Day 3453

Things are looking up. Yesterday I found out that three more of my model trains had sold. Today I found out that I'd sold two of my guitars. Someone seems interested in buying one of the keyboards too. Slowly but surely, the collections are starting to unwind. It's weird that the money from one of my favorite guitars will just go to buy a new set of tires for my car, Hey, that's life. Right now I need tires more than I need guitars.

I discovered today that I can't use the app that lets me bypass the checkout line at the grocery store to buy beer and wine. The self checkout lane won't work either. You have to stand in line and checkout with a real person. Jeez. Why are stores still carding a guy who's going to be seventy one years old this month? The app has all my information anyway. Don't they already know I'm old enough to be the checkout clerk's grandfather? They could probably just add a couple of lines of code to the app that would allow me to take a picture of myself holding the beer. That would definitely prove that they're selling to an old man. At any rate I had to leave my buggy at the door while I took my six pack of beer to a young checkout clerk to verify my ID. It all seemed kind of silly.

Janet has no interest in skipping the checkout line. She likes a different app that lets her use digital coupons at the grocery store. She'll look at my groceries and say "You could have saved a dollar on this if you'd used my coupon app. "But you could have skipped the checkout line entirely if you'd used mine," I say. I guess technology has something for everybody.

It's definitely Summer. We haven't had a triple digit day yet, but temperatures are in the ninety's now. I have to remember to take my walks before I take a shower because it's so hot and humid that I'd just have to take another shower when I returned. I guess I could start walking before sunrise again. I used to do this with the dogs. Maybe I'll be forced to do this later this summer, but it's hard to get up early now. I'm finally getting enough sleep. A little app on my watch that tracks my sleep finally shows a sleep surplus after years and years of showing a deficit. I miss having a dog to walk but sleep is good. Sleep is very good.

I keep trying different shoes, hoping to find a pair that will let me walk indefinitely without foot pain. Some shoes make my toes hurt. Others make the ball of my foot hurt. Still others don't support my ankles well. All of these shoes fit pretty well and were comfortable before I started taking long walks. Most of them already have a good orthotic inside. I think my feet must swell when I walk. The shoes are generally fine at distances under three miles. If I walk much longer I feel like I've made a big mistake.

I haven't been up on the roof in quite a while. I think the water is just evaporating now. It's just as well. There are plenty of things on the ground that need attention. Janet and I are going to try to clean up the yard ourselves. This is probably a mistake, but things like this happen when you've got too much time on your hands.

Lacey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3383

Go home Texas weather, you're drunk. I had just about convinced myself that Spring was here and then I wake up this morning to hear the furnace running again. Winter has returned. It was cold and windy when I walked Dash, which was fine with him. He was still slow and forgetful, but the cold seemed to invigorate him and he was determined to explore new paths. We followed a coyote trail this morning which is never a good idea. It wasn't raining, but the ground was damp. By the time we returned, Dash was dirty and his protective boots were wet. So were mine.

Dash didn't want to take his pills this morning. He kept rejecting all the usual treats we use as pill pockets. He didn't like ham. He didn't like cheese. He didn't like turkey. Eventually, he took the pills in some leftover Jimmy Dean sausage. I could always pill Dot by placing pills directly down her throat when it became necessary. This doesn't work with Dash. He tries to bite you and if you do manage to get the pill down, he gags and tries to throw it up. As always, all's well that ends well. Once Dash decided to take his meds, the rest of the day went smoothly.

I had to get a bunch of things at Sam's Club today. They completely rearranged the store this week. Every single aisle had been moved and nobody could find anything. All the customers kept asking employees where things were, buy nobody seemed to know. It was as if somebody had come in during the middle of the night and reinvented the store. Even the brands on the shelves had changed. To make matters worse, the app I use to bypass the checkout line had been discontinued and I was forced to download the replacement app in the store. Of course I couldn't remember my passwords and I had to start over from scratch. The old app was simple and just recorded your transactions. The new app was complicated, played ads while I was shopping, and tried to get me to buy things I didn't want. Jeez. Who thought this was a good idea? I was so disgusted by this display of corporate hubris that I completely forgot to go to Kroger and finish my shopping on the way home. I'll have to go back and get peaches tomorrow.

I'd forgotten over the years that Blogger and Google+ have always shared a lot of functionality since the are both owned by Google. I've been getting warnings for several weeks that I need to remove any shared profiles and widgets from the blog before April 2 or they would just disappear. I clicked the "return to Blogger profile" button this morning without realizing that I never had a Blogger profile in the first place. Suddenly my blog description was blank and there was no way to return to the Google+ profile to see what I had written. I had to write a new profile from scratch. I briefly wondered why I was even doing this. Very few people read the blog anymore. Blogging has become passé. I think the cool people have moved on to podcasts now. The popularity of blogging peaked quite a few years ago.

When I was walking Dash this afternoon, one of his rubber boots and a sock came off. This is the equivalent of having a flat tire in your car. I needed to replace the boot so Dash's paw wouldn't bleed, but Dash wasn't being very cooperative. I couldn't hold him up and replace the boot and sock at the same time, so I had to get him to lie down in the grass. The grass was wet and Dash wasn't pleased. I eventually got the boot back on, but when I got home I noticed that it was inside out. I'm glad this doesn't happen very often.

I hope it is warmer tomorrow. Flowers are blooming. Trees are turning green. It is supposed to be Spring.

Sparky is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2984

I saw a little patch of blue sky this afternoon. A lot of dog owners must have seen that same patch of blue, because there were more people walking their dogs in the park than I've seen all month. I noticed that there were no loose dogs today. Probably the people who are fond of letting their dogs run free aren't so fond of muddy dogs. Although we saw the sun for a while, the park is still pretty soggy.

I was surprised that the weather improved today, because we woke up to thunderstorms again. The rain quit as we were finishing breakfast, but it was still pretty foggy. It would have been a good morning to photograph ghostly sailboats, but Dash comes first. By the time we returned from our walk, the fog had already lifted and I was starting to see shadows on the ground.

I don't think it's time to celebrate yet. Thunderstorms are supposed to return on Tuesday. Hey, at this point I'll take what I can get. They say it's going to be a nice day tomorrow. I can't decide what to do about the roof. On one hand, it's probably better to leave the water up there until the rain finally quits for good. On the other hand, I've got an actual leak now, so removing the water is more of a priority. Getting rid of the water is a good thing, but I risk damaging the elastomer coating if I'm up on the roof in wet weather. My whole life is like this now. It's almost impossible to make a decision about anything.

I can't figure out why more people don't use the little app I use to bypass the checkout line at the grocery store. Whenever I get groceries on Saturday, I'm the only one in the store using this app. Everyone else is standing in long checkout lines. The app is free and saves a ton of time. What's not to like? I guess I should be glad that few people use this convenient app. If everybody chose to bypass the checkout line, the app would probably crash all the time and it would just irritate me.

Just as I was starting to get into watching the Olympics, it's over. I'm surprised at how much I enjoyed watching curling. It's kind of a mash up of shuffleboard, billiards, and bowling. Since the curling competition is finished and here doesn't seem to be any more halfpipe or skating excitement, I found myself watching a Time/Life infomercial about music from the sixties this afternoon. I kept trying to guess the names of the bands before they showed them on the screen. Say what you will, but music from the sixties and seventies was still the best. I won't be buying the overpriced 9 CD set. I think I've already got all these tunes on vinyl in my storage warehouse.

Dash was much better today. I still don't know what triggers his periodic vestibular episodes, but I'm glad he is still able to fully recover from them. Vestibular disease seems to affect dogs differently. Some never recover from their initial seizure and others are more like Dash. He has had dozens of vestibular events, but has been able to bounce back from each of them. The blood clots in his heart have nothing to do with the vestibular disease. Dash's heart problems are a totally separate issue.

It's time to go to the gym again. I've been saying that I need to go more often for years now and yet I never do. It's ironic that my excuse is always that I don't have the time. I should have plenty of time. I don't do anything. I think I've become so good at doing nothing that it consumes my entire day.

Nora is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day