Day 3780

I've been interested in astronomy for a long time. I'm certainly no expert, but I do know the basics. That's why I've been completely baffled to keep seeing articles on the Internet saying that the Moon, Jupiter, and Venus will form a smiley face in the sky on May 16th. If you Google this event you will literally find dozens of articles, some from seemingly reputable sources, telling you how and when to view this rare celestial show. I've even started seeing Facebook friends telling each other to mark their calendars.

Have any of these people actually gone outside and looked at the sky? Jeez. There isn't going to be a smiley face in the sky. It's not going to happen. On May 16th, Venus shines brightly in the evening sky after sunset, but you won't see Jupiter unless you get up early the next morning and look toward the East a little before sunrise. These two planets are on the opposite sides of the sky. The Moon is a waning crescent at this time, but it isn't even thin enough to look like a smile. The only planet anywhere close to it is Mars.

So how could so many people be completely wrong? Do people actually believe what they see on the Internet more than what they can see with their own eyes? Sadly, the answer is yes. This isn't rocket science, people. Just go outside and look at the sky. I'm kind of amazed that none of the many "fact checker" websites have called out the "smiley face" story as a hoax. They probably believe the story too.

I think the reason this obviously false story persists is that people like a smiley face. A smiley face makes them feel good. They want to believe the story. A smiley face in the sky is an innocent little story but it illustrates perfectly why fake news is so prevalent today. People believe what they want to believe. Nobody questions anything in a clear, dispassionate way anymore. You find something that supports your preconceived opinion and then you tell your friends about it. If enough people agree with you, your opinion goes viral. I doubt that the bogus smiley face story is any sort of conspiracy. It's just laziness. There actually have been conjunctions of the Moon, Jupiter and Venus in the past. I think the last time this happened was in 2008. You can see almost anything in the sky if you wait long enough.

I don't know why the smiley face story bothers me so much. Perhaps it is because it illustrates human nature so well. If you can easily convince people to ignore the laws of physics, you can convince them of anything. Almost everything we see and hear in the media has been designed to influence you in one way or another. Ads try to influence you to buy something you may or may not need. It's pretty easy to do this because people are gullible and they have emotions. I spent my entire career trying to influence you and got pretty good at it. Today, what used to be called "hard news" has just become another form of advertising. These news sources feed you a steady diet of what you already believe so you will continue watching. Pick your poison. It's not that hard to to find something that appeals to you these days. Maybe you like OAN and Fox. Maybe you like CNN and MSNBC. Don't expect that what you are hearing is true however. You are being manipulated.

If you have your heart set on seeing something cool in the sky on May 16, just wait until the next morning. If you get up around 5 AM on May 17 you can see Jupiter and Saturn extremely close together in the Eastern sky. The two planets will only be a few degrees apart. No smiley face though. I have no idea when that will happen again.

Bea is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3048

It was a nice, uneventful day. Everyone got enough sleep. Dash seemed in good spirits. And the weather was wonderful. I had no plans for the day and was determined to keep things that way. I went to the gym right after walking Dash and eating breakfast. It was the path of least resistance. You don't have to think at the gym. You just follow routines.

There were plenty of things that needed to be done around the house when I returned, but I watched another episode of The Expanse instead. Now I'm all caught up on Season 3 and will have to start watching the show on Wednesday evenings. I can see the appeal of binge watching on Netflix now. A lot of current season shows are available for streaming on the SyFi Channel, but all the commercials are there. To avoid the commercials, you have to wait until you can find what you're looking for on Netflix, Amazon Prime, or iTunes. It's probably worth the wait.

I probably should have a little more respect for commercials. They did provide me with a pretty good income for decades. In retrospect, I wish I'd worked for Space X. Going to Mars seems like a worthy goal. Getting someone to eat a taco, not so much.

The world of The Expanse is pretty bleak. Apparently, 200 years from now we are still involved in continual wars and are on the verge of annihilating ourselves as a species. Personally, I don't think humanity will have spread across the solar system in 200 years. It's been almost 50 years since we went to the moon and we haven't been able to get back there yet. Maybe I'm wrong. Medicine and technology are advancing faster than I ever imagined. I could never have predicted that I'd be walking around with a little phone in my pocket that was so powerful it has basically replaced my camera, my computer, the weatherman on TV, my rolodex, and most of my friends.

It's kind of irritating that I'm having problems with acid reflux again. I thought I'd put this all behind me. After taking Pantoprazole for ten years, my doctor convinced me to stop and I was actually doing very well without the proton pump inhibitor for at least three years. I'm almost certain the problem is just a lack of discipline on my part. When I was being treated for Hepatitis C, I completely changed my diet. For the first time ever, I was really eating healthy meals. It made a difference. After I was cured, I gradually began backsliding. I still don't drink and try to eat healthy meals, but I am eating red meat and pasta again. I've resumed eating bread and occasionally enjoy a pizza. Sadly, I can't handle Italian food anymore. Even a cheeseburger is risky these days. A mostly vegetarian diet completely eliminated the acid reflux, but it was so boring. There's always a price to pay for pleasure.

It's hard to believe that it's almost May. It's been such a chilly Spring that the furnace is still coming on at night. I should enjoy these cool mornings, because they won't be around much longer. The temperature will be over 100 soon and I'll be turning 70. I'm not looking forward to either event, although my advanced age will get me out of jury duty.

Parker is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2588

Every time I run my Saturday errands, I'm reminded of how much I dislike living in a large city. I still have fantasies about living in the middle of nowhere with a deep artesian water well and an acre of solar panels, but living comfortably off the grid like this is never going to happen. The older people get, the more they need to be near doctors. I doubt that I'd be lonely living off the grid, but if I ever had a heart attack or a serious fall, I'd be dead before the EMT's arrived. I was talking to a friend of mine last week who has enjoyed living in a small town in Arkansas for over 40 years. He and his wife are thinking of moving to Little Rock, because that's where their doctors are. That's what happened to my sister too. She and her husband sold a beautiful forest home in rural Ohio and moved to Florida for better medical care. This the bleak reality of modern life. There are fewer and fewer rural doctors and absolutely no state of the art rural research hospitals.

I watched the Falcon 9 launch at Vandenberg Air Force Base this morning on the Internet. I was glad to see that Space X had a big success today, after the devastating explosion they experienced last year. It's amazing that they have live video cameras inside these rockets now. The return of the first stage booster to the floating barge in the Pacific was all shown live in real time. If I was young, I'd love to work for a company like Space X. I think going to Mars would be a lot more inspiring mission in life than getting people to eat more burgers and drink more soda. That being said, I don't really regret spending most of my life in advertising. I'm a shallow person, so advertising is a perfect fit.

I'm glad the big ice storm in Oklahoma and Kansas is well north of us. Our weather wasn't great today, but at least nothing was freezing. Although it never actually rained, there was a mist in the air that left my jacket wet after I walked the dogs. I wonder how long our roller coaster weather is going to continue? I think constantly alternating between warm and cold days is making me sick. I feel like I'm coming down with a cold again. The humidity keeps changing too. It was over 90% this morning, but less than 20% a few days ago. We've certainly had colder winters, but I can't recall such sudden changes before.

I cooked French Toast for Janet this morning. My cooking repertoire is very limited, but I do make good French Toast. Bread is kind of the forbidden fruit in my current diet. I try to avoid bread and seldom eat pizza anymore because the starches in bread break down quickly and enter the bloodstream as glucose. Bread spikes blood sugar levels faster than many candy bars. It's too bad the stuff is so delicious. I could live on bread if it didn't put me on a fast track toward becoming a diabetic.

The dogs kept me busy today, but there were no messy accidents. Knock on wood, I guess. The day isn't over yet. I've discovered that Dot can easily sleep an extra hour on weekends without needing to get up to pee. As long as everyone else is asleep too, she's fine. The day officially starts at our house whenever Janet gets up. Hopefully, we'll all sleep in late tomorrow as well. I always enjoy an extra hour of sleep. I'll go to the gym unless it's raining and then I'll end the day by watching British comedies on PBS that I've already seen a hundred times. It's not all that exciting, but you wouldn't be reading this if you were looking for excitement.

Kasey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2487

Today was busier than I expected. As usual, it took forever to take care of my morning chores and get the dogs situated, but when I eventually got around to turning on the computer, there was lots of work waiting for me. I saw that I now had the information I needed for a long overdue website update, as well as a request for a new article. When I started working on the website, I saw a notice that there was a software update that would allow my responsive, mobile ready websites to load up to ten times faster. The good news was that all my clients would love for their websites to load faster. The bad news was that I now had to learn something new. Oh, well. Progress marches on, I guess. When I finished my update, the site actually did load faster. It certainly wasn't ten times faster, but maybe the modest speed increase was worth forcing my tired brain to remember even more complex code that I can barely understand.

Most of the articles I write are for products that I would never use myself. It can be challenging to make overpriced junk seem like something everyone needs to have, but I do the best I can. I've done this for years and years and I'm pretty good at it. Maybe this is why I'm somewhat amused when politicians call each other liars. Of course they're liars. Our whole society is based on lying. How long would you last at work if you told your boss or supervisor what you really thought? Do you actually believe everything you hear on the news these days? I didn't think so. So, maybe I embellished things a little when I wrote my article. No real harm was done. Hey, maybe somebody really loves this product. I can say nice things about almost anything. I'll leave the disparaging comments to those folks who write restaurant reviews on Yelp.

Dot is really getting weaker. I don't know what to do. She desperately needs daily exercise to keep her leg muscles from atrophying further, but she's not strong enough now to walk as far as she used to. It's a vicious circle. A lack of exercise makes her weaker, which forces us to decrease her exercise even further. In theory, the underwater treadmill can still help Dot, but she needs to be relaxed for the therapy to do any good. Riding in the car causes a lot of stress for Dot, so it negates most of the benefits of the therapy. We hesitate to extend her short walk around the block, since it's clear that this is about all she can handle. Maybe this is as good as it gets.

Dash has his own problems too, but they are completely overshadowed by Dot's deteriorating condition. It's hard to remain upbeat when your dogs are fading away in front of your eyes and your business is fading away at an equally alarming rate.  Everything, including my own health, appears to be headed downhill. I imagine that the blog was more fun to read when it was more about beginnings than about endings. That's not the way life is, unfortunately. We all reach the end of the line eventually. For now, the challenge is finding beauty in a life of diminished expectations. I complain a lot, but I actually am extremely grateful for each additional day we are given. Dot is still here. Dash is still here. Janet and I are still here. Tonight we'll get some sleep and tomorrow we'll start over again.

Lightning is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1612

Buzz Aldrin couldn't have said it better. "You promised me Mars colonies. Instead, I got Facebook." When I saw this quote today, it summed up the last several decades for me. There are no large dreams that capture the imagination of entire countries anymore. Instead, we have become a fractured, totally divided world that agrees on nothing and can't get behind anything of consequence. When I was growing up, the best and the brightest went to work in places like Los Alamos and Oak Ridge. Today they work for Google. I was an Oak Ridge kid myself for a while, since my Dad was doing something secret at one of the labs. My young friends and I were science nerds before the term was even invented. We were convinced that we'd be traveling among the stars by now. None of us ever dreamed we'd be downloading funny cat pictures instead.

Not only has the world become trivial, I have become trivial as well. When I was a young kid in Oak Ridge, I thought I'd be an astronomer when I grew up. I actually ended up becoming an architect. Then in my mid 20's I had an epiphany. I realized that I was a fairly shallow person and became an ad man instead. I thrived in advertising, largely because my shallow nature fit me like a glove. I thought having a few people like me made the world a more interesting place. It probably did. The entire equation changed when everyone decided to get a degree in marketing. You don't really need that many people like me. There is a reason why big companies hire most of their advanced technical talent from India and China. American college grads no longer want to split the atom and go to the moon. They'd rather have their own reality show.

I don't know where we go from here, but I do know that people like John Kennedy and Buzz Aldrin don't resonate with today's young people like they did with me. Going to the moon in ten years from a standing start was a ridiculously ambitious goal and we did it. These days it would take ten years just to agree on what we wanted to do.

I certainly didn't do much today. I went to my breakfast restaurant a day early, because I'm going to be busy tomorrow. The first thing I noticed was that the restaurant, which is typically packed on Friday mornings, was virtually empty. Could this mean that we already have a de facto four day work week? All my clients seem to have flex-time employees these days and I know quite a few people who don't work on Friday already. What's going to happen when the robots get really good?

Maybe some of my clients have started taking Thursday off as well. It was certainly slow today. The dogs got two nice walks, including one in the morning where the temperature was brisk and cool. Dot and Dash love the cooler weather. Later in the day, I filled the car with gas, went to the bank, and paid a quick visit to a Fry's electronics store in the neighborhood. The store was almost as empty as the restaurant was this morning. Sign of the times, I guess.

Sadie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1575

I changed my cable bundle to a package with fewer TV channels today. So far, I can't tell any difference. I'm certainly not missing anything. There are so many worthless cable channels anyway that I'll probably never really know what I eliminated. I did save a little money though. I made the changes online, and I did notice when I was checking out that the cable company tried to sneak a new movie package into my cart, adding $20 and then subtracting it again, saying the first month was free. They didn't think I'd notice. I wasn't falling for that. I figured out how how to remove the unwanted movie package and scaled back my land line phone service as well. I should have eliminated the land line entirely. It is used exclusively by telemarketers now. I haven't received a call that actually mattered on the land line in months.

I took my April invoices to the post office this afternoon. Billings are starting to decline again. I'm not sure what to do about it though. I'm pretty busy writing, but I hesitate to go after any more writing work. Editorial writing just doesn't pay very well. I still do the occasional advertising job, but these high budget jobs are becoming a rarity. Most of the young agency creatives just don't want to hire someone the same age as their grandfather. I can't really complain though. I certainly had my own moment in the sun. When I was a young hot shot agency creative, I wouldn't dream of hiring some old fart twice my age. I hired the friends I went drinking with, and I'm sure today's kids do the same.

Dash can't go in for radiation therapy tomorrow. The cancer center called me today and said that the radiation machine was broken and that it would probably take a full day to repair. I certainly hope the machine didn't go haywire with a dog in it. That has always been one of my fears. You'd hate for some technician to calibrate the machine improperly and come home with a radioactive dog. In fairness, the entire team at the cancer center seems very professional and always pays attention to details. Dash will probably be upset when he discovers that he isn't going anywhere tomorrow. He looks forward to these visits to the cancer center now.

Work was kind of light today. I updated one website, did my invoices, and that was about it. Tomorrow looks busy though. I return to writing again tomorrow. I'm going to take Dot for her acupuncture session tomorrow as well. I changed her appointment back to Wednesday after Dash's radiation therapy was canceled. Dot's vet is probably getting sick of me constantly changing her schedule because of Dash's changing transportation needs. There not much I can do about the situation now though. If I happen to have a free day, I'm going to try to use it. When the radiation machine is fixed, Dash may need to go for therapy on Thursday and Friday this week.

I'm starting to see wild irises blooming in the park this week. From now through June, there will be a new variety of wildflower coming into bloom every few days. The dogs are stubborn now, and I can't always get near the flowers like I used to. If I get close to a wildflower now, it usually means there is something stinky nearby that the dogs want to smell.

Cooper is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1459

Today, the ice and snow turned to rain. I guess that's a good thing. It sure would be nice to see the sun again however. There were a few breaks in the rain when I was able to walk the dogs, but for the most part, I just stayed inside and tried to get caught up on work.

It's hard to even remember what day it is anymore. A week ago at this time the city was without power. Although the electricity has returned, the residual effects of the ice storm still linger. For the most part, my clients are still trying to make up for lost time. So am I. It's amazing how just four or five days of ice related chaos can screw up your schedule.

Things are getting better though. My client with the Internet problems is back online again. I'm getting caught up on my writing assignments. I even managed to get my December invoices in the mail this afternoon. I'm glad I didn't waste any time trying to get the water and ice off the roof. It's still raining right now, and any effort to clear the roof would have been futile.

UPS seems to have lost another of my shipments. I'm not going to get upset this time though. Losing things seems to be the new normal for UPS. Both of my previous shipments turned up eventually, and I'm sure that this one will too. Hey, the trash truck finally came and picked up our garbage today. Could the UPS truck be far behind? 

Maybe I'm just going to have to learn to live with a certain level of incompetence. Nothing runs very smoothly anymore. I get put on hold more frequently when I call people. Check out lines in stores are longer. I think part of the problem is that nobody really has any useful skills anymore. When everybody just wants to write press releases and have their own reality show, society will slowly grind to a halt. I don't have many useful skills myself, but no society needs very many people like me. Trust me on this. Tell your children to become chemists, plumbers, and astronomers. The world doesn't need any more advertising people.

Tomorrow is our last Santa Paws pet photo event for 2013. I'll be glad when I can finally pack some of this gear up and take it to the storage warehouse again, so I won't have to trip over it every time I get up to go to the bathroom at night. I've photographed a lot of dogs this year, and I don't think I've complained as much as I did last year. Hey, that's something to be thankful for. If the weather finally clears up tomorrow like everybody is expecting, I'll be a happy camper.

Cookie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1168

I didn't leave the house all day. Well, technically I guess I did leave the house to walk the dogs, but that is such a predictable, rain or shine activity that it doesn't really count. I occupied myself with a new technical writing assignment that should take me two or three days to complete. Technical writing is a little different than the consumer oriented writing I usually do. Advertising writing is almost totally BS. Technical writing, on the other hand, is only about 50% BS.

While we were walking this morning, I noticed multiple small Zip-Lock bags with white pills inside strewn along our path through the woods. What was this all about? Did somebody finally get disgusted and throw away all their meds in favor of some vigorous exercise? Was this the remains of a drug deal gone bad? Was someone trying to poison the birds and squirrels? I don't know. I'll probably never know. I have seen stranger things in the park, however. This is one reason I always try to avoid walking the dogs after dark.

It's too bad that the roof wasn't quite dry enough for me to make my repairs yesterday while the weather was nice. It rained again overnight and now I'll just have to cross my fingers and hope for an extended dry spell, so everything can dry out again. I have already learned the hard way that patching a crack on the roof while there is still trapped moisture underneath doesn't accomplish anything.

Would you believe that it might snow tonight? If it does, it will be Winter's last hurrah. There's always one really cold day in late February or early March just to freeze all the early blooming flowers and plants. That's the way it works here in Texas.

Cookie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1147

My learning journey continues. Oatmeal mixed with fresh blueberries and strawberries and sweetened with a little Stevia is actually delicious. Who would have thought? Maybe I can live without bacon after all. I also learned that the Kale I'm eating in my salad is actually the very same purple plant that I used to buy in pots at the garden store to put on the front porch during the Winter. I always thought these ornamental plants were pretty, but never knew you could eat them. I certainly had no idea they were healthy.

I wish I would discover some equally enlightening things about my chosen profession. I'm really starting to get burned out with what advertising has become in recent years. The stuff I write never was intended to be Anna Karenina or Moby Dick. It's depressing how mindless advertising messaging has become however. For the past three or four years I keep thinking that the Super Bowl ads keep getting worse with each succeeding year. There is no subtlety anymore. It's all rudeness and explosions these days. Coke, GoDaddy, Priceline... there wasn't a coherent idea between them. I didn't even like a lot of the commercials that the young bloggers gave rave reviews on their websites. I thought the Taco Bell spot with the old people escaping the retirement home was kind of insulting and even though I thought the Tide "Stain" spot was clever, it wasn't that great. On the other hand I did like some of the commercials that the young folk thought were insulting. The Volkswagen spot featuring white people talking like Jamaicans was panned by many reviewers who said the spot was racially insensitive. What a bunch of politically correct nonsense. That Volkswagen commercial was one of the few genuinely funny spots I saw all night.

Like many of you, I loved the Paul Harvey "Farmer" spot for Dodge Ram. I was terribly disappointed however to discover that the Dodge Ram ad agency didn't actually come up with this idea. A much smaller Chicago agency had already used the exact same Paul Harvey dialog in another commercial earlier. This is sad to me. Copying has become so mainstream that people don't even think it is wrong anymore. Most of my clients would actually rather copy or emulate something that already exists than to take a chance on something genuinely original. I haven't been asked to do anything genuinely original in years.

I was really busy today, but like I've already mentioned, I wasn't doing much original thinking. That monkey the Iranians sent into space recently could have taken my place today. I changed out pictures on websites. I paraphrased things I found on Wikipedia. I replied to mindless questions with equally mindless answers. Maybe something original will happen tomorrow.

Duke is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1112

I plugged in the guitar and played a little blues today. There certainly wasn't much else to do. It was a very slow day. The good news was that I hadn't entirely lost my chops. The bad news was that playing guitar for any extended length of time with Carpal tunnel hurts like hell. Who knows though. Maybe playing with a wrecked left hand will give my riffs a note of authenticity.

I wonder how many years of sitting in a little room and writing inconsequential advertising it takes before you go stark raving mad? When you factor in that my primary diversions are sweeping standing water off the roof and killing cockroaches that wander into the house, maybe I've passed that threshold already. At least it was a bit warmer today. The dogs didn't even have to wear their Winter coats.

I was amused today when I noticed that the stock market had a substantial rally when the President came on television early in the afternoon to say that everyone was close to striking a deal on the fiscal cliff. Of course five minutes after the market closed, some senators came on TV and essentially said "just kidding." There is no deal tonight because nobody wants to be the bearer of bad news. I have a feeling that this impasse could go on for weeks or months.

If we can stay awake until midnight, Janet and I will bring in the New Year with some champagne and a selection of cheese. I can't imagine standing out in the cold for hours to watch a mirrored ball drop, but seeing the event on TV in a warm house with a flute of champagne in your hand is actually kind of nice. 2012 certainly wasn't that memorable, but maybe 2013 will be better. Remember 1999 when Y2K was supposed to bring the world grinding to a halt on New Year's Eve? Nothing happened. People still say "party like it's 1999" though. What's that all about?  I have a feeling that it's going to be a lot like 1999 when we all sail over the cliff a little later this evening.

Happy New Year to all of you. I hope your first New Year's resolution is to continue reading this blog for another year.

Dot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1055

I don't think I'm a spokesperson for Paypal anymore. The Paypal Advantage program that I was helping to promote seems to have disappeared. I looked on the Internet yesterday and all references to the program have vanished. Very few people saw the ads featuring me and a Dalmatian as satisfied Paypal users, but I swear they actually did exist. I saw them myself. Oh, well. And I was hoping to be like William Shatner for Priceline.com. The only other company that has ever used me in their advertising was Wordstar. Remember Wordstar?  I didn't seem to do that company much good either.

My little photo shoot this morning went pretty well, considering that we did the photography at the wrong time of day and the lighting was terrible. It was good practice for me. I need to remember how to deliver good results under bad conditions.

At one point I was seriously considering turning my company into a more retail business, taking family portraits and pet pictures. That little fantasy didn't last long. I quickly learned that professional art directors and graphic designers were much easier to deal with than regular folks. It seemed like the less money people had for photography, the more they wanted in return. Now, I have a simple rule of thumb. If there isn't an accounts receivable department to send the invoice to, don't do the job. I'll occasionally take pictures as a favor, like I did this morning, but I'll never charge for them. It's just too depressing to see what friends actually think you are worth.

The clear skies and bright sunlight might not have been good for photography, but it was perfect for taking the dogs to the dog park. Now that Janet's Land Rover is back in service, the dogs were much better travelers. They seem to like Janet's car better than mine.  They hated the Kia Sorento rent car.  The back seat wasn't deep enough and they kept falling out of the seat every time we went around a corner. Thankfully, everything is back to normal now. Life is good.

Next weekend, the annual Santa Paws photo season returns for another year. Dalmatian Rescue has lined up five different locations this year. I hope I'm up to the challenge. Each year my knees seems to get worse and worse. After kneeling and standing up over and over again for six hours, I always feel like someone needs to scrape me off the floor with a spatula at the end of the day. The only thing more grueling than being the photographer at these events is being Santa. I'm really glad that I don't have to wear a Santa suit and have big dogs sit on my lap all day.

Ginger is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1012

The Dalmatian Rescue group has another casino party today. We use these casino parties as fundraisers to help the dogs. Often the people who hire us to put these events together are other charities conducting their own fundraisers. I've worked with animal rescue organizations for a long time and it seems like most of what we do involves raising money. Money is the gasoline that fuels practically everything we do in society. If you start looking at things this way, you'll soon start seeing your own job as just another fundraiser with you and your family as the beneficiaries. You just can't do much without money these days.

I have traded services with one client of mine for over a decade. There are no invoices or bills. No money is involved whatsoever. I just do what they want. And they do what I want. This odd arrangement works because we are lucky enough to trust each other and we have mutually beneficial skills. I often think it would be nice if everything in life worked this way. It would be nice to just walk up to a gas pump and fill my tank, confident that I was doing something equally beneficial for the oil companies in return. One of the great things about the Internet is that at least conceptually, the whole thing is free. Since the ability to connect people together has real tangible value, you and I have access to an enormous wealth of knowledge for free. I don't really know how a world without money would work however. First of all, everyone would have to be totally trustworthy and they would have to have real useful skills.

I'm not sure I have any useful skills myself. I'm an advertising man. The only way I could repay the world for my free gas, electricity and food would be to use my communication skills to convince others to use real money to buy things they don't really need. Oh well, it was a nice thought. Until utopia arrives, I'll just continue helping with fundraisers and trying my best to earn a living.

It was a beautiful day. As I was doing my weekly shopping, I was struck by the fact that the year is already winding down. There are already Halloween items for sale all over town. In one store, I even saw a stack of Christmas lights. By the time I hang my own Christmas lights, the election frenzy will be over. I don't know who's going to win, but I have a feeling that when I wake up on Christmas morning, the world is going to look pretty much the same.

Sadie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 990

When I was eating breakfast this morning, I noticed that the waiters knew sign language. "That's cool," I thought. I hear waiters speaking to customers in Spanish all the time, but I run into very few who sign. I actually wish everybody used sign language. The world is way too noisy. Year ago, when I worked on the American Airlines account, I proposed that the airline scrap their smoking and no smoking sections on the planes and substitute talking and no talking sections instead. As you might expect, that went over like a lead balloon. I still think it is a good idea though.

Lots of older people go to the restaurant I visited this morning. I've noticed that the older women tend to eat in groups of three or four and are almost always happy and smiling. The old men almost always eat alone and look miserable. The only time when the old women seem to look miserable is when they are dining with their grumpy old husbands. There were a few younger people in the restaurant too. One young woman was wearing a t-shirt that said Kiss Me in the Dark. A bright shaft of light was shining directly on her through the restaurant window. I thought that was funny.

I didn't really get caught up today, but I feel more or less up to speed again. There's only one article left to write and it isn't due until sometime next week. All my websites are current again. My clients are happy with the stuff that I sent out by FedEx yesterday. It seems like a good time to slack off a bit and enjoy the Labor Day holiday.

Dot and Dash have a rescue event to look forward to this weekend. They've both turned out to be good little ambassadors for the breed. Dot likes these rescue events because she gets to be bossy and act like she's running the show. Dash, always the social butterfly, just likes to get petted by strangers.

Domino is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 917 - My Birthday

"Will you still need me, will you still feed me when I'm 64?" When I first heard these lyrics during the Sergeant Pepper summer of 67, I never dreamed I'd eventually be 64 myself. It was simply impossible. I was playing in a band at the time and thought I was ageless. My feelings of being impervious to age lasted a long, long time. I soon entered the world of advertising where youth is almost a prerequisite. When I was a 26 year old creative director, we used to wonder where they put the 40 somethings out to pasture. There simply weren't any old people in ad agency creative departments back then. Maybe there still aren't. At any rate, it should come as no surprise that I've always been reluctant to reveal my age. I have always looked younger than I am and have used this to my advantage for many years.

I think the jig is up, unfortunately. When you wake up feeling 70, it's hard to pretend you're 40 anymore. In the inner recesses of my mind, I may still be 18, but my body begs to differ. What a compendium of aches and pains I have become. There is a pill for every perceived problem, but I'm not really fond of pills. I think its actually the dogs that have kept me alive. I walk Dot and Dash five miles each and every day. Dalmatians are very strong and active animals. The daily exercise keeps the dogs happy and helps keep me in much better shape than I would be otherwise. As an added benefit, everything else I do during the day seems easy by comparison.

I was thinking of going to a daytime movie as a birthday treat. Janet doesn't really like science fiction and it would be nice to see Ridley Scott's new Prometheus prequel on a big screen. I should have known better. By the time I finished the day's writing and website work, a movie was out of the question. As usual, when the work is finished, the day is usually over. I heated up a pizza in the microwave and treated myself to the remaining Shiner beer in the refrigerator. When Janet came home from work later in the evening, she brought Sprinkles Cupcakes with her and we had a little party. All in all, it was a good day to turn 64. Even the stock market was up today.

Ironically, if I had been born one day earlier, I would have shared a birthday with Paul McCartney, who wrote the song I can't help humming today.

Inky is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 696 - Veteran's Day

Both of my parents served in the Navy. They were so proud of their service that they both requested military funerals, long after they returned to civilian life. One of my favorite art director partners, back in my ad agency days, was in the Marine Corps before he discovered the ad biz. Several of my high school and college buddies went to either West Point or the Air Force Academy, and just about everyone on my Mom's side of the family was career military. All these connections to the military life have disappeared. I don't know anyone personally who is serving in the military these days. All I know is what I see on TV. I remember my parents and my friends though and the dedication with which they served. I think all our veterans, past, present and future, deserve a tremendous amount of respect.

Watching a parade on TV this morning was as close as I got to a Veteran's Day celebration. It was a just another normal Friday for me, full of projects that really should have been finished on Wednesday. Weekends are more enjoyable for both my clients and myself if there aren't any unfinished projects lingering on my desk, so I usually stay busy on Fridays. By the end of the day, I had everything finished and I'm ready to face to weekend.

The photo above was part of an ad campaign I did several years ago for a client who insisted on basing their entire marketing efforts around their logo, which just happened to be a flag. I must have taken pictures of every flag in Dallas, looking for the perfect pictures to illustrate the campaign. For a while, I thought all these flag images would be great for stock photography, but all the stock photo houses told me that they had plenty of flags already. I still find a use for these pictures occasionally, but not very often. Hey, if you need a good flag picture, I'm your guy.

There's basically only one day to get all the weekend errands done this week. On Sunday, I'm supposed to take video footage of the Pet Fair animal rescue event. With all this going on, I'm not sure how we'll get our own dogs to the dog park on Sunday, but I'm sure where there's a will, there's a way.

Dolly is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 668

Another beautiful day. It's hard not to like October in Texas. Unless the rainy season starts early and ruins the State Fair, it's typically the nicest month of the year. I'm enjoying our morning walks again. My aches and pains have subsided and the dogs seem to have taken a break from their usual tugging and pulling. They now seem to enjoy lingering to smell things along our path. I could walk a lot longer on days like this, but there is always plenty of work waiting back at the house.

After breakfast this morning, I took the old mattress out to the street to be picked up by the bulky and brushy trash trucks that should be arriving next week. Moving a king sized mattress without assistance is not the easiest thing in the world. For starters, the mattress is fairly heavy, but the real problem is the size. I couldn't really get a grip on the thing without it flopping over and making me start over. I finally got the unwieldy mattress over the back fence, down the alley and moved to it's designated spot near the curb. After taking care of the old mattress, I added the dead tree limbs I trimmed last week to the pile.

I figured that all this activity should count as exercise, so I didn't do my physical therapy exercises today. I did go to my session though, and discovered that this wasn't my last day after all. Insurance is going to cover me for another week , so I will have sessions next week as well. I have become a believer in physical therapy and in physical activity in general during the past two weeks. I didn't used to think I needed an exercise program at all. Hey, I walk the dogs, mow my own grass, vacuum the house periodically and climb up on the roof every time it rains. That should be enough, shouldn't it? As it turns out that, even with all this activity, I wasn't exercising the correct muscle groups and still have poor upper body strength. We'll try to fix all that this Fall.

I balanced my checkbook today and discovered once again that more money was going out than was coming in. My problem is that frugality never really appealed to me. I lead a simple life in many ways, but instead of champagne living on a beer budget, I would much prefer beer living on a champagne budget. The only real solution to this dilemma is more clients. Surprisingly, I might have actually found one this afternoon.

It turns out that the guy who had been doing my physical therapy is actually the owner of the place. He started talking about advertising today while he was pulling on my neck and I mentioned that I was pretty good at solving advertising problems. We're going to have a meeting next week and there's a chance that I'll get his advertising business. I'll see if I can put together some sort of a presentation this weekend that I can show him on my iPad. I'm optimistic at this point. A surprisingly large percentage of people I run into actually end up being clients. I just don't see many people these days.

It's going to be a busy weekend. The house is dirty. I still have two videos to finish for my doctor client. And of course, the dogs need Halloween costumes.

Abby is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 654

It hard to believe that it's been a full year since my Paypal photo shoot in San Francisco. That's what I was doing a year ago today. Being a spokesperson for Paypal certainly hasn't changed my life much. Very few people I know have even seen the ads. A lot of the people who actually have seen the ads still think that the Dalmatians in the photos are Dot and Dash. I have to explain that they only flew me to San Francisco for the photo shoot, not Dot and Dash. The dogs in the photos are California show dogs who are used to being in photos. They are very nice, but they are not mine.

I had my first physical therapy session today. I learned that I don't have a pinched nerve, or my neck pain would be even worse. What I have is a condition called encapsulated soft tissue. What this means is that some tissue has been caught between the vertebra in my neck and is being pinched. Evidently traction therapy can pull the vertebra apart just enough to release the tissue. I'm a bit sore after the first session, but it all makes sense to me.

When I arrived at the physical therapy offices I was surprised to see that my own doctor was there getting physical therapy himself. I heard him tell a nurse that he was just going to ride the stationary bicycles till the therapist was done with me. My therapist heard this and told someone to go watch him, because he "didn't know when to stop." The therapist turned to me and told me that the doctor was in a lot worse shape than I was. I guess this is good news, but I certainly like a healthy doctor too. At any rate, it looks like several weeks of therapy sessions ought to get me back to normal. I certainly hope so.

Janet's is helping with a big neighborhood Octoberfest tomorrow, so I guess that's where we're eating lunch. Hopefully we'll be getting our new mattress ordered tomorrow as well. It looks like a very busy weekend, since I've still got work that I didn't manage to get completed today. Tomorrow is a brand new month. We need to remember the dogs heartworm pills in the morning.

Thelma is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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