Day 3413

My old storage warehouse is under new management. When Janet's unit came up for renewal recently, they lowered her rate to encourage her to stay. This was unheard of under the old management. They kept raising my rate year after year until it was more than double what I initially paid. It's too bad this management change didn't happen a few months earlier. I didn't really want to move. If these guys had offered to lower my rent by even a modest amount, they could have saved me a whole lot of trouble. Oh, well. Too late now.

It's counterintuitive, but I've learned the hard way that things tend to last a lot longer if you use them. When you use something you tend to oil it, wash it, paint it, or do whatever is necessary to keep it functional. I used to think that storing things away would keep them in perfect condition indefinitely, but this has not been the case. Today I discovered that some mid-century furniture I'd been keeping in Janet's unit had become badly stained. I thought this stuff would do well at auction, but now it looks like it will need to go to a thrift store. Jeez. I've ruined so many things by storing them away for decades and forgetting about them. Metal gets rusty. Rubber gets brittle and cracks. Fabric gets moth holes. Heat destroys electronic components. Wood warps. These things happen very gradually and you don't notice if you aren't looking. If someone had told me all this years ago I probably wouldn't have listened. It still seems like storage should be a form of suspended animation. Why can't I put something away and then start using it again thirty years later? I guess the world doesn't work that way.

While I was picking up the mid-century furniture today we found some brand new Kuranda dog beds that were still in the shipping carton. We used to buy these beds by the dozen for the Dalmatians in the rescue program. I forgot that we even had some leftover beds. We don't need them anymore because our current kennel for the rescue dogs already provides very nice beds. The Kuranda beds didn't go to waste. We gave them to a local rescue group we like. I didn't open the box, but I doubt that storage hurt these things. Kuranda beds are virtually indestructible.

I wish I was indestructible. It is a bit disconcerting that a brisk three mile walk leaves me winded. Three miles used to be nothing. I see people every day who run this distance and probably much longer. Dot and Dash had been sick for so long that I guess I didn't realize that our walks were gradually becoming slower and slower. I'm going to continue walking. Activity is good. Walking in the park certainly beats mowing the grass. Maybe if I keep at this, I can pick up the pace a bit.

The weather forecast still looks dismal. It's supposed to start raining at 4 AM this morning and continue for the rest of the week. There's always a chance that the forecast is wrong. Weather forecasts are often wrong in Texas. Also, it could be raining in one part of the city and dry where we live. There's a pretty good chance that we'll get some rain though. We'll see what happens. The pumps and the buckets are ready.

I have no plans for tomorrow. I guess that's not surprising. I had no plans for today either.

Parker is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1179

Well, I discovered why my car had been leaking oil. Virtually all the engine seals have gone bad. Rubber is a great invention, but very old rubber is virtually worthless. My service representative at the Land Rover dealer called me today and told me that the head gaskets, the oil pan gasket, the transmission seals, and a couple of other things that leak on the Defender all needed to be replaced. The gaskets themselves aren't very expensive, but the engine and transmission have to be torn apart to get at everything. This definitely isn't very good news.

The one thing that old houses, old cars, and old people all have in common is that they all deteriorate with age. It's a bitch when all this deterioration starts happening at once. If there is a general theme to my life right now, it is that everything is falling apart.

It wasn't always this way. Janet and I lived in the house for over ten years before there were any problems with the roof at all. The Defender used to run flawlessly for years at a time when it was newer. Most telling of all, I used to be able to have a beer with lunch, two or three glasses of wine with dinner and eat bacon for breakfast every day. Those days are gone. Things are falling apart.

The one bright spot amid all this dry rot and deterioration is that I'm actually starting to feel better as a result of my new diet. I have more energy now and I've actually lost eight pounds in the last two months. I really shouldn't lose much more weight, since I wasn't fat to begin with, but it's nice to be getting back to the weight I maintained for the first forty years of my life.

I got a little adapter in the mail today that allows me to use the headphone jack with my new indestructible iPhone case. I'll add the adapter to the shoebox of weird adapters and plugs I've already bought to resolve awkward connection issues. I could take my phone to the South Pole now, although I doubt that it will ever leave the neighborhood. The phone used to look like a sleek BMW roadster. Now it looks like a H1 Hummer.

Lots of dog activities on tap for this weekend. Dot and Dash get a bath. There's a new dog to photograph at the Dalmatian Rescue kennels. And of course there's always Sunday's trip to the dog park.

Bacardi is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1167

On days like this I realize that I'm no match for Mother Nature. Since it is supposed to be cold and possibly wet later in the week, I took advantage of today's nice weather to get an early start on Spring cleanup activities. It only took a cursory inspection of the house to reveal galvanized gutters that had rusted through, rubber window seals that had dried and cracked, and a lot of peeling paint. The sun, the wind, and the rain had taken their toll, like they always do. I find it harder and harder to stay ahead of the game. Inexorably, the house and the yard it sits in are being reclaimed by the forces of nature.

I remember seeing a short animated film a few years ago that illustrated how cities like New York and Paris would revert to nature if all the people that inhabited them disappeared. In only a few hundred years, the cities were crumbling. In less than a thousand years, all traces of them were gone. We may think we have tamed the earth, but in the end nature always wins.

I'm not comfortable with decay. I wish our bodies didn't deteriorate. I wish my aging but beloved Defender 90 wasn't falling apart. I am continually irritated to see the sun, wind, and rain do their best to convert my house back to the elements from which it came. Wood rots quickly. Metal rusts faster than you think. Constant painting and upkeep just slows the process down. Like Dr. Who said in the Waters of Mars episode. "Water is patient. Water always wins."

There are some good things to this constant cycle of birth and decay. Last week's rain and this week's warm weather have already produced a bumper crop of early Spring flowers. When we took the dogs to the dog park today, I noticed that all the trees had already started to bud. In a few weeks the redbud and dogwood trees will be in full bloom. I will continue to try my best to stay on top of things. We'll plant some new grass next month and hope for the best. I'll put on a new roof which will immediately come under attack from the sun, wind, and rain. Life will go on. For a while anyway...

Nora is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day