Day 2800

I wish weather forecasts were more accurate. Earlier in the week, I made an appointment to take Dash back to the vet for another fasting blood test on Friday because it looked like it was going to be the only sunny day this week. My plan was to walk Dash very early to make sure that he would poop before he got in the car. I definitely don't want a repeat of Tuesday's disastrous trip to the vet. Now that Friday is approaching, it looks like it is going to rain early tomorrow morning. That might spoil my plans for a walk. Jeez. It was dry as a bone on Wednesday and Thursday when it was supposed to rain. The little weather app on my phone is never right. I don't know why I even look at it. Hopefully, this new forecast is wrong too.

It turned out that it was more difficult that we anticipated to change Janet's bandages. We didn't have all the supplies we needed, so I had to make a trip to the specialty pharmacy before we even started. You'd think that nothing could be easier than changing a bandage, but these have several layers and each layer must be applied exactly right. You don't want to do anything that would disturb the delicate sutures and you definitely don't want to do anything that might cause an infection. I think we did a good job, but it is nerve wracking. I think we would both rather just drive to the doctor's office every day and have them do it. That wasn't an option unfortunately.

I think I discovered how water is getting under the shower tiles, but I'm not sure how to fix the problem. I taped the area where the shower door frame attaches to the tile floor with painters tape so water couldn't seep into a small space that was designed to let water dripping down the glass doors drain back into the shower. There is no way to access this drainage cavity because it is covered by the door frame itself. I think some of the tiles have cracked under this frame due to foundation settling and that's how water is getting between the tiles and the shower pan. None of this is fix it yourself stuff. The only way to see if I'm right would be to remove the entire shower door assembly from the wall and look underneath. Since you can't unscrew the frame from the wall, or remove the heavy glass doors, I think this is beyond my pay grade. I guess I could just leave the blue painter's tape where it is. It is ugly and is probably not meant to be where I placed it, but it has dramatically diminished the leak.

Dash was a very finicky eater this morning. He wouldn't eat his regular food and wasn't interested in Dot's either. The only other food we had on hand was a holistic blend that we discontinued about six months ago because it made his poop soft. Wouldn't you know. Dash loved this brand of kibble today. This doesn't bode well for tomorrow morning. I really don't want him to poop in my car again.

I'm glad I don't live in Houston. It looks like a hurricane is headed their way this weekend. We have the occasional tornado here in Dallas, but the chances of actually getting hit by a funnel cloud are very low. Hurricanes are much harder to avoid. Here's hoping that the hurricane changes course. Let's also hope that Dash has an uneventful trip to the vet tomorrow morning, and that Janet and I will soon become pros at changing bandages.

Hero is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2784

I don't think I'll ever buy a gift card again. The gift card company keeps asking for more and more information. It's almost as if they think we're the perpetrators of a fraud rather than the victims of one. We keep providing all the information they ask for, but they don't seem that much closer to refunding our money. Why this investigation process should take ninety days is beyond me. I'm sure they know exactly what happened. There is an entire Consumer Reports website about gift card fraud. The sad truth is that this type of thing has become so commonplace that the company doesn't particularly care. Janet and I are just a statistic.

I like things to be predictable. That's a big reason why the gift card fraud is so frustrating. I've always thought of gift cards as a simple and convenient way to give someone money. If you have to worry about someone else gaining access to the card before you even use it, it suddenly isn't simple or convenient anymore. It's just one more giant hassle in a world full of giant hassles.

I wish Dash knew how much I want life to be predictable. He's driving me crazy by changing his food preference every day. Some days he likes the Hill's I/D that we used to feed Dot. Other days he won't touch the stuff and prefers the Hills I/D Low Fat that the vet wanted us to feed him when his triglycerides were through the roof. Usually, he wants a little wet food mixed in with the dry, but not always. It's really hard to predict what he's going to eat on any given day. Today, I split his dinner into two parts, because he wouldn't wait until 5 PM. He ate the first part of his dinner with gusto. An hour and a half later, he refused to touch exactly the same thing. I removed the food from his bowl, ate my own dinner, and then put Dash's dinner in a different type of bowl. I made sure he saw me stirring the bowl with a spoon and pretending to add new ingredients. This subterfuge did the trick. Dash finished his meal.

There was very little work to do today, so I used my time trying to find replacements for some of the software that refuses to work after I upgraded my operating system to Sierra. My computer used to be able to play Windows videos, but not anymore. Neither Apple of Microsoft seems to have any interest in being compatible with each other these days. It's a shame. Since most of my clients are still on Windows systems, I sometimes have a need to open and play Windows audio and video files. I did a Google search, downloaded a few open source Windows media players, but none of them worked. That's the trouble with Google. Something that got rave reviews in 2013 might not work at all in 2017.

At least computer problems aren't messy. I'm starting to think our shower is leaking again, and that is messy. We had a shower pan leak once before and we pretty much had to rip out the entire shower and re-tile everything to fix the problem. Maybe it isn't as bad this time, but there is a distinct musty smell in the bathroom that wasn't there before. I hate water problems because you can't ignore them. If you ignore a leak, it will eventually ruin everything.

The new grass is already starting to die. It's received plenty of water and it seems to be getting enough sunlight too. It definitely shouldn't be looking spotty and thin so soon. I'll call the landscaper to come take a look, but I doubt that he'll do anything. He'll just say that I did something wrong and that it's my fault. Somehow, it's always my fault.

Lilly is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2783

I tried to clean up some loose ends today. I called about a long overdue invoice and was told that a check was going in the mail today. Even though I was skeptical about this claim, I didn't feel like arguing. When someone tells you that they put a check in the mail, you have a good chance of getting paid eventually. It's when they claim that they don't even owe you the money that you've got a problem. Next, I called about a watch repair that was two years overdue. When I listened to the recorded message, I noticed that the name of the company had changed. This was not a good sign. I'll have to follow up on this one if the watch repair guy doesn't return my call. I was going to enquire about the estate of a relative that has been tied up in probate for even longer than the watch repair, but I've been told that this kind of delay is not that uncommon. Maybe I'll wait another six months and see what happens.

I've become accustomed to the fact that nothing goes smoothly anymore, but some delays seem ridiculous. Should any type of repair take three years?  Does the little notice on my invoices saying "30 Days Net? mean absolutely nothing? When I was told that it would take 90 days to get a refund on the fraudulent gift card recently, I kept thinking that this really meant six months and a lot of frustrating phone calls. You've got to keep trying though. That's the only way you get results these days.

Dash wouldn't eat his breakfast this morning. He has always been a finicky eater. We keep two brands of food on hand, knowing that if he won't eat one, he will usually eat the other. I knew that we had inadvertently picked the wrong brand this morning when I offered Dash a handful of the other brand and he gobbled it up. Unfortunately, the dry food in his bowl had already been mixed with wet, so I couldn't just put it back in the bag. I put the uneaten mixture in a different container and saved it for later. At lunch, I made a big show of preparing the food he refused to eat at breakfast and served it in a different bowl. This time, Dash gobbled it up. As difficult as Dash can be sometimes, he is still easier to deal with than a late paying client.

I've been wondering why I haven't received any updates for one of the websites I manage. I was going to ask where the updates were and then I noticed that I already had them. They arrived two weeks ago. The delay I'd been fretting about was actually my fault. How could this have happened? It appeared that I had updated my local version of the site, but that the changes had never been uploaded to the server. I still don't know whether the upload had failed or I simply forgot to finish what I started. At any rate, I apologized for the mistake and made sure the changes were actually on the server this time.

The website snafu and Dash's weird eating habits occupied most of my morning, but by mid-afternoon I was dead in the water again. I looked for a movie to watch on Netflix, but the one I chose wasn't nearly as good as The Expanse. That's what happens when you watch a really good series. I want to watch Season Three and Season Four, but they haven't even been filmed yet.

I don't have any big plans for tomorrow. I don't have any little plans either. I guess we'll just have to see what happens.

Lou is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2624

I usually check the dogs on the baby monitor before I start my workout at the gym. Typically they're just sleeping, but today I heard Dot yelping like she was in pain and saw Dash looking around with a worried look. I turned around and went back home again, wishing it wasn't a fifteen minute drive. The house was quiet when I arrived home, but Dot was resting in an awkward position on her dog bed. She must have tried to get up while I was gone and twisted one of her rear legs. On a good day, Dot can still get up on her own. On a bad day she can't. It used to be pretty safe to leave the house for a few hours when the dogs were taking their morning nap. They both sleep soundly and would typically still be snoring on their beds when I returned. That's all changed in the past month or so. Dot is a lot more restless now and doesn't sleep as soundly. Since the oncologist thought that the restless might be caused by discomfort, I was hoping that the Gabapentin might help. If the drug makes her as limp as a wet washrag though, it only makes matters worse.

When I got the dogs up, everything seemed fine. Dot was able to walk and both dogs were eager for me to feed them their lunch. I think Dot's yelping was more of a panic attack than an injury. She has grown very dependent on me and doesn't like to wake up and find me gone. I took the dogs outside to pee, fed them their lunch, and then cleaned up after Dot when she decided to poop while she was eating. After lunch we walked around for a while until Dot got tired and then they were both ready to take a nap again. After making sure that Dot was relaxed and resting in a comfortable position, I got in the car and went back to the gym. This time the trip was a success. It's always a balancing act to care for Dot while still finding a little time for myself. I'm almost always nearby when Dot needs me, but I do need to occasionally get out of the house.

The rain that was supposed to arrive today got delayed. Now, we're supposed to get some severe weather starting at about 1 AM this morning. I wish the tree guys had already come out to trim our trees. One of the main reasons I wanted to remove the dead limbs is that I'm always afraid that they're going to fall in a strong wind. Maybe the storm won't be a bad as the weatherman on TV is predicting. Sometimes I think they make things sound alarming to get more viewers. Of course, Texas weather actually is alarming, so I never ignore what the weatherman says.

I don't know what to do about Dash. He has gotten finicky about his food again. This is nothing new. It has been going on for years. We'll find a healthy diet that Dash likes and after enthusiastically eating it for months and months, he'll abruptly stop and refuse to touch the stuff. We look for a new diet and the whole process starts all over again. I've asked every vet I know what causes this behavior but have never really received a satisfactory answer. Sometimes Dash will refuse to eat something in the morning and then enthusiastically scarf the same food down in the afternoon. Nothing is simple at our house.

I didn't even bother with vacuuming this weekend. Every time I thought about getting out the vacuum cleaner, the dogs were sleeping peacefully and I didn't want to disrupt things. Sleeping peacefully is the Holy Grail around here. When the dogs are asleep, maybe I've got time to take a nap myself, or even get something productive done. Actually, Dot is asleep right now, so maybe this is my opportunity.

Spot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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