Day 3613

I didn't feel like going out for breakfast this morning. I stayed home and had a piece of pie. Pie is comfort food. Sometimes you need pie for breakfast. It was actually a good idea that I stayed home this morning. It turned out to be a busy day.

I finally discovered why I wasn't hearing anything from McDonald Observatory. They wrote and told me they never received my application. This was very strange because I actually called back in October after I sent all the application material to make sure they had what they needed. There was no point in arguing about this though. I just sent everything they requested again. This time two different people, one in Austin and another at the observatory, acknowledged receiving the material, so I guess I'm OK. This is essentially starting over, but there's no hurry. If I'm accepted to stay on-site at the mountain, I won't be leaving until late Spring or early Summer anyway.

After the big snafu at the observatory, I decided to go ahead and apply for the second NASA event at the Michoud Assembly Facility. Maybe one of these applications will get lost as well. I might as well just apply for everything that looks halfway interesting. Maybe something will stick. The only complicating factor with the two December NASA events is that they are both scheduled back-to-back with Dalmatian Rescue Santa Photo events. If I get accepted I will need to fly out of town right after completing a busy day of pet photography. I guess this won't kill me. Back in the day, I used to frequently leave on business trips after a busy day at work.

All this being said, I don't enjoy being busy anymore. Doing one thing a day is plenty. Some days just going to the post office is enough. I don't know how people with families and lots of obligations handle the holidays. It would drive me insane. Maybe it's just an age thing. I used to be much busier when I was younger. When I look back, I have no idea how I accomplished all the things that used to seem routine.

Just adding a few extra things to my normal routine today wore me out. It took quite a while to get my application straightened out with the observatory. Then there were November bills to pay. After I went to the post office, there were prescriptions to pick up and I needed to get some things at the grocery store. Finally, Janet and I went to my storage warehouse to look for stuff we needed for tomorrow's adoption event. It was dark before I finished my five mile walk.

We haven't done an off-site adoption event for Dalmatian Rescue in ages. Hopefully, this will go well.  We've got everything we need for our booth now and will go up to the kennel to pick up a dog first thing in the morning. Like so many other things, it's hard to believe that we used to do this all the time.

Honey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2137

It's weird to see rain again. It's been dry for almost two months here in Dallas and I'd almost forgotten all the little rituals we go through whenever it rains. It's always been difficult to get the dogs to go outside and pee when it rains. Now, it's even hard to find a comfortable place for them in the house. Dot's primary dog bed has a clear view of the windows, so she can easily see any approaching storm. Since she can't hear very well anymore, I could just turn her around so she was facing a wall if it weren't for the fact that Dash is scared of storms too and likes to huddle up with Dot. I had a hard time today finding a place where both dogs felt comfortable and I still haven't been able to get Dot to go outside and poop.

One hidden benefit of Dot's new morning therapy schedule is that I was able to get her to the vet and back again before the rain even started. Dot actually did quite well in the underwater treadmill today. She was able to walk in the tank for a full seventeen minutes and even had two short intervals where we raised the treadmill speed a bit. Dot's resilience and tenacity are really pretty amazing. When we got home, it looked like the approaching storm was imminent, so I immediately went up on the roof and swept away a huge accumulation of pecan shells and acorns. The squirrels had already eaten most of the pecans, but there were an enormous amount of acorns on the roof. Now that the roof is clean, it will be a lot easier to remove the water when the rain stops. I probably did the squirrels a favor too. All the acorns are on the ground now and it will be much easier for them to dig unsightly holes in my St. Augustine grass when they bury their nuts for the Winter.

I sent in my application to NASA to attend the Orbital ATK CRS-4 launch. I have no idea if or when I'll hear back from them. The last time I applied to cover a launch, I thought they had totally forgotten about me until I received a surprise e-mail out of the blue telling me that my application had been accepted. We'll see what happens this time. I hope my Klout score and blog readership numbers don't influence their decision. Both these numbers are trending down. It's kind of ironic. I think my blog posts have improved over the years, but I actually had more readers in the early days when my posts were crap. It's all being in the right place at the right time. Any way you slice it, blogs just aren't as popular as they used to be.

It's raining hard now. There's no way we're going to get the dogs outside during this downpour. If Dot poops in the house in nice weather, she's certainly not going to make the effort to go outside during a storm. Hopefully, most of these storms will pass through the area tonight and we'll be able to take our regular walk tomorrow morning. If Dot and Dash don't get their walk, tomorrow is going to be miserable.

The world continues to change around me while I stay the same. One of Dot's favorite nurses has unexpectedly moved on to a new opportunity at another hospital. We didn't even get a chance to say goodbye. I certainly can't fault young people for taking advantage of every opportunity that comes their way. I worked at 17 different ad agencies before I finally realized that the only way to avoid having problems with my boss was to be the boss. So far it has worked out pretty well. Nobody can fire me now and my little company will celebrate its 26th Anniversary at the end of the year. That should impress NASA, but it probably won't.

Dot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day