Day 2819

I spent the day mending fences with clients, solving odd website problems, and trying to keep Dash from continually getting stuck in corners with his cone. I wish Dash would quit trying to lick his wound whenever I take the cone off, but I guess that's what dogs do. Dash hates wearing the cone and I try to take it off whenever I can, but he's not being very cooperative. Whenever I turn my back, he's quietly licking his injured dewclaw again.

It was actually enjoyable to be working on websites today. I like to stay busy, but work is hit and miss these days. Usually when I'm busy, it's because someone has a crisis. Most of my bread and butter work has gone away. I should have stayed in architecture. My writing work has declined because younger people don't read, and my design work has declined because there are too many easy alternatives to hiring someone like me. Every time I turn on the TV I see ads from GoDaddy promising that you can build your own business website for next to nothing in less than an hour. It's hard to compete with that.

I suspect that my career would be nearing an end by now even if I'd stayed in architecture. Many of my classmates from architecture school have already retired. Some are traveling. Some have taken up painting. Some have died of cancer. At least I'm still alive. I don't have a house filled with floodwater either, so I guess I'd better quit complaining.

I was kind of astonished by the new iPhone X introduction today. Would you pay $1000 for a phone? I saw some pundit on one of the business shows try to rationalize the exorbident price by saying that unlike your car, which just sits in your driveway most of the time, your phone is an essential part of your life and you couldn't function without it. Have we really come to this? I could get along just fine without my phone. I got one phone call today and it was on my old land line. Staying connected is overrated.

I postponed jury duty again. Eventually, I will have to serve, but I'll keep delaying things as long as I can. Sitting in the jury pool room is one of my least favorite things. I don't know why I keep getting jury summons. I've been called many times and have never been asked to sit on a jury. I don't seem to be what the lawyers are looking for. I probably wouldn't make a good juror anyway. I think everyone is guilty.

The shower didn't leak this morning. I don't know why. My latest theory is that there is a very slow leak and it takes about three days for enough water two accumulate under the tile floor that it starts leaking out of a crack. I may be wrong. I don't have any theories about why Dash continues to lick his paws. He used to lick them even before his injury.

Marcie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2613

Good grief Firefox. Quit telling me that Google is a suspicious site and refusing to let me log into my Blogger account. You're confused buddy. Sometimes I get so sick of SSL Server Certificates, encrypted websites, anti-virus software, and e-mail spam that I want to scream. Developers have made things so complicated in their ongoing efforts to thwart the hackers and spammers that my browser doesn't even work half the time. I really miss the old days when only a few geeks with dial up modems used the Internet and security was totally unnecessary. I was eventually able to access my Blogger account or you wouldn't be reading this, but why does it always have to be such a hassle?

It's hard to tell whether the world has become more complicated or if I have just become less tolerant. All I know is that even easy things seem hard these days. Traffic is horrendous. You can never reach anyone the phone anymore. Cable TV is an expensive joke. My U-verse service is always freezing or crashing. All my voicemail is from telemarketers. I don't think I can make it through a single day without rebooting something to bring it back to life. Right now my phone says "No SIM card installed" when I know perfectly well that there is a working SIM card inside. One more thing to reboot.

Maybe if the rest of the world worked smoothly, it would be easier for me to deal with the dogs. I'm continually stepping in dog poop in the back yard and cleaning it up indoors after Dot has made a mess. The washing machine seems to be running continuously now. I've gotten used to helping Dot walk, but now I've got to worry that Dash will fall as well. He's recovering from the massive cluster of seizures he experienced recently, but he's still pretty shaky. Often, when he lifts his leg to pee outdoors, it will throw him off balance and he will stumble. Dash's energy is returning a lot faster than his sense of balance. I have to be real careful when I take him on walks. The doctor says he should be back to normal in about three weeks, but it is going to be a long three weeks.

I've gotten Dash to eat dry food again. That's a good sign. Dot's urinary incontinence has stabilized a bit as well. If I take her outside every three hours, she seldom pees in the house anymore. I hate to wake her up when she's sleeping, but I hate for her to sleep in a puddle of pee either. Dash still tries to climb on the bed even though he's not ready yet. I'm trying to train him to sleep on the floor, but that's a work in progress. Basically, life is still a three ring circus.

I've been caring for sick dogs for so long now that I've almost completely forgotten what a normal life is like. I'm not complaining, but the combination of extended isolation, stress, and sleep deprivation can't be good for me. I'm actually getting pretty good at this, but I would definitely not pick nursing as a career choice. If you're a nurse, you have my admiration. It's much easier to be a writer.

I had a few small website updates to complete today, but it was just as well that I wasn't busy. Dot was restless all afternoon and it was hard to concentrate. I think I'm coming down with a cold too. I was taking Dot outside to clean her off this afternoon when I really had to sneeze. I wanted to reach for a Kleenex in my pocket, but realized that I still had poop on my hands. Such is life.

I wish it was Friday tomorrow. No, scratch that. I just remembered that I have to do a run through for this weekend's baffling photo shoot on Friday. I'd rather just have a nice breakfast and go back to bed.

Taylor is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2557

Sometimes it's embarrassing to explain how I spend my day. Even the big events can be kind of trivial. Spelling errors always bother me. Especially when I make them myself. This morning I noticed a glaring spelling error in yesterday's blog post and I wasted hours trying to correct it. You'd think it would be easy to just correct the error and update the blog. Well, nothing is easy with me. Every time I publish a post, it is time stamped and syndicated to my various social media accounts. Correcting the blog itself would not correct the way it looks on Facebook, Twitter, or anywhere else. I had to figure out a way to erase all those links and then publish a new version with yesterday evening's date. Heaven forbid that it looked like I skipped a day. Does any of this even matter? Of course not. Does it matter to me. Apparently so. I finally got everything looking exactly the way it should and now the unfortunate spelling error never even existed. Morning wasted.

I've definitely got a cold now.  Once you catch a cold there isn't a lot you can do. There are hundreds of cold remedies on the market, but I find that very few of them help at all. You've just got to let the cold run its course. A lot of people take antihistamines, but I hate the way they make me feel. My head feels like it is going to explode after I've taken antihistamine pills. Cough drops provide mild relief from a sore throat, but if the sore throat is bad, you can go through a bag of cough drops in a day. That's a lot of sugar and menthol. I don't have a fever, so I'm hoping this cold won't be too bad. The weather certainly isn't helping. It was nasty again today.

I got a package from B&H this morning. Last week I'd ordered two small items that could have easily fit in the same envelope. Only one of the items arrived. The other is being shipped separately and apparently I have to sign for it. Why? It would have been so easy to dump both items in the same envelope. Since I hate waiting around all day for the UPS guy, now I've got to drive down to the UPS service center and pick up the shipment myself. UPS drivers rarely leave packages at the front door anymore, since there are people who follow the brown trucks around and then steal the packages. I'll be glad when Amazon perfects drone delivery. Maybe they can use military grade drones and just shoot the package thieves. I don't think anyone would mind.

I thought I'd have Pad Thai for dinner tonight. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I had enough reward points at Pei Wei to get a free meal. When I went to pick up my dinner, I discovered that my points had expired. Damn. I must have looked really disappointed because the guy at the register looked up my account on the computer and told me he'd give me the Pad Thai for free anyway because my points had only expired a few days ago. What a nice surprise. For a few short moments I felt like humanity wasn't doomed after all.

Dot had lots of accidents today. I always thought that poop was the big problem, but now I'm discovering that pee is actually harder to clean up. When Dot pees inside, it soaks through everything it touches almost instantly. I did a lot of laundry today and spent some time scrubbing the floor as well. I'm hoping that Dot's oncologist can give me some advice on controlling incontinence when we go for our cancer recheck on Friday.

Maybe a good night's sleep will conquer this cold. It's not very likely, but I can always hope.

Lance is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2543

I was a little better organized today. I tried to get as much done as I could while the dogs were asleep. Once they woke up, I knew it was going to be a lost cause. It was a nice day, so I got up on the roof and removed all the standing water. This is the worst time of year for keeping the roof dry. The large Oak, Elm, and Pecan trees in the yard are all shedding leaves. Wet leaves are heavy and a lot more trouble to move than dry leaves. The roof was covered with water and wet, soggy leaves, but unfortunately there are still a lot of leaves left on the trees. I have a feeling that I'm going to have to do this again.

Since the dogs were still sleeping when I returned to the house, so I moved on to my next task. I needed to replace a lot of pictures on a website, but since the client had already resized them for me, the job went quickly. I was done before noon. I checked on the dogs again and Dot was still sleeping soundly, so I took a shower. Dot often poops in her bed while I take a shower, and today was no exception. Luckily, she was still asleep and laying on a disposable pad, so I was able to clean things up easily. This is when my luck ran out.

Dash woke up while I was cleaning Dot up and immediately ran to the kitchen and started barking for his lunch. I lifted Dot up so she could join him, but I forgot to immediately take her outside to pee. Both dogs have a rice cake for lunch. It's not really a meal like breakfast or dinner, but it keeps them from getting bored. While Dot was eating her rice cake, she started to pee on a rug. Damn. I should have remembered the correct sequence of things. Everything is so complicated now. I have to cut the rice cake into tiny pieces because Dot has trouble chewing now and almost choked on a larger bite of rice cake recently.

After the dogs finish their lunch, I take them outside and then they typically used to go back to sleep again. Not anymore. Dot is restless in the afternoons now. She paces around and wants me to take her outside every ten minutes. If I ignore her, she barks. I can't ignore her for very long. Even if she manages to get out of her bed on her own, she quickly falls or manages to get stuck in a corner.

When I could tell Dot was getting tired, I penned her in an area where she couldn't hurt herself and went to the vegan take out place to pick up something for dinner. I was looking forward to the meal they had featured on their website, but it was all gone when I got there, so I had to choose something else. I've discovered that I don't like all vegetarian meals. Some are definitely better than others. I picked out something new that looked interesting and returned home, hoping that Dot hadn't pooped again.

Dot's bed was clean when I returned home, but the day wasn't over yet. She ended up pooping and falling in the mess while I was getting Dash ready for his evening walk. I was hoping for a relaxing walk after I got Dot cleaned up and started washing another load of dog blankets, but Dash wasn't being cooperative. We were almost home when he froze and refused to move forward. Nothing I could do would convince him to walk up the final hill that completed out journey. Finally, I gave up and we backtracked and returned home the way we came. This behavior seemed insane, but I'll give Dash the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he could smell coyotes. There are coyotes in the neighborhood again. One more thing to worry about.

By the time Janet returned from work, both dogs were exhausted and were sleeping peacefully. This is what usually happens. Janet never believes the trials and tribulations I deal with during the day.

Belle is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1096 - Blogiversary

Today I begin my fourth full year as a blogger. Maybe if I had all my ducks in row when I started this venture, I would have waited a few weeks and commenced my blogging adventure on January 1. It sure would have made keeping track of things a bit easier. One day is as good as the next, I guess. I suppose the middle of December just seemed like a good time to begin a blog. I wish I could tell you that I had discovered something profound about either myself or the world in general during the past three years. I haven't. I'm no closer to having all the answers today than I was then.

Regular readers may have discovered a few things about me, however. I'm persistent and tenacious. How else could you explain 1096 consecutive posts without missing a single day? I'm also completely self-absorbed. After all this time, I still have no desire to blog about politics, or music, or animal rescue, or even watches. I'm perfectly content to just continue telling you what I did today. I think writing on such a regular basis has actually helped me a bit with my work assignments. I don't worry so much about deadlines anymore. It's just words. Put a blank page in front of me and give me a topic. I'll fill that page fairly quickly.

I think I've become more candid than I was when I started blogging. You guys probably know me as well as anybody by now. Candor doesn't always equal adventure though. There are very few wild rides and even fewer epiphanies here. Basically, nothing happens. I'm amazed that so many of you have continued reading. I certainly hope you stick around. If I can keep this thing going for three years, I can probably keep it going for ten. I appreciate that the blog is very gradually growing more popular, but I don't expect anything dramatic to happen for quite a while. Maybe when Day 5000 rolls around, morbid curiosity will kick in and people will start speculating about how long I can continue. They might even be taking bets in Vegas about what day is going to be the very last post.

If today wasn't such a momentous anniversary, I might have told you about last night's sudden rainstorm and all the water that accumulated on the roof. I might have told you about taking another batch of aging computers to the storage warehouse, so I could find room to plug in Janet's printer and keep it running until the next Dalmatian Rescue event. I might have told you about walking the dogs and enjoying a leisurely breakfast. Hmm. I've already told you about those things though. Many, many times. Hey, if you guys can stand all the excitement, I'll see you again tomorrow.

Jasper is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1095

I think life is a lot like raking leaves. You rake the leaves, and then the next day, a whole new pile of leaves has taken their place.You repeat the process over and over again, but it seems to take forever before the leaves actually disappear. When the leaves are finally gone, you wonder if all the raking was actually worth the effort. Usually, it was always an exceptionally windy day, not your raking efforts, that cleared the last of the leaves away. Maybe it's just me, but I think many of us spend way too much time doing the same mind numbing things over and over again. What constitutes work for most of us is just a long series of repetitive chores. Then we come home and do laundry, make the bed, and vacuum over and over again. It's all a lot like raking leaves.

Breakfast was delicious this morning. I think the bed of pulled pork under my eggs might have been a bit off a bit though.  I've had a stomach ache for most of the day. I sure hope I haven't gotten food poisoning like Janet did last week. Food poisoning is no fun. On the plus side, it's the fastest way of losing weight I know of. The last time I got food poisoning, I lost ten pounds in less than a week.

There are too many printers in the house now. Now that Janet's printer is fixed, I'm having a hard time finding a place to put it. This printer was purchased primarily for use at Dalmatian Rescue events. Unfortunately, that's why it got hopelessly clogged in the first place. The printer just wasn't used enough. Now, I've got to add it to the queue of ink jet printers I'm already trying to keep unclogged. The ironic thing is none of my clients even want me to print anything anymore. A PDF file is just fine with them.

The school shooting today in Connecticut was incredibly sad. How can we keep these type of things from happening? There's going to be a lot of talk about gun control in the days ahead. I would be the first to agree that there are a ton of people who should never be allowed anywhere near a gun. How do you identify these people though? Again and again, when these mass shootings occur, I see interviews on TV where neighbors and close friends say the shooter seemed completely normal to them. Maybe we could start by banning gun ownership for anyone under 40. There aren't a lot of old serial killers and mass murderers. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I think something has fundamentally changed in society. It's a colder, more depersonalized world. There were plenty of guns when I was growing up, but these type of events were completely unheard of. All I know is that when I was a teenager, I wasn't playing Assassin's Creed, Halo, or Call of Duty eight hours a day. I was reading a new library book once a week. My parents always knew what I was doing too. Maybe it's as simple as that.

Lance is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1000

1000 days ago, I became a blogger. I didn’t really have much to say, but I was determined to say it anyway. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was convinced that if you looked at the ordinary closely enough, it would become extraordinary.

Day after day, I recorded the trivial and the absurd in my life. Even in the beginning I knew that a blog needed pictures. Each evening I showed you a different Dalmatian. They all had spots and looked very similar, but I understood they were completely unique. I knew these dogs. I had photographed each of them and had helped to find them homes.

The watches were different. I didn’t find homes for the watches. They found a home with me. I collected them all. The reason you see a new Dalmatian and a new watch every day is quite simple. I have lots and lots of pictures of both. Since I’m a visual person, I instinctively knew that every watch and dog I showed you told a story. I wasn’t so sure about my days.

On the surface, my life is extremely boring. If you were a fly on the wall, watching my daily routine would be like watching paint dry. At least that’s what I thought at first. I wondered why anyone would even bother to read this blog. Lets face it. Not much happens.

People did begin to read however, and I began to discover that even the most uneventful existence is full of mystery and nuance. The simple act of writing things down has allowed me to see things I normally never noticed. Maybe it wasn’t such a boring life after all. I had built a little business that had survived for almost 25 years without going bankrupt. I had learned to understand what goes on inside the heads of dogs. Perhaps most surprisingly of all, I was still alive.

Without the trail of breadcrumbs the blog now provides me, I probably would have already forgotten that I’ve been interviewed twice by the local news during the past 1000 days. I’ve been featured in ads for Paypal and was even flown out to San Francisco for a big photo shoot featuring two Dalmatians and me. Honeybees built a huge hive in our roof one Summer and threatened to invade the house. Another Summer I shot a video about a goat that became friends with a Great Dane for the National Geographic Channel. You may have seen it. There have been cancer scares, tornado alerts, sick dogs and much more. Through all this, I never missed a day. I posted on the same day I had surgery. I kept posting through power outages and computer failures. Hell, I had a story to tell. It was a good story too. You could even make a good case that I’d been leading a pretty interesting life after all.

The blog has taught me that almost everything you do has implications. The Dalmatian pictures have made people more aware of Dalmatian Rescue and the importance of saving these wonderful dogs. Dot and Dash now have dozens of new friends from all around the world.

Amazingly, the pictures of watches on the blog have actually made me a little money. As a result of my daily watch pictures, I am now considered a watch expert in certain circles and have written more than 300 articles and press releases for major brands like Fortis, Eterna and Versace. Who would have thought?

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. On September 10, 2001 I had no idea of what was going to happen the next day. If the blog has taught me one thing, it is this. Even after 1000 consecutive days of posting, I still can’t tell you what is going to happen tomorrow. You’re going to have to just keep reading.

Cleo is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day