Day 3610

It was so cold today. I felt like staying under a warm blanket all day, but knew that I had to face facts and admit that it was winter. I took my time eating breakfast in hopes that it would get warmer. Maybe the temperature rose a few degrees, but it wasn't enough to notice.

I wasn't surprised that the park was empty today. It was just me and an insane jogger who wasn't even wearing a jacket or a hat. I was warm enough. I looked like the Michelin Man, wearing a puffy outer down coat over a lighter inner down jacket. Add a pair of compression pants under my jeans. a wool hat, and some heavy insulated boots and it was a miracle I could even move.

I finished the entire five miles. There were a few spots where the wind was pretty nasty, but for the most part it was a beautiful winter day. I'm glad I dressed warmly. Anything lighter and I would have froze. When I passed the area where the Pelicans spend the winter, they were all huddled together in a big clump. Maybe this was their way of staying warm. What do I know though. If I was a cold Pelican, the first thing I would do was get out of the water.

There seem to be an abundance of opportunities to attend NASA events in December. After I got rejected to attend the Space X ISS resupply launch, I applied to attend the first Boeing Starliner launch a few weeks later. Now there's an opportunity to tour the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. I'm not a huge fan of New Orleans but it would be cool to see the Artemis moon rocket being assembled. Should I apply for this event too? I'm not even sure if I could afford to do both.

I did try to contact the volunteer director at McDonald Observatory today. I haven't heard anything about my application yet. The director wasn't in, so I sent him an e-mail. It would be nice to know if these thoughts I've been having about spending time on Mount Locke this Spring are real or just a fantasy. Sometimes I think all my travel plans are just a fantasy. It's not like I actually need to do any of this.

We'll see what happens. I might be very busy toward the end of the year, or I could just be sitting here wondering if the roof was going to leak. I wish that getting selected to attend rocket launches wasn't so competitive, but that's just the way it is. When something is desirable, there are usually lot of people who want to take advantage of the opportunity. I suspect that being an on-site volunteer at the observatory is the same way. I know for a fact that there are a ton of amateur astronomers who are way more dedicated than me. A lot of them would probably love to spend time at McDonald Observatory. Hey, I rarely even look through a telescope. The only thing that works in my favor is that I'm a pretty decent writer. Sometimes a story needs to be told.

We have a rare adoption event to attend this weekend. Janet and I still can't decide which dog to take. Some aren't quite ready to be around a crowd yet and others might end up being adopted before the event. With the weather we've been having, it might even be too cold for the dogs to be outside. No sense in fretting yet. If I've learned anything it's that a lot can change in a week.

Jada is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2430

I took Dash back to his regular vet today. Dash is not a good patient. By the time he gets to the vet, he is barking, his adrenaline is pumping, and he is so wound up that it is often difficult to diagnose anything. The vet agreed that he was walking a bit oddly, but when she took x-rays, there seemed to be no basis for his stiff, almost robotic gait. She told me that there were no obvious signs of arthritis or hip dysplasia. There were no signs of soft tissue injuries either. Dash was quite limber and was able to extend his legs through a full range of motion. As always, the dog continues to remain a mystery. Since dogs are often very good at hiding pain, the vet suggested that I give him Rimadyl for 14 days and watch to see if he changes the way he walks. If the stiffness disappears, something is causing him pain. It's worth a try. Of course, the Rimadyl won't tell us where the pain is coming from. Since the x-rays don't tell us much, he might need to have a MRI. There's always a chance that there is nothing wrong at all and this is just the way Dash normally walks.

Tomorrow, it's Dot's turn. I'm taking her back to her physical therapy vet to see if she's strong enough to resume using the treadmill. I have my doubts, since she appears to be growing weaker. There's always the chance that she's becoming weaker because we stopped the therapy. I'd hate to think I stopped the therapy just because of all the poop in the car. At any rate, we are going to evaluate her tomorrow and then we'll decide what to do next. Even if she's not strong enough for the underwater treadmill, she could still probably benefit from acupuncture.

I received some new writing assignments today. These ought to keep me busy for the rest of the week. It's time to send out August invoices, but I think I'll wait until I finish these new jobs. Maybe I'm just robbing from September to make August look a little better, but every dollar counts. I wish I could think of something lucrative to do that would boost my billings. It's getting harder and harder to compete with large high volume solutions.

Today, when I was waiting in the lobby with Dash to see the vet, I noticed a cool looking application that was running on a large flat screen TV which displayed the clinic's Instagram and Facebook posts in real time. This looked interesting and I started wondering if I could create something like this for my clients. I did some research when I got back home and discovered that the clinic had just bought a prepackaged solution from a large national digital signage company. They didn't have to hire a programmer at all. All they did was pay a monthly fee, plug a special box into the back of their TV, and they were done. It wouldn't matter if I learned how to do this. I could never compete with the signage company's prices.

Our yard squirrels seem to hate the August heat as much as I do. They don't even move around anymore. They'll find a place in the shade and just sit there, waiting patiently for sunset. I can walk right up to them and they don't even bother to move. I feel the same way and I have the luxury of air conditioning. I think we're all ready for Winter.

Nautica is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2285

The Palladia appears to be working. When Dot had her Ultrasound scan this afternoon, there was no evidence that her cancer was continuing to grow. Everything appears to be stable. This was good news, although it does mean that she will need to continue her chemotherapy. We'll take things one month at a time, scanning her abdomen every thirty days to evaluate the status of the mass in her liver. Dot's oncologist seemed encouraged by today's results and told me that often the tumor starts to shrink after about three months of treatment. If Dot's mobility doesn't continue to deteriorate, I think we're OK. We can always discontinue the Palladia if it is making it harder for her to walk.

I went back to my original breakfast restaurant this morning. It was disappointing to see how much the new restaurant across the street has hurt their business. This morning, there were a lot of empty tables and it looked like they had to lay off some kitchen staff.  The food was still excellent, but you could see a look of resignation of everybody's faces. Things have changed.

It looked like the construction crews, cyclists, and moms who didn't have time to fix breakfast for their kids were still regular customers, but that the hipsters had all abandoned the place en masse. This confirmed something that I have long thought about hipsters. They are conformists at heart. If one hipster does something, they all have to do it.  Maybe this explains the proliferation of man buns, messenger bags, and Amish style beards. At any rate, the local hipster community has decided that the restaurant across the street is the place to be.

I got a call from the guy who has been hosting all my websites since the mid 1990's. He wanted to give me a heads up that he was planning on selling his business soon so he and his wife could travel more. The guy is 72 and I've been amazed that he's run a successful web hosting company for as long as he has. It's not an easy business. Almost every day someone is trying to hack into your servers and cause as much chaos as they can. I wished my friend well, but I was sad to hear the news of his retirement. It was the end of an era. I will probably have to move my websites somewhere else. There are plenty of places to choose from, but I really enjoyed having a friend I could talk to personally when things went haywire, instead of calling a tech support number and talking to somebody in India.

The decline of my favorite restaurant and the upcoming demise of my hosting company seem like different aspects of an ongoing trend. The march of time is gradually making my world irrelevant. Stores I have done business with for decades disappear overnight. Software I depend on is no longer supported. Clients retire or in some cases even die. I am forced to change or adapt just to survive. I don't like this. The world seemed as it should be from the day I graduated from college until the mid 1990's. Those were good times. Now, I can barely recognize where I am.

I'm always nervous that Google will abruptly decide to abandon Blogger someday. That would be just my luck. I'd wake up ready to continue my journey to Day 5000 and discover that my blog and all the other Blogger blogs had simply disappeared. It could happen. So much has changed already that further changes like this seem almost inevitable.

Nick is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1877

We passed another milestone today. Dash's oncologist told me that he won't need to see him again for another year. This is very good news. The lab work and x-rays that were done at the re-check painted a portrait of a very normal, healthy dog. For all effective purposes, Dot and Dash have both beat cancer.

In addition to putting the yearlong chemotherapy regime behind me, I think I managed to put yesterday's video woes behind me as well. I'm sure we're not really done yet, but at least I have a nice looking finished product to show my client tomorrow. Since this isn't a time sensitive project, there will almost certainly be further changes. Projects like these always expand to fill the time available. I'd be fine with this if budgets expanded in a similar fashion, but they never do.

I've always thought of myself as a prolific and productive person, but some of the people I met in California are putting me to shame. I'm already starting to see really well researched articles about the SMAP launch from other participants at the NASA event. Some have secured interviews on local radio and TV stations. Others have produced elaborate, full edited videos and posted them on YouTube. What have I done? Not much. I've mentioned a few things here, but these guys are running circles around me. It was a real honor to be included among the best and the brightest, but clearly I am neither the best, or the brightest. It appears that I am still just a guy who spends most of his time walking his dogs.

I noticed today that Dot wasn't interested in walking at all while Dash was at the cancer center. She is very competitive and seems determined to keep up with her younger companion. She kind of likes to boss Dash around too. I think this friendly rivalry is what keeps her going. Without Dash, she suddenly seems much older. There's a lesson in this. You really need someone to challenge you as you grow older. It's so easy to grow complacent and start making excuses. Dot had so much more energy on our evening walk after Dash had returned home. I need to take this to heart. I think I held my own pretty well with the young space enthusiasts in California. I should be able to do it here as well.

I hope my client approves the video tomorrow. I'm supposed to do at least five more of these things. If the first one goes well, doing more should be a piece of cake. If there are a lot of silly changes, I'm doomed. I don't deal well with silly changes. The thought of spending the entire Spring jumping thru hoops makes me want to crawl under a blanket and hide. Let's hope for the best though. The glass isn't always half empty.

Duke is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1653

I moved a client's site from one server to another today. After I pointed the DNS to the correct address, uploaded all the files, and configured the server, everything worked perfectly. The client never even realized the site was offline. I was amazed. Usually, when I try this, there are all sorts of snags and it takes days before things start to work properly again. Even more amazing was that I only had to make a single call to tech support during the entire process and wasn't even put on hold for a long time. Complicated things like this give me hope. Maybe I'm not getting senile after all.

The rain continued today. It would rain for an hour and then stop for an hour, as wave after wave of showers passed through town. The intermittent showers gave me plenty of time to walk the dogs, and since there was no thunder, they eventually settled down and forgot it was raining. Since I had no place to go and the roof no longer leaks, I eventually forgot it was raining as well.

Moving the website took quite a bit of time, but it was tedious and somewhat boring, so I found myself entering contests again. I keep telling clients that they ought to consider online contests. They're about the only thing that gets me to visit a website these days. When I'm bored, I'll enter anything that promises a free guitar, camera, or a chance to get published. That's probably why I get so much spam. I like so called "creative" contests the best. There probably isn't a chance in hell of winning, but I enter anyway. Today I entered a contest that promised that the winner's photographs would be sold as framed limited editions in a major furniture store chain. After I picked a photo and entered, I discovered that to win, you had to convince other people to vote for your entry. That immediately turned the contest into a game and I hate games. I would have preferred that a panel of photo experts judged the entries or something. I'm not going to win this one.

Remember that Amtrak Writers in Residence program that I was telling you about earlier this Spring? This was the program where Amtrak paid selected writers to travel around on their passenger trains and describe their experiences. Well, I wasn't a winner here either. I got a short letter from Amtrak a few days ago thanking me for my entry and encouraging me to enter again next year. I don't know why I kept thinking I was going to get selected for this. Especially since over 8,000 other writers entered. Hey, I like trains and I have plenty of time. I guess the other writers were thinking the same thing.

I'll start on a other new website project tomorrow. I guess I should be glad that I've still got plenty to do, but it infuriates me that I've had to lower my rates to a pittance to compete with all these mass produced template sites. The weird thing is that if I had won that Amtrak Writers in Residence grant, I would have been paid even less for my time than I'm getting for this website. Writing on a train seems glamorous though. Sometimes a little glamor can make all the difference.

Shiner is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1138

I went to see a nutritionist today. I've got to get beyond feeling good about myself for having a nutritious Kale salad one day and then going out and having a humongous bacon and chorizo omelet the next day. Consistency and discipline have never been my strong points. I need to clean up my act though. The team of hepatologists I saw earlier this week has put the fear of god in me. I definitely don't want to wind up on a transplant list.

It's too bad that eating unsalted nuts and fresh fruit isn't as appealing to me as a cheeseburger and a beer. Some people I know love to eat raw, unprocessed foods. Personally, I'd much rather have a pizza, or barbecued ribs. I have a feeling that those days are gone though. I'm going to have to learn to love something new.

This is the longest string of foggy days I can remember. One foggy day is a photo opportunity. A whole week of foggy days is just lousy weather. Although I have professed my love of fog many times on this blog, I'll have to admit I'm getting tired of it this week. I'm ready for a little sunshine.

I keep hearing on the news that stores are going to start adding and additional 4% to your bill for credit card transactions starting tomorrow. That sucks. I hate carrying cash around and use credit cards for virtually everything. I wonder if stores will actually try to pass on their transaction charges to customers, now that they're allowed to by law. It could go either way. Competition could keep prices the way are are currently. Or, the stores might get together just like the airlines have and try to stick their customers with every additional charge they can get away with.

I can't find anything on TV tonight. Sometimes I wonder why I even bothered to get U-Verse. There are dozens of channels filled with dumb shows like Storage Wars and Duck Dynasty. There's absolutely nothing that I want to watch though. You'd think with 500 channels, there would be at least five good ones. I find myself still watching old Seinfeld episodes because the new shows are so terrible. Sometimes I just stare at the NASA channel, watching astronauts floating around in the space station. It's not very dramatic, but at least it's not irritating.

Jazz is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1127

What a surprise. I looked out the window this morning and the back yard was covered with snow. It's quite rare to get enough snow to cover the ground in Dallas. The dogs initially didn't want to go outside, because it was cold, but when they discovered the snow, they had a great time. We tramped around in the woods, leaving foot and paw prints everywhere and by the time we got home again, the snow had just about melted.

As luck would have it, the only snow that didn't melt was the snow on the roof. I decided to wait until it turned to water again before I dealt with the cleanup ritual. For the moment, the snow is just good insulation.

Today, I took care of keeping my car legal for another year. First I got a new registration sticker and then drove down the street to the little garage where I always get the car safety inspected. Even though they have inspected this car for at least six or seven years, I always have to tell them that it is a full time four wheel drive vehicle and ask them not to put it on the dynamometer. I must have been pacing around the lobby of the garage during the inspection because the owner asked me why I was so nervous. I made up some lame excuse for all the pacing because I was embarrassed to tell the guy that I was nervous that the mechanic would put my inspection sticker on crooked again. He always puts the stickers on the windshield crooked. Last year, he even put my registration sticker on upside down. The car passed inspection with flying colors, even though I hadn't bothered fixing the rattling catalytic converter. I guess I'll just live with the rattle for for another year. It doesn't hurt the engine and I'm kind of getting used to it.

While I was at the garage this afternoon, their web developer stopped by to renew their contract for another year. Since I was obviously too late to make a pitch for the business, I asked the garage owner what the other guy was charging to design a website after he had left. The owner said his new site was costing him $500 and acted like that was a lot of money. Sad. I don't know how you can make a living doing websites anymore, unless you're one of those big corporate interactive agencies like Razorfish. The budgets for the simple bread and butter jobs that keep little guys like me busy keep getting lower and lower and lower.

The price of Apple stock keeps getting lower and lower too. Apple closed below 500 today. I wonder how much further it's going to fall. I'm sure glad I didn't buy any shares at 700. I hate to admit it, but maybe my broker's decision to get me out when he did wasn't so stupid after all.

Betty is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1024

I lost another website account today. My soon to be former client went to a conference and was pitched by one of those companies that offer standardized, template driven websites geared to a specific industry at very low prices. I patiently tried to explain to my client that all those cheap bells and whistles would be of limited value if their competitors all had exactly the same website. This argument went in one ear and right out the other. Apparently, one of their competitors had actually recommended this web developer to them. They didn't care if their website looked exactly like 100 other websites. They just wanted the cheap bells and whistles.

Inexpensive template websites have become the bane of my existence. I still do everything from scratch, and just can't compete with this mass produced approach. I feel like one of those obscure auto companies who were hand-building cars in a garage right after Henry Ford invented the assembly line. I still have some really good customers who seem happy with my work, but the writing is on the wall. I get e-mail everyday from companies offering to re-design my own website for free. I get other e-mails offering to host the site for as little as $9.95 a month. It's becoming a commodity driven business and I'm becoming a dinosaur.

Maybe I ought to just stick to writing. I think the bloom is off the rose when it comes to comes to photography, video editing, and website design. It's become increasingly easy to do these things yourself. People still don't like to write, however. Hell, they don't even like to read anymore. I actually have more writing jobs than I did a few years ago. I guess there still isn't a convenient iPhone app that will do your writing and thinking for you.

Although I missed the political debates last night, I couldn't avoid seeing everything rehashed on the morning news shows today. The pundits were right. Obama was definitely off his game. The guy looked like he was sleepwalking through the entire debate. The debacle serves him right if you ask me. He's been spending way too much time partying with the likes of JZ and Beyonce.

Jersey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 977

Dot is sitting shivering under my desk, wrapped in a blanket. It's raining again. I wonder how she knows it's going to rain. She's better than the weatherman. Over an hour before the rain started, she was nervously pacing around the house, trying to tell us that the world was about to end. I've gotten to know her mannerisms so I checked the weather radar on my iPhone. It didn't look so bad. Dot knew better. Almost on cue, the rains started immediately after she went to her protected spot under my desk. It's a good thing I got my chores done earlier. I mowed the grass and got all my weekend shopping done before the deluge started. I hate rain at this time of day though. By the time the storm passes through, it will be too dark to go up and get the water off the roof. It will be another night of listening for leaks.

I got a good example of why Apple is so successful this afternoon. I needed to buy an audio cable, so I went to Guitar Center because they have tons of cables. "Oh, you've got to go to the Apple Store for Apogee cables," the sales guy said. "Apple owns Apogee, so they'll have all the cables there."  I stopped by Radio Shack first.  The Apple Store is always crowded on Saturday and Radio Shack has lots of Apple stuff too. The Radio Shack manager told me that I needed to go to the Apple Store too. "That's not a very common cable," he said. "We don't carry those." So, I fight the mall crowds and go to the Apple Store. "That's a specialty item," says the Apple sales guy. "You'll have to order that from our online store." Two different stores, who probably had this particular cable online too, just lazily sent me to the Apple Store instead of trying to get me to buy from their online stores. Apple got the sale.

I'm trying to decide which gear to take on an assignment next week. The assignment involves taking both video and still images. Since DLSR cameras take pretty good video these days and many video cameras can capture high quality JPEG stills, it's not an easy decision anymore. Of course, I could just pile everything I own in the car, but I'd rather travel light and take no more than I need. I wish these companies would make it a little easier for me. My video camera captures sound better, but I like the picture on the DLSR the best. Writing jobs are so much easier. All I need is a laptop and a ten year old copy of Microsoft Word.

I wonder if all the rain we've been having is going to wash away the mosquito spray? It's been bone dry around here for weeks, but just as soon as the city began its aerial spraying program to combat the West Nile Virus, it began raining cats and dogs. Mosquitoes love the rain, so probably this wasn't exactly what the city had planned. So few things go according to plan for me personally, that it's kind of reassuring to know that they don't go according to plan for anyone else either. I wonder if the city has a Plan B if the mosquitoes come back? I learned long ago that you've always got to have a Plan B.

Lucy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 819

I went to the AT&T store today to find out a little more about U-verse. I've been getting these flyers in the mail for the past several months with what look like incredibly good deals and I wanted to find out if they were really true. The $79 a month bundle price they quoted was indeed correct, but the more I learned about it, the more I wondered if anyone would really sign up for this rather limited service. You got a phone, but you were limited to a certain number of minutes a month. You got internet, but it was slower than what I have now. You got TV as well, but not very many channels. When I asked how much it would cost to get what I really needed, the price suddenly got a lot higher. Despite the bait and switch tactics, I'm still thinking of switching from Time Warner to U-verse anyway.

Why do competing companies make it so difficult to compare services these days? You always end up comparing apples to oranges and at the end of the day, you're just guessing which company is actually better. I'm convinced this is why telephone, internet, and electricity providers try so hard to get you to sign a two year contract. Without a contract, there would be nothing preventing you from just leaving when the disappointment sets in. Somehow phone companies always seem to deliver less than they promise. They never mention all the city and state taxes that are going to be added to your bill either.

I got a bid on putting in a new furnace as well today. Although the price was more reasonable than I expected, it was still pretty high and confirmed my decision to just wait until next Fall to do anything major. There are far to many expenses on the horizon these days anyway. Taxes are due in less than a month. The rent house is empty and not contributing anything to the monthly cash flow. The Defender 90 is almost due for another major service. The list never ends.

Enough complaining though. The weather seems to get a little nicer every day. I'm not wild about daylight savings time starting so early this year, but it's nice to be able to put the heavy Winter coats away for another season. Walking the dogs is a lot more enjoyable in warmer weather too. Although Dot and Dash haven't officially become photo assistants, they are both becoming better about letting me take pictures during our walks. I never really thought of myself as a nature photographer, but I'm actually starting to get some good shots.

The iCloud has turned out to be a good thing as well. I was a bit apprehensive about upgrading everything to take advantage of the Cloud, but it's certainly making my life easier. I don't have to synchronize calendars and contact lists anymore and I just noticed that my iPhone upgraded itself to the latest IOS all by itself. Now, if I could just train these devices to do my web and writing work for me.

Wyatt is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 783

A photographer I knew from my ad agency days called this morning to ask if it was OK to refer me for a writing job. Sure. I can always use one more client who wants things done overnight for no money. When the prospective client called later in the day to fill me in on the upcoming project, I asked for some input and she sent me what appeared to be the text for a finished brochure. "This looks done," I said. "What do you need me to do?" She told me she wanted basically the same thing, except different. OK. I've been down this road before. I guess I'll take the job.

As I was getting dressed to go in for a doctor's appointment this afternoon, I got a call from the doctor's office wanting to confirm my appointment for tomorrow afternoon. Oops. I looked, and I even had the appointment marked on my calendar for tomorrow. I guess this just shows that I don't pay much attention to my calendar. It seems like this same thing happened to me less than a month ago.

Sometimes I wish I had more of a competitive spirit. During the past week, I've received two entry forms in the mail for contests where I could be a strong contender. One is a photo contest sponsored by the City of Dallas for pictures taken in the park behind my house. I have taken hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of pictures in this park, so it would seem like I could manage to come up with two good ones to enter in the contest. The second contest is sponsored by Panasonic for short videos shot with one of the cameras I own. At first glance, it would seem that this contest would be very hard to win, but I happen to know that very few people actually bought this particular camera, so maybe there won't be many entries. One of the categories in the video competition is Nature as well, so I could just spent an afternoon in the park on a nice day and probably come up with some great images that could be set to music. Will I enter either of these contests? Who knows. I almost always come up with some sort of excuse not to do these sorts of things.

Tomorrow I need to take Dash to the vet to get his antigen shot. I need to remember that I need to go to my own doctor as well. I wonder how much work I'll get done. The day seems full already.

Landry is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 736

I got an early start today, since I needed to take Janet to the dentist for dental surgery. Somehow, by the end of the day, my extra hour totally disappeared. For a change of pace, I spent the day writing about process safety engineering in the oil and gas industry instead of writing about watches. A little different to say the least, but it still just comes down to putting words on a page.

I got an e-mail from B&H Photo today. It said they were having a contest to see who could make the best video of a B&H package being opened. Hmm. I ordered something from B&H recently and will be getting a package soon. I make videos for a living. Maybe I could win this contest. The prize is certainly pretty good: a Canon 5D Mark III. There's only one problem. I absolutely hate competitions and contests. This is a tough one.

I wasn't sure if Janet would want to go to dog class tonight, since she just returned from dental surgery a few hours ago. Apparently nothing can keep her away from training class though, so we all bundled up and went through the exercises in the cold, damp December air. I'm ready for Spring and Winter hasn't even officially started.

Tomorrow will be another busy day of writing. With any luck, I'll be able to finish the first draft of my oil and gas article and get back to my marathon of watch articles again. I know there are probably a bunch of little errands I need to do between now and Christmas, but if they involve fighting the holiday traffic, I'm probably just going to forget about them. Hey, the Christmas tree is up. The Santa Paws pictures are done. I've ordered gifts from Amazon.com. Maybe it's time to relax.

Willow is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 719

The power is back on. It's nice to have electricity again. It's not so nice to have another leak in the roof however. The rain that started yesterday afternoon continued through the night, and sometime before morning I awoke to hear the sound of dripping water in the living room. I put a bucket under the drip and went back to sleep.

When daylight arrived, I went up on the roof to assess the situation and spent quite a while sweeping water off the roof, even though it was still raining. By the time I was finished, I was already so wet that I figured I wouldn't get any wetter if I walked down to the lake and photographed the White Rock Marathon that was taking place behind my house.

Earlier, during breakfast, I watched the leaders in the race go by on television. Two Kenyans covered five miles in the time it took me to eat my Krispy Kreme donut. By the time I got down to the lake with my camera, the really fast runners were already close to the finish line. There were still plenty of runners however. 25,000 of them to be exact. I've never understood runners. It is raining cats and dogs outside. It is getting colder by the minute. Does that dissuade any of the runners? Not a bit. They all just put big black plastic garbage bags over their heads and continue running 26 miles in the freezing rain.

Just knowing that 25,000 intensely competitive type-a people were running a race behind my house was a bit unnerving to me. That's a lot of competitive people. I'm not a competitive person at all. I work hard and I think I'm good at what I do, but I've never spent much time trying to convince people that I'm better than anyone else. I avoid contests and competitions like the plague. Sure, I understand that there are winners and losers in life, but it's still frustrating to run into someone who thinks that in order for them to win, I have to lose. Hey guys, game over. I still prefer to think I passed the finish line at birth and have always been a winner.

When the rain finally quit toward the end of the day, I went up on the roof again and swept away the remaining water. I rarely get up on the roof twice in one day, but it's supposed to freeze this week, and I'm determined not to have ice on the roof again this year.

Camp is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day