Day 3834

Another rainy morning. This is getting old. Especially when I keep hearing from my astronomer friends that skies are clear out at McDonald Observatory. We managed to find time to give Dawn a shortened walk this morning. After getting caught in the rain a few too many times, I think we've finally learned not to tempt fate. Dawn was fine with the shorter walk. Not me. I had to go out later in the day to make up the lost steps.

When I went out again I passed a woman feeding the ducks with her children not more than twenty yards away from a crazy man wandering around shouting "My favorite is missing," over and over again. Occasionally he'd add "They're not all missing, but my favorite is gone." Was this guy talking about a loved one, a teddy bear, or maybe a sock? The woman feeding the ducks didn't seem alarmed. There were lots of runners on the trail and everyone ignored the crazy man. This strange tableau seemed to represent America today. We all want to keep feeding the ducks while the world is burning around us. It's pretty weird.

I wonder if the other NASCAR drivers are a little embarrassed after that noose in Bubba Wallace's garage turned out to be a garage door pull. The exact same rope was found in every other driver's garage and they had all been there since 2019. There was no hate crime. There was nothing at all. The media jumped all over this story before any investigation had been made. They did the same thing when Jussie Smollett said he had been assaulted in Chicago. Do you think the media is pushing a narrative? They love this stuff.

I don't love any of this. I don't know many members of the police force, but the few cops I do know are wonderful people. I'm pretty sure that the percentage of bad cops is about the same as the percentage of bad people in the general population. I used to live in Capitol Hill in Seattle. It was a great place back in the 1970's. If I was living there now, I would be outraged by a mayor that does nothing to stop the madness. I don't support tearing down monuments at all. If you think you can improve the future by erasing the past, you are wrong. It just doesn't work that way.

You can't defeat the virus by ignoring it either. I used to think that the Chinese were lying about their relatively low death rates during this pandemic. Now I'm more inclined to believe they were telling the truth. The Chinese had the liberty to impose draconian containment strategies. Jeez. These guys welded the doors shut to people's homes to keep them from moving about. We're so used to having our freedom that we just ignore anything that we don't like. It's not really a surprise that the United States has one of the highest death rates from the virus in the world.

I've thought for a long time that the Chinese would be the first to set foot on Mars. These guys play the long game and seem to have a thousand year plan for everything. We have trouble making a plan for next week. I wish we could get our act together as a country. There is so much potential here. We need more people like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs and fewer people pulling down statues. You may not agree with me, but we'll see who's right soon enough. Chaos is not a winning strategy. Sooner or later the Chinese will just declare "game over."

Boo is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 2216

I bought some Powerball tickets today. I'll never win, but how can you pass up a chance at 800 million dollars. It's rare that I ever buy lottery tickets, but when I do, I'm always amazed that there are so many other people doing the same thing. Often the people ahead of me in line buy lots of tickets. Don't they realize that the chances of winning are so remote that the odds are about the same whether you buy one ticket of a hundred? You have a much higher chance of being struck by lightening than winning the lottery. Probably everybody has had a fantasy about winning the lottery. I'll confess that I've contemplated winning, especially when the jackpot is so high. I'd immediately buy a house without a flat roof. I can't even tell you how tired I am to have standing water on the roof every time it rains. Maybe Janet and I would hire our own personal veterinarian. I doubt that I would change very much. I'm happy enough with the way things are. It would be nice not to have to worry about money anymore though. I always worry about money.

The weather turned really cold this afternoon. Later tonight, we're supposed to get our first hard freeze of the season. Since I'm not looking forward to the prospect of ice on the roof, I reluctantly put on my warmest clothes and went up to remove all the water while it was still liquid. This isn't pleasant work in nice weather, but it miserable up there when the temperature is near freezing and there's a thirty mile an hour wind. I have a feeling that my days of doing this are numbered. The roof has two levels. There is a lower carport level and then about three feet higher is the main roof. I access the main roof from the lower carport roof and then climb or take a giant step up to the main roof. Now that I'm having problems with my hip, I'm not as agile as I once was. Getting my leg up and over the three foot gap between the two flat surfaces isn't as easy as it used to be. I'm careful and methodical when I'm up on the roof, but this is beginning to seem like a job for a younger man.

I'm having problems with Blogger again. I wonder if Google even cares about this platform anymore. I sure have been having difficulties uploading and posting lately. Blogger will work for a little while and then it will disappear. Sometimes the text will appear, but all the pictures disappear. This has been happening for weeks. I notice in the forums that other people are having the same problem, but usually Google tech support keeps saying that nothing is wrong. It's frustrating to have no control over something you've put so much effort into. Maybe I should have started a Wordpress blog, but it's way too late for that now.

When I was at the grocery store today, I noticed a woman who was randomly opening bags of popcorn and chips on the shelves and offering samples to other customers. The woman was clearly nuts, but apparently management hadn't noticed her yet. Some people took the chips she offered, but most shied away from her. When she offered ma a sample, I politely declined.  I really felt like saying, "Why are you even here? Shouldn't you be in Walmart?" Probably it will be a loon like this who will win the lottery tonight.

I keep hoping that the furnace keeps working. So far, so good this winter. How do you Northerners cope with this weather? It hasn't even snowed yet, and I'm already sick of Winter.

Mack is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 2080

I was expecting to see lots of cute dogs on the Internet today. Hey, it is National Dog Day. Instead I see a disturbing and very graphic POV video of the senseless murder of two journalists on live TV taken by the shooter himself and posted immediately to Twitter. Is this what our world has come to? It's very sad. There will be the usual outrage about guns and gun violence in the weeks to come, but the problem goes far beyond guns. There are simply way too many crazy people and it has become socially unacceptable to lock them up in insane asylums. When I was a kid, every state had a huge network of mental hospitals and it was a fairly easy process to have a loony relative committed. I once knew a man who was the director of one of these state hospitals. He took me on a tour back when I was in college. It scared me. A lot of the people who were locked up seemed no different than I was.

Later, when my own mother was diagnosed as manic depressive, I became somewhat of a mental health advocate. I never dreamed that mental health advocacy would lead to this. We have gone too far. Giving people Prozac and tossing them out on the street again isn't going to stop school shootings and senseless violence perpetrated by crazy people. We have to develop a way to stop these people before they hurt someone. I'm sure that a lot of you saw the film Minority Report. That's exactly where we are headed if we don't get a grip on this situation. We have almost reached a tipping point. You can see it in the rhetoric of politicians. And you can see it in your friends Facebook postings. I don't care what you think about mental health issues. Society needs stability to survive and it will get that stability one way or another. When crazy people threaten the rest of the world's sanity, the lunacy simply has to stop.

The stock market had a good day, but today's gains did little to assuage my uneasiness. This roller coaster ride has already chopped over 8% off the value of my investment portfolio in just a matter of weeks. I used to take these meltdowns in stride. I knew, and still believe, that the market will always bounce back. The problem is that you can never be sure when it will bounce back. It might be months and it might be years. The older you get, the more you start to think that you might not live long enough to see the next boom in this perpetual boom and bust cycle. My Dad lived quite comfortably off his old fashioned university pension. I don't think many of us who depend on an increasingly volatile market and a 401K plan for security will do nearly as well.

I had a long conversation today with a guy who seems destined to become the new brand manager for a company I work with. I don't know if this is good or bad for me. New brand managers often want to get rid of old suppliers. I was asked for my opinions and I gave them. We'll see what happens. I've had a long run with this particular company, but nothing lasts forever. Hey, there's always room for a September surprise. Maybe the guy actually listened to what I had to say.

It seems like I just took Dot to physical therapy yesterday, but it's already time to take her again. This year is going by very quickly. I'm not sure whether to rest Dot tomorrow morning, or take her on her normal walk. She does seem a little bit stronger. Maybe we can do both. I'm not having much luck strengthening Dot's weak rear leg, but I am getting better at anticipating when she is going to poop. For two day in a row I have recognized the telltale signs and gotten her outside in the nick of time. It's too bad I can't do this while I'm sleeping. That's when most of the pooping occurs.

I hope tomorrow is a calm and peaceful day for everyone. With any luck, Dot will be able to go her full 18 minutes in the underwater treadmill. Maybe I'll remember to take out the trash too. That's enough to make Thursday a success for me. I don't set the bar very high these days.

Cammy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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