Day 1095

I think life is a lot like raking leaves. You rake the leaves, and then the next day, a whole new pile of leaves has taken their place.You repeat the process over and over again, but it seems to take forever before the leaves actually disappear. When the leaves are finally gone, you wonder if all the raking was actually worth the effort. Usually, it was always an exceptionally windy day, not your raking efforts, that cleared the last of the leaves away. Maybe it's just me, but I think many of us spend way too much time doing the same mind numbing things over and over again. What constitutes work for most of us is just a long series of repetitive chores. Then we come home and do laundry, make the bed, and vacuum over and over again. It's all a lot like raking leaves.

Breakfast was delicious this morning. I think the bed of pulled pork under my eggs might have been a bit off a bit though.  I've had a stomach ache for most of the day. I sure hope I haven't gotten food poisoning like Janet did last week. Food poisoning is no fun. On the plus side, it's the fastest way of losing weight I know of. The last time I got food poisoning, I lost ten pounds in less than a week.

There are too many printers in the house now. Now that Janet's printer is fixed, I'm having a hard time finding a place to put it. This printer was purchased primarily for use at Dalmatian Rescue events. Unfortunately, that's why it got hopelessly clogged in the first place. The printer just wasn't used enough. Now, I've got to add it to the queue of ink jet printers I'm already trying to keep unclogged. The ironic thing is none of my clients even want me to print anything anymore. A PDF file is just fine with them.

The school shooting today in Connecticut was incredibly sad. How can we keep these type of things from happening? There's going to be a lot of talk about gun control in the days ahead. I would be the first to agree that there are a ton of people who should never be allowed anywhere near a gun. How do you identify these people though? Again and again, when these mass shootings occur, I see interviews on TV where neighbors and close friends say the shooter seemed completely normal to them. Maybe we could start by banning gun ownership for anyone under 40. There aren't a lot of old serial killers and mass murderers. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I think something has fundamentally changed in society. It's a colder, more depersonalized world. There were plenty of guns when I was growing up, but these type of events were completely unheard of. All I know is that when I was a teenager, I wasn't playing Assassin's Creed, Halo, or Call of Duty eight hours a day. I was reading a new library book once a week. My parents always knew what I was doing too. Maybe it's as simple as that.

Lance is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1085

Things certainly didn't go according to plan today. Janet got food poisoning at an awards dinner she went to last night, and I needed to take her to the doctor this morning. As we sat in the crowded waiting room, it made me realize that my strategy of only making doctors appointments at 2:15 PM was a pretty good one.  We got to the doctor's office around 11 AM and I'm sure everyone there was trying to cram in a quick visit on their lunch hour. 2:15 PM is a great time to go to the doctor, since all the working people are back at work and the doctor is just back from his own lunch and hasn't had time to get behind with other patients yet. Considering that Janet didn't have an appointment at all, she actually got in to see the Doc fairly quickly. We were home again by 2:15 PM.

With Janet's emergency taken care of, I drove to the FedEx office to pick up the replacement for the guitar amp that arrived broken last week. I didn't want to risk another delivery to the house, because I thought the driver would just drop the heavy package again. When I got the big box home and unwrapped I was happy to see that this time the case was in perfect condition. I wasn't so happy when I turned the amp on and discovered that the volume potentiometer on both channels made a loud crackling noise whenever I turned the control knobs. I've seen very old and dirty amps make this sort of crackling noise, but never a brand new one. Oddly, the electronics on the broken amp sounded much better than on the brand new one.

After another call to my sales rep, the music store finally decided that it would be OK if I took the electronics from the broken cabinet and switched them with the electronics from the new cabinet. I think they were willing to do anything to avoid sending me a third amp. As long as I sent them back something resembling a guitar amp, they seemed to be happy. It will take me a couple of hours tomorrow to take the internal parts out of the broken cabinet and install them in the good cabinet, but after I do that, I think everything will be OK.

With all this going on, I didn't have enough time to take the Norman strobes to the repair shop. Hopefully, I can do this tomorrow, because there are still some more Santa Paws events for me to shoot. Somehow, amid all this confusion, I still found time to write an article and make some website revisions. Today's updates involved changing several women's names after they had gotten married. I should know better than to embed names in JPEG images. The young ones always get married right after I get their profile pictures finished.

Dot and Dash were good little nurses today. They seem to sense whenever either of us get sick and become very attentive. Both dogs were very gentle today and spent most of their time sleeping right next to Janet.

Camp is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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