Day 4545

I paid five dollars a gallon for gas for the first time I can remember. Sadly, I don't think it will be the last time either. Things are getting bad. I remember four dollar gas during the Jimmy Carter years, but this is even worse. I could have gotten gas a little cheaper at Sam's Club, but the lines were too long. All the cars were pointed in the wrong direction too. If I joined one of these lines, the gas pumps would have been on the wrong side of the car. I feel sorry for people who have a long commute. No wonder everyone still wants to work from home.

Since I can't figure out how to stop the dishwater leak, I went shopping for new dishwashers after I finished my grocery shopping this morning. I didn't buy anything. Sticker shock. The average price for dishwashers at Best Buy was around a thousand dollars. I was expecting the price to be around five hundred dollars. There were a few machines for that price, but not many. I asked the sales guy about Bosch dishwashers which I kind of liked and he told me that they'd been out of stock for almost a year. "Supply chain issues," he said. What kind of dystopian world are we living in? Everything seems to be much more expensive and in short supply. Maybe I should just get the old dishwasher repaired.

It was nice outside on our sunrise walk with Dawn, but I could tell even then that it was going to be a hot day. This seemed to be a good day to go back to the gym. For some reason I seem to walk slower around the indoor track than I do outdoors. I think I'm walking fast, but Fitbit says otherwise. I got the steps I needed and worked with weights a bit to try to regain some upper body strength. I should have stayed longer, but it was kind of a bare minimums day. All I really wanted to do today was take a long nap.

Dawn has been reluctant to eat her dinner when Janet isn't home. She's going to have to eat while Janet is on vacation, so I thought I'd try something new this evening. I opened a can of Hill's Savory Stew with Beef and Vegetables which I knew she liked and let her smell it in the bedroom. "There's more of that in the kitchen for you," I said. That did the trick. She raced out to her bowl in the kitchen where I had placed a little bit of the wet food on top of the kibble that she normally eats. I'm not sure how long this will work, but it's a start. She likes her food, but just doesn't like to leave the bedroom when Janet isn't home.

I saw the rat in the atrium again today. I wish it would just go away. There's nothing to eat in the atrium and I don't know why it stays. The last time I tried to catch a rat in the atrium was a disaster. It refused to go in the safe live trap for weeks. I tried different baits, but nothing worked. I finally resorted to an old fashioned kill trap which caught the rat almost immediately. Unfortunately it didn't kill it. The rat woke me up in the middle of the night with a strange scream. It was dragging the trap around the atrium while making a terrible noise. I had to catch it in a big bucket and take it down to the park in the middle of the night. I don't want to ever do that again.

On a more pleasant note, I think it will be a nice day for Dawn's Sunday outing tomorrow. I'm tired of all the rain we've been having and am looking forward to better weather next week. Maybe I'll go look at dishwashers again after we have our ice cream with Dawn tomorrow. Hopefully I can find something better than what I saw today.

Faith is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 4544

Do people still work on Friday? The park was so full of people when we took Dawn on her sunrise walk that I thought it was Saturday for a moment. Maybe everyone was just trying to get their jogging and cycling in before the rain started again. It's been pretty wet lately.

This was definitely a slow day. I didn't do much of anything. After breakfast I tried to find out where the leak in the kitchen was coming from without much success. It's not a bad leak. I removed some drawers from cabinets next to the dishwasher so I could see underneath and the area looked pretty dry. My best guess now is that the seal on the dishwasher door is starting to go bad. The rubber feels pretty dry and a leak on the right side of the door would correspond to where water is appearing on the floor. I'm no expert though. The water might actually be coming from the ice maker in the refrigerator. Who knows? I'm such a procrastinator that I actually thought about washing the dishes by hand to avoid using the dishwasher. That wouldn't work very long though.

When I took my long walk today the road over the little creek feeding the lake was open again. It apparently only took one day to install the new bridge. The bridge is for the fancy bike trail the city is building and is right next to a larger bridge for cars. The construction company building the trail must have a penalty clause in their contract because there is a ton of activity these days. It looks like the trail will actually be finished in early July as they promised.

I was able to complete my full six mile route today, but I probably should have just gone to the gym. I thought it would be a nice walk because it was quite cool outside on our early walk with Dawn. I guess I miscalculated because I was hot and sweaty by the time I returned home. It was overcast all day, but the temperature still climbed quickly. I'm probably going to be walking in the park a lot less during the summer. I just can't handle the heat anymore.

I'm trying to find out if I'm credentialed to attend the Artemis-1 launch this Fall. I applied so long ago that I've completely lost track of my status. The last time I was down at the space center I got the name and e-mail address of the person who handles all NASA credentialing issues. I sent a message this morning but it came back return to sender. I guess the person who wrote down the address for me misspelled something. Back to square one. There is still a lot of time and it's likely that the launch will get delayed again, but I'd sure like to find out something. I've already promised the magazine an article about this launch. It would be a shame if I don't get press credentials.

It's raining again and I've got the pumps on the roof working. I hate all these water problems. There's the toilet that runs in the bathroom, the mysterious leak in the kitchen, and the perpetual threat of roof leaks every time it rains. Plumbers won't work on the strange French toilet, the appliance repairmen is good at fixing things but bad at diagnosing problems, and the roof is just very expensive to add a slight pitch so it will drain properly. I'd rather deal with little problems like the star tracker. Old houses have so many problems that it can be overwhelming at times.

Time to make a grocery list again. This week has gone very quickly. Janet says the price of gas has gone up. I think it goes up every day now. We'll see how bad things are when I fill my tank along with a few grocery bags tomorrow. Life seem normal when I'm just sitting here at home. It's kind of a rude awakening when I have to venture out into the world these days.

Freckles is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2314

We went to a concert tonight. One of Janet's friends is a singer in the group and we go and see them perform from time to time. This evening's event was a fundraiser and there was a barbecue dinner, a silent auction, and casino night gambling. Janet was probably hoping that I wouldn't look at the baby monitor on my phone, but I couldn't help myself. I worry about Dot. The first time I looked, she was sleeping. The second time I looked, she was barking and appeared to be struggling to get up. I could hear Dash barking too in the background. We left the event early and came home.

I was almost certain that there was either a thunderstorm in the area or that Dot had pooped in her bed, but everything was calm when we returned.  I have no idea what got the dogs so upset. It's probably just as well that we came home a little early. It takes me longer to write the blog that it used to. If we stayed for the gambling, I would never have gotten tonight's entry completed before midnight.

The weather forecast looks ominous. There is supposed to be wind, rain, and severe thunderstorms for the next ten days. This is one reason I was worried about the dogs this evening. Dot and Dash are both very storm phobic and tend to panic when there is thunder and lightning in the vicinity. The rain is supposed to start later tonight, so I thought it might have arrived a little early. Probably it is me who has the real storm phobia in the family. Bad storms freak me out. Trees have fallen on our roof twice since we bought the house, and if a tornado ever blew through, we are sitting ducks. There is so much glass in the house that there are no safe rooms anywhere. Even the interior walls are pretty close to floor-to-ceiling glass windows. With a flat roof and no basement, this house wasn't designed to weather much of anything.

For the past few weeks I've been noticing that the price of gas is going up again. Why? When I filled the car up today it seemed that prices had risen even further. The price of oil has been basically falling for the past two years. It seems like the price of gas should stay low for a long time. I've gotten used to seeing prices gradually go down. It will be a low blow to watch them go up again. I guess it doesn't really matter. I don't drive much anyway.

The new grass in the back yard is starting to grow. This is always a good sign. Every year when we refurbish the yard I think that this might finally be the year that the grass takes root and thrives. It never seems to happen though. Grubs eat the roots below the ground and squirrels eat the grass above the ground. In the Summer there is always a thick canopy of Oak leaves overhead that blocks most of the direct sunlight. The grass always has an uphill battle, but I keep thinking that one of these years it might make it.

I'm not sure whether I'll be going to the gym tomorrow or sitting at home watching an approaching storm on the weather radar and hoping the power doesn't go out. You never know about Texas weather. I hope the rain doesn't start until after we've walked the dogs in the morning. Life is much more peaceful once we've gotten the morning walk out of the way.

Becker is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day