Day 4834 - Vernal Equinox

I've had enough of this cold weather. It certainly doesn't feel like the first day of Spring. I guess it could be worse. At least it doesn't look like we're going to get any snow this year. You can complain about Texas weather all you want, but it's still a lot better than other parts of the country. I just try to go with the flow. I look out the window when I wake up and then dress accordingly.

Dawn did well on her sunrise walk this morning although she seemed tired and a little stiff after we returned. We've reduced her daily dose of Rimadyl and will watch her for a few days before trying to reduce it further. It's hard to tell how much activity Dawn needs. Too little activity and she gets restless. Too much activity and she gets tired and we risk falling again. I still think she is doing better than I am. She definitely had more energy than I did on our morning walk.

I didn't accomplish much today. It was too cold for outdoor activity and nothing needed immediate attention indoors. I also didn't sleep well last night and could have easily gone back to bed after breakfast if Dawn was more agreeable about sharing the bedroom. I am glad that I didn't make plans to go out to McDonald Observatory for their annual Spring Break star parties. There's been an unusual amount of snow in West Texas this year. From what I see on the Internet I'm better off here in Dallas, even if I am a bit bored.

It was cold and windy on my long walk today, but I dressed warmly and completed my route. I really need to find something more interesting to do with my time. These walks are good exercise and keep me from sitting around the house doing nothing, but they have become boring. When I'm out walking I'm usually daydreaming about being somewhere else. I'd definitely like to attend more launches in Florida but my budget has put a cap on what I can do. If I get credentialed for either the Axiom AX-2 or the ViaSat-3 missions I'll probably go though. It's really time for another trip.

It's too bad that nobody wants to hire old geezers to design websites anymore. I actually enjoyed working. When I look at the current websites of former clients they certainly don't look any better than the ones I designed. Several of them look a lot worse and don't function well. I doubt this even matters. The people I used to work with have all retired and several have died. Their replacements are much younger and prefer to work with someone their own age. I can't say that I blame them. I prefer to work with people my own age as well.

It's supposed to be a lot warmer tomorrow, so maybe I'll go up on the roof and look for leaks. It's definitely not my favorite activity but it needs to be done. I wonder how long I can keep using my current phone and computer? Almost every day I find something else that is no longer supported. I live in an old house, drive an old car, and am surrounded by old equipment. Goes with the territory I guess. Some would say that I'm obsolete myself.

Baxter is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 4469 - Vernal Equinox

Today is the first day of Spring. It actually felt like it too. It was a warm, beautiful day and there were signs of new growth everywhere. The park, and even our own yard are turning green again. It's hard to imagine at this point that we will have any more freezing weather. Dawn certainly enjoyed the change of seasons. She had fun smelling things on her early morning walk and then was ready to go again a little later in the day when we took her on her Sunday outing.

I wasn't quite as exuberant because I was still feeling under the weather. I don't know how I got this cold, but I'm having a hard time shaking it. It's definitely your common, ordinary head cold, even though I rarely get these things. My nose is continually dripping and I feel like I've taken a bunch of decongestants even though I haven't taken any at all. I don't think it's the flu anymore, but I do feel tired.

We followed our regular Sunday routine. We had a big breakfast with bacon, eggs, and toast after Dawn had her sunrise walk. Dawn always gets a little bacon, so she loves our Sunday breakfast. Janet had some things to do, but we were ready to take Dawn on her Sunday outing around noon. Dawn will never ride well in the car, but she definitely enjoys this change of pace from her regular walks. Maybe the smells are different at the little park on top of the hill.

I don't know why I even bothered taking my long walk later today. I'd already walked enough. I should have just gone back to bed. Instead, I set out on my regular route but didn't get very far. Even though it was a beautiful day I only walked two additional miles. I was tired. Maybe I'll feel better tomorrow. I certainly hope so.

Dawn does seem to trust me a little more after spending a week alone with me. This of course makes Janet want to take another trip. I don't think Dawn is eager for Janet to go away again. She just doesn't think I'm someone to be afraid of anymore. This is all good. Maybe we'll finally have a family dog after all. This would be good for everybody. Especially Dawn.

I wonder when I'm going to hear about my application to attend the Axiom-1 launch? This launch happens pretty soon. I hate to make reservations before I get credentialed, because it's a pain to cancel things if the trip doesn't work out. These days, people would rather just leave you with a credit on your account than go to the trouble of giving you your money back. Flights and hotels fill up fast though now that the entire country is eager to travel again. Flights to Orlando are always full anyway because of Disneyland. I'm sure everything will get sorted out. I just tend to fret about everything.

I guess we'll go visit the kennel Dalmatians tomorrow. The weekend went by so fast that it doesn't seem like tomorrow is Monday. We have a lot of dogs to visit now, so I'd better get my long walk out of the way before we go. I waited to walk until after we got home last week and the sun was setting by the time I returned home. These are the kind of decisions I make these days. My life is so simple and yet it still seems complicated to me,

Baxter is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 4104 - Vernal Equinox

It definitely felt like the first day of Spring. The weather was beautiful and that meant the park was incredibly crowded. It seemed weird to see so many people out and about when the commentators on television are still talking about social distancing and Covid spikes. People aren't listening anymore. I think they've had enough. It also seems weird that only a little more than twelve percent of the population has been vaccinated when every single person I know has had at least one shot. Even younger people seem to be getting vaccinated now. Apparently it is still hard to get an appointment in some parts of the country, but the whole process is relatively easy in Dallas. I'm still glad I live in Texas.

My grocery list was longer than usual this week, but I managed to find everything. When I was getting blueberries, the ink was smudged on all the bar code labels and I had to learn to enter the information by hand in my handy shopping app. I kept getting the SKU wrong because there is one number way to the left of all the other numbers. The produce guy finally showed me how to enter the information correctly. I bought some LED bulbs for a burned out lamp in the bedroom, forgetting that we already had plenty of spare bulbs at home. I also bought some more Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, forgetting that I'd already gotten some two weeks ago. I'm not really a very good shopper.

We slept in late this morning, but I'm still not getting enough sleep. I need to get to bed earlier. It's taking me longer and longer to write the blog each night, even though I have less and less to say. Sometimes I seriously wonder if I'm going to be able to complete my 5000 day goal. I keep plodding along one day at a time, but a little voice in my head keeps telling me that this strange journey doesn't even matter anymore. I'm certainly not writing for an audience. I think only about ten of you are regular readers.

Dawn seems to like being outside more than our other dogs. We leave the back door open for her on these nice Spring days, but that's not going to last long. It won't be long until the air conditioner starts running continually and all the windows and doors will be sealed shut again. It's a shame that Spring doesn't last longer in Texas. It's easy to forget how nice it can be when the temperature is reasonable.

I keep bookmarking articles and videos about astrophotography. I'm learning a lot, but still feel like a beginner. It's amazing to me how many people around the world have chosen this complicated activity as their hobby. There must be thousands and thousands of them. I took a telescope out occasionally over the years to look at the planets and the moon, but never really got serious about astronomy until I started spending time out at McDonald Observatory. It's fascinating to look at the sky at night and realize how truly insignificant we really are. It's a shame that so much of the night sky is invisible to Dallas residents. Maybe all the light pollution is for the best though. I don't feel safe going out at night in this city anyway. Somebody seems to get shot every night.

My feet weren't my friend today. By the time I finished my long walk, every bone in my body seemed to ache. I'm not very fast. On a good day it takes me about 19 minutes to walk a mile. On a bad day it can take me up to 24 minutes. People pass me all the time. I don't really care. Most of these people are in their 30's and 40's. Let's see how fast they move when they're 72.

Baxter is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3373 - Vernal Equinox

I'm always happy to see the first day of Spring. There may be a few more cold days ahead of us, but Winter is essentially over. If it weren't for the inevitable seasonal allergies, this would be the nicest time of the year. There is supposed to be Super Moon tonight which apparently makes the equinox special. I looked outside and the moon looks the same to me. When something is ten percent larger than usual, I don't think I can perceive the difference. If the moon was 50% bigger, I'd probably notice. As it is, it's just a bright full moon.

Dash wouldn't take his pills again this morning. Some of the pills aren't critical, but the phenobarbital is. We just don't want to risk another seizure. I was hoping I could get Dash to take his meds as soon as we returned from our morning walk, but he was too tired and immediately went to sleep. He wasn't interested in anything until he woke up again a few hours later. I guess all is well that ends well, but life would be easier if we could keep Dash on a regular schedule.

I spent most of the day trying to catch up on sleep. Dash got me up way too often last night. He made it outside each time and there was no mess to clean up, but once again life would be easier if Dash would just pee and poop before he went to bed at night. He used to do this every single evening, but those days are gone. I was glad there was no mess in the bed last night, but a little more sleep would be nice.

There were more bills to pay today. March turned out to be an expensive month. My web hosting plan auto-renewed for another three years, my doctor's concierge medicine retainer was due, and there were airfare and travel expenses from my recent trip to Houston. I think we're done for March though. I won't have to pay for those Sequential Circuits synthesizers until April or May.

Tomorrow, I need to figure out how to get Janet's iTunes account to show up on the flat screen TV. She rented some movies I'd like to watch, but I don't want to watch them on her iPad. I've added her account to the TV before, but I ended up erasing my own account in the process. I'm sure that Apple has a way to share multiple accounts on the same TV, but they could make the process of switching from one to another a little easier. Oh, well. I don't have much else to do tomorrow. Little things like this count as a challenge these days.

I wish that Dash would regain his strength. He still seems weaker and more lethargic than he did last month. His decline has been so slow that it's easy to convince myself that nothing has changed. There are still good days and bad days but at the end of the day we're definitely headed downhill. I don't think there's anything I can do to stop the process.

Baxter is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2653 - Vernal Equinox

Dot threw up today right after the took her afternoon pain medication. Dogs throw up for hundreds of different reasons, but it always makes me uneasy when a dog with cancer starts vomiting. Sometimes Dot throws up simply because she drinks too much water. I didn't want to accidentally overdose her, so I didn't give her any additional Gabapentin. I watched her for the rest of the afternoon and by dinnertime she seemed back to normal. When Dot threw up on her bed, I'd just finished washing all the rugs she peed on this morning. The washing machine got a lot of use today.

I'm such a creature of habit. Even though I've almost convinced myself that it would be smart to start using electronic payments, I took another batch of bills to the post office this afternoon, just like I always do. Old habits die hard. I guess I just like going to the post office. On the way home I stopped by the vet and picked up some more phenobarbital for Dash. The dogs take so many meds now that it's going to take a spreadsheet to keep track of them soon.

I'm trying to spend a little time every clear night looking at the stars. It's a bit of an uphill battle. I found a little meadow in the park with a clear view of the sky. It's near the house and there aren't a lot of streetlamps or car headlights to spoil the view. The only problem is that all the neighborhood dogs sense me standing in the meadow and start barking at me. When one dog starts barking, pretty soon they all start barking. I looked for the Andromeda Galaxy tonight. I should have started looking last winter when it was higher in the sky. This thing is big enough and bright enough that it should have been easy to see with binoculars. I couldn't find it though. Like many other things, it was lost in the haze and glow of city lights that obscures everything near the horizon.

It actually did seem like the first day of Spring today. The weather was beautiful. I waited until sunset to walk Dot and she seemed to enjoy herself, even though she had thrown up earlier in the day. I wish Dot wasn't so frail, but we do the best we can. Even though Dot's appetite is still good, she is having trouble chewing certain things. She won't eat rice cakes anymore, even though she used to love them. Slices of banana sometimes fall out of her mouth. I don't know why she has trouble chewing a banana. Luckily, she's still fine with the Hills ID that has become her regular diet. Slowly all her favorite things are becoming more difficult. The dog that used to run like the wind now moves at a snail's pace. She's becoming finicky about what she eats and can no longer control her bladder. The scary thing is this is my future too. It's hell growing old.

I still haven't called the landscaper. I'm not even sure it's worth replacing all the Asian Jasmin and Liriope I've trampled taking Dot out to pee. As long as I'm walking behind Dot, holding up her rear legs, I'm going to continue to trample the ground cover. The yard looks terrible though. I need to do something.

I thought today was going to be uneventful. I guess it was. Dot gave me a little scare, but she's fine now. I cleaned four large rugs today, although it was far from a record. I think I've cleaned seven in one day once. The house shoes I use to take Dot outside tore apart at the seams, so I glued them back together to avoid the hassle of looking for another pair at a shoe store. Tomorrow I'll get up early and try to get Dot outside before she pees all over the place. I'll make my morning smoothie and put it in the freezer for a while so it's nice and cold. Eventually, I'll open my e-mail and hope to find an exciting new project to work on. There won't be any work, but there will be lots of spam. If I'm lucky, Dot won't throw up.

Baxter is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2287 - Vernal Equinox

It was nice that the first day of Spring turned out to be a Spring day. Since this is Texas, we could just as easily have had snow. It was a little cold in the morning, but by mid-afternoon there was definitely a hint of Spring in the air. I used the pleasant weather to catch up on yard work. I pruned some backyard bushes and hauled an abandoned agility course we used when the dogs were younger out to the curb for this week's big trash pickup. I thought about mowing the grass, but I forgot to charge the mower battery, so that will have to wait until another day.

On the way to the gym this afternoon, I stopped at the REI store to look for some flip flops. I like to wear socks around the house and when the dogs need to go outside in a hurry, it's always hard to put on my shoes quickly enough. I've had to go outside barefoot occasionally when Dot couldn't wait. At any rate I was looking for some slip on sandals without the band between the big toe and the other toes that you typically find on flip flops. I finally found a pair that I liked, but they were $130. WTF? How did flip flops get so expensive? There were nice hiking boots in the store for the same price as these flip flops. I left without buying anything, because the price seemed ridiculous. I'll probably come back later though, because the shoes were exactly what I was looking for. Why do I always have to like the expensive things?

While I was at the gym this afternoon, I got to thinking about the yard work I'd done this morning.  Yard work is strenuous. When I did more around the house, I had no need to go to the gym. I used to mow the grass with a push mower. I hauled in tons of round river stones in the back of the Defender to make decorative areas in the shady spots where grass wouldn't grow. I used to put in the St. Augustine turf myself instead of hiring landscapers. I did lots of things that kept me fit and made me tired. I quit using the push mower first. It was simply too exhausting. Gradually other things fell by the wayside as bones got brittle and joints got sore. Today, when I was pruning the Photinia bushes I couldn't even reach a lot of the branches because of my dislocated shoulder. Age has definitely taken its toll. As I finished my twenty minutes on the treadmill, I concluded that going to the gym was for people who work in offices. If you do any type of manual labor, you don't need to go to the gym.

Dash gets his teeth cleaned this week. I always worry about dental exams because a long time ago a friend of mine had a dog who died during a routine dental exam. Dash is what they call a "hard wake up" dog as well. He freaks out sometimes as he is coming out of anesthesia. Dash has a great vet and I know everything will be OK, but I still worry. I don't like going to the dentist myself, but it's something you can't ignore. Gum disease can be very serious in an older dog.

I actually got a good night's sleep last night. My activity tracker said that I reached 90% of my recommended sleep goal. That's as close as I've ever come. Usually I get about 40% of my sleep goal. I don't expect to sleep nearly as long tonight. It's a work day tomorrow and we all get up early.

Baxter is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1191 - Vernal Equinox

It was a good day. It's hard to go wrong when the first day of Spring actually feels like Spring. The landscaping crew made good progress today. I'm feeling much more confident now that the yard is going to look nice when it is finished. All the metal edging is in place. A dump truck came with lots of top soil today. Even some of the new turf has been installed. By this time tomorrow, the yard ought to be finished. I'm tempted to hire these guys to maintain the yard as well. Neither Janet or I are known for having a green thumb. It would be a shame to go to all this trouble to have a nice looking yard and then have everything die again in August.

Sometimes I'm surprised at how little it takes to put me in a good mood. I'm enjoying seeing the yard come together. It's nice to get on a scale and realize that I've lost eight pounds in less than a month. Dot's shaky rear legs seem to be getting stronger as well. Unless something terrible happens next week, I'm going to give March a thumbs up.

I tried out the new juicer today. It takes a lot of fruit and vegetables to make juice. I fed a whole pineapple into the juicer and only got about two pints of juice in return. The juice was quite tasty, but I thought there would be more. I decided to keep the pulp as well. I guess you're supposed to throw the pulp away, but it tasted a bit like pineapple pudding and it seemed a shame to waste the stuff.

So far, Hulu seems like a good deal. Many of my favorite shows are well represented. There were even quite a few British comedies, which surprised me. Since I generally prefer the old shows to today's endless lineup of reality TV, Hulu might be all I need. I ought to give one of those over-the-air HD antennas a try and see if I can pick up anything in our neighborhood. There are so many trees in our part of town that I doubt that an antenna would work well, but even if it just pulled in a few basic channels for the news, I might be able to dump cable and U-verse entirely.

Tomorrow ought to be interesting. I need to renew a few insurance policies and the agent said he'd be happy to come out to the house, so I wouldn't have to drive to his office in Far North Dallas. I told him that I have two loud barking dogs, but he said that wouldn't be a problem. Actually it will be a problem. Maybe we can meet on the front porch.

Baxter is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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