Day 2799

I took Janet to see her surgeon today. This was her first post reconstruction visit and I think it was mostly so they could teach her how to change her bandages. The building was very impressive. While I was waiting in the lobby, I looked up her surgeon on Google. Wow. She has one of the best rated plastic surgeons in the entire country. I really need to start going to her doctors. They are in a whole different league than mine. Her primary care physician did an amazing job of making sure she had the best specialists possible for her cancer treatment. I have always been a little skeptical of concierge medicine, but the results seem to speak for themselves. I think you do get better care.

I don't even bother to check my e-mail for work assignments anymore. Work is so slow that I need to find other ways to occupy my time. When my chauffeur and nurse duties were finished, I resumed my efforts to fix the leaking shower. I cleaned out the drain and looked for places where the pipes might have separated. I found one area that might be succeptable to leaks, but I couldn't figure out how to seal it. I need to find some kind of putty that can be applied in permanently wet areas. The corners of the shower seemed nice and dry so I applied a new coat of the silicon caulk. Who knows if any of this will work. I'll have to admit that I don't really know what I'm doing.

Now that I've cleaned all traces of dog poop out of my car, I thought it would be good time to remove the dog hair as well. I got out the vacuum and sucked up an enormous amount of dog hair that has found it's way under the seats. I wish I'd paid more attention to all the dog slobber on the back of the front seats. I tried to clean it off today, but it think it has permanently stained the leather. All things considered, the car does look much better now. I was going to wash the outside as well, but I ran out of energy. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow. I'll certainly have the time. It doesn't look like there's going to be any writing deadlines for the rest of the month.

I watched a documentary about the Voyager spacecraft this evening on PBS. It's hard to believe it's been forty years since Voyager 1 and 2 were launched. Pretty soon it will be fifty years since we landed on the moon. Where did the time go? I wonder if we will ever be this bold again. So many people alive today don't remember these events. They weren't even born yet. I remember when Sputnik 1 was launched in 1957. I was nine years old and was already reading Robert Heinlein novels. I don't think my interest in space has ever wavered.

My interest in everything else has certainly wavered. The future doesn't look nearly as interesting as the past. I have no idea what I'm going to do tomorrow. I'm almost scared to take a shower. Will it leak again? I don't want to see all my handiwork go down the drain. A lot of things are going down the drain. I got a notice from Apple today saying that the new High Sierra operating system will no longer support the legacy versions of Logic and Final Cut Pro. I've used both of these applications for years. Time marches on I guess, but it will be sad to see two of the cornerstones of my business cast aside like yesterday's news. Everything I know and love is becoming obsolete. I saw a show on TV last week about the Citroën SM. This used to be my everyday drive-to-work car when I lived in Seattle. Now it has become an impossible to find relic. My mid-century modern house is becoming a crumbling antique. The JPL project managers they interviewed on that Voyager documentary tonight all seemed so old. Jeez, these guys are just a few years older than I am and the producers of the show seemed amazed that they were still alive. Hey, we're still here. We may be a little perplexed, but we're still here.

Mickey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1562

Don't ever let me apply for a job on a haz-mat crew. I hate dealing with hazardous substances. Every time I have to don the purple rubber gloves and go through the elaborate clean up procedures to give Dash his chemotherapy pills, I expect something dire to happen. Logically, I think the warnings are ridiculous overkill, but I follow them anyway. I'm superstitious. Why are these pills so dangerous? I understand why you wouldn't want to break the pills apart or crush them to sprinkle on food, but they have a wax coating like most pills. Wouldn't this coating make the pills safe to touch? I don't get it. And if the pills come with such extensive warnings, why wouldn't the doctors just want to give them to the dogs while they were at the clinic?

Like I said, I'm superstitious though, so I take the extra time to do every single silly safety procedure. Since the primary adverse side effect of the chemo pills is anemia and the primary adverse side effect of my own Hepatitis C pills is also anemia, I definitely don't want a case of double anemia. Luckily, my own reluctance to administer the pills is the only side effect we are seeing so far. Dash is handling his treatment much better than I ever expected. He actually seems to look forward to going to the cancer center. He shows no adverse effects from being anesthetized every two days for the radiation treatments. He still has lots of energy. And as we near the end of week two, the dreaded chemo pills don't appear to be bothering him either.

It was a very busy day, although at the end of the day, it didn't seem like I'd accomplished much. There were still lingering website problems to resolve stemming from some incorrect DNS settings that took several sites down overnight. There were some tax issues to resolve with my accountant. There were dogs to transport. Photos to retouch in Photoshop. And since it rained today, a car to wash. I don't know why I waste so much time keeping my car clean. It's kind of a thankless job, since the dogs continually get the inside muddy and the rain gets the outside even muddier. The car is still one small thing I have complete control over though. I can impose order on it, so I do. I wish I could impose the same rigid order on the rest of my life, but I can't. When it's John vs. the world, the world usually wins.

When I was trying to resolve my client's website problems this morning, I realized that even in a world where everyone is using the same Wordpress template, it's still good to have coding skills. After getting nowhere talking to tech support for half an hour, I finally realized that the only way to get the outcome I wanted was to re-write some code myself and bypass the new restrictions the hosting company had placed on the site. I don't know how long the patch will work, but it works now.

Tomorrow, Dot gets to be the center of attention again. I've had to skip her acupuncture and water therapy sessions for several weeks, due to Dash's cancer treatments, but I was finally able to get her rescheduled on a day where Dash rests. Since her physical therapy is obviously helping her, I'd really hate to abandon it at this point. Hopefully it won't rain again tomorrow. I'd hate to wash my car two days in a row.
 

Bubba is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day