Day 4114

The arboretum got hit pretty hard during the big freeze. I don't know why I thought this place would be exempt from all the carnage, but mother nature definitely had the upper hand here as well. As Janet and I walked through the gardens we kept saying "look, their's died too." Strangely, I felt a little better about our own pitiful yard after seeing that even dozens of skilled gardeners couldn't save these plants.

Even though almost all the Azaleas and Rhododendrons died, the Spring celebration was still pretty spectacular. Thousands of seasonal flowers made the well manicured gardens seem even more colorful than usual. Janet and I always get lots of ideas for our own yard when we visit the arboretum. Somehow we never follow up on these ideas though. When you have large dogs and thousands of squirrels in your yard, it's easy to lose interest in gardening. Usually we never get beyond cleaning up all the dog poop.

I didn't bother to take a long walk today. After stopping for a beer and a cup of tortilla soup at a patio restaurant inside the arboretum, a stroll through the gardens seemed like all the exercise I needed. Maybe it was good to take a break. My foot didn't hurt at all today. It's too bad you can't take dogs to the arboretum. Dawn would have enjoyed this afternoon's outing.

While I was eating breakfast this morning, one of the TV stations I was watching showed a supposedly live broadcast of the latest Starship launch at Boca Chica. Something seemed vaguely familiar about this launch, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Later in the day I realized that the broadcast I was watching wasn't live at all. It was footage from several weeks ago with a "live" caption pasted over the top. The real launch today was much different. It was very foggy outside and the rocket blew up in midair. This makes four Starships in a row that have blown up. I have a feeling that the first person to ride in one of these things is going to be pretty nervous.

Although I didn't take my long walk today, Dawn did get her shorter walk. She always seems eager to take these walks, but some days we don't get very far. Today was a good day. We completed our short one mile loop with no strange behavior at all. Some days Dawn walks like a normal dog. Other days, she freezes in place for no apparent reason. We still can't figure out her many moods. She certainly doesn't seem sick. Every time we take her to the vet, everything checks out fine.

I thought about taking a good camera to the arboretum, but I'm glad I didn't. I find that a lot of experiences are more enjoyable without a camera. I always have my phone in my pocket, but that's a lot different than lugging heavy professional equipment around. I find that I remember things better if I just take the experience in with my eyes instead of constantly trying to compose a scene for the camera. Oddly, I still haven't used my new camera. Maybe I should have just got a better phone.

Today seemed like Sunday for some reason. I hope that won't make tomorrow feel like Monday. One Monday in any week is plenty. I have no idea what I'll be doing tomorrow. I"m still trying to avoid climbing up on the roof. Maybe if I wait long enough, the water will just evaporate.

Sparky is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2115

I was glad the yellow warning light came on again when I was driving to the dealership this morning. At least the repair guys won't think my suspension problem is something I imagined. Who knows how long the repairs will take. It always seems to take much longer than I anticipate. This is probably why Land Rover has always been pretty generous with their loaner cars. If you've got a free loaner car, you're not going to complain as much about how long the repairs are taking.

Since I like to complain, I'll complain a bit about the Evoque anyway. The car is more expensive than the larger LR2 or the appealing new Discovery model. It has a small 4 cylinder engine and terrible visibility. The rear seats don't fold flat and the engine shuts off when you stop at a light. The stop and go engine is supposed to be a feature, but it is a giant annoyance to me. I never really believe the engine is going to start again when the light turns green. I hope they are able to fix my suspension quickly. I'm not looking forward to driving the Evoque for the entire month of October.

It was a nice warm day, so the dogs wanted to sun themselves in the backyard after lunch. Instead of lying in the grass, Dot now likes to lie in the Monkey Grass beds next to the greenhouse. This is killing the Liriope plants, but I don't have the heart to make Dot move. I did a little gardening while I was watching the dogs. It's always been difficult to grow the type of plants I want, but surprisingly easy to grow weeds. If I don't pull the weeds, they crowd out the good plants. As I was pulling weeds, I noticed that clumps of them made a pretty good makeshift broom. I used the clumps of weeds to brush away a dense mass of spiderwebs on the back windows. I thought this was pretty clever, since clearing away the spiderwebs with a regular broom typically ruins the broom. The webs stuck to the clumps of weeds like a charm and them I just threw them away.

I've been having trouble with my phone ever since I upgraded to IOS 9. A lot of the apps I use don't recognize the WiFi network anymore and use cellular data instead. I looked on the Internet and a lot of other people are having the same problem. Apple needs to fix this quickly. As soon as people start realizing that they've inadvertently maxed out their data plans by using cellular data when they thought they were using WiFi. My watch is having trouble getting the temperature from my phone as well. Makes me wonder about the wisdom of upgrading my laptop to the new El Capitan system. What could possible go wrong?

I still haven't figured out how to get Dot in the Evoque for tomorrow's physical therapy appointment. That will be my after breakfast project, unless a new writing job accidentally falls in my lap.

Thelma is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2035

I should sleep well tonight. For one reason or another, I managed to keep moving all day long. We got up early because Dot had another accident in bed. She managed to get herself stuck in an awkward position when she repositioned herself during the night and I think struggling to stand up caused her to poop. There is no real way to prevent this. Like most dogs, Dot gets up, circles around, and then lies down in a different position several times a night. Sometimes she doesn't land quite where she expected to. Since she only pooped a little bit, we got up early and took the dogs on a walk so she could finish the job outside.

When we returned, I threw the dog blankets in the washer and we sat down for breakfast. It was actually a fairly normal morning. After breakfast, I went to the gym. I usually don't go this early, but why not? If I had stayed home, all I would have done was vacuum or work on another website. I can do those things any day of the week. I think all the activity trackers I'm using now are shaming me into having a more effective workout.

I really like the Apple Health app. It aggregates information it receives from my watch and the Jawbone UP band and presents it all on an easy to read dashboard. Even though I'm basically a lazy person, I got my heart pumping this morning and burned a respectable number of calories. I'm thinking of adding a WiFi scale to the mix. It certainly isn't necessary, but I just like tracking things.

On the way home from the gym I stopped at a nearby nursery and bought some Liriope plants to replace the ones that had died in the back yard. When I was replanting the Monkey Grass, it became clear why the plants had died. The soil in this part of the yard was just too dry. Actually, we should have planted grass instead of ground cover in this section of the yard, because it is one of the few areas that receives direct sunlight during the day. The combination of sunlight and tons of small roots from a nearby Oak tree had caused the ground to dry out twice as fast as the rest of the yard. Large, mature trees can really suck the water out of the soil. I love the trees though, so it will always be difficult to keep the grass and landscaping looking nice. It looks nice again now though. We'll see how long this lasts.

Dash got a trip to the dog park as a reward for helping Dot with her walks all week. He has become timid again after we quit going to training class when Dot had her spinal injury. Now, just about anything scares him. Today, a basically friendly dog wanted to play a little too rough and it spooked Dash. He was ready to go home way earlier than he should have. It's a shame that dogs are scaring him again, because going to the dog park used to be one of his favorite things. Dot used to love the dog park too. She will probably never go again though. She is just too fragile.

Since it was such a hot day, we had a great  dinner of sushi and cold salads. Cold food on a hot day is really satisfying to me. The only thing that would have made the meal better would have been a couple of glasses of wine. I can probably drink wine again in moderation, but I an scared to tempt fate after making such tremendous progress recovering from Hepatitis C. I feel extremely lucky to have a fully functioning liver again and foregoing alcohol seems a very small price to pay for staying healthy. That being said, I still think a good wine makes a great meal even better.

It has been a pleasant weekend, but it's back to work tomorrow. I will begin development on my latest website project and I expect the flow of writing assignments to begin again soon. Hopefully, I can find the right balance of exercise and rest with Dot. The Summer heat is tough on her, but she still needs to keep active to prevent her leg muscles from atrophying further. One way or another we'll all make it though the remainder of the Summer and then you can listen to me complain about Winter again.

Winston is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1692

The dogs love our unseasonably cool August weather and enjoyed being out in the yard today. There was a nice breeze that blew away most of the mosquitoes, so we were able to enjoy the outdoors longer than I expected. While I kept an eye on Dot to make sure she didn't fall down or get herself in trouble, I managed to get a bit of gardening done. As the dogs sniffed the air for new scents, I pulled weeds and tidied up the yard. It's nice to see Dot enjoying herself again. She still moving around very slowly and her rear legs are a bit shaky, but there's a look in her eyes that tells me that a burden has been lifted. I think that the intestinal tumor had been bothering her for a lot longer than we knew.

I'm out of shape. It's amazing how quickly things can go downhill without exercise. A week in the hospital on IV fluids erased almost an entire year of rehab work with Dot. Several weeks away from the gym has erased a bit of my own progress was well. I was winded after today's workout, even though it was no different than any other. My goal for the rest of the year will be to help Dot get strong again while doing my best to stay strong and fit myself. Neither of us are getting any younger, so it is important to keep moving. If I can emulate Dot's determination and tenacity, we should both be fine.

Tomorrow we go back to the cancer center for Dot's first post-surgery evaluation. I hope the doctors are as impressed with Dot's progress as we are. Considering the seriousness of her situation a few weeks ago, she is doing amazingly well. Hopefully, if her doctors think she making good progress, Dot may soon be able to resume her water therapy and acupuncture. Her rear legs have been weak before and the physical therapy she's been receiving this year has really helped.

We almost made it through the night last night. Dot didn't need to go outside to pee until almost 4 AM, instead of the 2 AM wake up call we have been getting used to lately. With any luck, her incontinence will continue to diminish and we'll all be able to get back to enjoying a good night's sleep in the near future. You can't rush recovery though. Getting better has its own time schedule and you have to be patient.

With Dot's recent emergency, it's easy to forget that Dash is still being treated for cancer as well. Today I noticed for the first time that his hair is finally starting to regrow in the smooth bald area on his neck where he received the radiation treatments. If Dot continues to do as well as Dash has been doing this Summer, we'll have two healthy, cancer free dogs again before Christmas. I'm hoping for the best when Dot's oncologist examines her tomorrow.

Becker is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1559

Weekends come with a bonus these days. There are no complicated cancer protocols to follow on weekends. Dash gets a little rest and the dogs can just be normal dogs. Even though it was a normal weekend filled with the usual weekend chores, it seemed much easier to deal with than the previous week.

Since the weather was nice, I thought I'd do some gardening and finish up what the landscaping guys forgot. I went to Home Depot and bought a couple of flats of Liriope to fill in a few bare areas. I thought the landscape guys were going to do this themselves, but apparently we weren't on the same wavelength. They did have extra Monkey Grass in their bid, but when I told them to fill in the bare areas, they started on the East side of the yard and methodically worked their way West. I thought they'd start with the worst looking areas and proceed to slightly less shabby areas until the Liriope ran out. There would have been plenty of ground cover to go around if they'd done this. Instead, they just told me that they ran out of Liriope before they even reached the big bare spot on the West side of the yard.

I should never do gardening. I'm somewhat of a perfectionist and I hate mud and dirt. Gardening is all about mud and dirt, so I always make a bigger mess than I anticipate. It took a while, but the yard now looks the way I imagined it would. I also took some of the white pea gravel I had the guys add to the path and moved it to the small decorative circles that serve as sculpture bases. Just like the Liriope, there was already plenty of pea gravel to accomplish what I wanted. The landscapers just didn't seem to know what I wanted to do with it.  I found the extra gravel I needed under the garbage cans behind the back fence. It wasn't doing much good there, so I shoveled it into buckets and moved it to the two circular areas on either side of the curving path. After I was finished, there was still plenty of left-over gravel.

Everything looks great now, but my gardening efforts took so much longer than I anticipated that I didn't make it to the gym after all. By the way my shoulder feels now, I probably got more exercise gardening than I would have at the gym anyway.

I'll be real glad when my Hepatitis C treatments are finished. Now that my Hemoglobin levels are low, I find that I'm frequently getting nosebleeds in addition to waking up with a cold every morning. When I was making the bed this morning, I leaned over to straighten the sheets and noticed little drops of blood on the pillows. "What the hell," I thought. "Where is this blood coming from?" Then I realized that it was dripping from my nose. It's a nuisance, but a very minor nuisance compared to getting a liver transplant sometime later in life.

Janet and I tried to attach our little bird scarecrows to small suction cups to make them easier to place on the cars. It was an idea that should have worked, since the suction cups seemed to stick easily to a variety of things around the house. They wouldn't stick to the cars though. I don't know why. Oh, well. This was a minor failure. The yard looks nice. The dogs are relaxed and happy. It was a nice weekend.

Ariel is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1202 - Easter Sunday

Two days of rain shut down the dog park this weekend, but the wet weather did have a few benefits. The soil was finally wet enough for me to go pull up all the little oak and elm trees that were growing in the Asian jasmine beds. Every year, acorns and seed pods fall by the thousands from the large trees in our backyard and sprout into small trees during the Spring. These tiny trees have surprisingly deep roots and you can only pull them up when the soil is really wet. If you don't take this opportunity to rid your gardens of these diminutive trees, the root systems will continue to grow and they will be impossible to uproot the next season. In just a few seasons, your entire yard will become an ugly thicket of brush and weeds. Today seemed like the perfect opportunity to do some weeding, so I did.

Even though all the dog parks in Dallas were closed today, the human parks were having their busiest day of the year. As soon as the sun came up, I saw families putting up tents and staking out their territory for huge family picnics in the park behind our house. By the time I walked the dogs in the afternoon, the entire area was like a three ring circus. The air was thick with smoke from hundreds of barbecue grills, and every hundred yards or so, there was an impromptu soccer game going on. At least four times, our walk was interrupted by crowds of little kids running toward the dogs while shouting "Do they bite" in Spanish.

Dot and Dash were very good, allowing all the children to pet them. I could tell Dot was getting tired though. This Easter outing was way too noisy and stressful for her. As soon as we got home again, both dogs went straight to their dog beds and fell asleep.

I was really hungry today. In addition to weeding the garden and walking the dogs, there was also a lot of water from last night's rain to get off the roof. Lucky for me, Janet fixed a fabulous Easter dinner with ham, whipped sweet potatoes, and braised cabbage. I ate lots of vegetables and left just enough room for a pear tart for dessert. It's been a good day. I think I'll be joining the dogs for a snooze on the bed very soon.

Smiley is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 935

There's one guaranteed way of making it rain. All I have to to is go to Home Depot and buy a bunch of things that would be handy in a drought. Since it has been pretty dry for the past several weeks, I picked up some soaker hoses to water the Photinia bushes. I got another sprinkler for a hard to reach spot in the back of the yard. I even got some more Henry 209 Roof Patch. The rain started before I even got home.

I've got mixed emotions about rain in the Summer. I still have roof problems whenever it rains, but the yard really needs the water. You really can't have a dry roof without the worry of a dead yard. Today's rain was brief, but it packed a wallop. High winds knocked over a large construction crane, and then blew a man off a paddle board on the lake behind out house.

Since I was stuck in the house waiting for the rain to stop, I thought I'd try hooking up a MIDI keyboard to my computer. The keyboard had been hooked up to an older computer for years, but I had kind of lost interest in it. When I plugged it into my current computer, the keyboard didn't work at all. This initiated a long Google search to see what the problem was. I finally got the thing to work after a fashion, but the real problem is that Apple has no interest in staying compatible with older equipment anymore. This keyboard was just one of many things that worked perfectly on my older Macs, but has compatibility problems now.

I had a hard time getting the dogs to go on their evening walk. Dot kept hearing thunder off in the distance and didn't want to go outside. It didn't matter to her that the storm was over and the thunder was headed away from us. She was having no part of it. Eventually, the skies returned to normal and I took the dogs on their walk. They both refused to poop though, so it was kind of a wasted effort.

Maybe the weather will be better tomorrow. Then again, it might rain. That's the way it is during the Summer in Texas. You just never know.

Dalaney is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 766

Although my Northern readers might not believe me, it was eighty degrees in Dallas today. I walked the dogs wearing a T-shirt and we were all hot by the time we got home. It's hard to believe it's January. We saw people out flying kites in the park today. This type of Winter weather is one of the reasons I enjoy living down South. I'll admit that I am getting confused about my furnace problems though. I'm hesitating to call the repair folks again while it's this warm, because I'm afraid that when they arrive, I might have the air conditioner running. I just need to remember that no matter how warm it might be today, it could still be below freezing next Monday. Texas weather is totally unpredictable.

I finished the week by getting caught up on just about everything. My two big website remodeling jobs are complete and I don't think there are any stray writing jobs hiding on my desk either. This means the weekend is totally free for chores I don't want to do. If the weather stays nice, I think I'll trim all the dead branches off the Photinia Bushes in the back yard. Years ago, these bushes used to be a nice looking hedge, but they've grown unruly in recent years. Some of them have grown into full fledged trees. I'm not very picky about gardening. To me, if it's still green, it's great.

Janet and I are going to pick up a new Dalmatian named Molly somewhere West of Fort Worth tomorrow morning. Evidently this dog ran away and when the local animal control found it and called the owners, they didn't want it back. "Just keep the dog," they told the pound. This uncaring attitude continues to amaze me. Why do people like this even get a pet in the first place? At any rate, Dalmatian Rescue will find Molly a good home. I'm certain that her second home will be much better than her first.

I'm getting the urge to write songs again. In truth, this songwriting urge is just an excuse to buy gear. I find that I'm lusting after microphones and mixers again. The last time this happened was about eight years ago. I did write and record a few songs, but not nearly enough to justify all the gear I bought. It would be a lot less expensive if I had a craving for chocolate or single malt scotch. I love technology though. It's my downfall.

April is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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