Day 3776

We walked five miles before breakfast this morning. The weather was beautiful and the park wasn't crowded yet. I kind of like this new routine. It sure helps build an appetite. Breakfast was delicious, but by 9 AM we both wondered what we were going to do next. We'd used up our day's activities too early.

I continued my house cleaning efforts today. I filled a large trash bag with clothing I knew I'd never wear again. Some of the clothes I'd never even worn once. I certainly threw away a lot of socks. I seem to have a habit of buying socks that don't fit. I'd buy a package of six, wear one pair, and after discovering that the socks didn't fit, never bother to wear the rest. From the number of unworn socks I found, I must have done this over and over again. I also threw away some short sleeve dress shirts. Whatever possessed me to buy these? They look ridiculous. All the clothes were clean and in good shape, so I bagged them up and drove them over to one of those little kiosks where you can donate clothing. There are lots of these places all over town and some of them benefit animal rescue groups. Much to my surprise the dropbox was closed and there was a sign saying that due to Covid-19 they could not accept clothing at this time. My guess is that someone thought people were sneezing on clothing before they donated it. Not me. My clothes were clean and had been safely stashed away in a dresser drawer for years.

Now that my computer is fixed and my upcoming trips are in limbo, I'm not sure what to do next. Cleaning is sort of a last resort. I really don't enjoy cleaning at all. I was so bored today that I took a second walk in the park. The place sure looked a lot different this afternoon. Early this morning there weren't many folks out and about. This afternoon, the place was filled with people. It looked exactly like any normal Spring Sunday afternoon. The city seems to have had a change of heart about closing the park. Basically the closure lasted one day and the place has been gradually reopening ever since. Today I didn't see any police at all. People were having barbecues, throwing frisbees, and hanging hammocks between trees. Even the ice cream truck was back. I think the city realized that people need an outlet during a lockdown and going to the park was a lot safer than having everyone turn up at Home Depot.

I've been noticing something kind of weird lately. You don't have to tell me to stay away from other people. I do this naturally. I'm really an expert at social distancing and know some tricks most of you won't learn until you take the advanced course. You'd think I'd be happy to see other people get on the social distancing bandwagon. Nope. When I hear someone preaching to me about staying indoors and accusing others of being selfish for wanting to walk their dog, it just pisses me off. Just shut up already. Moralistic preaching is not helping anything. It just further polarizes an already polarized population and brings out the "Badges? We don't need no stinkin' badges" in me. I'm going to lay low and mind my own business. If you want to have a party, it's fine by me. I'm pretty sure that Darwin will take care of things in the long run.

And don't you guys get all moralistic on me. If humans had a shred of morality, we wouldn't have been having pointless wars since the dawn of time. We wouldn't have bioweapons labs either, which is probably where this virus originated in the first place.

Brady is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1397

Janet asked if I would donate one of my old fine art photos to a charity auction she was involved with. The photo that had originally hung in a gallery show was long gone, but I though I might still have a duplicate print over at the storage warehouse. The storage warehouse used to be a repository for things that were too good to throw away and too useless to keep around the house. Now, it has just become a repository for mysterious objects that I don't even remember buying. I'm always surprised when I go to the storage room now. You just never know what you're going to find.

I eventually found the photo, along with a spare gallery frame to put it in. I found enough other forgotten photos to mount an entirely new show, but I think those days are gone. I'm just not that interested anymore.

I was interested in getting the dogs to the dog park today before the predicted rain ruined our opportunity. We'd never been to the park this early before, but it was still full of dogs and their owners. Maybe the others wanted to let their dogs play before the rain started too. Or maybe they just wanted to get their dog to the park before the big Texas Oklahoma football game started later in the morning. Dash was delighted to finally return to his favorite place and was a well behaved dog for the rest of the day.

I happened to see my old Defender on the Land Rover website today. They were asking almost double what they gave me in trade in for the car. Oh, well. I guess I knew I was selling the car wholesale, but still it was a bit startling to see it priced so high. I still feel like I made the right decision. I didn't feel comfortable driving the unreliable car anymore, so I guess it is irrelevant what someone else eventually pays for it.

Eventually it did rain today, but the afternoon shower was so brief that Dot didn't even notice it. I think she slept through the whole thing. By the time the dogs and I took our afternoon walk, the only evidence that it had rained at all were a few water drops on tree leaves. It certainly wasn't an eventful day, but it was a pleasant one.

Kuuipo is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1118

I took some filing cabinets from the office over to a little resale shop that benefits homeless animals. I love this place, because you can donate absolute rubbish and they always act like it's exactly what they needed. They are really doing me a favor to even take this old stuff, but they always make me feel like I'm the one doing something good. I like that. I have a feeling that these folks are just nice, but maybe they're being polite in hopes that I'll eventually bring them something good.

After I got rid of the unneeded furniture, I went back home and tried to thin out the closets a bit by getting rid of equally unneeded clothes. I used to just throw away shirts that I couldn't button around the neck any more. Since most of these tight fitting clothes from younger years are already gone, I have to rely on Janet to tell me which things are hopelessly out of style. If I hold something up and she makes a face, it goes in the throw away pile.

Spring cleaning is kind of like peeling an onion. There are usually layers upon layers of mess, and once you have dealt with the top layer, it just reveals something else waiting underneath. When I removed the filing cabinets today, they must have been in a damp corner, because there was a layer of mildew on the wall behind them. I then had to set up a portable heater to dry out the wall and still haven't finished scrubbing everything down with bleach. I found an old Macintosh laptop when I was cleaning things out this afternoon. I plugged it in and got nothing. Dead as a doornail. When I removed the battery, it was date-stamped 1999. I don't know it it's even worth the effort to try and find a working 1999 Apple laptop battery. Probably not. Even if I managed to get the computer working again, I'm sure it is so slow that I would find it useless.

Dot and Dash had a great time at the dog park today. They both seemed a bit alarmed when we began to take an alternate route to the park. Both dogs started barking like crazy in the back seat. I'm sure they were saying something like "Turn around immediately, this isn't the right way." To quiet things down in the car, we returned to the old route. As soon as the dogs recognized their surroundings and knew where they were going, they both settled down again and were good for the rest of the journey.

I have a feeling that next week is going to be busy. It's time to get the car safety inspected again, and before I can do that, I need to get a new catalytic converter. I have a feeling that the old clattering converter would be a dead giveaway that my emission system isn't up to par. I've grown to hate state safety inspections over the years. They continue to grow more and more complicated. I think I should be exempt anyway, since I don't drive very much. In our state, humans aren't even involved with the safety inspection. It's all in the hands of a computer. They hook your car up to some sensors and the results get sent straight to Austin. In the old days, I could talk my way out of minor infractions. There's no one to talk to anymore though. This automated life really doesn't suit me. It probably won't be long before I have to give a DNA sample just to get my prescriptions filled.

Allie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 545

I'm finally starting to get comfortable with the idea of giving stuff away. Don't get me wrong. I still don't feel any inner peace from this process of simplification, but I am able to get rid of stuff now. Maybe the reason this is all so hard is that I always envisioned that at some point I'd have this huge loft building where I could spread everything out and have lots and lots of room all my photography equipment, musical endeavors, painting experimentation, woodworking projects and so on. Maybe there would be a separate huge room for electric trains and another just for framing pictures. I don't think this is ever going to happen though. I have no desire to live in marginal industrial neighborhoods with affordable lofts anymore. The dogs rule now. A small house near a beautiful park where the dogs love to walk is a much better alternative.

It's time to toss stuff. Maybe, even though I'm a die-hard Gemini, one of everything is actually enough. Today, I took three very large CRT monitors and an old aerial reconnaissance camera down to the animal rescue resale shop. I thought this effort would clear out a large amount of space in the storage warehouse, but when I was ready to leave, the place looked just as full as ever. At first I was confused and then I realized I'd put the big stack of boxes that was blocking the door back on the shelves I'd just emptied by removing the monitors. It's slow progress, but I do feel like I'm accomplishing something.

I also finally resolved the mystery of how my recent software purchase got totally screwed up. When I made one of my daily calls to the support center, my call mistakenly got routed to the company's headquarters here in the United States instead of going to the offshore call center like it normally did. This time the representative I talked with almost instantly had a grasp of the problem. She found my account, told me that it had mistakenly gotten merged with the account of someone else and then proceeded to cancel my order as I had requested. This all took less than five minutes. When I asked why repeated calls to the support center weren't able to produce this result, the representative said. "Oh, we only provide the offshore call center with a very limited amount of information. They can't access the same database that we can." I'm still puzzling over this one. What use is a customer support center if they don't have any information? If I hadn't accidently reached the wrong person this morning, my order would still be in limbo.

It was interesting to me to see how many people seemed genuinely happy to see Lebron James fail last night. The Internet was buzzing with Lebron James jokes this morning like: Today is National LeBron James Day. Everyone gets to leave work 12 minutes early! and Why didn't LeBron James go to college? He didn't want to show up for finals. I think this all has a lot to do with people's expectations of loyalty. You certainly expect loyalty from a friend and Cleveland definitely considered James a friend. Not anymore. John Kasich, the governor of Ohio, issued a resolution today praising the Dallas Mavericks for their loyalty, integrity and teamwork. Of course there were all these people in Ohio saying the governor should be concentrating on "serious things" instead of praising the Mavericks. Hmm. I'd say loyalty actually was a serious thing.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 529

The charity that I gave my old large-format printer to came by with their van and picked it up today. I threw in another unused printer for good measure, and now finally I've got a little room in the office again. I wonder if these guys will ever actually use the printer? It still can make great looking prints and posters, but it is a royal pain to use. I think they like the idea of being able to print their own marketing materials, but I bet they'll probably keep taking things to Kinkos. That's what I'd do anyway. It's much easier to have someone else do the printing.

If any of you have lower back pain, you have my sympathies. I don't usually have back problems, unless I happen to do something really stupid like finding myself locked in a small fenced in area when I've got a swarm of bees coming after me. I'm pretty sure I threw my back out when I was trying to get away from the bees I was trying to kill last week. I've been hobbling around and feeling like I was 100 years old ever since. Usually when I do this, my back is back to normal in three or four days. If I felt this way all the time, I would be miserable. Again, if you have back pain, I hope you have a good chiropractor or at least some good meds.

My plan of cleaning up the house while I watched the Dr. Who marathon didn't work out all that well. I can't even multi-task well enough to watch TV and clean at the same time. I found myself lying down on the bed with the dogs and watching long segments of the show and then realizing that I wasn't getting anything done and turning the TV off entirely. Luckily, I had seem most of these shows before, so it didn't really matter. My office still isn't very clean though. It was kind of a wasted day.

We'll probably take Dot and Dash to the dog park tomorrow. The weather is already too hot for Dot, but the dogs still like to be off leash and walk around the park smelling things. If today was any indication, it looks like it's going to be a long hot Summer.

Dalmatian of the Day

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