Day 1429

It's that time of year again. I brought home a big pile of photo and lighting equipment from the storage warehouse in preparation for the first of our Santa Paws photo events this weekend. If it seems a little early for a picture of your dog sitting on Santa's lap, just look around you. The Christmas season is already in full swing. There are Christmas tree lots on every other corner. Stores are filled with lights, cards, and decorations. Some people are even starting to decorate their yards.

Every year the equipment seems heavier and it seems to take me a little longer to set up for these events. These Santa photos are all for a good cause though. I guess lugging this heavy gear around is what I've been doing all the workouts for.

I picked up my suit from the tailor today and the moth holes are gone. Reweaving is kind of amazing. Even when I look at the repair with a magnifying glass, I can't see any evidence that a moth hole was ever there. Now that I've taken care of the moth problem, I need to take care of the ticks. Dash seems to attract ticks like a magnet. Oddly, even though they walk together, I rarely see a tick on Dot. I check Dash for ticks every evening, but sometimes I miss a few. This morning I found one crawling on me. Yuck. It's all part of having dogs though. If you have a dog, you're eventually going to find a tick.

Dot did really well at her water therapy session today. She seems to enjoy these sessions. The water is nice and warm. The place is quiet. And the vet techs all like her and feed her treats. Dog class is another story entirely. Sometimes the dogs like their training class too, but not tonight. The only thing Dot and Dash wanted to do at class this evening was go home again. I can't really blame them. It was really cold this evening. I thing the temperature is supposed to get down in the mid-twenties later tonight. I finally remembered to set the outdoor faucets dripping, so they won't freeze. Since there are no valuable plants to bring inside, I guess we're all set for the first hard freeze of the season.

It looks like my breakfast recipe is actually going to be published in the SXSW Cookbook. I had to sign a release form today verifying the my recipe was original and not copied out of another cookbook. I'm glad I didn't have to sign anything guaranteeing that nobody would get sick from eating my recipe. I'm not really a very good cook. If somebody told me a few years ago that I would end up being featured in a film festival cookbook, I would have just laughed at them.

I wish tomorrow was Friday. This week is kind of dragging along. I've got lots of writing and website assignments to finish tomorrow. It's time to go to the gym again as well. One of these days I'll surprise you with something new and original. It won't be tomorrow though.

Puppies are today's Dalmatians of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1308

It's been raining for two solid days and I haven't gone up on the roof once. There's still a lot of water up there, but I'm not nearly as worried about it because there are no longer any leaks. Any regular reader will quickly realize that two days of standing water on the roof with no attempt to remove it is nothing short of astonishing. Even without troublesome roof leaks, rain can still be problematic though. It's hard to walk the dogs. Today was a waiting game. The rain was fairly steady throughout the day, but I discovered if I kept an eye on the iPad weather radar, I could still manage to find little pockets of relative dryness when the rain would slow to a trickle and the dogs became brave enough to venture outside. It was one of those days where I used up a lot of towels. We would get wet. Then I would dry everyone off. And then we would repeat the process again.

I was invited today to send a recipe to be included in the 2014 SXSW Interactive Cookbook. It was quite an honor, since my recipe will apparently be included with other recipes from luminaries like Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, Zappos founder Tony Hsieh, and BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti. This invitation just shows how far I have fallen in recent years. Yes, I not only used to attend SXSW on a regular basis, I used to be a speaker there as well in the early years. There's only one problem with submitting a recipe of mine to this cookbook. I don't have any. I can only think of two original recipes I have created in the past twenty-five years and I can no longer eat either of them.

These days I hardly cook at all. I've succumbed to stopping by Central Market several times a week and picking up some tasty, semi-healthy items from the Chef Prepared section. It's kind of like eating out, except that I can eat at home with the dogs and there are no waiters to tip.  Today, I picked up a container of Kale, Chard, and Orange salad and another container with Walnut, Grape and Blue Cheese salad on the way home from the gym.

The gym is already starting to feel like a familiar place. I'm starting to establish a routine that suits me. I stay about an hour or so and work mostly on exercises designed to build up my upper body and core strength. A lot of people at the gym seem to be doing cardio workouts using treadmills and elliptical machines. I don't think I need this type of workout quite as much, since I spend so much time walking the dogs. Maybe I do though. I'm just making this up as I go along.

Even though it was a slow day, I still managed to get a few writing assignments finished. I have a feeling that tomorrow will be busier.

Lizzy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day