Day 1133

After meeting with my financial adviser and confirming that I was not a rich man, I went up to Ikea and bought a cheap floor lamp. I'm sure that some of you have shopped at Ikea before. The stores are enormous and I always get lost in them. I usually get lost right after I pick up something heavy and then spend the next fifteen minutes looking for the check out aisles. Things are incredibly cheap at Ikea. That's why the stores are always crowded. People don't even care that most of the stuff is pure crap and will probably break before you figure out how to assemble it. It's just incredibly cheap, so you fill your buggies like everyone else. Ikea doesn't miss a trick. If you get hungry while you're lost in the store, they'll sell you some lunch. If you need something to carry your heavy purchases out to the car, they'll sell you a shopping bag at the check out counter. Everything is cheap, but nothing is free. I think you could furnish your entire house at Ikea for the same price as a single dining room chair at Design Within Reach.

When I got my floor lamp home, I had to assemble it. You have to assemble everything you buy at Ikea. My fully assembled lamp seemed to lean a bit to the left, but you can't expect perfection from a $29 floor lamp. The high-tech LED bulb I screwed into the socket to complete things actually cost more than the lamp. I still can't figure out why the lamps I was looking at a few weeks ago at the ritzy lighting studio cost $1500 and up, while this somewhat similar lamp cost $29.

Although today was a holiday, Janet and I certainly didn't take advantage of it. She cleaned the house and went to a Zumba class at the gym, while I got lost in the crowds of people buying baby furniture at Ikea. Tomorrow, it's back to work again. I've got a lot of website revisions to make this week, but none of them will make me much money. I was trying to explain to my financial adviser today why designing websites is no longer a winning proposition for me. I'm not sure he understood. He asked why I couldn't start offering cheap template driven sites myself.

I think the garage that did my safety inspection screwed up my car. It's been making an odd rattling noise ever since I got it inspected last week. This is a different kind of rattling noise than the rattling catalytic converter, so now I've got two rattling noises. I guess I'll have to stop by the Land Rover dealer later this week. It's always something.

Myles is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1113 - New Year's Day

A lot of my bright ideas end up in frustration. I can usually visualize in intricate detail exactly what I want or need. I just can't find it anywhere. This inability to find what's in my mind's eye was made abundantly clear today when I continued my quest to find a new floor lamp. I know exactly what I want. I love these new LED bulbs. The high output 24 watt PAR bulbs have beautiful fluted aluminum vents that function as heat sinks. These bulbs are so attractive that they don't even need a shade. What I'd like to find is a simple torchiere floor lamp that lets me plug one of these bulbs directly into the top. Ideally, the aluminum pole would be the same color and texture as the bulb itself, so the entire unit looks seamless. It's easy to draw what I see in Photoshop, but can I find these lamps anywhere?  Nope. They don't seem to exist outside my mind.

I wonder what lies ahead for me in 2013? I'd like to see an end to medical problems. I've got enough medical problems already. I'd like a few new clients. Two or three would be fine. Hey, I'm not greedy, I just like to stay busy. I'd like a little sanity to return to the stock market. At some point in the future, my retirement is going to depend on the investments I make today. I think it's sad that you could probably do just as well these days betting on sports teams in Vegas as most people do with their investments. Most of all, I hope that the dogs stay healthy. Dot and Dash are my best friends and I don't know what I'd do without them.

While I'm wishing for things, it might be wise to wish for some warmer weather. I asked Janet how long this cold weather was going to last, and all she said was "It's Winter." Historically, we can get nasty, cold weather here in Dallas all the way through the end of March. I guess we'll all survive until Spring, but I don't know how much more mud I can handle.

I have another doctor's appointment tomorrow. As I recall, this particular doctor is even more behind than most and I usually spend a long time waiting in the lobby. I think I read all the magazines in this guy's lobby three years ago.

Damn. I didn't eat any black eyed peas today. Black eyes peas are supposed to bring prosperity in the new year, and usually I'll have a bowl just to play it safe. I have a feeling that black eyes peas aren't going to make a lot of difference in 2013 unfortunately. With what's coming down the pike, it's going to be an uphill battle for anyone to stay prosperous.

Camp is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1111

I made another trip to the storage warehouse this afternoon. Since I had already dealt with the vinyl albums, I decided to tackle the cassette tapes today. Since tape cassettes are so small, I was surprised to fill an entire packing box with the things. Some tapes were music I used to play in the car when I commuted between Seattle and Portland. Other tapes were samples of radio commercials I'd written and produced over the years. There were a lot of tapes.

The record industry has quite a racket going. They've somehow managed to con us into buying the same songs over and over again on different media. I've purchased vinyl albums, only to purchase the same thing again, first on cassette tape, then on a CD, and finally as an iTunes download. What will they think of next?

As I've been packing my music away, it has struck me that there hasn't been a lot of really memorable music in the past ten or fifteen years. The old albums I was packing away are still being played on the radio today. Actually, they're played everywhere from iPods to elevators. As I was watching the Kennedy Center Honors on TV the other day, I was mesmerized at the audience reaction to Nancy and Ann Wilson as they sang "Stairway to Heaven" during the tribute to Led Zeppelin. Everyone knew that song by heart and still loved it after all these years. Can you think of a similar reaction to anything you've heard recently? Probably not. Like it or not, the music that defined my generation, still defines music.

On the way back from the storage warehouse, I stopped by Home Depot to see if they had any less expensive floor lamps. They did. Although the lamps I looked at were dirt cheap, it only took a few seconds to see why. The pole lamps I looked at in the design studio the other day were fabricated from solid rods of stainless steel. The Home Depot poles were all constructed out of three foot sections of cheap aluminum that you had to assemble yourself. The lamps looked like they were made from old tent poles. The reason some floor lamps are $24 and others are $2400 is the same reason that a Lamborghini is not a Ford Focus. You get what you pay for. Too bad I can't afford either a Lamborghini or a fancy designer pole lamp.

The dogs don't worry about such things. For them, the best things in life are free. They certainly enjoyed their excursion to the dog park today. The weather was cold and brisk and it put all the dogs in the park in a frisky mood. Dash was exceptionally playful today and he even managed to get Dot to run with him for a while.

You'd think tomorrow would be a holiday, since Christmas Eve was a holiday last Monday. Apparently it's a work day though. Janet's working. Most of my clients are working. I'll probably be working as well.

Penny is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1110

I thought I'd go look for a lamp today. I've been so pleased with the LED bulbs in the ceiling can lights that I thought I'd find a nice looking floor lamp that used these high tech bulbs as well. The floor lamps in the living room and bedroom are the only lights in the entire house now that haven't been converted to LED bulbs. I went to a lighting studio that I remembered from the days when I was obsessed by furniture and was astonished at how expensive nice looking lamps had become. I found a lamp that would look quite nice in the house, but I wasn't about to pay more for a lamp than I paid for my laptop computer. A floor lamp is not a complex object. It's basically just a bulb at the end of a pole. How something so simple could get so expensive is beyond me. Maybe I should have gone to Ikea instead of a fancy contract lighting studio.

Although I failed to come home with a lamp, I did get a few things done today. I found the air compressor and my tires are now all at the correct inflation pressure again.  I got Janet some fresh blueberries at the grocery store. I got Dash's antihistamine prescription renewed at the vet. I even found a little time to practice my guitar.

Am I the only one who's getting completely sick of hearing about the fiscal cliff every time I turn on the television? If congress does nothing, very little will change in our day-to-day lives. Conversely, if they get their act together and pass some sort of legislation before the end of the year, very little will change either. The country will still be in debt and most of us will still personally be in debt. No matter what happens, we will continue to get up in the morning and plod along the best we can. Some things will get better and other things will get worse. The world will change and the next generation will still think all the changes are completely normal. What's not normal is listening to some of the local news anchors continue to call this year-end financial mess the "physical cliff."  Don't they know? The physical cliff has nothing to do with spending and taxes. The physical cliff was what Thelma and Louise drove their car over at the end of the movie.

I hope Dash's sinus problems clear up soon. I'm getting tired of getting up at 4 AM every morning to let him outside to throw up. Even though he's a lot lighter on his feet than Dot, he still tracks in a lot of mud too. I've got to get better at cleaning muddy paws when I'm half asleep. The bed was covered with paw prints when I woke up this morning.

Alle is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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