Day 1517

I'm surprised that the city didn't close the dog park today. It was sure pretty muddy when we arrived after breakfast. I'm glad they left it open though, because Dot and Dash both had a great time. Dash even found a playmate, a little black dog who seemed determined to show Dash how fast he was. It was fun seeing Dash lose his fearfulness for a moment and race around the park with his new found companion. After about 45 minutes, both dogs were ready to come home again and they spent the rest of the day curled up on their dog beds.

I returned to the gym this afternoon for the first time since my shoulder injury. I didn't attempt to do any lifting or upper body exercises. All I wanted to do today was burn calories and the treadmill worked fine for that. I hadn't spent much time on the treadmill before, and discovered that all the dog walking I do has actually been keeping me in pretty good shape. Thirty minutes on the treadmill is a lot easier than twenty minutes on the hand bicycle. It was interesting to see that if you control your breathing, your heart rate actually goes down, even if you are moving along at a pretty good clip. I need to figure out how to return to doing upper body exercises without destroying my shoulder all over again. Endurance I've got. It's strength that I need. Muscle atrophy is real as you get older. Dot is experiencing it, and so am I.

I tried to get a head start on my February invoices today. I'm so busy during the workweek now that's it's hard to find time for things like this. Invoices are important though. If I don't send them out, I don't get paid. It would be nice to go after some new, and possibly more interesting, business. This doesn't seem to be in the cards though. It's all I can do to keep up with the business I already have. Every day is more or less the same. I get up. I walk the dogs. I eat breakfast. I write an article. I feed the dogs lunch. I take a shower. I update my clients websites. I write another article. I feed the dogs dinner and walk them again. I eat my own dinner. I write my daily blog post. And I go to bed.

This is exactly what will happen tomorrow, with one small addition. We take the dogs to the vet early in the morning before they have their breakfast so they can both have blood tests. We need to to find out whether Dash has a vitamin-B deficiency and Dot just needs recent blood-work before we get her teeth cleaned. If the dogs aren't having a blood test, chances are that I am. My next test is on the 20th to see if the new Hepatitis-C medicine is working.

I was hoping for another sunny day today, but all I got was an absence of rain. The day started out pretty warm, but the temperature continued to drop as the day progressed. By morning, the chances are high that we will have returned to Winter again. Back and forth between the temperature extremes we go. I don't even think the ground hog could have predicted this.

Jazz is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1164

I'm amazed at how much daily temperatures have been fluctuating this February. This morning I wore a heavy goose down ski jacket while I was walking the dogs. We barely missed getting soaked by a chilly Winter rainstorm. When we walked again late in the afternoon, the skies had cleared and the temperature was over 70 degrees. I wore a t-shirt. The entire month has been this way. One day, signs of Spring are everywhere and I'll see daffodils along the path. The next day, it's 35 degrees outside and feels like it is going to snow.

I took a break from my writing chores around mid-afternoon to pick up some new slacks I was having hemmed. I wonder how long it will be before I actually wear these pants. There is literally no reason for me to dress up anymore. All my work is conducted over the Internet these days and the dogs certainly don't care what I look like. The neighbors probably don't care either. It's probably only a matter of time before I start taking the trash out to the curb on Thursdays in my bathrobe.

I made a big salad for dinner using all the leftover vegetables in the fridge. Tomorrow I'll go to the store and get a new supply. I think I'm learning to manage meals better than I used to. Usually, something has gone bad in the fridge by Thursday, because I've simply forgotten about it. This week, I made a conscious effort to eat the things with the shortest shelf life first. Other than that carton of milk that inexplicably turned sour, everything stayed fresh this week. The big chef salad was actually pretty good too.

I'm fascinated by the little activity tracker I wear on my wrist. I never realized that it almost always takes me exactly 38 minutes to get the water off the roof. I usually burn up 250 calories doing this. My longest activity of the day is my morning walk with the dogs, and I am sometimes more active sleeping than I am writing. It's a good thing I take the dogs on long walks, because I burn up no energy at all writing.

I'm disgusted with the stock market again. As recently as a month ago, I was doing pretty well. Now, everything is headed downhill again. There is no rhyme or reason to anything anymore. I have no idea why gold and commodities are in the toilet right now. The price of gas is going up, but oil stocks are going down. I have shares in a 3-D printing company that were stratospheric a few months ago. Now, the shares are going down as quickly as they went up. Nothing has fundamentally changed about the company.

If yesterday was full of bad omens, today was full of good ones. The car ran smoothly. So did the furnace. I got a large number of website updates finished today, so it doesn't look like I'll have to work this weekend. We'll just forget about how much I lost in the market today and concentrate on what I'm going to have for breakfast tomorrow.

Lizzy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day