Day 1457

As the sun rose over Dallas this morning, I found myself listening to an interesting presentation about the future of Dallas. The new Midtown project that was being proposed at my breakfast meeting sounded exciting and ambitious, but I doubt I'll be here to see the ribbon cutting ceremony. Even though I've made this city my home for many years, I can't wait to move to somewhere smaller and more tranquil. Janet and I haven't decided where that illusive "somewhere" might be. It just has to have great veterinarians and reliable WiFi.

Since I was out and about today, I began to hear other people's ice storm stories. I thought that we'd had a rough time, but our ordeal was nothing compared to some of the stories I heard. Dot's veterinarian almost had her house burn down when a nearby transformer exploded during the ice storm and knocked her power out. She and her family are still without power.

I thought I was insanely busy yesterday, but the hoops I had to jump through were nothing compared to the chaos that was unfolding at the main UPS customer service center where I went to retrieve my lost package this morning. There was a huge line of people trying to either send, pick-up, or complain about a package. None of these people seemed very happy. The service representative I talked to said the ice storm had put them five days behind schedule on deliveries. Many of the people in line were mad when they discovered that the package they had come to pick up was already on a truck headed to their house. It's a long drive to this service center, so few people wanted to make this trip twice.

At least I was prepared. I called ahead to make sure that my package was actually waiting for me at the depot before I even got in the car. I've been through this drill before. I still had to wait in line though. Even though I could see my package sitting behind the counter, it took me thirty minutes to get to the head of the line and claim it. I don't know how the agents managed to keep their sanity. The place was a madhouse.

I finally was able to climb up on the roof today and assess the situation. There's still lots of ice up there. I was able to remove some of the ice in an effort to lighten the structural load on the roof, but my utility pump has frozen solid, so I wasn't able to remove much of the ice melt. A lot of the ice was 2 to 3 inches thick and was quite heavy. A 2 inch slab of ice weighs about the same as a two inch thick rock. Maybe it will warm up enough tomorrow so I can remove this ice before the next cold spell. Oh, there's a downed tree on the roof too, Not a huge tree, but it's still a tree.

I'm hoping that tomorrow is uneventful. One can always hope.

Emmitt is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1440

One of the overhead lights in my office keeps blinking on and off. It's one of those new LED bulbs that are supposed to last forever and it's driving me nuts. I get out the ladder and climb up and tighten the bulb in it's socket, thinking I've solved the problem. About twenty minutes later, the light starts blinking again. It is a bad bulb? A bad fixture? Or bad wiring? It could be all three, but I hate to call an electrician just to have him tell me to screw the bulb in tighter.

At least this problem is indoors where it's warm. Earlier in the day I was up on the roof trying to remove the standing water before it all turned into ice. I was a little late, since a lot of the water had already frozen. I can tell you from experience that it's a lot harder to remove ice from the roof than water. When the water and the falling leaves freeze together, you've got a real mess on your hands.

It's hard to stay a fan of mother nature when the elements are relentlessly trying their best to destroy your house. Hopefully, the new roof is genuinely waterproof, since ice brings out the worst in a leak. Heat from the house melts the bottom of the ice and the cold keeps the surface frozen. As a result, it is nearly impossible to remove the water from the roof until the weather gets above freezing again. Indoors, water condenses on the inside of large expanses of single pane glass. This water drips to the sill below where it soaks through tiny cracks in the paint and rots the wood. Water pipes freeze. Rats and squirrels aggressively invade the greenhouse, looking for someplace warm. All in all, life is much easier in the Summer.

I  watched the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Awards ceremony on TV this evening where they honored Carol Burnett. Maybe I'm showing my age, but those old sketch comedy segments are still funnier today that almost anything I've seen on SNL lately. Granted, Saturday Night Live was fabulous in it's day too, but those days are long gone. I occasionally see a funny episode of Modern Family, but it's nothing like vintage Sienfeld or All in the Family. I think we've collectively lost our sense of humor and just like to make fun of people instead. Don't even get me started on music or reality shows. The world has changed. Wouldn't it be nice to have someone like John Kennedy again who could actually keep a promise to send men to the moon, invent the Peace Corps, and still be tough enough to put Khrushchev in his place. We have iPhones now, but we are a pale shadow of our former selves.

Maggie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1109

It must have rained last night. I slept through the shower, but there was ample evidence that a storm had passed through. The paths through the park were all muddy and the plants were covered with dew. There wasn't much evidence remaining that it had ever snowed however. That's the way the weather is in Texas. Easy come. Easy go. I was disappointed to see this new rain because it meant all my efforts to clear the ice off the roof yesterday were wasted. Of course, I didn't even have to look to know that the roof was now covered with two inches of standing water all over again. I really think I know how Sisyphus felt, pushing his immense boulder up that hill for eternity.

I got off to such a slow start this morning that I might as well just have ordered lunch when I finally arrived at my designated breakfast restaurant. Since I'm a stickler for ritual, I went ahead and ordered a big breakfast anyway. After I finished eating, I took my warm goose down jacket to a little neighborhood tailor to get a new zipper sewn in. The tailor said he could put a new elastic drawstring at the bottom of the coat as well. I'm glad there are still a few people like this around. I'd hate to throw away a perfectly good coat, just because the zipper was broken.

On cold, damp days like this I tend to get a lot of writing done. What else is there to do anyway? I wasn't under any deadline pressure, but I pretty much got caught up on things for the year today. I probably should have saved a few of these assignments for a rainy day, but hey, it was a rainy day.

I'm tempted to go buy a couple of bales of hay to spread around the back yard. It's going to be impossible to grow new grass until Spring anyway and the mud in the yard is getting worse and worse. I'm not really sure where you buy bales of hay in the city though. Some garden stores carry hay bales around Halloween to set your pumpkins on top of, but that's about it.

When I went to the grocery store today I noticed that my tires looked low again. It makes sense, I guess. Hot air expands and cold air contracts. I suppose I'll have to drag out the air compressor tomorrow and pump the tires up again. I can tell by looking that they only have about 20 pounds of pressure in them now.

I was looking forward to watching a new Dr. Who episode tomorrow, since I enjoyed seeing "The Snowmen" episode last week so much. Wouldn't you know. There isn't going to be another new episode until April. Didn't Series 7 begin last September? Jeez, I've never seen a show take so long to air 14 episodes.

Lou is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1108

Somebody please send me a little glamor. I spent the day chopping a big sheet of ice up on the roof into little blocks I could remove. When I got cold, I would come back inside and write articles that seemed a lot like the metaphorical equivalent of blocks of ice. The whole process reminded me of the woodpeckers I see on our morning walks. Such industrious little birds, but there must be a better way of finding food and sustenance.

A note to the folks who depend on me to write their fake press releases. I've got a nice wool Ralph Lauren tux that still actually fits. You might consider actually sending me to a few of those glamorous events instead of just asking me to pretend I was there. Another note to those who continue to send me Christmas cards long after they have fired me. Wouldn't it have showed a lot more Christmas cheer to have simply kept me on your payroll a bit longer?

While I was eating breakfast this morning, Dot had to go outside and pee. When I let her back inside again, her paws looked like they were wearing clown shoes. Big, brown oak leaves had cemented themselves to a layer of sticky red clay that was all that remained from this Summer's St. Augustine turf. The whole mess, in turn, cemented itself to each of Dot's paws. She looked ridiculous and I had to laugh, despite the fact that it took me at least fifteen minutes to clean her up again.

This is the trouble with Winter. It's just so messy. I don't mind the cold nearly as much as I mind the mess. Every Winter I am continually wiping condensation off of large expanses of single pane glass, so the window sills won't rot. There is a continual load of laundry running from all the towels I use to clean mud off the dogs paws. I never seem to catch all the mud on their paws either. I'm always discovering muddy little surprises on the bedsheets, the sofa and the dog beds. The zippers on my Winter coats always keep breaking too. I've got to take another coat to the tailor tomorrow.

At least it's Friday tomorrow. I'm already thinking about what to order for breakfast. There's a short week to look forward to as well. I always like a week with a holiday right in the middle.

Daisy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 422

The lines between my real world and my virtual world are becoming increasingly blurred. I noticed today that the contact list in my cell phone now has Facebook profile pictures attached to most of the entries. I didn't put those pictures there. They just appeared. I guess I must have clicked some sort of button at some point that allowed this to happen, but I don't even remember. Everything is interconnected now. I don't think most of us are even aware of what is going on. When I go to the grocery store, I get coupons printed on my receipt for the same sort of items I just bought. I did my invoices for the month today and I noticed that a reminder about when each invoice was due was automatically added to my iCal calendar. All of these things are happening without any intervention on my part. I've automated my Twitter account so that appears like I'm Tweeting even when I'm not. Oddly, the synthetic Tweets seems to get more comments than the spontaneous real ones. I wonder where this is all going to lead. Maybe I'll get in my car someday and it will just start driving towards some place I happened to "Like" on Facebook.

I'm getting real tired of all this ice up on my roof. I had to get up there three times today to sweep off water that was accumulating from the melting ice. My plan seems to be working though. So far, no more water has leaked into the house. There may even be a hidden benefit to all this ice wrangling. Getting ice off the roof is pretty strenuous activity. I have a feeling that I may have lost a few pounds this week.

Good Morning Texas ran a segment this morning about the pet photo event we're doing this Sunday at the Foxy Paws store. The segment was really more about the store itself, but they did mention that the pet pictures were benefiting Dalmatian Rescue and showed a picture of Dot that I had taken. Dot is becoming quite the media diva. This is the second time she's been on TV. She was featured in our local newspaper last year as well.

I sure hope they pick up the trash tomorrow. Our neighborhood hasn't had trash pickup for two weeks now and it's really starting to pile up.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 418 - Super Bowl Sunday

I felt a lot of sympathy for those guys who were trying to get all the ice off of the Superbowl roof yesterday, because today I was doing exactly the same thing on a much smaller scale. The temperature was in the mid 50's, most of the snow was gone, but I still had three inches of solid ice covering my roof. The fact that I was up on the roof shoveling ice while wearing shorts and a T-shirt is all you need to know about Texas weather. Our weather makes no sense at all. It took most of the day to get all the ice removed. I couldn't break it up by pounding it into little pieces with a shovel like I did with the driveway ice. It would be pretty easy to break through the fragile tar & gravel roof and have an even bigger leak than I started with. I was careful though and now the dripping water in the living room has finally stopped.

With my home maintenance duties out of the way, I went down to the Culwell & Son Superbowl Sale and bought some clothes. I don't need any more clothes, but I go to this unique five hour sale every year because it's hard to resist 75% off the regular price. I got a great deal on a couple of sweaters that I'll probably be wearing pretty soon. The weather forecast says it's going to snow again before the end of the week.

It was a good game tonight. Even though my team didn't win, it looked like they easily could have several times. The game was close enough that it kept my attention until the final minutes. I can't say the same thing for the commercials. This year's batch of ads weren't all that good. The only commercial I saw all evening that deserved to be in the Superbowl hall of fame was the Volkswagen "Darth Vader" spot where the little kid thinks he has used the force to start his Dad's car. This commercial made me smile. Most of the others just left me scratching my head. I guess Chrysler's homage to Motor City was pretty good too, but that's only two out of literally dozens of heavy-handed clunkers. There seemed to be an awful lot of car commercials from recently bankrupt companies this evening. I bet they were paid for with stimulus money.

Here's hoping it doesn't snow again this week. I don't want to spend the day shoveling ice on the roof again for a long time.

Dalmatian of the Day

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