Day 4783

It was a fairly typical Saturday. I did my grocery shopping and continued to be amazed at how expensive everything is getting. I did my walking and was equally amazed at how slow I'm getting. I'm still making an effort though. It seems important to keep moving.

There was a light mist in the air when we took Dawn on her early walk this morning. It never really turned into rain, but my jacket was wet by the time we returned home. Dawn was wet too. I think she would have preferred staying home. I wish everything would dry out. There are still leaves to rake and I don't want the roof leak to reappear. I was thinking of repairing the damaged areas with what remains of my five gallon bucket of Armorflex silicon coating, but the surface needs to be dry before you can apply this stuff. I'm not sure if I can manage to lift the bucket up to the roof either.

I couldn't find shredded wheat at the store today. Hopefully the shelves will be restocked before I run out completely. I have become such a creature of habit that I don't know what I'd do if I'm forced to eat something else for breakfast. At least I found everything else on my list. I was actually very close to the gym this morning, but I came home and walked in the park instead because I didn't want to leave the groceries in the car. I didn't want my week's supply of strawberries to go bad.

I'm beginning to think that the bald eagles have moved somewhere else. I haven't seen them for over a month and I'm out in the park every day. It still seems kind of ironic that the birds would disappear right after the city fenced off several acres of land near their nest. The eagles stay so high in the trees that I don't think they care what is happening on the ground anyway unless it is something they can eat.

No leaks today. The ceiling is stained again though. It's probably not worth bleaching the stains away with more rain on the way, but the task is back on my to-do list. I really need to get serious about hiring a roofing company to replace the roof. I find it very irritating that replacing a roof has become so expensive, but being mad isn't going to stop the leaks. I need to find someone who will give me a twenty year guarantee. In twenty years from now I'm probably not going to be around anyway.

I looked at some of the test pictures I took with the star tracker yesterday and finally discovered where panorama pictures were being saved when I hit the "save to local" button in the Benro app. I thought they were being sent to the camera, but apparently they are being saved on my iPhone instead. This is good to know if I ever get around to actually using the tracker. For now it is just something to test on a slow day.

Hopefully the weather will stay dry for Dawn's Sunday outing tomorrow. Rain or shine, I'll probably go mall walking as well. There will definitely be ice cream.

Molly is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 4726

I would have preferred to sleep in this morning, but Dawn and Janet were ready to walk. Did it rain last night? The ground was very wet even though I don't remember it raining. There was a light mist in the air and my coat was damp by the time we returned home. Dawn had a good walk though. We took our lights this morning because we got started early, but we didn't need heavy coats. It was surprisingly warm today.

After breakfast I installed the latest firmware on the star tracker and tested everything to make sure it still worked. This took about an hour. I must have upgraded the firmware on this tracker at least a dozen times by now. There have been quite a few changes to the software app that controls the tracker as well. After many hours of testing, I've still only used this thing out in the field once. I guess it was a good purchase though. It has kept me occupied for many hours and I suspect that I've learned a lot along the way. One thing I've learned is that I'm not quite as interested in astronomy as I thought I was. The night sky is fascinating, but I'd really rather stay inside at night.

I changed my eye doctor appointment because it turned out to be on the same day I need to take Janet to and from dental surgery. When they asked when I'd like to reschedule, I felt like saying how about several years from now. I know my eye doctor is going to want to do cataract surgery and I'm not ready yet. Somehow it really bothers me that I won't be able to quickly change focus between near and far objects anymore. The artificial lens is just a simple fixed focus lens usually optimized for distance viewing.

It was fairly warm by the time I took my long walk, but it was not a nice day. It's been grey and gloomy all day. There were lots of people with cameras and binoculars when I passed the eagle's nest. I thought it was funny that the three Muscovy ducks were wandering through all the gawkers and being totally ignored. I'm sure the ducks thought the people were there to feed them and they looked pissed. "Hey, what about us," they seemed to be saying.

Construction continues on the world's most elaborate stone gates. I would have liked to be a fly on the wall at the meeting where the city approved these five gates. I'm still not sure what their purpose is, but there had to be a less expensive way to accomplish the park department's goals.

I think I've got my equipment ready for the first Santa Paws photo shoot tomorrow morning. I always take an extra camera body and a spare strobe light and power supply in case something breaks. Likely the only thing that is going to break is me. I'm getting too old for this. Dogs are small and I'm down on my knees a lot trying to get the best angle. I'm sure I've already mentioned that my knees are terrible. Last year I brought a cane to one of the photo shoots, but it didn't help much. Oh, well. This event is a good fund raiser for the dogs. I don't really do enough to help the rescue Dalmatians.

I can postpone my weekly grocery shopping, but I'm not sure how I'm going to get my steps tomorrow. Santa Paws days are long. Did I manage to get 10,000 steps last year? I don't even remember. 

Gretta is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 4163

Another rainy day. I think it's supposed to be this way for the rest of the week. This would have been the week to go out to the Davis Mountains. It's still clear out there. I don't know what this proves other than it's very difficult to plan ahead and sometimes I'm just unlucky

I guess having a regular physical exam is an attempt to plan ahead. I do try to stay healthy, even though maintaining your health depends on a certain amount of luck as well. Since I was having blood work done today, I needed to fast and couldn't eat breakfast before my 10 AM appointment. This made for a long morning. I drove to the doctor's office in the rain and noticed that I need new windshield wipers. One more thing to add to my to-do list.

Physical exams are always a mix of good and bad news. The good news was that my doctor seemed pleased with my overall health. The bad news was that I'm due for another colonoscopy. It doesn't seem like ten years since my last colonoscopy, but time flies when you are growing old. I always ask about my ongoing foot pain and my frozen shoulder, but I'm never happy with the answers I get. There's no real cure for osteoarthritis. When the protective cartilage that cushions the ends of your bones wears down over time, there's not a lot you can do. Your choices are usually limited to pain medications, physical therapy, and surgery. I've known plenty of people who have had knee, hip, and shoulder replacements. I'm not sure I want to go down that road.

Dawn didn't get a walk at all today. We tried, but she had no interest in getting wet. It took some planning to take my own longer walk, but I managed to find some dry time between the bands of rain moving from the southwest to the northeast. I got caught in a few sprinkles, but for the most part I stayed pretty dry. This wet weather seems to bring out the snakes. I've seen snakes almost every time I've walked lately.

I made another attempt to process some of the pictures I took last week and wasn't happy with the results. It is much easier to take pictures of dogs. The night sky is quite dim and the stars are always moving, so you can't simply take a very long exposure. Successful astrophotography depends on taking a lot of shorter images of the same subject and then merging them together using specialized software that compensates for the rotation of the earth. There are many steps to this stacking process. You want to keep both your foreground and your stars sharp, while avoiding the camera noise that often accompanies long exposures. I'm learning, but I've got a ways to go.

The Atlas V SBIRS GEO Flight 5 launch was successful today. Several of my launch photographer friends were there and got great pictures. I'm always a little envious when I see these pictures, but I don't think I'll be returning to Florida any time soon. The East Coast gas shortage, lack of rental cars, and the huge number of people who want to get out of the house and return to Disneyland or the beach are going to make travel difficult for a while. I'm hoping that life will eventually return to normal, but clearly we're not there yet.

Dismal weather always puts me in a bad mood. I wonder how long it's going to be before I see the sun again? I spent a lot of time napping today, but that's the way it goes on a rainy day. I'll make up for lost time when the sun returns.

Skippy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 4007

Today was dismal. I woke up to the sounds of thunder and rain pounding on the roof. The temperature was only 39 degrees. Clearly we weren't going on a walk with Dawn this morning. This wasn't a case of waiting an hour for the skies to clear. It looked like it was going to be an all day rain. Dawn didn't want to go outside anyway. We couldn't even get her to go out in the back yard and pee.

I turned on the pumps, which actually worked for a change, and we ate breakfast. There were all sorts of things I could have done today, but it was hard to get motivated. I could have gotten more familiar with my new camera. I could have installed the new electrical wiring monitoring device. I could have explored a new article idea I have for Sky & Telescope. I did none of these things. I decide to stop a toilet from running instead.

I should have known from the start that this would be a thankless experience. I can no longer get the parts I need for the aging French toilet and have been forced to clean and repair the existing parts in the flush mechanism instead. Unlike American toilets that use a simple float mechanism to stop the flow of water when the tank is full, this Rube Goldberg device uses a complex system of tiny rubber membranes to accomplish the same thing. When the membranes being to leak, the toilet runs. I've cleaned and reassembled these part so many times, but each time it gets a little harder to achieve a perfect seal. I think I made things a little better today, but I still hear an annoying drip, drip, drip sound. I get so tired of fixing broken things, but there is really no alternative.

The rain started to subside around mid-afternoon and I was getting cabin fever, so I decided to take a walk. I dressed warmly because it was still very cold. I should have worn a raincoat. Although the weather radar showed that the rain was moving away from us, there was still a fine, wind driven mist down by the lake. Even though it wasn't raining hard, it didn't take long to get wet. I just kept walking. I was wearing two warm coats and the inner coat didn't appear to be getting wet. Needless to say, I didn't encounter many other people on my walk. It was cold and nasty outside but I enjoyed the solitude. Long, quiet walks are a good time to think. By the time I returned home I had walked over five miles. 

I've got an idea for a second Sky & Telescope article and I'm going to start writing an initial draft tomorrow. What have I got to lose? If the rain clears up, I'll definitely have to go up on the roof. We got a lot of rain today and even with the pumps running most of the day, there will still be a lot of standing water. I might write my one contact at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as well to see if I can get myself invited to the Perseverance rover landing in February.

It was a miserable day, but oddly a cold walk in the rain helped to get me motivated. Who knows how long this will last. I might not even want to get out of bed in the morning. I noticed today that some of my very old blog posts have reappeared on Facebook. When were these posts reinstated and why is everything earlier than 2015 OK now? The newer blog posts are still gone. I've given up trying to figure Facebook out. My blog should never have been banned for violating community standards in the first place. Oh, well. I think robot algorithms control the whole thing anyway. 

Cookie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3676

Another dismal day. I think it rained more today than it did yesterday. I wasn't that hungry, but I went out for breakfast anyway because I thought it would make the day go faster. Rainy days have a tendency to be long days. I wanted something cold but I didn't feel like cereal, so lox and bagels sounded good. This used to be my go to breakfast when I traveled a lot, but it's been a while. Lox and bagels turned out to be a good choice. It brought back memories and made me forget about the rain for a while.

After picking up something for dinner at the grocery store, I came back home and got the pumps working. I'm not sure the pumps on the roof even help that much, but seeing water exit through the garden hoses attached to the pumps makes me feel better. If the rain ever stops, I'll need to go up on the roof and finish the job.

A few days ago Janet got some solar powered pathway lights at the dollar store and to my surprise they actually worked. A dollar for a solar powered light is a pretty good price. Nothing lasts long at the dollar store, so I went back today and got some more of these lights. Like the rubber snakes I once found here to keep birds from pooping on my car, I knew I would never see these things again. During a break in the rain, I placed the lights along the gravel path leading to the alley. I don't expect them to last very long, but for now they are working and actually look pretty good. So much for landscaping on a rainy day.

During the next break in the rain, I decided to take my walk. This worked for a while, but it was a long walk on a rainy day. Before I returned home I was pretty wet. I was really on my own today. Even the joggers and dog walkers opted to stay dry this time. I don't know why it has become such a big deal to keep moving. Probably just because there is little else to do and it is easier than going to the gym.

When I woke up last night I noticed that I was seeing ghost images of the little LED lights on the network router through my left eye. I only saw a single point of light from each bulb with my right eye. My eye doctor warmed me this would happen when cataracts started to develop. I sometimes saw ghost images when I looked up at the moon, but this was more pronounced. When daylight returned, my vision seemed more or less normal, but double images are still not good. For several years my eye doctor has told me that I was developing cataracts. At some point I will need to deal with it. The doctor says I've got five years at best. Cataract surgery is pretty safe and is usually successful, but I'm not looking forward to the day when I need to make this decision. I depend on my eyes and hate to mess with them. I'm also seeing signs of keratosis on the skin under this eye. I guess I need to deal with this too. Jeez. I hate growing old.

I think the weather is going to clear up tomorrow. I certainly hope so. The sooner I get the water off the roof, the less I have to worry about leaks.

Chief is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3296

Cold rain. Leaking roof. Incontinent dog. Put these ingredients together and you've got the basis for a sad country song. Basically, today was a mess. I started putting buckets on the floor as soon as I got up. The pumps weren't working, so I had to climb up on the roof in the rain to prime them. When I returned, Dash was stumbling down the hall, knocking over the buckets I'd placed a little earlier. There was no morning walk today, but there was definitely poop to clean up. There's always poop to clean up.

The rain didn't freeze today, but it still might. It is very cold. As the day progressed, the leaks in the ceiling continued to spread and I ran out of buckets. I had to go to Home Depot and pick up a few of those big plastic containers that people use to store sweaters and children's toys. I thought a big container would be better at catching water than three or four smaller buckets. It's a shame that I had to buy more containers. I already have a ton of these things in the storage warehouse, but they are all full of stuff. The containers worked, but they made it even harder for Dash to navigate the hallway.

I'm stuck with this mess until the rainy period is over. Lord knows when that will be. There is bad weather in the forecast as far as the eye can see. You can't repair the roof when it's wet and I'm not sure the roofers can find the leak anyway. They certainly failed the first time they tried.

I went out and picked up some meds for Dash after lunch because driving in the rain was preferable to listening to water drip into plastic buckets. I'm sure I'll be driving in the rain tomorrow too. Dash has an appointment for one of the periodic echocardiograms we use to monitor his heart. Hopefully, the blood clot hasn't returned. I'm also hoping that he won't poop in the car on the way to the cancer center. That's always a possibility since it is very doubtful that he'll get a walk before his appointment.

I finally got the pumps on the roof working but they don't remove enough water to stop the leak. The pumps are basically useless. I'm just about out of ideas for stopping the leak while it is still raining. I've resigned myself to the fact that I'm going to have to use my new car fund to replace the roof. Jeez. What's the fun in that? Even with a new roof, it's still going to be a very old house with a host of other problems. I'd rather have a new car.

The first pictures from New Horizons were received today and Ultima Thule looks like a big snowman. Weird to think that a big icy snowman has been lurking at the edge of the solar system for billions of years and we didn't even know it existed until last year. I bet there's lots of other stuff floating around in space that we don't know about either.

Clearly I'm no rocket scientist. The New Horizon's team at Johns Hopkins was able to fly their spacecraft directly to a tiny 19 mile long speck in the sky billions of miles away from Earth and I can't even find how water is getting into my house.

Maybe things will be better tomorrow. If Dash gets a clean bill of health at the vet, maybe he won't have to take Plavix anymore. Realistically, this isn't very likely. It's not very likely that the rain will stop or the stock market will rally either. The Apple earnings warning today even surprised me. Apple hasn't had a dire warning like this since 2002. For many investors this news will seem like a sign of the apocalypse. I have a feeling that 2019 is going to be a very bumpy ride.

Dash is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2965

The stars were definitely not aligned today. Everything seemed wrong. Dash is still not eating well. I've just about run out of options. Usually if he's not hungry when he wakes up, his appetite will return after a morning walk. Not today. I kept trying different varieties of food and eventually got him to nibble at a few things. He just wasn't hungry though. The tremors have gotten worse as well. Several times today, I noticed that he was shivering a lot. I tried putting a blanket on him, but he didn't seem cold. I went to the vet and got some more Cerenia pills, but I'm not even sure if nausea is causing his problems. I wish Dash could talk and tell me what was going on. His vets don't seem to have any answers.

I received another jury summons this morning. Jury services has taken away my ability to postpone the summons any longer, so it looks like I will have to appear this time. I think I have some perfectly good reasons to be exempt, but none of them qualify. I don't want to catch the flu by sitting with hundreds of people in the jury pool room. I have a sick dog to take care of. A sick person would be a valid excuse, but they don't seem to care about dogs. I don't think they'd even like to hear that I have no faith in the judicial process.

The stock market not only continued Friday's sell off, it had a spectacular crash, dropping over 1,000 points in a few hours. Not good. I'll be the first to admit that the market has gotten ahead of itself, but this is no justification for the largest intra-day drop in history. The business channels had all sorts of explanations for today's crash, but it all comes down to fear and greed. Greedy people pushed the market too high and fearful people are dragging it too low. I hate these wild swings, even though I've seen them many times before. I have no pension or retirement plan. The market is all I have and on days like this, it's of very little use. Ironically, one of the reasons that the market dropped today was the fear that interest rates will rise. Give me a break. Interest rates are still incredibly low. I actually wish interest rates were high. I miss the days when a simple, safe bank CD could earn you 10%.

It looks like I'm going to have to take the freezer apart and defrost the evaporator coil again. The refrigerator is starting to get warm. I guess it's still worth waiting for the President's Day sales, but trying to keep the current refrigerator running for another month is getting real old. I could do the defrost procedure in my sleep by now, but it is still a giant pain in the ass. I've tried keeping the freezer on a warmer setting so the coil won't freeze quite as fast, but it doesn't seem to make any difference. Every week and a half, I'm faced with transferring all the food to a large cooler and taking the freezer section apart to expose the evaporator coil. Hopefully, by this time next month there will be a new refrigerator in our kitchen that will last until it's time for me to be shipped off to assisted living.

Today's events would have been bad enough on a sunny day, but cold temperatures and dismal, grey skies made things even worse. This weather is crazy. Yesterday I was wearing shorts and today it's back to long underwear and a down ski jacket. Oddly, Dash enjoys the cold weather. Even though he had an upset stomach and got me all stressed out with his shivering episodes, he still wanted me to take him on his daily walks. These two walks were probably the only things normal about today.

Zorro is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2260

I dropped my car off at the dealership right after we walked the dogs this morning. Amazingly, I was able to replicate the intermittent electrical problem I've been having. This almost never happens. Usually, when I bring my car in with an intermittent problem, it works perfectly for the service technician and nobody believes there is anything wrong. Sometimes, it has taken me three or four trips to resolve these frustrating on-again, off-again problems. Who knows how long it will actually take to get the car fixed, but at least everyone believed me today.

Dot had another accident in her bed last night. She managed to eat most of the evidence again too, before either of us woke up.  Yuk. I'm surprised that Dash didn't have an accident as well. Since it was raining outside, he categorically refused to go in the yard and do his business. I told him that he'd have to hold it until morning, but he didn't seem to care. Luckily, the rain finally stopped, so I think we're back to normal again. I've really grown to appreciate a day with perfect weather. When everything else is a disaster, nice weather can really help. Nope. The weather wasn't very nice today, but it would have made life easier if it was.

Work is picking up again. I have three new articles to write and several website updates to make. There was a time when I could have done all of this in one day, but not anymore. Since I'm still limping along with a nasty cold, these new jobs could take me the rest of the week to finish. It felt like I was busy today, but at the end of the day, I'd accomplished virtually nothing.

The high points of my day were almost pathetic. I used the sanitize setting on the washing machine to clean a particularly messy dog blanket and discovered that the super hot water in the waste water lines accidentally helped to unclog a sluggish shower drain. I was fascinated with the sanitize setting when we first got the front loader, but quickly discovered that it took forever to do a load of wash and wasted a lot of water. Maybe I ought to use this setting more often if it helps to keep the plumbing lines clear. On the other hand, it is possible that this super heated water caused our underground water leak. I'm not certain what the melting point of the lead solder they used to use in old cast iron pipes, but I'm sure it is quite low. The plumber did tell me that the joints in one of the cast iron sewer lines coming out of the utility room had failed when he fixed our underground leak last year.

I finally received a credit from the water company to for the water we lost during the pipe leak. Unfortunately, I thought the credit notice was a water bill and wrote a check to the water company for the amount of the credit. How was I to know?  The credit memo looked exactly like a bill if you didn't notice the tiny type that said "no payment required. Luckily, I finally did figure out what was going on while I was looking for a stamp for the envelope and I tore up the check. I guess I should have noticed that the dollar amount on the bill was negative too. I always forget that the standard way to show negative numbers is to put them in parentheses. I'm glad I noticed my mistake, because the water company would have taken my money and just sent me a larger credit notice next month.

I know you're tired of hearing about how yucky having the flu feels, so I'll quit whining about it. Eventually, I'm bound to feel better.

Maggie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day