Day 3670

It snowed this morning. This was no winter wonderland, but it was snow. Less than two days ago it was 70 degrees. Where else could you go from a warm Spring day, to tornados, to snow in 24-hours? That's Texas weather for you. I'm not even going to predict what's going to happen tomorrow.

It seemed harder than usual to get the water off the roof today. Maybe it was just because it was so cold. I kept the pumps running all night, but they must have gotten clogged. There was still a ton of standing water to remove when I got to work. I'm way beyond tired of doing this loathsome chore, but it's got to be done. Left to its own devices, standing water will always find a way inside.

Batteries were on my shopping list today. Unfortunately, the store had moved the battery display again. I knew they were somewhere, but it took forever to find them. Why do stores do this? Almost every week I'm looking for something that is not in its usual place. I know that stores are trying to get you to explore new aisles and end up buying more but this tactic of constantly moving the merchandise around seems almost diabolical.

It's hard to know how to dress at this time of year. When I take my walk I'm almost always too cold when the wind blows and too hot when the sun come out from behind a cloud. It seems ten degrees colder when I walk along the shoreline and is always warmer away from the lake. I was a little cold today, but that's still better than being too hot. At least when I go to the gym, I know exactly what to expect.

I'm wondering whether I should go buy a warmer coat. On cold days like today I wonder how much colder it is going to seem when I'm outside helping with star parties on Mount Locke. Brrr. I was already cold when we went out there last Summer. I have a feeling that I just can't handle cold weather anymore. I'm always dressed warmer than most of the other people I see on my walk. Today, several joggers dressed in shorts and t-shirts passed me again. Are these people insane? It was barely above freezing.

We got some pictures of Selena in her new home. She already seems more relaxed than she was at the kennel. I think these dogs know when they have found their forever home. It is amazing how quickly some of them adapt. Sooner or later they are sitting on the couch or sleeping on the bed. Dalmatians can be very persuasive in getting what they want.

Time just flies by now. It's already the middle of January. So much to do. I need to make reservations for my trip to Florida. I need to schedule some telescope time at the little observatory north of Dallas. I want to be a knowledgable star party guide when I head for the Davis Mountains. I need to find out if Sky and Telescope is still interested in an article. I hope they are. First things first though. Tomorrow, I just need to go to the gym and see if I can still shoot free throws.

Pepper is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3596

Every year it is the same. During the summer, I can't wait for winter to arrive. Then as soon as it turns cold, I'm wishing it was summer again. Fall is nice. It is unfortunate that it only lasts two weeks in Texas. Today was one of those cold, damp days that makes you regret getting out of bed. I should have just stayed under the covers this morning.

I had the park to myself today. It wasn't raining during my walk, but I kept expecting to get wet anyway. Maybe sweating isn't so bad. I wore a light down ski jacket, my wool hat, and some heavy hiking boots and by the time I returned home I was wishing I'd worn something warmer. Other walkers must have similar thoughts. I usually see lots of people in the park on hot days but very few on cold days. In other parts of the country, today's weather wouldn't even qualify as winter, but we're not used to the cold here in Texas. I was happy enough to stay inside with the furnace running for the rest of the day.

I tried my new retainer last night. It felt way too tight. At first I thought that the dentist had given me someone else's retainer by mistake. Then the thing clicked into place and I couldn't get it off again. I kind of panicked when the retainer appeared to be stuck and I was afraid I'd lose a tooth trying to remove it. Was the original retainer ever this tight? It's hard to remember. All I know is that my old broken retainer is very easy to remove. Sure, it's worn out and probably doesn't even work anymore, but I never worry about losing a tooth when I wear it at night. Janet said I should soak the retainer in warm water before using it at night to make it more flexible. I'll try that this evening. If this doesn't help, I'll have to go back to the dentist.

A former client wanted me to locate a picture I'd taken back in the early 1990's. Lots of luck with that. I spent several hours looking through files this afternoon and couldn't find the image she wanted.  I wish my memory was better. I found lots of similar images, but nothing that matched the low-resolution thumbnail I was given as a reference. The more I think about this, I have a feeling that another photographer took this picture. It was used in a website and I used lots of other photographer's pictures during this period of time. I'll keep looking, but I have a feeling that this is a lost cause.

The roof isn't leaking, but I have no idea whether my recent repairs worked. The roof is under water now and I won't be able to inspect things until the roof dries out again. Lord knows when that is going to happen. At this time of year we seem to get an endless series of cold fronts preceded by a line of storms. I know it is supposed to continue raining through tomorrow. Hopefully, the pumps will keep working. The pumps don't remove all the water on the roof, but they help keep the standing water from becoming too deep. I'll place buckets under suspicious areas before I go to bed and hope for the best.

We're going up to the kennel again tomorrow to meet with the family who will be adopting Darn. One by one, these dogs are finding good homes.

Dakota is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2595

I found my missing fitness tracker today. This thing disappeared almost two months ago, so I'd totally given up hope of ever seeing it again. It was always a mystery where the tracker was, since just before the battery died, I noticed that it was still paired with my phone. Logically, the wristband had to be nearby, but I never could find it.

Today, I was cleaning the car after getting the interior dirty bringing stuff back from the storage warehouse and while I was brushing a crevice under the rear seat, I dislodged the illusive bracelet and swept it, along with a lot of dirt, to the driveway. Weird. The car was the first place I looked, but it never occurred to me to look under this seat. The tracker must have fallen off my wrist while I was loading photo equipment and found its way under the seat while I was driving. I'm glad the mystery is finally solved. Now, I can finally quit wondering whether one of the dogs ate it, or if I inadvertently vacuumed it up while cleaning rugs.

I never would have found the fitness tracker if I hadn't decided to bring home the garment rack from the storage warehouse and bring some order to my growing collection of coats. Don't ask me how the garment rack got muddy. I don't recall that it had ever been outside. At any rate, I disassembled the thing at the warehouse so it would fit in the car, and then cleaned and reassembled it when I got home. I had to take a bookshelf apart too, so the bulky rack would fit where I needed it to go. I always forget how heavy books are until I need to move them. These books and magazines hadn't been moved in decades. There were old Communication Arts magazines from the 1970's. There were German language textbooks from the 1990's when I was doing a lot of work in Germany. I threw away about thirty pounds of old B&H catalogs from the days before the Internet when they used to mail out massive two inch thick books every six months or so. If I had more time, this cleanup job might have been a little nostalgic, but I was trying to get everything finished while the dogs were still sleeping.

Eventually, I rearranged all the books and gathered up the loose coats around the house so I could place them neatly on the garment rack. The job was a success, but it took longer than I'd thought. By the time I fed the dogs their dinner and got them ready for their evening walks, it was starting to look like rain. Dot's walk went fine, but when it was Dash's turn, the sky was pretty dark. When we were about a mile away from the house, I started to see lightning. I urged Dash to hurry up and amazingly, he listened. We arrived home again two minutes before a real downpour started. I guess today was a lucky day. We didn't get struck by lightning and I found a fitness tracker that I never thought I'd see again. The office is still a mess, but the coats look much better on the garment rack.

I'm pleased that the new wonder scale tells me I'm in pretty good shape. My body mass index, bone mass, body fat percentage, standing heart rate, and pulse wave velocity are all excellent for someone my age. I'd never even heard of pulse wave velocity before. You take the time it takes for blood to travel from your heart to the blood vessels in your feet and then compare this value with your height to determine your pulse wave velocity. Lower numbers are good because they indicate that your veins and arteries are elastic. Higher numbers indicate hardening of the arteries which could put you at risk of a heart attack. I guess I already knew that my arteries were somewhat elastic, but I didn't know what it all meant. Cool machines that actually teach you something are the best. I like my scale.

Molly is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2124

Sometimes you can't win. If you're a photographer, you've probably heard of ImageBrief. It's actually a pretty cool idea. Members get an e-mail every day with a list of images that buyers are looking for. If you happen to already have an image that meets the description and like what the client is willing to pay, you can submit the image in your files for approval. Usually, I have nothing to submit, because I don't happen to have pictures of Norwegian children playing on a beach in Vietnam, or small green frogs sitting on top of a mushroom. Art directors can be quite specific. Today, I saw that someone was looking for multiple images taken inside an aircraft maintenance facility. Perfect! As luck would have it, I was once asked to take hundreds of pictures of a large aircraft maintenance facility. This was kind of an odd subject, so I thought I wouldn't have much competition. I looked on the shelf where I used to keep my outtakes, all neatly arranged in ring binders. Of course they weren't there. The pictures hadn't been there for years. All the clear plastic pages filled with Kodachrome slides were in the storage warehouse somewhere. You'd think it would be an easy task to run down to my storage space and get these images. Nope. There are tons of ring binders, filled with old ad copy, financial records, letters, photos, and assorted other stuff, all boxed away in unmarked banker's boxes. I have absolutely no idea where the photos from the aircraft maintenance assignment are.

Even if I managed to find the photos, what would I do then? Also somewhere in the storage warehouse is a very nice old 4000 DPI Canon film scanner that hooked up to your computer using a SCSI cable. SCSI was great back in the 1990's, but Apple hasn't supported this outdated interface in decades. Maybe Kinkos could convert the images, but I didn't have time anyway. The submission deadline was seven hours away. Oh, well. This was definitely a missed opportunity. The pay was good and I had some great pictures. I just couldn't find them. So far, the only pictures I've actually submitted to ImageBrief were when someone was looking for pictures of dogs in costumes. I guess they didn't like the costumes Dot and Dash were wearing.

My breakfast restaurant has hired a new server and for the second week in a row the guy has tried to clear my plate away while I was up at the coffee bar getting my second cup of coffee. Each time I said "Hey, don't clear my plate away. I'm not finished yet." You'd think the guy would know by now that I always go over and ask the barista for a second cup of coffee midway through my meal and then get a third refill in a to-go cup just before I leave. The guy apologized profusely, but he's not very observant.

The software I currently use to create mobile friendly websites just announced a major upgrade that will allow developers like me to create sophisticated content management systems. This new CMS capability is of course a lot more expensive than what I'm currently using. If I were creating complex blogs, online catalogs, or an online version of The New York Times, this fancy new product would be very valuable. Most of the websites I create are pretty simple though and I'm afraid that the software I'm just starting to become comfortable with will soon be discontinued. Nothing is permanent these days and almost all cool new software products are subscription based. I hate the Creative Cloud and all these subscriptions, which explains why I'm still using a very old version of Photoshop.

For some unexplained reason, Dot pooped all over the house around 1:30 PM. I wasn't expecting this, because she had done her business normally on her morning walk. When she does this, I'm usually safe until at least 4 in the afternoon. Life is full of surprises. I cleaned up the mess and did a load of laundry while I was updating a website the old fashioned way using an ancient version of Dreamweaver. I'll admit it. I'm a dinosaur, but at least I was a T-Rex back in the day.

Maverick is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day