Day 3239 - Election Day

I decided that it was time to face reality and hire a mover. Even if I continue to move something every day, I just don't think I can get everything out of the old warehouse on my own by the middle of the month. It took me fifteen years to fill this place up. I guess it was unrealistic to think I could empty it out in a matter of weeks. Maybe if I extended my lease until December I could finish the job, but my body would be a wreck. It just isn't worth it. I've only moved about one third of the contents so far and I already feel like a cripple.

The movers arrive Friday. Hopefully, I'll never have to do this again. Jeez. What am I thinking? Of course I'll have to do this again someday. I still don't know what to do with this stuff and I know it's never coming back to the house. Hey, at least I'm getting rid of quite a few things. That's a start.

I made reservations for Thanksgiving Dinner today. As usual, I should have done this earlier. This particular Thanksgiving Brunch has become very popular and the restaurant is filling up fast. I couldn't get a table until 1:30 PM. I guess that's OK. We usually eat later on holidays anyway.

I've got to get up early tomorrow to walk Dash before going to my doctor's appointment. I won't be able to eat breakfast because they want to do fasting blood work again. I hope the phlebotomist can find a vein this time. I hate it when the vein rolls and they keep poking you. That's what happened last time. My veins used to be super easy to find. Now they seem to be hiding.

Dash made it outside both times last night. It's always a good night when Dash doesn't poop in the house. When I go to bed, I never know how things are going to turn out. Sometimes he makes it to the back door with time to spare and other times he can't even make it out of bed. I wish Dash would learn to sleep on the floor. We have nice dog beds, but he still prefers sleeping in the bed with us. I don't know how long this can continue because he's having increasing difficulty getting up at night. If I don't wake up first to help him off the bed, he frequently stumbles and falls.

Even though I have movers coming, I still went over to the storage warehouse and moved a few more things this afternoon. The more I'm able to move ahead of time, the less I'll have to pay. Today I moved a bunch of pictures that were left over from several gallery shows I had over a decade ago. I hadn't looked at these pictures for a while and I'll have to admit they were pretty good. It took a while to secure my first gallery show, but after only two shows I totally lost interest in the gallery world. Competition for gallery space was intense and you had to be an active member of the local artist's community to find opportunities to show your work. Like most other things in life, the art world turned out to be all about who you know. It seemed way too much like business to me.

I'll be asleep long before the election results are finally decided. I suspect that nobody will be happy. We are such a divided country that you can't really expect the results to bring any kind of unity. When I wake up tomorrow morning I expect that half the country will still be mad. At the moment, I just don't know which half.

Spot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1970

I had to go down to Janet's former employer and get some pictures I'd loaned them many years ago. It would have been nice if they'd just bought the pictures when Janet left the company, but they couldn't be bothered. I was surprised at how well the pictures had held up over the years. They were all from a gallery show back when I thought gallery shows were important. I had printed the photos perfectly using the best archival paper. They were professionally framed and the images still seemed relevant. I looked at these large, beautiful prints as if someone else had done them. It was a little sad. I doubt that I will ever go to the trouble to show in a gallery setting again. Been there, done that. These pictures will go to the storage warehouse where they will join a lot of other stuff I don't do anymore.

I found a great new website today that provides a minute-by-minute weather forecast, telling you exactly when it is going to start and stop raining for up to two hours at a time. The forecast is remarkably acurate and very useful for a person like me. You just provide your address and zip code and you immediately start getting messages like "rain will begin in seventeen minutes." You know exactly when the rain will begin, how much rain to expect, and when the rain will end. This is perfect when you need to find a little dry window of time to walk the dogs. I've been using the website to schedule our dog walks for several days now, and so far it's been right every time.

I'm so disgusted with food particles in my mouth that I'm going to start drinking smoothies instead. If I remember correctly, a banana, one egg, a few strawberries, some milk, and a little ice cream makes a pretty good milkshake. I used to make this concoction in a blender all the time because I was too lazy to cook. Now that we have a Vitamix, it ought to taste even better. It seems like the dentist could have given me a little rubber plug to put in the empty wisdom tooth socket before I ate, but I guess that's not the way it is done. I must have had an unusually large tooth, because it left behind a very large hole in my jaw. Maybe a tasty smoothie will help.

May must be the month for major website overhauls. My updates have gotten more complicated this month. I'm not complaining, because it's nice to have the work, but today's update was a bit confusing. I'm still not sure if I did the right thing. We'll see if anyone complains. That's often the only way I know if I've achieved my goal. It doesn't help that a lot of my clients are still using Internet Explorer. A lot of people never upgrade their browser or empty their browser cache. They're still seeing things that officially don't even exist anymore.

It looks like there are still tornado warnings in tomorrow's weather forecast. Whatever happened to April showers bring May flowers? We do have plenty of flowers, but there's been way too much rain. If this was an ordinary May, I wouldn't even need that minute-by-minute weather forecast website.

Daisy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1404

The permanent plates for my new car arrived today and when I went up to the dealership to have them put on, I notice that my old Defender had a place of honor on the showroom floor. They'd waxed and polished the Defender 90, so it positively gleamed. You could have sworn that it was a brand new car, instead of one that was 17 years old. If I hadn't just sold this car a few weeks ago, it would have been very tempting to buy it. The Defender was, and still is, a very cool looking car.

The dogs are loving the near perfect Fall weather we've been having lately. The brisk, cooler temperatures have renewed their interest in taking long walks. On days like these, Dot thinks she has more energy than she actually has and I have to be careful not to let her walk too far. Dalmatians have no concept of moderation. They'll go full speed ahead until they get tired and then decide to go no further. This usually works pretty well, unless they decide they're tired when we're three miles from home.

After I got my license plates, I went to the grocery store and got gas. You won't hear me bragging about the new car's gas mileage. It gets terrible gas mileage. I spend the rest of the day doing little chores around the house. I vacuumed. I polished shoes. I cleaned the sheets and washed the car. It has finally gotten cold enough that I no longer need to mow the grass every week. One of the best things about Fall is that I seldom need to start the lawn mower.

After dinner this evening, Janet and I went to a neighborhood art show. One of Janet's friends turns her business into a gallery one a year and hosts new local artists. There was a nice crowd at the show, but I didn't recognize many people. I told Janet that I saw the lady who runs the local dog washing place we use, but when we went up to say hello, it turned out to be our mailman instead. I'm not very good with faces.

Do any of you use Shutterstock? I"ve been submitting photos to iStockphoto for quite a while and thought I'd give Shutterstock a try as well. So far it's been an exercise in frustration. You have to get ten pictures accepted before you can become a contributing member. I typically get eight or nine accepted and then have to wait two weeks before I can submit again. You have to start over from scratch and submit ten more pictures with captions and keywords. You can only submit pictures that are 4 MP and larger. Usually my favorite pictures end up being 3.9 MP and are not eligible. The login process to the submissions site uses those irritating Captchas as well. I hate Captchas. I'm beginning to wonder if it's even worth the trouble to join Shutterstock. You certainly don't make a lot for each stock image you sell.

Tomorrow looks like it will be a carbon copy of today. This means Dash will get his wish and we'll all be going to the dog park again. I may try going to the gym again on Sunday as well. This certainly worked out pretty well last Sunday.

Diva is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1397

Janet asked if I would donate one of my old fine art photos to a charity auction she was involved with. The photo that had originally hung in a gallery show was long gone, but I though I might still have a duplicate print over at the storage warehouse. The storage warehouse used to be a repository for things that were too good to throw away and too useless to keep around the house. Now, it has just become a repository for mysterious objects that I don't even remember buying. I'm always surprised when I go to the storage room now. You just never know what you're going to find.

I eventually found the photo, along with a spare gallery frame to put it in. I found enough other forgotten photos to mount an entirely new show, but I think those days are gone. I'm just not that interested anymore.

I was interested in getting the dogs to the dog park today before the predicted rain ruined our opportunity. We'd never been to the park this early before, but it was still full of dogs and their owners. Maybe the others wanted to let their dogs play before the rain started too. Or maybe they just wanted to get their dog to the park before the big Texas Oklahoma football game started later in the morning. Dash was delighted to finally return to his favorite place and was a well behaved dog for the rest of the day.

I happened to see my old Defender on the Land Rover website today. They were asking almost double what they gave me in trade in for the car. Oh, well. I guess I knew I was selling the car wholesale, but still it was a bit startling to see it priced so high. I still feel like I made the right decision. I didn't feel comfortable driving the unreliable car anymore, so I guess it is irrelevant what someone else eventually pays for it.

Eventually it did rain today, but the afternoon shower was so brief that Dot didn't even notice it. I think she slept through the whole thing. By the time the dogs and I took our afternoon walk, the only evidence that it had rained at all were a few water drops on tree leaves. It certainly wasn't an eventful day, but it was a pleasant one.

Kuuipo is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 969

Yay! My InstaCanvas Gallery is open now. Please go and take a look when you've got a minute. Practically every Instagram picture I've ever taken is up on the site. I don't know if I'll ever make a dime from this venture, but I certainly like the idea. Instead of selling high resolution JPEG files to other professional graphic designers, this place is selling reasonably priced mounted canvas prints that anyone could use to brighten up a kitchen or bedroom wall. If it's pretty and bright, it just might sell! It was brilliant of these guys to print the Instagram photos on canvas too, because canvas isn't a very high resolution medium anyway. It's perfect for low quality Instagram prints that originate from a cell phone. I really like the fact that you can sell any image you want. There's no nitpicking evaluation team over in Sweden or Canada continually rejecting your images because they are out of focus or contain too many artifacts. Hey, I may order some of these canvas prints myself, which is probably exactly what the Instacanvas people want me to do.

I thought I might have found a new breakfast restaurant this morning, but as I was walking toward the front door, I saw a little hand written sign that said No credit cards accepted. Cash or personal check only. Oops. I turned around and got back in my car. I haven't carried any cash with me for years. I have a feeling that I won't even carry credit cards soon enough. I'll probably be among the first people to start using those new apps where you just wave your phone at the cash register to pay for something. I just don't understand people who carry big wads of cash around in their wallet. It's inconvenient. It attracts the wrong kind of attention. And if you're like me, you eventually wind up losing it. Credit cards are much tidier. I have a complete record of everything I spend and there is only one bill to pay every month. My theory is that a lot of those people with wads of cash in their wallets don't like paying taxes. At tax time they just say "What cash?" and claim that it never even existed.

At any rate, I ended up going back to one of my regular neighborhood restaurants. Sitting several tables away from me was an older gentleman wearing a crisp white dress shirt, starched blue jeans with precisely ironed creases and a highly polished pair of cowboy boots. He looked quite distinguished in his own way. If the customers in that restaurant wanted to tell me something, I'd certainly listen to this gentleman first. Most of the other men were wearing ball caps, running shoes, and rumpled looking golf shirts. I certainly wasn't exhibiting any sartorial splendor myself, but maybe I ought to try a little harder. I still don't venture far beyond my Steve Jobs look, wearing a black t-shirt and jeans everywhere except weddings and funerals.

As I was driving home from breakfast, I noticed on the odometer that I'd only driven 15 miles this week. Jeez, I walked the dogs more than 15 miles this week. It wasn't that long ago that I was driving up to 500 miles a week. There just isn't a need anymore. I remember reading an article recently that said auto sales to young adults were down almost 20% this year because young people increasingly prefer their iPhones, 4G connections, and other high-tech gadgets to cars. Maybe something similar is starting to happen with the rest of the population as well. There just isn't much need to actually go anywhere these days. FedEx and UPS deliver what I need to the frond door. All my business is conducted over the Internet. It's a lot more convenient to talk with people I know on Facebook than to actually drive somewhere to meet them. You wonder where all this is going to lead. I certainly never thought I'd lead an active, busy life while only driving 15 miles a week.

J-Lo is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 715

I feel like I'm competing in a very weird marathon. I've got work stacked up through the end of December that keeps me busy every single day. It's not like the old days where I had five or six high paying jobs every month and had the rest of the time to myself. The world has changed. Now, I have tons of tiny little jobs that pay virtually nothing individually. To make the same income I made ten or fifteen years ago, I have to keep churning this stuff out like a factory.

The continual stream of website updates, quickly written 400 word articles, and down-and-dirty video production is tiring. I no longer have the luxury of really thinking about what I'm doing. For the most part, I put my brain on autopilot, rush full speed ahead, and then correct the inevitable mistakes in the revision stages. Sometimes the final result is surprisingly good, but the effort is seldom fun. For most of my career my work really was fun. Where did that go? A few of my friends still tell me that their work is fun, but I don't believe them because they're all on Prozac.

Five or six years ago when I was still doing gallery shows, I had this vision of myself spending the rest of my life wandering around taking cool looking pictures and then displaying them in galleries and museums. After my first two gallery shows, it became obvious that this experiment was more of a hobby than an avocation. I got lots of complements at the gallery openings, but weeks later at the conclusion of each show, there were very few of the red dots that indicated a sale next to the pictures. At one memorable show, I actually spent more framing the pictures than I made from selling them.

If the market went up 400 points every day, I wouldn't feel so gloomy about the mechanics of earning a living. I could live quite nicely if every day were like today. Unfortunately, when I wake up tomorrow morning, I have a strong feeling that the world will still be broke and living beyond its means. If Angela Merkel sneezes, or Italian bond rates keep climbing, today's gains will evaporate in an instant. Hey, American Airlines went bankrupt today. I used to work on the American Airlines account when it was one of most successful and highly respected airlines in the world. How the mighty have fallen. Probably the only thing left in five years time will be the Apple stores, still selling iPads at full price in vacant shopping malls.

Belle is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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