Day 3075

I just received a notice that NetworkedBlogs is shutting down. Sad. One by one, all the familiar faces I have long associated with blogging are disappearing. Entrecard is gone. Adgitize is gone. I'm not sure if BlogCatalog still works. I haven't seen anything new there in years. I'm going to miss NetworkedBlogs. This is the tool I've always used to syndicate the blog to Facebook and Twitter. Maybe there are other blog syndication services out there, but there probably aren't many. Blogging just isn't popular anymore.

I'm glad I got to be a part of blogging's short lived golden years. It certainly didn't last very long. When was the last time you spent hours blog hopping? Yup. I can't remember that far back either. If you're reading today, you're probably just looking at a link on Facebook. At some point you begin to wonder if there is any point writing if nobody's reading anymore. It is becoming an increasingly quixotic quest.

It would be hard to quit writing. It's a lot like walking Dash. Our walks are painfully slow now, but they have become part of the fabric of life. Whenever we fail to walk I am filled with a sense of foreboding. The day is supposed to start with a walk and end with a blog post. That's just the way it is.

We had a nice walk this morning. I was somewhat surprised to see a single mutant flower in a field full of Mexican Hats. These upright prairie coneflowers are sombrero-shaped with drooping petals and a tall central cone. How did this explosion of petals even happen? This flower looked like it came straight from Chernobyl.

I had planned on having the trees trimmed this morning, but the tree guy called and said he'd had a couple of emergencies and he needed to postpone our appointment. It's just as well that we called this off. It rained last night and the trees were still wet. I imagine that this would have made the branches heavier and more difficult to cut. At least the trees didn't fall on my roof last night. Evidently, the storm was far worse in Far North Dallas.

Now that it's warm enough to keep the air conditioner running, doing the wash has become more difficult. Both the washer and the condensation from the air conditioner drain into the same floor drain  in the utility room. The drain needs to be plugged when the washer is running and open when the air conditioner is running. It gets complicated when both things are happening at the same time. I forgot to open the drain today and the utility room got flooded. If it's not one thing, it's another.

I wish my lone trip to the gym every Sunday was enough to build muscle mass and shed a little weight. I have a feeling that it's just a symbolic gesture. It's going to take a lot more than an hour at the gym to change anything. I'll still go tomorrow. Hey, there's nothing wrong with symbolic gestures.

Chief is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2147

Dogs don't understand Daylight Saving Time. Frankly, I don't either. The whole concept of "gaining an hour" or "losing and hour" is bizarre. We all follow the same circadian rhythm and arbitrarily turning back the clock so it will be light when you drive to work in the morning doesn't really prove anything. I'm sure that's what Dot and Dash were thinking when they got us up at 6 AM on a Sunday morning. According to their clock, we were already an hour late for breakfast. We wanted to sleep in a little longer, but it doesn't pay to ignore Dot these days. When we didn't respond immediately to the dogs desire to get the day started, Dot got up on her own and promptly pooped in the hallway.

I had plans to go to the gym in the morning, but got sidetracked by setting all the clocks in the house back an hour. You don't realize until the time changes that almost every device in your home has a clock in it. There's a clock in the thermostat. There's a clock in the coffee maker. There's a clock in the television. There's even a clock in the old land line phone. In addition to these clocks are wall clocks in the bathroom, office, and kitchen, plus two clock radios. You are either forced to change all of these clocks, or ignore them all. Just changing one or two clocks creates confusion.You never know which one is right. I even set one clock back to Daylight Saving Time by mistake this morning. It is ironic that in a house filled with watches and clocks, I am perpetually late everywhere I go.

Since we have a lot of single pane glass in our house, cold weather can cause water to condense on the inside of our windows. This condensation can make the entire house feel damp. There is nothing new about this damp weather condensation, but today it made me feel like it was caused by our invisible water leak instead of the weather. I still see no evidence whatsoever of a leak, but the water keeps running in the pipes. I hope the plumbing company sends out a really good plumber. I hate these kind of mysteries.

I went to the gym this afternoon even though I knew it was raining and I would feel compelled to clean the car when I got home. I had cabin fever and needed to get out of the house. I did clean the car when I got home, but it was no big deal. Sunday is just a giant cleaning day anyway. After I cleaned the car, I vacuumed all the rugs and carpets with the Dyson. I continue to be amazed by the enormous amount of dirt and dog hair that I sweep up every week. I used to wonder why Dyson made the dirt canister out of clear plastic so you could see all the gross gunk you had removed from your carpets. Now, I think that they want you to see all this dirt so you will be impressed by how strong their vacuum cleaner is. Probably all vacuum cleaners suck up the same amount of dirt, but most just hide it away in a bag that your forget about until it is full.

So far, November is looking busy. I have an appointment to take Dot back to the cancer center for one of her periodic exams. She'll get another Ultrasound scan tomorrow to measure whether the tumor in her liver has grown. Dash is fine for the moment. He is eating normally and all four legs are working fine. I haven't seem him limp for almost a week. I think there is already enough work on the books to keep me busy for most of the week. I have three new articles to write, along with a website that needs to be updated and converted to a mobile friendly format. All these projects will be finished in good time, while I spend my time fretting about where to find fresh peaches. My morning smoothies were much better with peaches in them.

Jeda is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1440

One of the overhead lights in my office keeps blinking on and off. It's one of those new LED bulbs that are supposed to last forever and it's driving me nuts. I get out the ladder and climb up and tighten the bulb in it's socket, thinking I've solved the problem. About twenty minutes later, the light starts blinking again. It is a bad bulb? A bad fixture? Or bad wiring? It could be all three, but I hate to call an electrician just to have him tell me to screw the bulb in tighter.

At least this problem is indoors where it's warm. Earlier in the day I was up on the roof trying to remove the standing water before it all turned into ice. I was a little late, since a lot of the water had already frozen. I can tell you from experience that it's a lot harder to remove ice from the roof than water. When the water and the falling leaves freeze together, you've got a real mess on your hands.

It's hard to stay a fan of mother nature when the elements are relentlessly trying their best to destroy your house. Hopefully, the new roof is genuinely waterproof, since ice brings out the worst in a leak. Heat from the house melts the bottom of the ice and the cold keeps the surface frozen. As a result, it is nearly impossible to remove the water from the roof until the weather gets above freezing again. Indoors, water condenses on the inside of large expanses of single pane glass. This water drips to the sill below where it soaks through tiny cracks in the paint and rots the wood. Water pipes freeze. Rats and squirrels aggressively invade the greenhouse, looking for someplace warm. All in all, life is much easier in the Summer.

I  watched the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Awards ceremony on TV this evening where they honored Carol Burnett. Maybe I'm showing my age, but those old sketch comedy segments are still funnier today that almost anything I've seen on SNL lately. Granted, Saturday Night Live was fabulous in it's day too, but those days are long gone. I occasionally see a funny episode of Modern Family, but it's nothing like vintage Sienfeld or All in the Family. I think we've collectively lost our sense of humor and just like to make fun of people instead. Don't even get me started on music or reality shows. The world has changed. Wouldn't it be nice to have someone like John Kennedy again who could actually keep a promise to send men to the moon, invent the Peace Corps, and still be tough enough to put Khrushchev in his place. We have iPhones now, but we are a pale shadow of our former selves.

Maggie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day