Day 2443

The weather seems more like October than August. The Fall rainy season usually coincides with the State Fair of Texas, but it seems like we got an early start this year. The temperatures have been unseasonably cool, and it has been very, very wet. I guess I should just relax and enjoy it. The water bill will be less this month and the grass is turning green again. The main problem with the rain is that it is difficult to find a good time to walk the dogs. We got wet today, but it could have been worse. At least it was a gentle rain.

I had a weird memory lapse recently. I've been wondering why I haven't gotten a bill to renew my homeowners insurance. It seems like I always renew my policy around this time of year.  I was kind of worried that the bill had gotten lost in the mail, so I called my insurance agent today. "When are you going to send my homeowners policy," I asked. "I haven't received a bill yet." "You paid your bill in June," the agent told me. Never mind. How could I have forgotten that?

I picked up a heat and serve meal at the new vegan store in the neighborhood. I wasn't really expecting much, but my dinner was delicious. The dish was called a Lime Cilantro Bowl and basically consisted of organic roasted corn and zucchini, Spanish rice, and black beans. The dish was very fresh, spicy enough for my taste, and quite filling. I didn't miss the absence of meat at all. I doubt that this meal will turn me into a vegetarian. If you remember, I had dinner at a steakhouse last night. What it proved was that a vegetarian dinner can actually taste good. Weaning myself away from meat will be a gradual process, but this is a start. The menu at this place rotates frequently, so every time I see a tasty looking curry or Thai dish, I'll give it a try.

Something is wrong with Dash. He stumbles a little too frequently for it to be purely accidental. He doesn't seem to have as much energy as he used to and I find him licking the area around his joints a lot. I worry that his cancer might have returned or that he has developed some neurological problem. The x-rays we took a few weeks ago were inconclusive, but I'm still convinced that there is something wrong. It would be so much easier if dogs could talk.

Dash wasn't the only one who had less energy today. Dot seemed tired too. Spending the day with two exhausted dogs makes me tired. I felt like taking a nap all day long. Maybe it's just the weather. It was so humid this morning that it felt like you could squeeze the air and wring water out of it like a sponge. I emptied the dehumidifier bucket twice today, but it still feels muggy. Lets hope that things improve tomorrow so Dot's trip to the vet goes smoothly.

Lance is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 2149

My life is about to become miserable. The plumbers have discovered a substantial pipe leak located under my living room floor. There are only two ways to fix this problem. You can jackhammer through the brick and concrete slab to access the underground pipe, or you can tunnel under the house. Either way is messy and expensive. The plumber agreed with me that it would be a disaster to tear up the brick floors. There's probably not a maason still alive who could duplicate the intricate brickwork. You'd never be able to find the Corsicana Red brick pavers either. The brickyard went out of business years ago and the antique bricks are now considered collectible by people who buy and sell them on eBay. At $30 and up per brick, I don't think I'll be replacing this floor anytime soon.

Since I am unwilling to totally destroy my floor, that left the tunneling option. The plumber contacted a tunneling specialist who came out to the house to survey the situation. It seems like the best option is to rip up some flagstones in the atrium, destroy our Japanese garden, and tunnel under the utility room where the leak appears to originate. Before any of this activity can began, I have to contact my insurance company and see if the repairs are covered under my homeowners policy. They'd better be! I'll need to contact my HVAC guy too, since it is possible that the furnace will need to be removed during the repairs. Mid-Century Modern houses get you coming and going. The ubiquitous flat roof covering most of these homes makes it easy for rain to leak in, while the concrete slab foundations with no crawl space underneath makes plumbing and electrical repairs almost impossible. There were good reasons why people have built houses with peaked roofs and full basements for hundreds of years. My home is what happens when architects ignore gravity and common sense.

You may be wondering how the dogs reacted to having plumbers in the house for most of the afternoon. It was a disaster. I tried to fool Dot by putting her in a back bedroom where she couldn't see the plumbers. This worked for a while, but eventually the plumbers had to come through the bedroom to access one of the bathrooms. When Dot noticed the strangers in her house, she started barking uncontrollably. It wasn't long before she pooped on a rug. It's not easy to hold up Dot's rear legs, clean up dog poop, and talk to a pair of plumbers at the same time. At one point I had to gate Dot in the back of the house while I conferred with the plumbers. Unfortunately, I forgot to close the door to the bathroom. Don't wandered into this room while I wasn't looking and slipped on the slick tile floor, which caused her to poop all over again. She fell in the poop and soiled her harness and herself. The floor itself looked like a poopy crime scene. I've been doing a lot of laundry and cleaning today. 

At some point, I had to take both dogs outside for thirty minutes so the plumbers could pinpoint where the leak was coming from. They used stethoscopes pressed to the floor to determine where the leaking water sound was loudest. It goes without saying that with Dot in the house, they wouldn't be able to hear a thing. Dot, Dash and I sat outside on a blanket for 45 minutes. Ironically, when the location of the leak was eventually found, it was located right below the spot where Dot had initially pooped.

Somehow, I managed to get two writing assignments finished during all this madness. While I was writing, I noticed that my client has been misspelling the name of their own products. This was the only humorous thing that happened today. I'm kind of at my wits end. Dot requires constant care and I can't safely take her to doggie day care or a boarding facility anymore. I can't postpone the repairs very long either. This all has to happen soon. Before the plumbers arrived, my biggest problem was inadvertently adding an apple to my morning smoothie. Now I've got real problems.

Wolfgang is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 2005

Dot has been leaving little "accidents" around the house. She can't help it. Doctors say that this is not true incontinence. It is a common problem with older dogs that have weak or debilitated hind legs. Dogs like Dot have a real difficulty squatting, so they never fully empty their colon when they poop. As a consequence, poop just falls out of them when they bark or when they get up in the morning. I don't think there is much you can do about this other than be as patient as you can. With Dot's weekly acupuncture, water therapy and exercise regime, we are already doing everything we can to keep her legs strong. The disconcerting thing is that this type of thing happens to people as well. It doesn't paint a pretty picture for growing older. One of the last things I remember my Dad saying before he died was "Nurse, there's a turd in my bed."

Dot's pooping problems haven't really slowed her down. I don't even think she's aware that when she opens her mouth to bark, things fall out the other end. Despite all her problems, Dot is still a happy dog. She wakes up every morning eager for breakfast. She loves her morning walks and relishes smelling every bush along the way. Today, the weather was warm and she wanted to lay outside in the grass and sun herself like she used to do when she was healthy. I can't leave her alone in the yard anymore, because if a car came down the alley, she would try her best to run back and forth along the back fence barking at it. Running is something she should never do because she could seriously hurt herself. Both dogs were having such a good time sunning themselves that I just sat on the garden bench for forty five minutes watching them while the mosquitoes bit me. You have to have a lot of patience with an older dog.

U-Verse isn't working again, so I was trying to show Janet how to work the Hulu remote control this evening. I don't watch Hulu and Netflix all that much, but whenever I do, I'm amazed at the thousands and thousands of things just sitting there on our TV waiting to be watched. It makes me wonder why I'm spending all this money on U-verse service when there are all these other things available for next to nothing. Oh, wait. I remember now. It's U-verse that powers my Internet connection and WiFi network. If I dropped the U-verse service, I would automatically lose all the other things that are streamed for next to nothing over the Internet. My high-tech thermostat would quit working too. There's always a catch.

My insurance agent finally called me back to explain why my rates were so high. He offered me several alternatives, which somewhat inexplicably cost even more than what I am already paying now. When I patiently explained to the agent that the whole point of my call was to reduce my rates instead of increase them even further, he seemed perplexed. I guess it wasn't in the cards to save any money today.

One of my clients also happens to be one of my doctors. I didn't feel like driving up to the clinic just to make an appointment, so I thought I try making an appointment online using a new appointment widget I'd added to his website recently. When I clicked the "Make An Appointment" button, I was presented with a calendar that showed all the available appointment times. Every single morning for the rest of the month was available. This didn't seem right at all, because this particular doctor is always busy. No afternoons were available either, which was even more peculiar.  Since the online system seemed all screwed up, I drove up to the clinic and made my appointment the old fashioned way. "Do you know that your online appointment system doesn't work," I told the guy at the front desk. "Oh, that thing isn't even connected to our system anyway," the guy said. "When someone clicks on one of those buttons, the company that sold us the online service calls us and asks if we have that time available. If we do, we call the patient back and confirm the appointment." "So, clicking on the button doesn't actually make you an appointment at all," I said. "Nope," the guy told me. This has got to be the world's worst automated appointment system.

I hope that Dot doesn't poop in her bed tonight. I'd like to get a good night's sleep without getting up at 3 AM to clean up the peculiar smell next to the bed that woke me up in the middle of the night. It happens a lot.

Lucky is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1954

Slowly but surely, life is getting back to normal. Dash still has a limp, but he is walking better than he was yesterday. Dot is still a little unsteady, but she is getting stronger everyday. I let her walk around the house without her harness for a while today and she seemed to enjoy it. It's a bit of a problem walking the dogs now, since both have leg problems, but we're doing OK. The big breakthrough is that Dot is confident enough now that her separation anxiety has subsided. I can leave her alone for several hours at a time and she is content to just rest on her dog bed. This allows me to run small errands like going to the post office or bank without worrying so much. To be on the safe side, I always leave Dot in a gated section of the hallway and take her harness off, so she can't get tangled up in something. I put a comfortable bed in this safe area and Dot is fine. She slept a lot before her injury and she still sleeps a lot now.

My website revisions have slowed down this week, but I'm trying to use my time wisely.  I'm still working on getting up to speed about responsive design, so when clients eventually discover that they've dropped in the search rankings, I'll have a solution for them. I learned how to apply transitions and animations across several platforms today. All I have to show for my several hours of study is a single line of type on my company website that slowly fades in and grows to its final size as the site loads. Although this doesn't really prove anything, it's the principal of the thing. I can move objects around and the effect stays the same whether it is viewed on a large desktop monitor or a small phone. Cool. If I contine to learn one new thing a day, I should be pretty good at this responsive design stuff by Summer.

An insurance guy came out to take pictures of the house this morning. He said that needed pictures to substantiate that the construction was load bearing brick. Jeez. I told them that house was constructed using brick bearing walls almost twenty years ago. They must not have believed me. It's weird that it took them twenty years to come out and take a picture though.

I got some more K-cup coffee pods in the mail today. I had written Keurig a while back and asked them what to do if one of the cups split during brewing. One of the cups actually did split and I ended up getting coffee grounds in my cup, but I didn't expect to receive a whole box of K-cups for a single defective cup. I wasn't even mad when I wrote Keurig. I just wondered if I needed to clean the machine after the pod broke. I like this company. It's a nicely designed product that's made in America. The coffee tastes great. And the service is pretty good. What's not to like?

I've got to stop listening to weather predictions I see on my Facebook page. They're almost always wrong. According to my Facebook friends, we were supposed to get huge storms and maybe even tornadoes tonight. I walked the dogs extra early to avoid this ominous storm. I also ate early to avoid a potential power outage. I'm not complaining, but so far it is still dry outside. I think the entire storm system passed about fifty miles south of us. Of course, things could change by morning. This is Texas after all.

Mindy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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