Day 3549

I filled my car with old gasoline containers, rusty propane cylinders, half empty cans of paint, motor oil, antifreeze, and a ton of old non-functional spray cans filled with remnants of bug spray, WD-40, household cleaners and other unidentified liquids for a trip to the hazardous waste disposal center. There were four red plastic gas cans, each filled with a different amount of gas. I don't use gas powered tools very often, so when it came time to fill the tank, I never could remember what kind of additives I'd added to the gas. Two cycle motors needed one thing and four cycle motors needed another. It was always easier to just buy a new gas can and start over from scratch.

Home Depot has made a lot of money from me over the years because I routinely ended up buying things I already had. I threw away a lot of duplicate cans of old, hardened spackling paste and sheetrock mud today. I've been meaning to get rid of this junk for a long time but it is a lot of trouble. I hope the effort was worthwhile. The greenhouse is almost ready for repairs to begin. The two non-functional lawn movers have been taken to the curb for the bulky trash truck along with a lot of other broken lawn and garden stuff. The mowers will probably be gone before the trash truck arrives. There are always people who cruise the streets a few days before big trash day looking for metal they can sell.

I was pretty ambitious today, considering that it is only Thursday. After I cleared away the old hazardous waste, I charged up the one remaining electric lawn mower and mowed the grass. Hopefully, I won't need to do this again, but I probably will. Sometimes the grass continues growing through the end of the year here in Texas.

With all this activity, it wasn't surprising that I didn't get started on my five mile walk until mid-afternoon. I was tired, but I had vague aspirations to do 20,000 steps on a weekday. I don't think I've done that before. I've only taken 19,000 steps so far, but the night is young. I still need to do a load of laundry.

The highway department looks like they're almost ready to demolish the bridge near our house. Some of the inconvenient detours are already in place. The road that travels under the bridge is supposed to close tomorrow. I don't know when they are actually going to blow up the bridge. We'll see what happens. I don't have a good feeling about this. Road construction projects take forever and they're always a much bigger mess than anyone anticipated. I still don't understand why the bridge is coming down. There is nothing wrong with it. I traveled over it one last time today.

I'm going to have to rethink where I go to breakfast tomorrow. Most of the regular places I go require that I drive under the doomed bridge.

Marcie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3259

I did a lot of laundry today and watched the Mars landing on NASA TV. That was about it. Of course there was poop to clean up, a walk in the park, and a large smoothie to drink, but these things happen every day. Mars landings and major cleaning efforts happen much less frequently.

I started watching Mars landings when the Spirit and Opportunity rovers made their debut in 2003. When I look up at Mars at night, it seems amazing to me that we can send things to this distant point of light. Traveling to a different city seems complex to me. It's hard to even imagine traveling 300 million miles and still arriving right on time. Maybe if I understood orbital mechanics a little better I might not have not have wound up in advertising. What I do definitely isn't rocket science.

I'm not sure if the solar panels have deployed yet, but the Insight mission appears to be a success. So few things in life work perfectly that I'm always impressed when anything goes exactly as planned. So many things could have gone wrong today, but they didn't. If my car worked as well as a Mars lander it would probably last 100 years. The space program proves that we actually do have the capacity to do things right. The reason that we don't have lawn mowers and cars built like the Insight lander is that nobody could afford them. Even though the space program is horribly expensive, it's cheap compared to all our senseless wars. I'd like to see fewer aircraft carriers and more Mars landers. Hopefully, I'll see a lander with a person in it while I'm still alive.

Dash was frustrated that he couldn't sleep on the bed while everything was being laundered today. Janet took the big, heavy comforter to a laundromat and I washed everything else at home. Everything looks crisp and new again. Even the pillows look good. It would sure be nice if Dash doesn't poop in the bed tonight. We need a few days to enjoy things the way they used to be.

The weather continues to be confusing. It was 34 degrees when we woke up this morning. Just a few days ago the temperature was almost 70. We'll probably go back and forth like this for the rest of the Winter. I just hope we don't get much snow. When I see the blizzard conditions in other parts of the country, it makes me glad I live in Texas. Dash had to wear a sweater this morning under all his other gear. He wasn't happy. It wasn't easy to get the sweater on because he wouldn't relax his legs so we could slip them through the armholes. I'm sure he doesn't enjoy all the time we spend dressing him to go outside, but it is necessary. The little guy likes his walks but he's pretty fragile these days.

Dash has a vet appointment scheduled on Wednesday, but I'm not sure what we'll do tomorrow. I certainly don't have much on my schedule. I'll have to say that I enjoyed watching the Insight landing today. I don't think I missed much by not being there in person. I wish there were more events like this. Watching a talented group of people accomplish the impossible is uplifting to me. It sure beats watching congress accomplish nothing.

Pepper is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2161

The other day, I was listening to an old radio interview with Allen Toussaint on NPR. It occurred to me that Allen's song Working in The Coal Mine, was the perfect sound track for my weekends. The tune was certainly appropriate today. I outdid myself with backbreaking activity. Yesterday, I noticed that my neighbors were piling up trash in front of their houses, so I was determined not to let another big trash day pass me by. I hauled a huge pile of nondescript rusty stuff that had been accumulating in the green house out to the curb and made my own pile as well.

Once I started my pile, it became obvious that this would be a good time to cut down the three dead Photinia Bushes near the back fence. I didn't have an extension cord that would reach that far, so I finally found a good use for my generator. The generator provided plenty of power for my trusty reciprocating saw and the unsightly trees I'd been meaning to cut down for at least two years were finally gone.

It was time to put the screen porch back together too. If I waited to find time to locate new extra wide screen wire and purchase new hardwood trim, there would have been a big gap in the screen until sometime next Spring. I carefully reused the old materials and although I can't say the porch is as good as new, at least it's as good as it was before. When the environmental cleanup people come to clean the vents and retrieve their big dehumidifier tomorrow, the house will finally be back to pre-leak condition.

When I was hauling trash to the curb, I noticed that there was a lot of nice fresh white gravel back by the garbage cans. I shoveled up a big pile of this gravel and traded it for the muddy gravel on the gravel walkway the tunneling crew had messed up. It was probably this activity that reminded me of  Working in The Coal Mine. I was tired at the end of the day, but felt like I'd accomplished quite a bit.

On my way to the pharmacy to pick up some prescriptions, I stopped by my storage warehouse to look for backdrops for our upcoming Santa Paws photo shoots. I found quite a few muslin backdrops, but couldn't tell which was which without unfolding them all. I dropped off the plastic fencing that had been keeping Dash out of the atrium while the tunneling crew was working and returned home for dinner. I'll save getting ready for the December photo shoots for another day.

The dogs were lucky to get both their walks today. It looked like it was on the verge of raining for the entire day, but the rain didn't actually start until after dinner. There is still lots to do. I need to find how water is still getting out of the shower stall after all the expert grouting work I did last week. I need to finish a website that should have been complete three days ago. All in good time. What I need to do most is post this and go to sleep.

Honey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2160

We went to a rescue event today. Dash was an ambassador for Dalmatian Rescue at Pet Fair. We told him he need to be on his best behavior. This meant no excessive loud barking, no knocking over other vendors booths, and no pooping in front of a crowd of little children. Generally, Dash was pretty good. He was a little too eager to sample the treats at the Hills Science Diet booth, but he let everyone pet him and was very friendly with all the other dogs.

Dot used to go to rescue events like this all the time. Sadly, she had to stay home today. These type of public events are simply too tiring for her. I drove home midway through the event to check on her and she was sleeping peacefully. I took her out to pee and she immediately thought it was dinner time. It was actually only 2:30 in the afternoon, but how was Dot to know? When she wakes up from a nap, she usually eats.

It was good to give Dash an opportunity to do something social today. It has become so difficult and time consuming to care for Dot, that we don't get out much anymore. He was still a little timid, but he seemed to have fun, making friends with other dogs and begging for treats from anyone who would feed him. When the days start to get longer again, we should probably start taking him back to our Wednesday training class. He was never that wild about the training exercises themselves, but he loved seeing the other dogs.

Now that I've had a chance to look around, I realize that we've got quite a mess to clean up in the back yard. Although the tunneling crew did a good job of backfilling their tunnel, there is still leftover dirt and mud all over the yard. I naively thought that the cleanup would be so good that there wouldn't be a trace that anything had happened. They did lay a bunch of 4x8 plywood sheets on the ground to protect the grass, but a lot of the excavated dirt seemed to land elsewhere. I'm probably going to spend the rest of the Winter cleaning mud off my shoes. When I take Dot outside to pee at night, I inevitably step in mud now. I guess stepping in mud is better than stepping in poop.

If I have time tomorrow, I'm going to reassemble the screened in porch that I had taken apart to give the tunneling crew access to the leak. I had thought about replacing the aluminum screen panels and buying some new wood for the finishing trim. In theory this would have been a simple task, but nothing is simple with this house. The extra wide screen material is not generally available in hardware stores anymore and standard dimensions for lumber have changed over the years. To exactly match the existing trim, I would have to buy lumber and have it milled to the proper size. It's not an ideal solution, but I think I'll just reuse the old aluminum screen wire and try my best to replace the old wood trim without cracking or splintering the wood.

I looked at the dehumidifiers they had on display in the store at Lowes and most of them were crap. You could never use one of these smaller machines to dehumidify an entire house and since they were all made of plastic, they probably wouldn't last a year anyway. Commercial dehumidifiers cost well over $1000 and are generally made in the USA. The machines at Lowes cost around $200 and were all made in China. Like everything in life, you get what you pay for.

I doubt that I'll make it to the gym tomorrow. I've still got lots of website work to catch up on and the house is filthy. My shower stall repairs didn't really work either. I'd prefer to take a long nap, but it looks like wall-to-wall chores tomorrow.

Puppies are today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1525 - President's Day

Yup. It did turn out to be a cleaning day. I kind of figured it would. I spent the day doing a host of little things that I've been putting off for months. I cleaned soap scum off the shower tiles. I took the handles off the bathroom faucets so I could clean off the accumulated soap and mold that had gotten inside the fixtures. I cleaned the toilet. I went to Home Depot and bought a new garden hose and spray nozzle to replace the leaky one in the back yard. I cleaned the bird shit off my car again. None of this was very exciting, but since I have the same degree of affection for cleaning toilets as I do for most recent presidents, I guess it made sense to do these things on President's Day.

I finally figured out were to find the serial number on my UP band, so I could write Jawbone and ask them to send me a new one. Then I saw something on the Internet about how to revive a dead Jawbone battery. I followed the instructions and amazingly the band started to charge again. I'd already sent the letter saying that the band was broken, of course. It remains to be seen whether they'll send me a new one.

I don't know whether my shoulder is ever going to get better. I was so worried about walking the dogs and working out at the gym, but it is the simple, unavoidable things that are the problem. Making the bed is a problem. Putting on socks is a problem. I climbed up on the roof today to sweep off some water, and that was definitely a problem. I've had a shoulder that tended to go out of joint for at least ten years. If I was careful, it never really hindered me much. My recent injury was definitely the worst I've had, but there have been others. I can make the muscles around the shoulder stronger, but that's about all. The ball and socket joint has been loose for a long time and will probably always be loose.

The dogs are finally learning to sleep in late. Now that they are mastering this new routine, it's back to work. Janet will return to getting up at the crack of dawn tomorrow and the dogs will be confused again. Maybe we'll all go back to sleep for another hour after Janet leaves for work. It's hard for me to come up with a good reason to get up early. What is the point? I usually have lots to do, but I can set my own schedule. Hey, why get up early when you have the option of staying up late?

I saw my first Daffodils today. I bet they won't last long. This always happens in Texas. The flowers get confused and then Mother Nature lets them know who's boss with one final blast of arctic weather.

Lexi is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1160

It was a good day to go to the dog park. The weather was nice and all the dogs were playful. We stayed quite a while at the park because it is much more enjoyable to watch dogs play than it is to clean the house. Since Janet and I both have the little activity wristlets now, we were probably looking for an excuse to boost our step count too. I feel compelled to walk 10,000 steps a day now. I've probably always walked that much, but now that I'm being measured, I hate to be a slacker.

When we got home from the park, the dogs did the smart thing and took a nap. I decided to clean the bathroom instead. I don't know why it's so hard to get soap scum off the shower tiles. In those Scrubbing Bubbles commercials, the tiles are glistening in just a few seconds. In real life, it never works that way. It's harder to clean shower tiles than it is to clean a barbecue grill.

It's supposed to be a holiday tomorrow, but it doesn't look like I'm going to get any time off. I've already got several jobs on tap that I need to work on in the morning and then I need to go over to Baylor and have an MRI done in the afternoon. I filled out a big stack of pre-admittance paperwork this afternoon, but I'll bet there's more paperwork for me tomorrow. An MRI is pretty painless. The only thing I don't like is when they inject you with dye. It leaves an odd metallic taste in your mouth for some reason.

I'm glad Janet approves of my new diet. It would be much harder to maintain my resolve if she wanted to continue eating cheeseburgers. Luckily, she's been eating healthy all along. All I have to do it eat the same things she does. Well, almost the same things anyway. I'll have to forgo the scotch and red wine.

Too bad I've had to give up alcohol. Drinking all that extra water I'm supposed to have would be a lot easier if I could add a little single malt scotch and a few ice cubes to every glass.

Lexi is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 971

I keep hearing that the Post Office is going broke. I don't understand why. Judging from the ridiculous amount of junk they send me, I'd think these guys would be rolling in money. Today I tried to wade through the big stack of "don't need to open now" mail that's been growing on the kitchen table for the past month. I'd just as soon never open this mail, but occasionally I forget a bill or something important, so it does need to be checked. Today I just threw away a seemingly endless stack of letters urging me to join a cause, vote for somebody, switch to a different electric company, get a new credit card, lose weight, or sign up for a pre-paid funeral plan.

I don't know why most companies even bother printing this stuff. If it doesn't contain a coupon, it's just going to get tossed.  I save coupons from Bed Bath and Beyond, Guitar Center, Lowes, and several other places. I throw the invitations to join AARP away.

Another neighborhood restaurant has bit the dust. It was sad to see a For Sale sign on my favorite local barbecue joint today. If the refrigerator was empty before shopping day, I would always just run down to Raymonds BBQ and pick up one of their three meat dinners. It probably wasn't the best barbecue in the state of Texas, but it was simple, honest food and it was dirt cheap. I would always get way more food than I could eat and never spend more than ten dollars. One by one, all my favorite little local businesses are disappearing. Anyone who thinks the economy is improving just isn't looking in the right places. You just can't have a strong, vibrant economy without small business, and from my small little corner of the world, small business is still having a tough time.

When we went to the dog park today, I watched two Shelties run straight toward the biggest mud puddle in the park and lie down in it. Their owner just shrugged his shoulders and smiled, as if to say this sort of thing happened everyday. This would have been the day for Dot and Dash to get muddy, because they were headed straight to Vhea's LaundroMutt for a bath on the way home. I don't know why the dogs hate a bath so much. They look better. They smell better. For the first three or four days, they're actually pleasant to have on the bed at night.

Ellis is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 528

The new printer arrived early today. I was hoping that it wouldn't be delivered until sometime next week, because I haven't managed to get rid of the old printer yet. Now, my office is awash in large, bulky wide-format printers. I hardly have a place to sit down. I think this is probably the last large printer I will ever buy. Everything is moving to the web. It's so easy to have a service bureau print high quality large posters from a PDF file these days that there is little incentive to print things yourself. Maybe I'll have another gallery show someday and need to make museum quality prints, but probably not. It's simply gotten too expensive to have a large show framed.

The dentist that I shot the Lumineers video for recently decided to edit it himself. He e-mailed me today with a link to his first rough-cut and it was actually pretty good. This is happening to me more and more. People are deciding that they like to do the things I do for a living, just for fun. They do their own photography. They design their own websites. Now it seems that they're even editing their own videos. When folks do ask me to do something, they inevitably want it really cheap, since they think I'm just having fun like they are. I don't know where this is all going to end, but it doesn't look good. Luckily people still don't seem to do a lot of their own writing. Writing still seems to be a bit of a lost art.

There are some mighty tough bees on the side of my house. Despite the massive amount of Demon WP that I sprayed on the hive the other day, there is still a determined group of bees buzzing around trying to rebuild it. Maybe the queen is still alive in the center of things. I still can't get close enough to find out.

There's a Dr. Who marathon on the BBC channel tomorrow. Maybe I'll watch old Dr. Who episodes while I clean up my office. I had to clear out a pathway through the clutter today anyway, just so I could move the new printer into place. Since I've already started this loathsome task anyway, I might as well just keep cleaning tomorrow.

When I went to Central Market tonight to pick up dinner, I noticed that you got 20% off your bill if your final total was more than $20. Spending $20 at Central Market is a piece of cake, so I was sure I'd get the discount. My final bill: $19.98.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day