue their migration and move somewhere else in late Spring. I wonder where they went? I haven't seen the green Monk Parakeets this year either. It's probably a sign of the apocalypse.

It's time to go to the gym again. I should be developing some serious upper body strength, since I'm having to support more of Dot's weight as her legs become weaker. I used to just guide and steady her as she walked. Now, I need to lift the rear part of the harness a bit to keep her rear legs from crumbling under her. I need to take weight off her legs while still letting her feet touch the ground to provide tactile support and encourage her to move her legs. It takes a while to learn to do this so she can still walk naturally, but we're getting there. We'll do a lot better tomorrow if we get some sleep tonight.

Nick is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2024

My unfocused Monday is rapidly turning into an unfocused week. I thought I'd get started on a new website project today, but ran into a major snag almost immediately. Instead of just using text for navigation buttons, I've always liked to use images instead. Having a photo that turns into a negative of the same photo when you roll your mouse over the link always looked kind of cool to me. This simple image swap behavior was always easy to do using Dreamweaver and Fireworks, but I still haven't figured out an effective way to accomplish the same thing using a responsive design framework like Webflow or Macaw. Basically, I wasted a lot of time experimenting with things that didn't work very well, and finally ended up erasing everything and starting over toward the end of the day. These trial and error exercises are usually how I learn things, but there are times when I think there's got to be an easier way.

I've created a monster by feeding the dogs a banana while I eat my breakfast. This worked well for a few days, but now both dogs start barking if I don't feed them a slice of banana every ten or fifteen seconds. Instead of training them to stay quiet and let me eat in peace, they've trained me to feed them the banana at regular intervals. Breakfast has become like a conditioned response experiment run amok. Dot and Dash have become Pavlov and I have become the dog. Now, they're starting to expect something at dinner too. I'm not sure how this is going to end.

I made a repeat trip to the park after sunset this evening to look for Venus and Jupiter and this time I was successful. The two planets weren't quite as close together as they would have been last night, but still it was a sight worth seeing. After walking about half a mile to find a good vantage point, I discovered on the way home that I could see the planetary conjunction just as well from my own backyard. This would actually be a good time to walk the dogs if it weren't so dark. The air cools down surprisingly quickly after the sun sets.

The Apple Health App has been sitting unused on my phone ever since I upgraded to IOS 8. I never really knew what it was for until I started wearing the Apple Watch. Now, I'm learning all sorts of interesting things. One thing I was completely unaware of is that my heart rate is higher than it should be when I'm sleeping. I supposed this has something to do with taking time release Niacin every night before I go to bed. Sometimes when I wake up at night the Niacin flushing drives me nuts. It probably also raises my heart rate. Since I'm taking another pill to slow down my heart rate, something is all wrong here. One more thing to ask my doctor about. I tried to do a little research on Google, but that is seldom a good idea. You can look up virtually any health condition on Google and find ten different plausible answers. If you keep reading long enough, you will inevitably conclude that you are going to die.

Sometimes ideas come to me in my sleep. I hope I discover a solution for my website dilemma while I'm sleeping. I certainly wasted enough time on this today. I guess I could just abandon using rollover images as navigation buttons, but I'm stubborn. I bet I'll find the answer I'm looking for tomorrow. I'll have to find the answer in the morning, because Thursdays are really Dot's day. I hope she does well at her physical therapy session. She seemed kind of shaky today. I'm hoping a good night's sleep will be good for all of us.

Bentley is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day