Day 3935

Every day there seems to be a new reason to take the virus seriously. I've pretty much decided that I'm not going to travel anywhere until this whole thing blows over. Unfortunately, that may be a long time. If the president and NFL football players can get sick while being closely monitored inside their special protective bubbles, what's going to protect me? I still think the best thing I've got going for me is that I have very little desire to interact with other people. They say now that the most common way the virus is transmitted is thru family gatherings. Weddings, funerals, birthday parties, and backyard barbecues are much more dangerous than a trip to the grocery store. This makes sense to me. People tend to be comfortable around their own friends and family and let their guard down. I see huge family picnics almost every day in the park.

Semi isolation does get boring though. Eating and taking long walks have their limits. Today I decided to get productive and mowed the grass in both the front and back yards. I also unclogged the shower drain, which I wasn't planning to do. If the shower backs up while you are taking a shower, you've got no choice though.

Dawn still doesn't feel like taking long walks. She's eager to go outside in the mornings, but tires a lot more easily than she used to. We're not sure if her lack of energy is related to the meds she's currently taking or the underlying condition that caused the high fever and apparent seizure. At least the fever is gone and she's eating normally again. All we can do right now is continue to monitor Dawn carefully and wait.

I watched another Space X launch get scrubbed tonight with two seconds remaining on the clock. This is really weird. Every launch attempt at Kennedy Space Center in recent weeks has been canceled or scrubbed. The Cygnus resupply mission did successfully launch from Wallops Island this evening, but that mission has been delayed recently as well. Maybe this is just the 2020 curse. It does seem like a lot of failures in a row though.

The Moon and Mars look spectacular tonight. I went outside a few minutes ago to look at the conjunction and immediately smelled smoke. Whenever the temperature drops below seventy degrees in Texas, people start lighting fires in their fireplaces. Just about everybody has a fireplace in our neighborhood, so sometimes the smell of smoke gets oppressive. This probably sounds like needless whining to people out West who are dealing with real wildfires, but I still don't understand the fascination with fireplaces. We've never had a fireplace. I don't miss them at all.

When I was taking my solo walk this afternoon I saw several coyotes peeking out of the bushes near one of the trails. It looked like they were just waiting for a little dog to come by. There were lots of little dogs being walked this afternoon. I thought about warning them, but somebody honked their car horn and scared the coyotes away. It's rare to see coyotes in the middle of the day. I see them occasionally around sunrise, but this siting was kind of strange.

It's time to make my grocery list again. Janet did her shopping today and said that a lot of items are still in short supply. It does seem like the whole supply chain is kind of broken now. Really common items have just disappeared from the shelves. What a weird year it's been. You really have to wonder what is going to happen next.

Bailey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1813

If anything happened today, I certainly wasn't aware of it. It's been so chilly lately that I think my brain has gone into hibernation. I haven't even bothered to cook breakfast for the past few days and have been eating a bowl of Swedish Muesli that Janet picked up at the Ikea store instead. Even though the stuff has the consistency of sawdust and is basically uncooked oatmeal, it is surprisingly good when mixed with fruit. I suspect that I'll revert to my old habits as soon as the bag runs out. I'm definitely not driving all the way up to the Ikea store for a bag of cold cereal.

Whenever the weather turns cold, the air in our neighborhood is thick with the smell of wood smoke. So many people are burning a fire in their largely unused fireplaces that it is often hard to breathe. I've never understood the fascination with fireplaces. They're drafty, dirty, and unless the chimney is properly screened, they provide an open invitation for critters to come into your house. I can smell all types of wood burning when we take our morning walks. Since this is a city, people buy "designer logs" at the supermarket. Pinyon Pine is popular. So is Mesquite. All these exotic smells just make the dogs sneeze. I find it ironic that the people who like to burn a fire are typically the same ones who hate coal fired power plants and automobile exhausts. They certainly don't mind turning logs into charcoal and soot though. Fireplaces are just a more romantic kind of air pollution.

I had to fill out a bunch of new patient paperwork in preparation for my dental appointment tomorrow. I don't understand why there isn't a central repository for this information where doctors, dentists, surgeons, and other medical folk could just download your medical history whenever they needed it. I've seen a lot of doctors and I'm convinced that I've filled out this same information at least a hundred times. Sometime you have to fill out the information multiple times for the same doctor, because they want to update your file every year, or more commonly because they lost the paperwork you filled out the last time you saw them. I've gotten so tired of filling in the list of medications I take, that I've pre-printed a list of all my meds and just staple it to the patient information form. Some parts of today's form were embarrassing. Especially the part that asked "When was the last time you saw the dentist?" I left the entire Dental Insurance page of the form blank because I don't have any dental insurance. Maybe I'll get some later. It's always easy to get dental insurance because it doesn't really cover that much.

Work was slow today. Or maybe work was normal and the entire day was slow. Cold Winter days can be disorienting. I'm hoping that my brain returns to normal tomorrow. I'm also hoping that my teeth turn out to be normal as well. New x-rays and a cleaning is OK. A root canal, not so much.

Greta is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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