Day 3199

Wow. What an ugly day. The hearings were hard to avoid. They were on every channel for the entire day. Dr. Ford was credible and her supporters will believe her completely. Judge Kavanaugh was credible and his supporters will continue to stand by him. I don't think a single opinion was changed today. I do think the country was harmed. Weaponizing sex for political purposes will have repercussions for decades. Turning our justice system upside down and deciding that a person is guilty until proven innocent is breathtaking and almost Stalinist in nature. Both of these tactics were terrible ideas. You may be passionate about who sits on the Supreme Court and think that the end justifies the means. If you feel this way, you may be forgetting about the law of unintended consequences. In the long run, what happened today will not be good for women. It will not be good for men. And it will not be good for the country.

I felt sad watching today's hearings. I kept hoping that sanity would prevail, but it never did. Lines have been drawn in the sand and I don't think anyone is giving an inch. We didn't use to be this kind of a country. I really think we are headed toward a second civil war. It's so sad. When we believed that we were a great melting pot and shared a common set of values, the United States was the greatest country in the world. All that is gone now. I think the future belongs to China. The Chinese don't have to deal with the chaos and discord we witnessed today. Democracy is messy. Perhaps it is too messy to succeed in a world where politicians see no problem in unleashing flash mobs to harass their opponents in restaurants.

No wonder that so many people on Facebook say they prefer dogs to people. People are horrible. The world would be a better place if people spent more time taking their dogs on long walks and less time letting something they saw on their phone work them into a frenzy. It's not going to happen though. Social media is a Pandora's Box that can't be closed.

I spent too much time watching TV today, but there was still poop to clean up and pills to administer. Dash fell again today and I had to put his harness on while he was struggling on the floor so I could lift him up. Dash panics when he can't get up and it's difficult to help him. I think it's time for him to wear his special harness full time. He's still eating well though and enjoys his slow walks. I wish I could make him younger. I wish I could make myself younger as well. Truthfully, I wouldn't want to be young in today's world. I'd rather take a time machine back to 1950 instead.

I just finished taking this week's trash out to the curb. I can't decide whether to go back to the hotel for breakfast. The food and atmosphere are great, but the menu is very limited. I think I've already tried everything. This week went quickly, but apparently not quickly enough. What a mess. I'd love to see sanity return next week, but I'm not counting on it.

Sophie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 3178

I've noticed that some of the Spring flowers have started to come back in the Fall. This doesn't happen every year, but I've seen it before. I wonder about things like this. Apparently, even annuals and perennials aren't entirely predictable. You usually don't see Antelope Horn Milkweed in the Fall, but there it was this morning.

The wildflowers may not be predictable, but the congressional hearings certainly are. I think you could substitute footage of Neil Gorsuch for Brett Kavanaugh on TV and nobody would know the difference. The questions are the same and the two guys even look kind of the same. Why do we even do these things? Everybody decided how they were going to vote a long time ago. Just vote guys. The endless bickering isn't going to change anything.

Dash was confused this morning. Janet left the house before dawn to take a new class at her gym. When Dash woke up, he panicked when he discovered that his friend was no longer next to him on the bed. It took me forever to convince him that everything was OK. He kept looking for her in every room in the house. I tell Janet now to be sure to say goodby to Dash when she leaves. He's become very needy and doesn't like surprises.

I wish Dash knew that I don't like surprises either. Especially at night. Dash is never very predictable about when he needs to go out at night. Luckily, I almost always wake up when he jumps off the bed. I immediately get up and race to open the back door. For the past several nights he's made it through the open door and pooped on the porch. I'm always grateful when Dash makes it outside. The mess is much easier to clean up when you can use the garden hose.

I got this letter today saying that some company had been bought by another company. "This change will have no impact on your current policy or the quality of service you receive," said the letter. What the hell were they talking about? I didn't recognize the name of either company. Was this a scam, a mistake, or something I had forgotten about? It could be anything. It looks like one more useless thing I'll have to track down. This is what modern life has become. Everything is a potential scam and even if it's legitimate, you know it's going to be a nuisance.

There were storms all around us this evening, but we managed to give Dash his evening walk without getting wet. The trash has already been taken to the curb as well. Basically, I'm done for the week. I'm thinking of going to a hotel for breakfast tomorrow. I haven't done that for a while. Sometime eating at a hotel gives me the illusion of traveling without having to go anywhere. We'll see how I feel in the morning. If it's raining when I wake up, I won't be going anywhere.

April is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 3177

It was hard to avoid congressional hearings today. As I flipped between channels while I was eating breakfast, I came to the conclusion that the Internet was going to get regulated and Judge Kavanaugh was going to get confirmed. It's a shame that the Internet became monetized. Money ruined it. I wish we could go back to the early 1990's when going online was about as popular as amateur radio. Who needs Facebook and Twitter? When I first discovered the Internet, it was a sparsely populated wilderness. There were no hackers and no fake news. The only people I ever ran into were a few like minded geeks. I would gladly ditch my fiber optic connection and go back to a 2800 baud dial up modem if we could return to those days.

Going back to the past has become a recurring theme with me. After a while I tired of the congressional hearings and flipped over to an oldies channel so I could watch ancient TV Westerns. Did you know that Gene Roddenberry and Sam Peckinpah started their careers writing for shows like Have Gun, Will Travel and The Rifleman? Some of these old shows are surprisingly good. They are all simple morality plays, but so was The Twilight Zone. Maybe that's what I miss in today's world. There is no morality at all.

I cashed the check from the Federal Trade Commission today. Usually I deposit even very small checks, but I just took the cash on this one. I was still a bit suspicious about the whole thing. I didn't see any sense in giving another government agency my bank account number. Rationally, I realized that this kind of thinking was pure silliness. If the government knows that I bought three light bulbs over five years ago, they probably know everything. Let's face it. Privacy doesn't exist anymore.

Dash didn't need to go outside last night, but that doesn't mean that I got a good night's sleep. Dash had some pretty serious dog dreams and kept trying to push me off the bed. I'm glad he can still run in his dreams. He certainly can't run in real life. All the thrashing around woke me up three times. I've just about given up on ever getting a good night's sleep. I don't think I'm seriously sleep deprived though because I've started napping during the day.

When I wasn't napping, I made some changes to an animal rescue website. This was the first time I'd done any website work in almost a month. I didn't make any money, but it was nice to know that I hadn't forgotten everything. I still maintain a few sites, but I doubt that I'll ever develop a new one again. Who wants to hire a seventy year old Luddite? Jeez. I've even lost interest in keeping my own website up to date.

Hey, I'm still interested in astronomy and photography. Maybe it's just reading a quick article on Google, but I still try to learn something new almost every day. I'd like to try and combine these avocations if we ever live someplace with dark skies. Until then, I'll continue drinking fruit smoothies and cleaning up dog poop.

Allie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 2397

I thought the plumber would only be here about five minutes. I mean, how long could it take to tighten a few loose bolts? I was wrong again. After a lengthy investigation, the plumber determined that there were several defective parts in the brand new faucet. "Since you bought the faucet, we can't pay for these parts," the plumber told me. "Your other plumber was right with me when I bought it," I told him. "I only paid for the parts myself, so you guys wouldn't mark them up 40% on my bill." This apparently didn't matter. Neither did the fact that the first plumber should have noticed that he was installing defective parts. I got the plumbing supply store to exchange the parts for free, but today's plumber still insisted that he had to charge me for today's service call. He said he was going to give me a big discount since this never should have happened, but my bill was still over $150.

As you might expect, Dot freaked out when the plumber arrived and pooped all over the place. After I got the mess cleaned up and managed to calm Dot down, the plumber had to leave to pick up the replacement parts from the plumbing supply store. When he returned an hour later, Dot acted like she'd never seen the plumber before and pooped again. It's been a long day. Sadly, it's also been a fairly typical day. Nothing seems to go as expected anymore.

As I was working today, I watched portions of the the hearing where FBI Director James Comey was testifying before congress about their recently concluded investigation of Hillary Clinton. It sure looked like the fix is in to me. In one astounding exchange, Comey openly admitted that Clinton had lied numerous times. He then admitted that lying to Congress under oath was a federal crime that you could go to prison for. He completely failed to connect the dots however and defended his decision not to prosecute Clinton, saying only that nobody had asked the FBI to investigate Clinton for perjury. He also said that Clinton wasn't under oath when she testified to the FBI and that their conversation with her wasn't even recorded. Unbelievable.

Watching this spectacle this morning just reinforces my belief that our country is hopelessly broken. We have become so divided that I don't think anyone will be able to fix it. The Democrats on the committee kept trying to divert the hearing into a conversation about police shootings. The Republicans just seemed dumbfounded that the FBI Director kept saying things like the Secretary of State might not have been sophisticated enough to recognize security designations on an e-mail message. I have a feeling that this isn't over yet.

I hope that the bathroom sink never leaks again. Truthfully, I'd rather live with a leak than deal with plumbers. I'm so tired of dealing with things that don't work the way I've been promised. It doesn't matter whether it's an expensive car repair that should have been covered under the vehicle warranty, a broadband router that the cable company managed to ruin during their testing procedure, or a brand new faucet that was full of defective parts. Nothing works properly anymore and everyone keeps trying to make excuses for their own incompetence. Maybe in this context, today's congressional hearings weren't strange at all. Maybe this is just the way things are in an increasingly dystopian world.

Delaney is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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