Day 3222

I had lots of errands today. Everywhere I went, I was faced with rising prices. I bought some Salicylic Acid at the drug store and and the price had increased by $2 a bottle. I bought some halogen bulbs at the hardware store and the price had increased by $3 a bulb. The grocery store is always full of price increases. I've been buying those blue paper shop towels for years and the price has almost doubled. Laundry detergent has gone way up . Strawberries are still cheap though. Go figure.

I stopped by the storage warehouse to see when my annual rent was due. Naturally, next year's rent is more than this year's. I've been a loyal customer for decades and yet my rent keeps increasing every single year. It would be a lot of work, but I'm really tempted to move everything to a new storage warehouse so I can take advantage of the new customer discounts. Every time I hear that inflation isn't a problem, I shake my head in disbelief. Maybe big screen TV's are cheaper than they used to be, but the cost of almost everything else has gone up.

For the first time in weeks, I saw blue sky. Amazingly, it was a beautiful Fall day. The performers at the little circus in the park seemed almost giddy with excitement. They were selling tickets, stringing lights, and getting ready for a show this evening. The park was full of people riding bicycles, sitting in hammocks, and throwing frisbees. I had to keep an eye out for loose dogs. There are always loose dogs on a nice day. I saw two dogs get in a fight off in the distance. Luckily they were nowhere near Dash and I.

There were no accidents today. Not yet anyway. Miraculously, Dash slept through the night and walked outside the next morning and pooped in the yard. He took his meds without incident, ate all his breakfast, and was enthusiastic about his walks. For most of the day, he seemed like a normal dog.

I should have vacuumed this afternoon, but I watched cooking shows on PBS instead. It's hard to get motivated. The combination of roof leaks, poop on the floor, and worn out appliances has taken it's toll. I look around and keep thinking "what's the point."

Another watch winder broke today. Back when I was really interested in watches, I bought winders for the watches I regularly wore. One by one, the motors in these winders have started failing. Nobody seems to be able to repair these things either. You'd think a simple electric motor would run forever. Nope. About twelve years seems to be the limit.

We had fried chicken tonight. Sometimes I forget how good simple southern food can be. Hey, blue skies, fried chicken, and no poop on the floor. That's a good day in my book.

Emily is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1635

Today was for the dogs. They both got a nice walk early this morning while the temperature was cooler and there was still a breeze. Later in the day, we took them to a party. Every Summer, our Wednesday training class has a big party with games for the dogs and barbecue for the people. The fried chicken and ribs were especially good today, since out meal was catered by Babe's. Any local will tell you that Babe's Chicken Dinner House has the best fried chicken anywhere. Their ribs are pretty good too.

Dot used to love the running events, but she doesn't run very fast or very far anymore. She enjoyed sitting quietly in the grass while we fed her little pieces of chicken as the other dogs ran. Dash is the social butterfly in the family, so we really go to this party for him. He loves seeing all the other dogs and excels at his favorite event: bobbing for bones. The object of this game is to see which dog is fastest at retrieving, and of course eating, six large dog biscuits that are sitting in the middle of a plastic kiddie pool filled with water. Dash got all the biscuits in 23 seconds this year, which was good enough for a ribbon. After all he's been through with the cancer treatments this Spring, it was nice to see him acting like a normal dog and having fun again

The barbecue and fried chicken I ate this afternoon was the first time I've had a big lunch for well over a year. The food was great, and even though I didn't eat that much, I was full for the rest of the day. I didn't feel like eating dinner tonight at all. I had a small salad and that was plenty. I don't think I'll ever go back to eating three meals a day anymore. It's too much food.

I got a Roku streaming stick for the TV today. It was pretty cheap, so I thought I'd give it a try. I'm getting so sick of paying huge cable bills for 100's of channels I don't even like that I'm wondering if there a way to pull the plug on cable altogether. I already have Hulu, but it would be nice to have access to other things using WiFi as well. If I discontinued cable entirely, I would lose my land line phone too, but as far as I'm concerned, that would be no great loss. Absolutely nobody calls us on the land line phone anymore. We still get plenty of robocalls and telemarketers though. If there's a local election on the horizon, the robocalls are relentless. Since I work at home, I get really sick of telemarketers. It seems weird to actually pay someone for the privilege of getting calls you don't want in the first place. That's what the world has come to. The post office delivers junk mail. The phone company delivers telemarketers. And the cable company delivers hundreds of worthless channels that you will never even watch.

I'm not sure what I'll do tomorrow. If I'm smart, I'll get an early start on the week's website work. I received 56 new dogs and cats to add to an animal rescue site this afternoon. That's a lot of work in Photoshop and Dreamweaver. I'm a realist though. 56 new HTML pages still beats mowing the grass.

Domino is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day