Day 4242

I'm really trying to get things done. Today I tackled a task I've been avoiding for months. I got a stepladder and scraped all the loose paint and plaster from the ceiling in the area where the worse leak has been occuring. The ceiling still looks terrible, but now the area is clean and I can apply spackling or even tape and bed if I am so inclined. The sheetrock was completely dry, so that's encouraging. Maybe I'll just paint over the rust colored stains with Kilz white primer as a temporary fix. I always hesitate to spend a lot of time on the ceililng, because the roof is just going to leak again if we get a heavy enough rain. I still need to search further for the source of the leak on top of the roof, but it's been too hot lately.

It took longer to clean up all the dust, paint chips and plaster chunks on the floor than it did to scrape the ceiling, but at least the job is done. With this task out of the way, I tackled another messy job. I finally removed the crumbling, disintegrating foam from the Zero Halliburton camera case and replaced it with the new foam inserts I bought recently. The old foam had basically turned to a sticky powder and was a mess to remove. At some point within the past five years, I realized that this was going to happen and carefully wrapped the camera and six lenses in heavy duty blue Scott shop towels. This protected the equipment, but I had to be really careful removing each item from the case so it wouldn't come in contact with the sticky foam residue. I did all this outside, because I didn't want to spend the rest of the day cleaning up a sticky mess in my office. Actually the case is not finished yet. The foam in the lid and at the base of the case are in place, but I couldn't bring myself to cut a bunch of holes in the central piece that holds the cameras yet. I still need to figure out how to do this precisely so I won't make a mess of things. To temporarily protect the camera and lenses, I cut apart a small pool noodle and wrapped it around the equipment. This actually worked very well. I may go to Home Depot tomorrow and look for a long foam tube that matches the color of the other foam. The foam tubes used to protect outdoor pipes from freezing might be perfect.

Dawn has lost her nerve again. I have to take her outdoors on a leash again when she needs to pee and she has reverted to her short one mile loop on our sunrise walks. She won't follow me out to the kitchen anymore when I am fixing her dinner either. I don't know what gave her so much confidence a few weeks ago or why she has lost it now. Dawn is a very complicated dog. You could write a book about all her weird personality traits. I wish I could make a list of every strange thing she does, take it to the vet, and get an immediate and definitive answer that would explain what is going on. I keep thinking she has some weird, undiagnosed disease. Janet just thinks the hard life she's led has made her extremely nervous and unstable. 

Finding normal with Dawn is such a long, slow process. I was able to take a nap with Dawn this morning for almost an hour without her biting or licking her paws at all. She was very relaxed and even curled up next to me. As soon as I left the room, she started going after her front paws unfortunately and I had to put the cone on her. Strangely, she doesn't seem to mind the cone at all. It seems to calm her and she usually goes to sleep within several minutes after I put it on. Go figure.

It was too hot to walk this afternoon so I went back to the gym. It's disappointing to see everything slowly revert to lockdown mode. We were doing so well there for a while. A lot more people are wearing masks now. The Covid testing center I pass on the way to the gym has a long line of car now. It was virtually empty earlier this summer. I'm glad the gym is still open, but it will be the first to close again if things get worse. Florida is a mess. Let's not even talk about Florida. Oh, well. At least the money I was going to spend attending a launch this summer will pay for my root canal.

Morgan is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 4241

I checked a few small chores off my list today. I took the two ice chests back to the storage warehouse because the refrigerator is fixed and we don't need them anymore. The storage warehouse is really full. My plan to clear it out clearly isn't working. I keep adding more and more stuff. The ice chests were actually in Janet's storage warehouse before the refrigerator problems, but it is more convenient to get them when needed if they are in mine.

An LED bulb burned out in the bathroom, so I needed to find a replacement that would match the bulbs in the other ceiling can lights. All these new LED bulbs claim that they'll last twelve years, but mine burn out frequently. They're still a lot better than the older incandescent bulbs though. I eventually found a bulb that matched the other bathroom bulbs. Hopefully this one will last a few years.

Dawn has reverted to taking very short walks again. The weather was quite nice when we left on our sunrise walk and I thought she'd want to go further. Nope. She back to her short one mile loop. She's also more obsessed with licking her paws than ever. We have to leave the cone on whenever we aren't watching her now. I hate to do this, but it's the only thing that's working. If we forget and leave her unattended, she can do a lot of damage in just a few minutes. The redness is getting better, but it's an uphill battle. Every time we forget the cone, we're back to square one. We still don't know what is causing the licking, but I bet it has something to do with the antibiotic resistant infection she has. I didn't even know that dogs could get a MRSA infection, but they can. Hopefully the new antibiotics will work.

It was probably cool enough to take an outdoor walk today, but it felt very humid. My feet hurt too, and I didn't feel up to walking six miles. I went back to the gym instead and made sure I had a mask in my pocket this time. Even though the gym has reverted to the same Covid restrictions that were in place when they first reopened, it didn't feel like much had changed. The masks are largely symbolic, because you don't have to wear them on the floor when you are actively exercising. I don't think there's much to worry about at this place. I'm almost certain that everyone at my gym has been fully vaccinated for quite a while. It's an older crowd. There are quite a few people even older than me on the floor.

I still haven't changed out the foam inserts in my camera case. I dread doing this because I have to cut openings in the foam for lenses and the camera. It's not easy to cut this type of foam. I want the cut outs to be straight and professional looking, but I don't think I have the proper tools. I'll probably just end up using a steak knife. I tried to order pick and pluck foam, but it wasn't available for my sized case. I may postpone this job for quite a while, since I don't actually use the cameras. 

Now that Covid restrictions are coming back, I wonder if my trip to the observatory in September is off too. I wouldn't be surprised. The observatory has been closed to the public for a long time because of the risk of the staff becoming infected. The place is a long way from a medical center, so the risk is real. It's such a shame that we are headed in the wrong directions again. There's plenty of blame to go around, but someone needs to shut the southern border immediately. It is insane to be imposing travel bans on European countries while we continue to let tons of unvaccinated, sick migrants flood the southern border. 

Hopefully my two Pfizer shots will continue to provide the protection I need. I'm really getting tired of this. As soon as the Delta variant fades away it will probably be replaced by something even worse. All this is so unnecessary. The virus spread through international travel. The dreaded Delta variant certainly didn't originate locally. Couldn't everyone just stay in their own country for a while. Maybe stay in your own state as well. None of this would have happened if there wasn't this compulsion to travel internationally. Don't get me started on another anti-globalist rant, but the world would be a better place if we all stayed home, raised our own food, made our own stuff, and minded our own business. 

Pebbles is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 4233

The sunrise walks are warmer now. You can tell what kind of day it is going to be the instant you step outside. I knew today was going to be a hot one. Dawn's enthusiasm for walking is very temperature dependent. She walked slower today and chose a shorter route. I couldn't blame her for wanting to get back to the house. When the temperature is already in the 80's during the coolest part of the day, even a dog knows that it's crazy to stay outside.

The air conditioner is running nonstop now. I keep hoping that this essential piece of machinery won't break. The problem with air conditioning is that it can only lower the ambient temperature by about twenty degrees. This works pretty well when the outside temperature is 90 degrees. When the temperature climbs over 100 degrees, most systems start to struggle. Our house isn't well insulated either. We have lots of single pane glass. The house was originally built with a thick tar and gravel roof that provided a modest amount of insulation. Modern roofing materials are much thinner and provide little insulation value at all. We have lost several large trees over the years as well, which used to provide lots of shade. We've always had hot summers here in Dallas, but it seems like the air conditioner is working a lot harder than it used to.

After breakfast I wrote a letter to my sister. This is the only way we communicate, so I always try to answer her letters. I kind of wish that everyone still wrote letters. It's easy to put a paper letter or a bill in a file folder and save it forever. I can't tell you how much e-mail that I have accidentally erased over the years. I have already forgotten to pay several bills now that I have switched over to electronic payments for everything. My old IBM Selectric typewriter used to feel so much more substantial than this Apple keyboard. I think my spelling used to be better back in the day as well, since it was such a pain to correct things. The older I get, the more nostalgic I become, so I guess I'm glad that there is still one person who believes in putting their thoughts on paper. My sister is even more old school than I am and writes everything in long hand instead of using a keyboard.

Dawn is getting better about wearing a cone while I'm away. She doesn't like it, but it works much better than the socks did for protecting her feet. She's got some new antibiotics now, but we still don't know what is causing the compulsive licking. It's rare that Janet and I are both away at the same time, so Dawn doesn't have to wear the cone that often. The redness does improve if we can keep her from licking or biting at her paws, so maybe if we can just keep her away from those paws for two or three weeks, everything will be better.

The gym must have fixed their air conditioning overnight, because the place was much cooler today. A lot of the treadmills are still broken, but I was still able to find a good one. It looks like I might be going to the gym every day this week because we've got a long string of 100 degree days ahead of us. Oddly, my car has better air conditioning than either our house or the gym. I have no problems staying cool in my car.   The only problem I have with the car is that it gets terrible gas mileage. If I'm driving in the city, I can almost see the gas gauge go down while I'm looking at it. Its silly to complain about this though, since I don't drive much and basically go nowhere. I only fill my tank about every three weeks.

The foam inserts for my camera case finally arrived. I haven't installed the foam in the case yet because I still have to cut slots in the foam for the lenses and camera. It seems like I had a special knife for this at one point. I'll have to look for it. Once I replace the disintegrating foam in the old aluminum Halliburton case I probably won't look at the cameras again for several years. It's way too much trouble to shoot on film these days unless you do the processing yourself.

I hope it's a little cooler tomorrow, but I'm sure it won't be. I'm probably going to be complaining about the heat for the next several months. 

Deuce is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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