Day 1956

Good grief. We're under a tornado warning again. As soon as I heard the news, I began recharging my phone, laptop, and tablet. Strong storms and power outages go hand in hand in this part of the country. I'm slowly learning to stay prepared. We're eating dinner in a hurry too, in case the oven goes out. I wish the dogs had taken my advice and taken an early walk. They just stuck their nose out the door and didn't even go outside. I guess they could smell what was coming.

I feel better about Dash's limp. I called his oncologist today and asked about the possibility of bone cancer. He told me that it was very unlikely that Dash's type of cancer would ever spread to the bone. He also said it was unlikely that Dash would succumb to a completely different type of cancer at this point in time. It seems increasingly likely that the limp is caused entirely by the torn paw pad. The oncologist said that his own dog had injured a paw pad once and that it took several weeks to heal. "Give it time," he told me and asked me to call him again in several weeks if Dash's condition didn't improve. This specialist is always very busy. I was amazed that he spent ten minutes talking with me. Dot and Dash have some great doctors. I"m convinced that they get far better medical care than I do myself.

I spent most of the day designing a supposedly simple brochure for a client. They want to print the brochure using Vistaprint, but for some inexplicable reason Vistaprint won't accept Quark Express files. Why? I've been using Quark for decades. This venerable software used to be the gold standard for print designers. Apparently the software has fallen out of favor. I had to design the whole thing in Photoshop instead, which certainly wouldn't have been my first choice. It is cumbersome to have all these layers. The original brochure I was updating was done in PowerPoint and a lot of the images were created in Adobe Illustrator, but saved as a PDF. It was a mess. The actual design was pretty simple, but converting all the files to the proper size and format and remembering what layer they were on took forever. I hope everyone likes what I did today, because I definitely don't want to spend tomorrow doing everything over again.

I reluctantly confirmed my appointment for dental surgery next week. I was very tempted to postpone the surgery again, but I've got to get this done sometime. Since I was originally scheduled to have the wisdom teeth removed in late January, I guess I've delayed things long enough. I hope having this tooth removed solves the problems I've been having, but somehow I doubt that it will. Once you start going to the dentist, you have to keep going to the dentist.

While I was eating breakfast this morning, a group of guys at a nearby table were arguing about whether the original Star Wars trilogy should be viewed before or after the three prequel movies. There was a heated  discussion about whether the movies should be viewed in chronological order or in the order they were shot. Some said four, five, six, one, two, three. While others said, one, two, three four, five, six. They were serious. At another table, a group of older guys were talking about man caves. This pretty well summed up the state of the world today for me. It's hopeless.

I had weird dreams last night and woke up in the middle of the night worrying about Dash's leg. I hope I sleep better tonight. Actually, I'd like to sleep the entire weekend.

Sadie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1382

I fired up Quark Express today to put together a print ad. It's hard to believe that I used to use this application almost every single day. Now, I can go months without using Quark or InDesign. Print may not be completely dead, but it certainly appears that way. Client meetings revolve around social media now and I can't even remember the last time someone I know actually ran an ad in a newspaper. Although it was kind of enjoyable to have total control over fonts and image placement again, I don't think I'll upgrade to Quark 10. What would be the point? I doubt that I'll be asked to design many print ads in the foreseeable future.

I don't know what the dogs were thinking today. They started barking for their dinner around 2:30 this afternoon, and kept bothering me until I finally relented and fed them early a few hours later. I would have appreciated a little quiet this afternoon, because I was still trying to figure out the mysteries of Wordpress. So far, I'm not a huge fan of this popular blogging platform. It's super easy to throw something together using the hundreds of readily available themes. When you try to modify those themes in Dreamweaver though, you're dealing with an entirely different animal. I haven't even tried to create my own themes yet. The frustrating thing for me is that most Wordpress files reside on the server. It's hard to show a client a local, in-progress version of a site without actually putting it online.

Whenever I try to make thing easier on myself, I usually end up making things worse. Now, I've got to go up on the roof before it rains and get rid of all the accumulated pecan shells so they won't stain the puddles of standing water that still accumulate when the roof gets wet. I've already lost the battle to keep the new roof sparkling white. Just about any form of tannin stains the white coating an ugly brown. Since dead leaves, pecan shells, and tree bark usually litter the roof, there's quite a bit of ugly brown already.

Janet wants to give the dogs a bath tomorrow, so they'll be clean for the Dalmatian Rescue golf tournament. They probably won't stay clean for long, since it's supposed to rain tomorrow. I hope the rain moves on and the skies are clear again on Sunday. We've managed to avoid rain on tournament day for over a decade. Last year, it was raining when we left the house, but by the time we actually arrived at the golf course. the skies had cleared and it ended up being a beautiful day. We need this kind of luck again this year.

Sophie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1351

Some days are a lost cause. I thought today would be a good time to finish a print job with a looming deadline. I don't do much print design anymore, since most of my clients have forgotten what it is. I fired up Quark Express and proceeded to re-learn all the things I'd forgotten since the last time I'd used this software. As it turned out, I'd forgotten quite a bit, but it all started coming back to me after a couple of hours of fumbling around. Eventually, I had a nice looking design and I started reading the printer's file upload instructions. Oops. This printer couldn't handle halftones. They wanted line art only, and unless I wanted to pay a huge setup charge for multiple spot colors, they wanted single color files only. I should have read all this before I got started. Oh, well. All I've got to do is throw away all the photos, find some line art vector files that look kind of like the photos I threw away and re-do the entire design using Adobe Illustrator instead of Quark Express. Piece of cake.

In the dumb and dumber department, ABC news sent out a tweet today saying that Neil Armstrong had just died. I felt sad reading the tweet, thinking that pretty soon none of the men that walked on the moon would be left. But wait a minute! Neil Armstrong was already dead. He died last year. Just goes to show that you can't believe everything you hear on the Internet, or on the evening news.

The weather was so nice this morning that I started looking for signs of an early Fall. I didn't find any, of course. By mid-afternoon the temperature was up over 100 again and it was clear that Summer wasn't quite finished with us yet. I always look forward to Fall. As the days shorten and grow cooler, I start to see beautiful sunsets that tempt me to carry a camera with me at all times. I get to quit mowing the grass for another year. And a blanket of leaves covers up the landscaping mistakes. If I'm lucky, the bugs disappear as well.

I got a letter from my historian sister who refuses to use the Internet. I learned that she'd gotten a post office box because a truck knocked over her mailbox and she didn't feel like fixing it. That she'd  fallen off a tall ladder and was walking with a cane. And that after having half a dozen books published, she'd lost interest in writing. Sounds like everything's normal.

Jordan is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day