Day 1641

I got up early to get my blood tested before breakfast. I walked the dogs first, of course, but I was still at the doctor's office before 8 AM. As you might imagine, I'm getting a bit tired of getting blood tests all the time. Everyone seems to want one. The urologist tests for PSA. My team of liver doctors test for liver enzymes and viral load. My GP seems most interested in cholesterol and blood sugar. Even the dogs get frequent blood tests. Dash gets tested once a month to monitor his chemotherapy drugs. Dot got tested recently before she got her teeth cleaned. I think I should have invested in Labcorp stock. I have a feeling that doing lab work for doctors is a growth industry.

The grocery store was near the doctor's office, so I decided to get my weekend shopping done on the way home. I wanted to put the groceries in the refrigerator before I went out for breakfast, but Dot didn't agree with this plan. She thought I was home for good. When it became apparent that I was going to leave again, she started barking. I checked in on the dogs using the baby monitor when I got to the restaurant and Dot was still barking. I could tell by her tone that she wasn't alarmed at anything, she was just mad. I felt a bit guilty, so I only had two cups of coffee instead of my usual three and went straight home again. One I got home, the barking stopped and the dogs just went to sleep.

When I'm not really busy, I keep trying to improved my knowledge of WordPress. I'm not very fond of WordPress, but increasingly, this is what my clients want me to use. It's easy to understand why I'm not a fan. Easy-to-use WordPress themes are slowly but surely destroying my web design business. You can put together a WordPress site in a couple of hours without any coding knowledge. The themes are dirt cheap to buy and generally include some pretty sophisticated features. What's not to like, you might ask? First of all, it can be difficult to make a WordPress site look truly unique. All the themes look more or less the same to me. My ISP tells me that they are not very secure either. I tried modifying a standard WordPress theme this afternoon to give it my own special style. I wasn't very successful. Using a theme is easy. Changing a theme is hard. Since I'm the one who keeps wanting to change these themes, I suspect I'm wasting my time. My clients don't even care.

Dash did a good job at keeping his tail from bleeding today. I didn't have to bandage or clean it at all. Maybe he just didn't do much wagging today. Whatever he did, I hope he keeps it up. A few more days like this and the tail might actually have a chance of healing.

I didn't make it to the gym this week, but I can't really remember why. Somehow, I managed to go twice last week when I was busier than I am now. I'll probably have time to go workout on Sunday. I'll get the rest of my exercise by mowing the grass and pulling weeds. Father's Day won't be a big deal. I'm not a father.

Marcie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1639

The roofing folks knocked on my door this morning and said they were here to inspect the roof. I had asked them to give me some advance notice before they came, but since I was here anyway, I guess it didn't matter. I went up on the roof with them and they said that considering I lived in a wooded area and the roof didn't drain properly anyway, it was doing pretty well. This was hardly a ringing endorsement. I showed them the spots I thought might be deteriorating. Sometimes they said "We can fix that." and other times they told me that there was nothing wrong. I told the guys to repair any areas that they thought might cause me problems in the future and went back inside to work. Later in the day, I went back up on the roof to see what they'd done. There were a bunch of little repair spots scattered over the roof, but none in the areas that I thought might be a problem. I actually have no idea what the roofers did.

I got a request to add some custom features to a client's WordPress theme today. Many of my clients love WordPress themes because they are cheap and easy to update without any coding skills. Themes are easy to switch too. The problems start when people like their existing theme but just want it to look completely different. You should really just pick a theme and leave it alone. I get requests that would be very easy to implement using HTML. Unfortunately, with my limited knowledge of PHP, it always takes me longer to modify a dynamic site than it would to create an entire static site from scratch. I've grown to hate WordPress, even though many people absolutely love it. I'm trying to keep up with the times though. I'm learning to develop nice looking, full featured dynamic websites, even though I'd really rather still be doing magazine and newspaper ads.

Dot did really well using the underwater treadmill today. We generally do the treadmill workout first, let her rest a bit, and then finish with acupuncture. The acupuncture relaxes Dot, and she almost always leaves her session feeling relaxed and happy. I wish there were something that did the same sort of thing for me. Relaxed and happy is definitely not my normal state. Maybe I ought to just sleep eighteen hours a day like the dogs. It seems to work for them.

We are still supposed to get some severe thunderstorms tomorrow. I sure hope that whatever they put on the roof today dries fast. If there is a downpour tomorrow, it would be just my luck that all the new coating material washes away in the rain. Who knows? Tomorrow might be hot and sunny. I never put much faith in Texas weather forecasts. I'm still glad I got Dot's vet appointment taken care of today. Driving around with Dot in a thunderstorm is not a pleasant experience.

Willa 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