Day 3341

What happened to our nice weather? One day it's 70. The next day it's 30. I wonder if the entire Winter is going to be this way? Since I like consistency, these extreme fluctuations are driving me nuts. It was cold and nasty outside this morning, but Dash still wanted his walk. I would rather have slept in a little longer, but off we went. Dash continues to do better than expected. I don't know where he got his second wind, but it's nice to see him with a little enthusiasm again.

After breakfast, I filled the car with gas and did my weekend grocery shopping. The list was small this week and that was fine with me. This seemed like a day for staying home and keeping warm. Dash seemed to agree. We took a long nap together this afternoon. It certainly beat cleaning the house.

As a consumer of healthcare, I've been following the debate about how to reform the system. I have a feeling that this is going to be the next battleground that divides us even further. I was listening to a proponent of Medicare for all explain that one of the most effective ways to pay for universal healthcare would be to stop approving all these elaborate procedures for really old people. "They're all going to die soon anyway," the guy said. You can imagine how well this idea went over. It's certainly true that most of your medical expenditures are going to occur during your last ten years of life, but if you need a new knee on your eightieth birthday, are you really going to say "never mind, I'll just keep using this cane?" I wonder how this will end? When the women are all fighting the men and the young are all fighting the old, today's political skirmishes will seem like child's play.

I'd be the first to admit that the earth's population is already too large to sustain life indefinitely. I'd still like to live as long as I can though. That is the dilemma. We desperately need to slow down population growth but we all want to live. Humanity has become the ultimate Kudzu vine. Since we are at the top of the food chain, there is absolutely nothing to stop us from consuming everything in our path. There really needs to be some fire breathing dragons or evil alien invaders to keep us in our place.

I don't see how you can be a student of history and still believe that you can change human nature. We have a pretty dismal track record. This is why I'm such a fan of exploring space. We're pretty clever. Maybe we can learn to tame wormholes and conquer the speed of light before we destroy our planet and become extinct. If we thought our destiny was to expand into the universe and destroy an infinite number of other planets one by one, it would provide a tremendous source of hope.

I saw us plant a flag on the moon, but I'd have to stay pretty healthy to see the same thing happen on Mars. Population explosion or not, I'll take advantage of every medical miracle that comes my way. I'd love to see Elon Musk succeed. It would be the first step in what could become a very long journey.

Joshua is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 2372

Like most of you, I woke up to the news of the horrific mass shooting in Orlando. I think in the weeks and months ahead, a lot of people are going to be asking why someone who was already on a terror watch-list and had been interviewed several times by the FBI was allowed to have a job as a security guard and purchase weapons in the first place. Omar Mateen's coworkers warned us about this guy, but nobody listened. The same thing happened when the Russians warned us about Tamerlan Tsarnaev before the Boston bombings. This has got to stop and it probably will. Safety and security has always had a higher priority than abstract concepts of personal freedom. I think we are headed toward a world like the one depicted in that movie Minority Report. It won't really be that hard to arrest people before they commit a crime. We won't need Pre-Cogs like in the movie, because Google knows everything about you already. In a world with no secrets, you will give yourself away. If you don't think this is going to happen, just wait. The technology is here already. All it will take is a few more incidents like Orlando and people will be more than willing to use it.

When I was younger I never dreamed that the world would wind up like this. I was convinced that we'd all be driving flying cars by now and would have already established a thriving colony on Mars. It's sad that we haven't lived up to our potential. Personally, I'm not all that worried about climate change. Humans will be extinct in 30,000 years, mostly as a result of our own stupidity. The earth will survive like it has for four billion years and maybe the next species to evolve will do a better job of things.

Current events frequently leave me feeling that dogs make better companions than humans. It makes perfect sense to lead a quiet, somewhat solitary life devoted to keeping two aging Dalmatians healthy and happy. That's pretty much all I did today. I cleaned Dot up after several accidents in the house. We took both dogs on a slow, but pleasant walk. Later, I comforted them when the thunderstorms arrived. It's a simple existence, but it makes as much sense as anything in today's increasingly chaotic world.

I did make it to the gym before the afternoon storms started to frighten the dogs. Like always, today's workout reminded me that I need to go to the gym more often. Aging is such a losing battle. I still do a pretty strenuous workout, but it seems much harder than it did three years ago. I wish I enjoyed all this activity. I know it's necessary, but personally I'd rather just eat cake.

Lucky is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 2055

There are few things that will destroy your faith in humanity faster than running errands on a hot Texas Summer day. The roads are filled with disgruntled drivers who aren't paying attention to the road. The parking lots are filled with people who can't manage to park their oversize cars between the white lines. Grocery stores are the worst. There's always some 400 pound person blocking the aisles with their motorized cart while they fill their buggy with the same sugar filled, fattening foods that gave them diabetes in the first place. I always seem to get behind someone at the automated checkout kiosks who keeps inserting their expired credit card in the machine over and over again and wondering why it doesn't work. No wonder Amazon Prime is so popular. I just look around and think we are doomed, because all these people can vote.

There seems to be a big controversy on social media entering around the fact that many people are showing more compassion for Cecil the Lion than for their fellow man. This is a no brainer to me. Of course Cecil the Lion is getting more sympathy. He deserves it. Humans are in many ways the worst animals on the planet. We've reproduced like rabbits, taken all the planet's resources for ourselves, cut down the rain forests, and poisoned the waters. And then we sit around blaming each other for climate change. We operate on fear and greed and survive only because there's nobody higher than us on the food chain to eat us for lunch. Cecil the Lion and all those sharks swimming around East Coast beaches this Summer are actually the good guys.

I should have gone to the gym today, because it's about the only quiet place on a sunny Saturday afternoon. I burned my calories outside today by mowing the grass. The lawn is growing slower now, due to the heat, but it's still growing. After I mowed and watered the shrubs, I washed the sheets and made the bed. We've got plenty of bed sheets, but I like the bamboo sheets that Janet got in the Caribbean best, so I wash them over and over again and put them right back on the bed. If you've never tried bamboo bed sheets, I highly recommend them. They're softer than even the very best cotton and surprisingly durable.

The armadillo was back on our porch this morning when we got up. I thought I had blocked the area where he usually crawls under the fence, but the little guy seemed to have had no trouble removing my barrier and getting in the yard again. Now, I know who is making all the little trails through the Asian Jasmine ground cover in the back. The armadillo doesn't seem content with destroying the grass. Now, it is messing up all the shrubs and ground cover as well. I wish the critter would just go away. It's just one more thing that I always need to be aware of before I let the dogs outside.

Dot had a good day today. She was able to get up by herself when she woke up this morning and was steady and surefooted on our early morning walk. She still slept for most of the day when we returned, but that's OK. Janet and Dot both have birthdays this month. After all these years, we still don't know how old Dot actually is. They said she was four when we adopted her, but she was so active in her younger years that we began to think she was only three. Now, that she really is getting old, I'm beginning to think she might have been four after all. At any rate, on her birthday she'll either be fourteen or fifteen. I doubt that she's sixteen, because she sure seemed older than two when we got her. We'll never know for sure.

Snoopy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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