Showing posts with label high school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label high school. Show all posts

Monday, January 6, 2014

Day 1483

It was cold enough to dress in layers this morning. I wore two warm coats, and so did Dot and Dash. One coat is usually plenty for the dogs, but when the temperature is in the single digits, you don't want to take chances. It's still hard for me to believe that Dallas is actually warm, compared with other parts of the country, but that's what I'm hearing on the news.

I've experienced much colder temperatures in my lifetime. I went to high school in Fairbanks, Alaska where it would often remain twenty degrees below zero for weeks at a time. It didn't seem colder though, because everyone was prepared. The windows in our house were all double glazed and there was a huge coal-fired furnace in the basement that kept the house toasty warm even in a blizzard. The cars all had electric crankcase heaters that you plugged into parking meters whenever you went out. When I went to school, I wore an Eddie Bauer parka that looked like it would keep you warm at the South Pole. The lesson I learned was that if you took the cold seriously, you were almost always warm. It's hard to take the cold seriously in Texas. As a result, I've experienced more dead batteries on cold mornings and more malfunctioning furnaces here in Dallas than my parents ever did in Alaska.

Today was one of those doctor appointment days that makes it difficult to get anything done. By the time you drive to the appointment, find a parking place, sit in the waiting room for an interminable amount of time, and take all the tests the doctor wants, you've wasted half the day. Luckily, today's tests went well, and this particular doctor gave me the green light for another six months.

Tomorrow, it's Dash's turn to go to the doctor. I'm worried that something might be wrong with his kidneys, since he's peeing all the time now. I've seen a noticeable change in the past six months. He also has some bad looking rear molars and his teeth need to be cleaned. I worry about this too, since Dash doesn't react well to anesthesia. The vets call his response "waking up hard" and it doesn't sound pretty. I'm hoping that his vet can come up with a more gentle way to bring him out of the anesthesia after his dental procedure is complete.

With Dot's physical therapy, Dash's seizures, and my own multiple medical problems, it often seems like life is just one extended doctor visit. If you count the trips to the gym and the pharmacy as health related outings, there is something medical going on just about every day. I guess it's worth the effort though. They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and I'm all about prevention these days. The dogs are both still very active, and when I'm sitting in the doctor's waiting room, I still seem to be in a lot better shape than most of the other patients. I must be doing something right.

That stupid bird is still pooping on my car every night. I wish there was an accessory I could buy that would electrify the entire car whenever I turned on the car alarm. Birds that used the car as a pooping post would get fried. Of  course, knowing me, I'd probably forget to turn the thing off one morning and fry myself instead. Better leave things the way they are.

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

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Day 1425

Dot and Dash got a bath this morning, since they'll be representing Dalmatian Rescue at a rescue event tomorrow. We went to a new self-bathe place near Janet's office and the dogs weren't impressed. The facility was actually quite nice, but it didn't matter to Dot and Dash. They hate getting a bath. The manager of the place ought to get some sort of salesmanship award. We walked away with two clean dogs, two new dog harnesses, and a pound of dog treats.

Since we'll be at the rescue event tomorrow, I decided to go to the gym today. The place was even emptier on Saturdays than it is on Sundays. This still seems strange to me, but Janet explained it to me this way. "People have things to do on weekends," she told me. "You're the only person I know who makes going to the gym the main event of your day." Maybe so. At any rate, it's nice to know when the place will be empty.

The Christmas tree stands are already going up all over town. Sure seems way too early to me. Jeez, it's not even Thanksgiving yet. If you went out and bought a Christmas tree today, it would be a dry stick of kindling wood by Christmas. You don't even hear much debate anymore about whether Christmas is being over commercialized. Everybody knows the answer by now. The answer is yes.

There's a lot of talk around town about the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. Has it really been 50 years?  This really makes me feel old, since I remember the day like it was yesterday. I was going to high school in Alaska in 1963. That same year, a new group called The Beatles created a sensation with a song called I Want To Hold Your Hand. Where does the time go?

I'd like to think that the ensuing years were all eventful and important, but probably a lot of them were just like today. I didn't change the world today. I washed a dog, bought groceries for the week, shot a few baskets at the gym, and put clean sheets on the bed. That's about it. After I finish writing the blog, I'm going to cut out a lot of little adhesive black spots that children can attach to the big dog in our "make a Dalmatian" game tomorrow.

Nope, I don't think I'll be changing the world tomorrow. Fifty years ago, I actually thought I might. I think a lot of us did. Little did we know that it would be the world that changed us instead.

Dot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day