Day 3549

I filled my car with old gasoline containers, rusty propane cylinders, half empty cans of paint, motor oil, antifreeze, and a ton of old non-functional spray cans filled with remnants of bug spray, WD-40, household cleaners and other unidentified liquids for a trip to the hazardous waste disposal center. There were four red plastic gas cans, each filled with a different amount of gas. I don't use gas powered tools very often, so when it came time to fill the tank, I never could remember what kind of additives I'd added to the gas. Two cycle motors needed one thing and four cycle motors needed another. It was always easier to just buy a new gas can and start over from scratch.

Home Depot has made a lot of money from me over the years because I routinely ended up buying things I already had. I threw away a lot of duplicate cans of old, hardened spackling paste and sheetrock mud today. I've been meaning to get rid of this junk for a long time but it is a lot of trouble. I hope the effort was worthwhile. The greenhouse is almost ready for repairs to begin. The two non-functional lawn movers have been taken to the curb for the bulky trash truck along with a lot of other broken lawn and garden stuff. The mowers will probably be gone before the trash truck arrives. There are always people who cruise the streets a few days before big trash day looking for metal they can sell.

I was pretty ambitious today, considering that it is only Thursday. After I cleared away the old hazardous waste, I charged up the one remaining electric lawn mower and mowed the grass. Hopefully, I won't need to do this again, but I probably will. Sometimes the grass continues growing through the end of the year here in Texas.

With all this activity, it wasn't surprising that I didn't get started on my five mile walk until mid-afternoon. I was tired, but I had vague aspirations to do 20,000 steps on a weekday. I don't think I've done that before. I've only taken 19,000 steps so far, but the night is young. I still need to do a load of laundry.

The highway department looks like they're almost ready to demolish the bridge near our house. Some of the inconvenient detours are already in place. The road that travels under the bridge is supposed to close tomorrow. I don't know when they are actually going to blow up the bridge. We'll see what happens. I don't have a good feeling about this. Road construction projects take forever and they're always a much bigger mess than anyone anticipated. I still don't understand why the bridge is coming down. There is nothing wrong with it. I traveled over it one last time today.

I'm going to have to rethink where I go to breakfast tomorrow. Most of the regular places I go require that I drive under the doomed bridge.

Marcie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1721 - Labor Day

Since it was Labor Day, I thought I'd undertake a laborious task. I got out the the toxic bottle of cleaning fluid, moved the teak lawn furniture to a dog-free zone on the side of the house, and set about making the wood look new again. The job wasn't as bad as I anticipated when I initially read the warning label on the bottle. Nothing caught on fire and the wood didn't boil or bubble as I applied the cleaner with thick rubber gloves. I was surprised that the stuff actually worked, since it had been sitting on a shelf for over ten years. After much scrubbing with an abrasive cloth, I rinsed the chairs off and was delighted to discover that they did look like new. After spending the past year giving Dash his chemotherapy drugs, I've gotten pretty good at handling hazardous materials. Cleaning the teak chairs was a piece of cake.

I discovered today that my iPhone is eligible for Apple's battery replacement program. Evidently, my phone was part of a small batch that received defective batteries when they were manufactured. The battery has never held a charge well, but I always though that I had just installed too many battery draining apps on my phone. I thought I'd investigate how hard it was to actually obtain my free new battery and got nowhere. The Apple stores are completely automated now and it is impossible to talk to a real person on the phone. I hit a dead end with the automated system. I couldn't even find out if the stores were open on Labor Day. I thought about just driving over to Northpark to see for myself, but then I remembered all the Labor Day sales at the mall and decided to wait until a quieter day. If experience is any guide, I will have to make an appointment to see someone at the Genius Bar online and then when I go to my appointment I will be told that I have to make another appointment to actually get the battery replaced. When I go to this second appointment, I will be told that the store ran out of batteries at 10:30 AM and that they will call me as soon they arrive. Then I won't hear from anyone for another month. That's the way it works at the Apple store now.

When we were having dinner last night, Janet asked me if I considered myself retired now. This seemed like a strange question, since I still fire up the computer every day and go to work. Sealander & Company is still open for business. I guess it was a fair question though. Much of the work I do these days pays very little and is largely meaningless. I've been losing the high-end jobs to younger, hipper companies for at least five years now. Maybe I just can't see the forest for the trees.

Since I didn't feel like fighting the holiday crowds at the shopping malls, there was very little to do after I finished cleaning the lawn furniture. After walking the dogs this morning, Janet set up a production line and began sewing dog bandannas for the upcoming Dalmatian Rescue golf tournament. She does a different design each year and this year's seems the best ever. I wasn't so productive and eventually wound up watching old Top Gear episodes on the BBC channel.

In keeping with today's toxic theme, I found another patch of Jimson Weed to photograph. It's amazing to me that these pretty flowers are poison. They look just like Easter Lilies to me.

Spot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day