Day 3740

The baby owls have really grown since I saw them last. I initially mistook one of the babies for the mother this afternoon. A closer look quickly revealed that I was looking at one of the babies, but it was still surprising to see how quickly they had developed. Evidently, young Great Horned Owls eat four times as much as adults, causing them to grow very quickly. The mom isn't around as much these days, but still returns almost every day to feed her children mice and encourage them to fly.

I think there are a lot more doomsday preppers than I ever would have imagined. I can't believe how much food people are buying. When I went to Sam's Club this morning to get some necessities, I saw people with enough food to last them for an entire year. Several people with large SUV's had the entire back of their cars stuffed to the ceiling with food and paper products.

It's easy to see how panic buying escalates. Literally everyone in the store had a big package of paper towels in their buggy, so I got one too. It wasn't a brand that I usually buy, but who cares when you are facing the apocalypse. I certainly hope people don't decide to start using paper towels as toilet papers. If that happens there are going to be some major plumbing problems.

I finally found some distilled water, oatmeal, and blueberries. I never realized that so many people need distilled water. I use it to prevent mineral scale from building up in my coffee maker. Other people use it for more important things, like preventing their Dalmatians from developing stones and keeping CPAP machines running properly.

I wonder when these Spring rains are going to end? I spent so much time clearing the roof of water yesterday and now it's raining again. Water on the roof is my own private version of the Sisyphus myth. The gods who condemned Sisyphus thought that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor. They were probably right. At least the roof isn't leaking.

I think dogs are loving this pandemic. I've never seen so many people walking their dogs in the park. It's good that people are becoming more active. They seem to becoming kinder too. I wonder how long this will last when the pandemic is finally over? I think the panic buying will finally subside when people realize they have more food than they could possible use. Maybe people will continue to drive less as well. One can only hope. I hope some of these new behaviors become permanent.

It's a shame that I won't be able to go to the gym tomorrow. Our options for doing things away from home continue to grow smaller. Janet and I did do our part to support local restaurants by ordering a pizza from a little neighborhood restaurant that makes a good pie.

My dealer told me that I sold a few more brass trains today. It's kind of astonishing that anyone is still buying railroad collectibles during the apocalypse, but it's fine by me. Today's sales almost paid for my trip to McDonald Observatory. I still don't have the nerve to look at my brokerage account. Janet and I have both lost a lot of money, but it's better at this time not to know how much.

The lesson of this week is that life goes on no matter what happens. We adjust to things and establish new priorities. I hope you guys are all doing well. Nobody I know has died yet. I hope I can say the same thing next week.

Big Boy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 3412

If you measure days by your level of activity, today was pretty good. The weather was nice too, so I really can't complain. I'm finally getting enough sleep as well. It's nice to know that I have no trouble sleeping under normal circumstances. Rest and activity are good. The rest allows me to stay active and the activity should motivate me. Why do I not feel motivated?

People keep suggesting things for me to do. Take a class. Volunteer. Go back to work. These are really just things my friends like to do. I need to find my own path. I've always been a clever person and have tended to work for praise. Being told you are creative over and over again can be a strong motivator to actually do something creative. Once you figure out what is going on, this doesn't tend to work anymore. I'm not looking for feedback these days. I need to find something that I intrinsically enjoy even if no one else in the entire world knew I was doing it.

I think about things like these while I'm at the gym. It's a kind of daydreaming where conclusions are unnecessary. I wonder if it is possible to do something significant if you don't have a goal? Maybe. My only goal in writing the blog was to write something for 5000 days. This sounds simple enough. You can't write for this long without thinking though. You are forced to explore your thoughts just to continue having something to say. Do this long enough and maybe you never become senile. Taking 10,000 steps a day is kind of similar. It's a mindless, repetitive activity, but it does keep you active. When I look around I find that I am healthier than people I know who don't take 10,000 steps a day.

I am not competitive at all. Even if I start taking 20,000 steps a day I will never have any desire to run a 5K. I won't join a yoga class or go to boot camp either. Even if I manage to keep writing until the day I die, I'll probably never care if anyone else is reading. I've been keeping journals long before the Internet even existed. I don't do a lot of talking. This is just a convenient way to make sure my brain is still working.

I'm happy enough to take long mindless walks and write about walking dogs and drinking fruit smoothies forever. Mowing the grass and removing water from the roof aren't part of the equation though. Even though I added quite a few steps by mowing the lawn after I got home from the gym this afternoon, it was still an irritating activity. I hate mowing the grass. The only reason I mowed today was that there is rain in the forecast all next week. If I didn't mow now, the yard would be a jungle by May.

I hope the forecast is wrong. I don't look forward to spending the week worrying about whether the roof is going to leak. Eventually it will leak again. I need to call the roofers who haven't submitted their bid yet. You'd think they'd be more interested.

Lucky is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1970

I had to go down to Janet's former employer and get some pictures I'd loaned them many years ago. It would have been nice if they'd just bought the pictures when Janet left the company, but they couldn't be bothered. I was surprised at how well the pictures had held up over the years. They were all from a gallery show back when I thought gallery shows were important. I had printed the photos perfectly using the best archival paper. They were professionally framed and the images still seemed relevant. I looked at these large, beautiful prints as if someone else had done them. It was a little sad. I doubt that I will ever go to the trouble to show in a gallery setting again. Been there, done that. These pictures will go to the storage warehouse where they will join a lot of other stuff I don't do anymore.

I found a great new website today that provides a minute-by-minute weather forecast, telling you exactly when it is going to start and stop raining for up to two hours at a time. The forecast is remarkably acurate and very useful for a person like me. You just provide your address and zip code and you immediately start getting messages like "rain will begin in seventeen minutes." You know exactly when the rain will begin, how much rain to expect, and when the rain will end. This is perfect when you need to find a little dry window of time to walk the dogs. I've been using the website to schedule our dog walks for several days now, and so far it's been right every time.

I'm so disgusted with food particles in my mouth that I'm going to start drinking smoothies instead. If I remember correctly, a banana, one egg, a few strawberries, some milk, and a little ice cream makes a pretty good milkshake. I used to make this concoction in a blender all the time because I was too lazy to cook. Now that we have a Vitamix, it ought to taste even better. It seems like the dentist could have given me a little rubber plug to put in the empty wisdom tooth socket before I ate, but I guess that's not the way it is done. I must have had an unusually large tooth, because it left behind a very large hole in my jaw. Maybe a tasty smoothie will help.

May must be the month for major website overhauls. My updates have gotten more complicated this month. I'm not complaining, because it's nice to have the work, but today's update was a bit confusing. I'm still not sure if I did the right thing. We'll see if anyone complains. That's often the only way I know if I've achieved my goal. It doesn't help that a lot of my clients are still using Internet Explorer. A lot of people never upgrade their browser or empty their browser cache. They're still seeing things that officially don't even exist anymore.

It looks like there are still tornado warnings in tomorrow's weather forecast. Whatever happened to April showers bring May flowers? We do have plenty of flowers, but there's been way too much rain. If this was an ordinary May, I wouldn't even need that minute-by-minute weather forecast website.

Daisy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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