Showing posts with label giant possums. Show all posts
Showing posts with label giant possums. Show all posts

Thursday, April 2, 2020

Day 3752

The park is open again. There was no explanation why it closed yesterday and no explanation why it reopened again this morning. I did notice a few overnight changes in the neighborhood. There were a ton of newly printed no parking signs warning people not to park on city streets or on the grass surrounding the park. This seems like a reasonable solution for reducing park traffic to me. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when city leaders were discussing the park last night. I wonder what caused them to abruptly reverse their position?

Banning vehicular traffic seems to be working. Just like Monday and Tuesday, there were very few people in the park this morning. I think today's solution is much better than yesterday's. The people walking their dogs in the neighborhood are happy. The joggers and cyclists are happy. The neighbors who were mad at people parking on their front lawns are probably happy too. I'm sure there are people in other parts of town who aren't happy, but they have their own parks to walk their dogs in. There are hundreds of parks in Dallas.

Maybe now that the city has solved the park problem, they can turn their attention to the fabric store problem. Every time I turn on the television I hear people encouraging us to make our own masks. There are lots of YouTube videos now with detailed instructions on how to make a good, reliable mask. There's only one problem. Our proactive county judge shut down all the fabric stores. Why are fabric stores considered a nonessential business when people are practically begging us to start making our own masks? It doesn't make sense.

I'm glad they haven't shut down the appliance repair shops yet. Our washing machine is working again. I managed to find an excellent repair shop after doing an extensive Google search. The repairman was very knowledgable and had exactly the part I needed. He was very polite, wore gloves, had a mask his wife made, and we both kept our distance. I felt like this was the way things were supposed to work.

I'm tempted to try fixing my computer myself. There are some excellent tutorials on how to replace my hard drive online and I think I could take the 27" iMac apart and successfully put it back together if I worked slowly and carefully. I've certainly got the time. There isn't much else to do these days. I'm actually getting used to working using the external hard drive. Once I master all the new little quirks, I may actually prefer working this way,

Last night was weird. There were two huge possums in the yard when we took Dawn out to pee before we went to bed. Dawn started to chase the possums and then she and the possums both became scared at the same time. The possums both climbed on tree limbs and froze in place. Possums have a habit of faking their own death in order to fend off predators. That's where the phrase playing possum comes from. I couldn't even scare the possums away. They refused to move. When we came back in the house there was a terrible smell. I thought something was on fire and Janet and I nervously searched the entire house looking for something that might be burning. It turned out that a big moth had flown into one of the halogen lamps in the living room and gotten fried.

Nothing weird happened today. All in all, today was a much better day than yesterday.

Miracle is today's Dalmatian of the Day
Watch of the Day

Friday, February 25, 2011

Day 437

It's tax time again. I spent a good chunk of the day putting tax documents in a ring binder for my accountant. This whole process used to be easy, but it seems to be getting harder every year. Almost every day an envelope comes in the mail with the words "Important Tax Return Document" printed on the outside. I don't know what half of these documents are or why I should be saving them. They all go in the ring binder though for my accountant to figure out. I used to buy a copy of TurboTax every year and do my taxes myself, but it has simply become too complicated. I like the flat tax idea proposed by Steve Forbes and many others. Everybody pays 17%. No loopholes or deductions. Just fill out one page and you're done. It will probably never happen though. Too many people like the loopholes and deductions.

When I was up on the roof sweeping away the water this morning, I noticed signs that a rather large animal has been up there recently. Either we've got a giant Possum in our yard or one of the neighbor's dogs has learned to climb trees. I don't even know how an animal larger than a cat or a squirrel could get up on the roof, but something's been up there. I'm on critter watch now.

I stopped by and got some more ink for the Epson 4000 on my way to the grocery store this afternoon and was surprised to discover that the printer store guys were reading my blog. It still startles me when people in my everyday life know what I've been doing every day, but I guess I ought to get used to it. I've been writing this thing for quite a while now. I like going to the printer store. It's a place where I can talk about cars and archival printing and what's on the horizon for my business. Mostly we just talk about cars though. There used to be tons of stores like this where guys could go to hang out and waste time talking about their favorite things. Most of these places have disappeared. I think the printer store will be around for a while though. I keep them in business buying ink.

I got an e-mail from one of my animal rescue friends today saying that she was canceling her LinkedIn account because an invitation to connect with her inadvertently got sent out to everyone in her address book. Is this even something to get upset about? Jeez, I think I send out blanket invitations of one sort or another just about every week.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day