Day 2870

I left the house early this morning so I could get my lab work done before I ate breakfast. Like I always do, I asked these new guys if they could tell me my blood type. I think it's ridiculous that I'm almost 70 years old and don't even know my blood type. I've literally had hundreds of blood tests, but this is one test that nobody wants to do. "Insurance won't pay for it," they tell me. Why not? It seems like useful information that everyone should have. Apparently, the normal way to find out your blood type is to donate blood at a blood bank. This won't work for me. Nobody wanted my blood for decades because I had Hepatitis C. Blood banks probably still don't want my blood. The nurse said it would cost me $100 extra to run the blood type test. "Never mind," I told her. I don't know why this irritates me so much, but the fact that doctors have taken gallons of my blood to run complicated tests and refuse to do this simple one represents everything wrong with modern medicine to me.

While I was walking toward the elevator in the parking garage, I passed a section where every single car was a Porsche. This seemed odd. The place looked like a dealership. There were several Panamera's, a bunch of 911's, a Macan, and two Cayene's. I looked a little closer and wasn't entirely surprised to discover that this was the reserved parking area for doctors. Even my old doctor in the hood drives a Porsche. I'm amazed that it hasn't been stolen yet.

It's still hard to get used to a medical facility where the lobby isn't crowded and everyone is polite to me. I only had to wait a few minutes before they took me back to the lab for blood work. I have to drive a little further, but I think I'm going to like this place.

I fixed my regular breakfast smoothie when I got home, but it was more like lunch than breakfast. Since it was a warm, clear day, I had planned to spend the afternoon repairing the roof. I don't know why I thought I could do this quickly. Nothing happens quickly on the roof. I started by cutting out the section that had gotten ruined by the rain. When I cleared away the debris, I noticed that there was water seeping out around the edges of the square hole I had made in the coating. I'm beginning to think that there is a thin layer of water under the entire roof. I removed some more of the rubbery material, hoping that I would find the end of the water, but the asphalt under the elastomer coating was damp everywhere I looked. I gave up and went back inside. It was clear that I wasn't going to be able to re-coat this damaged area today. Luckily, there is no rain in the forecast. I'll let things dry out for a few days and try again.

I had a lot more success with the large format printer in my office. I finally managed to get the thing unclogged and running normally again. This is a pointless exercise since I don't make large prints anymore, but I can't stand the idea of having a large nonfunctioning piece of equipment taking up space in the office. The printer will clog again, but if I get the urge to make a huge print within the next two weeks, everything should be fine.

The gift card people finally refunded our money. It took four months and they were rude the entire time. They lost our documentation twice and basically treated us like we were the scammers. All I've got to say is don't ever buy a gift card at a grocery store. This scam is well documented on the Consumer Reports website. It is apparently not that hard for someone to get your information before you even buy the card and when you go to use it for the first time, the money is already gone.

I'm going to get a haircut tomorrow. This is the only time I go to the mall. I"ll probably stop at the Tesla store for a few minutes and look enviously at the Model X. Maybe I'll stop at the Apple Store to and see if I'm tempted by the iPhone X. In both cases, I'm guessing the X stands for x-pensive.

Puppies are today's Dalmatians of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2784

I don't think I'll ever buy a gift card again. The gift card company keeps asking for more and more information. It's almost as if they think we're the perpetrators of a fraud rather than the victims of one. We keep providing all the information they ask for, but they don't seem that much closer to refunding our money. Why this investigation process should take ninety days is beyond me. I'm sure they know exactly what happened. There is an entire Consumer Reports website about gift card fraud. The sad truth is that this type of thing has become so commonplace that the company doesn't particularly care. Janet and I are just a statistic.

I like things to be predictable. That's a big reason why the gift card fraud is so frustrating. I've always thought of gift cards as a simple and convenient way to give someone money. If you have to worry about someone else gaining access to the card before you even use it, it suddenly isn't simple or convenient anymore. It's just one more giant hassle in a world full of giant hassles.

I wish Dash knew how much I want life to be predictable. He's driving me crazy by changing his food preference every day. Some days he likes the Hill's I/D that we used to feed Dot. Other days he won't touch the stuff and prefers the Hills I/D Low Fat that the vet wanted us to feed him when his triglycerides were through the roof. Usually, he wants a little wet food mixed in with the dry, but not always. It's really hard to predict what he's going to eat on any given day. Today, I split his dinner into two parts, because he wouldn't wait until 5 PM. He ate the first part of his dinner with gusto. An hour and a half later, he refused to touch exactly the same thing. I removed the food from his bowl, ate my own dinner, and then put Dash's dinner in a different type of bowl. I made sure he saw me stirring the bowl with a spoon and pretending to add new ingredients. This subterfuge did the trick. Dash finished his meal.

There was very little work to do today, so I used my time trying to find replacements for some of the software that refuses to work after I upgraded my operating system to Sierra. My computer used to be able to play Windows videos, but not anymore. Neither Apple of Microsoft seems to have any interest in being compatible with each other these days. It's a shame. Since most of my clients are still on Windows systems, I sometimes have a need to open and play Windows audio and video files. I did a Google search, downloaded a few open source Windows media players, but none of them worked. That's the trouble with Google. Something that got rave reviews in 2013 might not work at all in 2017.

At least computer problems aren't messy. I'm starting to think our shower is leaking again, and that is messy. We had a shower pan leak once before and we pretty much had to rip out the entire shower and re-tile everything to fix the problem. Maybe it isn't as bad this time, but there is a distinct musty smell in the bathroom that wasn't there before. I hate water problems because you can't ignore them. If you ignore a leak, it will eventually ruin everything.

The new grass is already starting to die. It's received plenty of water and it seems to be getting enough sunlight too. It definitely shouldn't be looking spotty and thin so soon. I'll call the landscaper to come take a look, but I doubt that he'll do anything. He'll just say that I did something wrong and that it's my fault. Somehow, it's always my fault.

Lilly is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2769

We had a terrible storm last night. The lights flickered on and off for twenty minutes and I kept hearing the thump of small branches hitting the roof. For a while I thought I smelled something burning, but I must have been imagining things. I looked everywhere and couldn't find a problem. We lost our internet connection for a while, but never did lose power. The storm was kind of a surprise after a succession of hot dry days, but at least I didn't have to worry about watering the grass today.

The overnight rain brought cooler temperatures along with it, so our morning walk with Dash was actually very pleasant. I noticed that Jimson Weed is blooming in the park again. I'm always surprised that the city doesn't destroy these beautiful plants, because they are very poisonous.

After breakfast, I wasted way too much time trying to figure out how we had become victims of a gift card fraud. I guess I'm still surprised that nobody was in any particular hurry to refund our money. It turns out that the kind of fraud we experienced is fairly common. It often originates at the facility where the cards are manufactured. An employee copies the numbers off the cards before they are packaged and shipped to a retail outlet. After an unsuspecting person purchases the card at a grocery store and has it activated, the person who copied the numbers at the manufacturing facility is able to receive a notification that the card is activated and then uses the card to make online purchases. There is an entire Consumer Reports website devoted to warning people about this scam. Scammers also sometimes steal batches of cards from a retail outlet, remove the cards from the packaging, copy all the card information, and them replace the cards in counterfeit packaging and return them to the retail outlet where they are purchased by unsuspecting customers. According to the Consumer Reports website, the only way to protect yourself from this kind of crime is to never buy a gift card at a grocery store or other retail outlet where the cards are displayed on an unsecured rack.  Live and learn. I suppose that we'll eventually get our money back, but I'll never buy a gift card again.

I wonder how long it's going to take for my legs to completely heal. I'm taking normal walks with Dash everyday now and the swelling hasn't returned. That's the good news. The bad news is that my left leg is still very sore. I still feel a hard knot in my calf that might take months to disappear. The slow progress is frustrating even though my doctor says that everything is proceeding normally. I'm ready to put this whole unfortunate episode behind me.

Maybe I'll go renew my passport tomorrow. My current passport expires next month and I've heard that the renewal process sometimes takes longer if you wait to renew until after your passport has expired. When did the cost of renewing a passport become so high? I remember paying somewhere around $25 to renew my passport. Now the cost is well over $100. Sign of the times, I guess. There is no place I particularly want to visit right now, but experience tells me that if I let my passport expire, I will need it almost immediately. I used to need a passport frequently when I worked overseas a lot, but somehow I don't expect that I'm going to get many jobs in Germany these days.

The closer we get to the solar eclipse, the more I'm reading that travelers must prepare as if they are entering a disaster zone. You are encouraged to bring your own food, arrive several days ahead of time, and make sure to bring your own toilet paper. It is anticipated that there won't be nearly enough porta-potties available to accommodate the huge influx of visitors. If huge traffic jams, no food, and and absence of toilets is what I've got to look forward to, seeing this "once in a lifetime" event is becoming less appealing every day.

Molly is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2762

The landscapers didn't show up today, but I did get my car back. I knew the bill was pretty high, so I was planning to use a gift card I'd gotten for my birthday to help with the payment. I couldn't remember the exact amount on the card, so I called the activation number to get a balance. They told me that the card had already been used and that there was a zero balance available. How was this even possible? The card was brand new and I hadn't even taken it out of it's sealed packaging yet. This was a whole new kind of fraud that I wasn't even aware of. The purchase that drained the card was made on my birthday when the card was in my possession. The transaction was made at a Wall-Mart Supercenter in Houston. Again, how is this even possible? The only thing that I can think of is that the cashier who activated the card when Janet purchased it knew how to use the bar code information in the packaging to redeem the card after it was activated. The Visa people said they would send us a new card, but that it would take 90 days. This has destroyed my faith in gift cards. I don't think I'll ever buy one again.

When I was leaving to pick up my car at the dealership, I saw two loose dogs running around the neighborhood in my rear view mirror. I was going to call Janet and warn her about the dogs, because I knew she'd be walking Dash soon. The light was already green where I needed to turn left though, and I didn't have time to get my phone out. As soon as I turned the corner, I saw that the two dogs had run out into a busy street and gotten run over by a car. I don't know how the dogs had gotten from a neighbors front yard to this busy street in the time it took me to drive around the block, but they did. The whole thing made me sick to my stomach. The dogs were transported to a nearby vet, but I still don't know if they survived. Please people. keep your dogs on a leash and don't let them run loose in a busy city. Things like this happen way too often in Dallas.

This was not a good day. Two dogs got run over as a result of someone's carelessness. Some scammer managed to suck all the money out of my birthday gift card before I even opened the cardboard packaging. To add insult to injury, my car repair bill was twice as much as I expected. Brembo brakes are great until it's time to get new rotors and pads. Yikes. I forgot my discount coupon too. I could have knocked 10% off my entire bill. I was so flustered about the gift card fraud that I totally forgot to bring the coupon with me.

At least my leg continues to get better. It will probably take forever for the swelling to completely go away, but I'm starting to be able to walk normally again. My wrist feels better too. I think I might start taking short walks again tomorrow. I hope Dash is cooperative, because I'm not really ready for long walks yet. This better be the last time I'm bitten by a dog for a long, long time. I've been bitten before, but this is the most painful bite I can remember.

We need to make a list of questions to take to the vet tomorrow. Dash has so many weird little quirks that it's hard to remember them all. Strange behavior has always worried me, because it is often the first sign of a larger underlying problem. We need to do a chest x-ray and make sure that the cancer hasn't returned. Since Dash has an enlarged heart, we need to determine if this is going to become a problem in the future. He's still a little wobbly from the vestibular disease, but I'm not sure if there's anything we can do about that. Dash has good doctors. We just want to give him the best chance possible to live a healthy and happy life.

The landscapers just told me that they will be here tomorrow. We'll see. I'm going to call Land Rover and see if they'll still honor their discount coupon. They should, but that doesn't mean they will. I can't bring back the two dogs that ran into the street, but I can make sure that Dash is always safely on a leash. I'll do my part to ensure it's a good day, but a little good luck wouldn't hurt either.

Riley is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day