Day 3357

It was 23 degrees and very windy when we woke up this morning. That added up to a wind chill of 9 degrees. Brr. Dash thought he wanted a walk, but I don't think he realized what he was up against. We dressed him up as warmly as we could this morning, but he didn't even make to the back gate. When he felt how cold it really was, he wisely turned around and returned quickly to the house.

We spent the rest of the day indoors. Dash ventured outside to pee occasionally and I made one brief trip to the post office to pay some bills, but that was it. Today's goal was to stay warm. Even Dash understood that it wasn't a day for walking.

I'm glad I got the water off the roof yesterday. Ice on the roof causes some peculiar problems. When the ice starts to melt, the heat from the house causes it to melt from the bottom up. This creates a layer of water covered by a layer of ice, making it impossible to remove the standing water under under the ice. These conditions are a recipe for leaks because if the weather is cold enough, the ice on top can last for weeks.

I canceled today's plumbing appointment because it seemed like a terrible day to dig a big hole in the ground. The ground looked frozen anyway and I had trouble seeing where the leak was. I have a feeling that the cold, hard ground partially sealed the leak. I certainly wasn't seeing any evidence of it anyway. I hope the plumber appreciated what I did. I definitely wouldn't want to be a plumber working outside today.

I sold a few trains in February. I'm glad the collection is getting some interest again. I thought there would be a lot of sales over the Christmas holidays, but I was wrong. Nobody bought any trains for Christmas. Zero holiday sales. Did somebody get a model train for Valentine's Day? Who knows. Stranger things have happened.

I updated the Dalmatian Rescue website today. It seemed like a good thing to do on a cold, housebound day. I do so little website design these days that I'm slowly losing my skills. I occasionally have to look up things that I used to know by heart. It's only going to get worse. Use it or lose it, they always say. I guess I could revamp my own websites to keep my chops up, but I just don't have the interest anymore. Hard to believe that I used to have dozens of active clients that required hours of work every single day. How did I ever find the time? Of course the dogs were young and healthy then. So was I.

I hope that tomorrow is warmer. Two days like this and Dash and I will both have some serious cabin fever. There's nothing all that exciting about a walk in the park, but it's good to get outside. These walks are physical therapy for Dash and mental therapy for me. I hope all the early wildflowers don't die. I'm starting to see Grape Hyacinth all over the place. Based on today's weather, I think these flowers may have jumped the gun.

Orion is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2934

I tried to get caught up on things today, but had a hard time staying focused. For the first time in weeks I made some real progress on my new website project. I came up with a very practical, but somewhat ugly solution. I can't decide whether to present it to the client or delete it and start over. I'll look at the files again on Monday and decide.

It was cold this morning, but the temperature warmed up considerably later in the day. All in all, it was a very nice day. In my little world that meant it was time to go up on the roof. I don't know what I expected, but I certainly didn't expect ice. The small amount of ice I'd seen in the yard and on our walks had long since disappeared. It figures that the last place I'd still find ice was on the roof.

The roof wasn't the only place I discovered ice today. The little emergency refrigerator we got when our kitchen refrigerator was broken doesn't defrost automatically. I assumed it would defrost automatically like any modern refrigerator, but I guess not. As always, you get what you pay for. When I went to get some cream for my coffee this morning, I noticed that ice was building up in the tiny freezer compartment. It was time to defrost. I didn't think we'd keep using this refrigerator after the big refrigerator got repaired, but it turned out to be the perfect place for dairy products. It's kind of handy to have two refrigerators you can keep at different temperatures. At any rate, I put the milk, eggs, and butter in the main refrigerator, unplugged the little one, and let the ice melt.

The vet didn't want to trim Dash's nails yesterday because Dash was being a being a little shit about the procedure. He said that things were so fragile with his heart that he didn't want to do anything that would make Dash agitated. I wanted to explain that Dash is always agitated, but we left with untrimmed nails. The vet suggested that I walk Dash without the rubber boots for a while and let the nails wear down naturally. I tried this today and it was a little alarming. Dash's rear legs have grown weak and his feet drag when he walks now. With every step he took, I would hear his rear nails clicking and dragging on the pavement. At this rate, it won't take long at all to grind down the nails. I think I'll go back to the rubber boots tomorrow. It's clear that his feet need to be protected.

I got some breakfast tacos this morning at a little place that was more of a sports bar than a restaurant.  The sound on the big screen TV's was turned down, but the closed captioning was still on. When you read what some of these morning show hosts are saying, it seems even more ridiculous than hearing the words. We are doomed. I'm beginning to think that just about everybody is an idiot. I will say that TV without sound is not that bad. Maybe I'll turn on the closed captioning on my own TV. Although the ambience was terrible, the cheap tacos were pretty good. Maybe I'll go back to this place.

It's nice to see the DOW over 25,000. Let's keep this rally going for a few more years so I can actually retire. When I bought my first stock in the early 1980's the DOW was still under 1,000. This is why equities are still the best long term investment you can make. The periodic market crashes are painful, but inevitably the market starts going up again. I can't figure out why young people don't like stocks. It's certainly doesn't take much money to get started. Young people think stocks are too risky, but they love Bitcoin. Go figure.

Thanks to everyone for showing so much concern for Dash. It means a lot. We don't know how much time he has left, but we're doing our best to minimize the risks he faces and make his remaining time as enjoyable as possible.

Lucy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2931

I think I'm becoming a wimp. We have had much colder winters, but this one seems to be getting the best of me. I just can't seem to get warm. I wear sweaters and down booties around the house. I even bought a spare pair of down booties because they looked so warm in the catalog. I've got the little ceramic heater running in the office now in an attempt to warm up this perpetually cold room. So far the furnace is running great, although our gas bill is going to be pretty high next month. I'm sure it will warm up eventually, but until it does I am very reluctant to get out of bed in the morning.

I worry about Dash getting cold, but so far he seems to enjoy his chilly walks. For the most part we have the park to ourselves. Very few of the other neighbors are out walking their dogs. I do make an effort to keep Dash warm. He wears a snug fleece sweater under his Ruffwear Webmaster harness. Since the service dog harness covers most of his back, it is kind of like a second coat. Add socks, rubber boots and the knee brace and you've got a well protected dog. I've gotten much better at putting on this gear by myself. It used to take forever to get Dash suited up, but now I can get him ready in less than five minutes. I think he understands that all this paraphernalia keeps him comfortable on cold days. He used to run away when he saw the sweater, but now he waits patiently for me to put everything on.

Janet and I must be tired. Neither of us heard Dash last night when he woke up and wanted to go outside. Eventually, I heard him scratching at the door, but it was too late. He had already pooped next to the door. I felt bad because Dash almost never makes a mess in the house. He tried to wake us and he obviously really had to go bad.

2018 certainly isn't getting off to a roaring start. I was slow fixing breakfast. Dash was slow taking his morning walk. And then things slowed down even further from there. I blame it all on the weather. It's hard for me to focus on anything other than staying warm when the temperatures are well below freezing. I did eventually make it to the bank and the post office. It seemed a sign of things to come that the first thing I did in 2018 was pay bills.

I'm curious how things are looking up on the roof, but I'm not going up there until the temperature gets about freezing. Been there, done that. The roof is really treacherous when it is covered with ice. There are no leaks or damp spots inside, so I'm going to assume that all is well.

I've got to get my website project finished this week. I've let this thing drag on way too long. I'm afraid that the new site is just going to be the existing site rearranged differently. I've come to the conclusion that there's nothing wrong with the way things are. The current site is fine. I really hate to fix something that isn't broken. Other people don't always adhere to this rule. The most common reason that people update their websites is that they have become bored with it.

I am very familiar with boredom and have learned to respect it. Boring isn't always bad. Boredom provides me with a sense of stability. Unfortunately, if my clients shared this view, I probably wouldn't have any work at all. They want something different that isn't really that different. Hey, I can do that. If it would warm up a bit, I'd be done already.

Lilly is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1456

Today was chaotic. As the city came back to life after the ice storm, I found myself bombarded with rush assignments and impossible deadlines. It wasn't just the Dallas clients either. Some of the out of town folks seemed in a big hurry as well. It was almost enough for me to wish for the cold to return again, so everyone would just hunker down and do nothing like they did yesterday.

The house was warm today, but it was a total mess. I kept the washing machine going all day long with load after load of dirty clothes and dog blankets. We have enough dog blankets to keep us warm under the covers on even the coldest night, but that means a lot of laundry when the crisis is over. I don't know how the dogs manage to get the blankets dirty as quickly as they do, but they're experts at making things filthy.

Since the temperature briefly got up to 40 degrees around 3 PM this afternoon, I wanted to use the opportunity to clean things up on the roof. Bad idea. The ice was so thick that the small amount of melt today only made things more dangerous. The surface was so slippery that I quickly abandoned my efforts and planted both feet on firm ground before I injured myself. I guess this task can wait.  The ice load on the roof is pretty heavy now and I'd like to get the ice removed, but it's definitely not worth falling off the roof.

There's still a lot of unfinished business. I need to talk to the neighbor about removing his tree that fell on my roof. Neighbors are funny about this sort of thing. He probably thinks that I should remove it, since it's on my roof now. I think the repair crews that threw the branches they trimmed in the alley over my back yard fence should come back and remove them. I don't know why the tree trimmers couldn't have tossed these branches into the big shredder I saw sitting out in the street, but they told me they didn't have time. Maybe they were right. I did noticed that the power came back about two seconds after the last guy with a chain saw got out of the trees in the alley. I doubt that any of them wanted to be next to a live wire with a chain saw when the power was turned on. Who knows, maybe these guys will come back later this week and clean up their mess.

All I know is that I've got a big mess of my own to clean up. The new car has finally been baptized with a thick coat of road dirt. The roof needs attention. Worst of all, I think a lot of the expensive landscaping we had done last Spring has died. I'm trying to avoid a trip to the grocery store until the feeding frenzy has subsided. I think everyone in town was restocking their pantries this afternoon. Traffic was terrible and every parking lot in town was completely full.

I'm hoping that a semblance of normalcy returns tomorrow. I'm certainly going to do my part. I like normal things. Dot has her regular acupuncture appointment tomorrow. I'll be going to my Wednesday networking breakfast. I doubt that we'll have dog training class though. It's still way too cold.

Princess is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day