Day 1216

I had to laugh this morning. When we arrived at the dog park, there must have been a dozen dogs sitting around a small tree, all looking skyward. You guessed it. There was a squirrel in the tree. Dot and Dash frequently do this in the back yard. They quickly lose interest though. A couple of the dogs in the park were more persistent. They continued to stare upward at the tree for the entire duration of our visit.

Janet often walks the dogs in the park on Sunday mornings and I am faced with a deficit of steps on my little activity tracking wristlet. I have become a slave to the thing. To meet my quota of activity, I've taken to looking for chores around the house. This is very unlike me, since I'm basically a lazy person. I guess it's a good thing though. Today I cut down a small, dead Wax Myrtle tree in the front yard and hauled the branches out to the street for big trash day next week. I meant to have the landscapers do this last month when they were here, but I forgot. This task seemed to compensate for the lack of a walk, and I felt better.

When I finished my self-appointed chores, I watched the Dr. Who episode I recorded yesterday. I guess I could have bought a TiVo box years ago and discovered this brave new world of re-arranging the natural order of things on TV much earlier, but I'm still a late bloomer about some things. I wonder what this all means for the traditional networks. With DVRs, Hulu, Netflicks, and shows like Game of Thrones, the networks don't really matter anymore. When I was a kid, every family subscribed to TV Guide magazine. They literally planned their lives around this diminutive programming bible. How things have changed.

I need to remember to send off the voucher with my first quarterly estimated tax payment tomorrow. I forget this a lot. In the euphoria of getting all your tax issues sorted out for another year, it's easy to overlook the fact that April 15 isn't the end of anything. It's just the day when you begin the whole cycle all over again.

Next week looks busy already. Dot has a visit with the neurologist in addition to her regular acupuncture appointment. Dash has his antigen shot. There are several writing assignments already on tap. This takes us up to Wednesday. After that, anything could happen.

Flash is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 810

It was interesting watching the dogs at the dog park today. One reason I like dogs so much is that they never hide their personalities. Active, energetic dogs are unabashedly wild. Shy dogs aren't a bit shy about letting you know exactly how they feel. All the dogs seem to instinctively seek out other dogs with similar personalities. Dot is not playful, but nobody pushes her on the issue. Dash is a bit shy, but puppies seem to seek him out. The dogs who like to chase each other at breakneck speeds from one end of the park to the other, always seem to leave the more sedentary dogs alone. The humans seldom have to intervene, because the dogs already know what kind of animal they are.

Even though there were dramatically different canine personalities in the park today, all the humans seemed pretty much the same. I'm sure the dogs owner's were just as diverse as their dogs, but we humans are so much better at masking our feelings. The people just talked politely with each other, while the dogs lived out their K-9 fantasies in public. I think the dogs have the right idea.

The weather was so nice today that I decided to tackle the leaves in the back yard after we got back from the dog park. Every Spring, it seems like there are more leaves than the year before, but I think it is a lot more likely that I just have less energy than the year before. There were certainly a lot of leaves today. In some spots the dead leaves had become compacted into a solid mass almost two feet thick. It was almost as if the entire yard had turned into a giant compost heap. One thing that you quickly discover when you rake leaves in the Spring is that you missed a lot of dog poop during the Winter. After several hours of using a rake and the leaf blower, I finally managed to get most of the leaves corralled into a huge pile in the middle of the yard.

Now, the leaves need to go into big plastic trash bags where they will wait for the illusive day when the city comes to pick them up. I need to check and see whether there is some special bag the leaves need to go into. I seem to remember a very angry neighbor last Spring who was furious, because after bagging all his leaves, the city refused to pick them up because they were in the wrong kind of bag. This seems like something the city would do, so I think I'll check first before I go to the trouble of bagging everything.

I may need to rethink my plan of buying a guitar and becoming a rock god again. I need to be able to spend an afternoon with a leaf blower first without being defeated by wrist pain. My left wrist just about killed me after two hours of swinging the leaf blower around with my left hand. I don't remember things being this bad last year. Carpal tunnel syndrome basically sucks.

Orion is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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