Day 2069

A year ago, Dot was still having problems with incontinence after her first surgery. Now, she's still having problems with her rear legs. After a year and a half of serious medical problems, she hasn't given up. Despite cancer, abdominal surgery, a ruptured disk, spinal surgery, and chemotherapy, Dot is still a happy, stubborn, and very resilient girl. I wish I was half as tenacious as she was. Little things still get me down. Absolutely nothing seems to get Dot down. Of course if dogs could talk, I might hear a different story, but I think I know her pretty well. She continues to be an inspiration.

The temperature seemed a little cooler on our morning walk. Maybe the worst of Summer is over. I asked Janet how long we'd been doing these pre-dawn very slow walks with Dot. Neither of us could remember. It seems like we have been doing them forever. It also seems like we've always has a huge collection of non-skid throw rugs scattered throughout the house. I've almost forgotten what the house looked like before. So much has changed and yet we still have the same armadillo tearing up the yard and and the same spiders building a huge network of webs on our back porch. I guess it's easier to remember the things that stay the same than it is to remember all the changes we've made along the way to adapt to our aging dogs.

I decided to go back to taking Benicar because the other blood pressure medication I had selected as a substitute has been giving me a nagging cough. When I renewed my Benicar prescription, I was irritated to discover that the cost of had gone up even further. I used to pay $40 for a thirty day supply and now the cost has jumped to over a $100. Medicare Part D apparently wants everyone to take a generic ACE inhibitor to control blood pressure. It's three or four dollars a month for the drug the government likes and a $100 a month for the drug my doctor prefers. Oh, well. Maybe that cough isn't so bad. It is frustrating that these rules are so arbitrary. I'm sure it's all more about money than it is about health. Medicare Part D doesn't seem to like Welchol either, even though it a safe and effective way to lower high cholesterol. I'd rather take Welchol than statins, but once again, you pay a big penalty if the government doesn't like the same meds your doctor prescribes.

I've gotten hooked on buying Keurig coffee pods. Every time I see a new dark roast flavor, I want to pick up a box and try it out. I saw some Cuban Roast pods today and bought a box, even though the kitchen cabinets are already overflowing with Keurig pods. It's too bad you can't buy these things a few at a time. Generally I've been lucky, but if you buy a box of 80 pods to get a bargain price and then discover that don't like the flavor, you're kind of stuck. I think I'll like the Cuban coffee though. Maybe I'll brew some tomorrow morning. I wonder if you can brew espresso using the Keurig machine?  Some mornings I feel like having an espresso, but I don't feel like dragging the old espresso machine out of the storage warehouse and bringing it home again.

I was bored this evening and watched the "Blink" episode of Dr. Who again. I think I've seen this show four or five times now but I still like it. Blink, the tenth episode in the third series, was one of the best scripts that Steven Moffat ever wrote. The Weeping Angels are certainly strange monsters, but they are still pretty creepy. I think this show, along with the one where the Doctor visits Vincent Van Gogh, are my favorites.

It's time to give the dogs their evening meds, but they are both sleeping so peacefully that I hesitate to wake them. Janet is still at a party with friends. Maybe I'll just wait until they hear her car in the driveway. That will wake them up. Hard to believe that it's already time to go to the gym again. A week goes by pretty quickly these days.

Freckles is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1757

I kept thinking it was Wednesday today. With so little to differentiate the days anymore, it is an easy mistake to make. Friday's stick in my mind because I go out for a great breakfast. Thursdays I generally remember because I take Dot downtown for her physical therapy session. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday just run together.

I had lots of work to do today, but work doesn't leave the same kind of memories as a good meal. For sanity's sake, I prefer to forget most of the things I work on and depend on my computer to resurrect these projects when it becomes necessary. This is why I take backups and archiving seriously. I have dual backup hard drives and alternate them every other day, just in case. Without these meticulous backups, any garden variety computer crash could ruin me. A lot of people talk about living in the moment, but I really do. The only thing I know about yesterday is that it was very likely exactly the same as today.

Ever since the power outage I've been looking at generators. Most people evaluate generators by their power output, price, and gas tank size. I just look at how heavy they are. With a bad shoulder and carpal tunnel in my wrists, I need something I can lift. I think 60 pounds would be about my limit. This is pitiful, considering the heavy speakers and amplifiers I used to routinely lift when I played in the band, but that's just the way it is. Since your typical generator can weigh several hundred pounds, I am looking at Inverters. This type of design is much lighter and still provides enough power to meet my basic needs. As an added bonus, some types of Inverters can be hooked together in parallel to double the power. Maybe I'll get one tomorrow.

My sister told me recently that she and her husband were going to sell their rural home because of health problems and move to a place where there was better health care. I find this sad, because I know they loved living off the grid and spent years and years building a wonderful retreat in the middle of nowhere. When my parents sold their home and moved to an assisted living facility they really had no choice. Medical issues made the choice for them as well. I think about this from time to time. I'd love to live in the middle of nowhere, but I'd never want to be far away from a good veterinarian. Several of my dogs would have died if a large, full service veterinary hospital wasn't just a few minutes away. It would be nice to have a top quality research hospital nearby for Janet and I as well. I've already seen how much of a difference a good medical team can make. Basically, getting old sucks and there is very little you can do about it.

I must be moving up in the world on Klout. I got a notice today that they were sending me a Honeywell programmable WiFi thermostat for the house. This is certainly fancier than the bag of dog food they sent me last time.

Cupcake is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1077

When I arrive for my physical exam, my doctor always starts the conversation by asking how I'm feeling. Today, I asked how he was feeling. Doc said he was tired. He'd been working ten hour days, since he was having trouble filling a couple of staff vacancies. The doctor and I have become friends over the years. We are about the same age and take a lot of the same meds. I understood exactly what he was saying. I work ten hour days a lot myself and am almost always tired.

That's the trouble with these annual physical exams. They don't make you any younger. At best, they just provide a road map for what to expect next. I've got my cholesterol and blood pressure under control. I've been immunized against all manner of terrible things. I eat a healthy diet and haven't gained any weight in years. Despite all this, it's still a long, slow downhill slide toward oblivion.

I appreciate how thorough my doctor is. I've learned a lot about medicine along the way by learning to interpret the mountains of tests I've been subjected to. It's fascinating stuff in a macabre sort of way. Since the dogs receive the same overprotective care that I do, I often get confused. Is it Dot that has the heart murmur, or me? Does Dash need to change his diet because of a fatty liver, or do I? Dash and I have both had kidney stones. And Dot and I both have problems with acid reflux. It gets complex.

There were a lot of website updates to attend to today. I'm glad that November is going out with a bang instead of a whimper. Business was slow during the first half of the month and it's nice to know that I haven't been forgotten. Cyber retailers certainly haven't forgotten me. My inbox was bombarded with Cyber Monday messages today. I even saw some new Apple laptops on sale. I didn't think that Apple ever put anything on sale. Although some of the deals were tempting, I didn't succumb to the ad onslaught. After a certain point, another technology toy doesn't change anything.

The doctor says that I need to start doing more exercise to combat the muscle atrophy associated with the Statin drugs I'm taking.  More?  You'd think walking five miles a day would be enough.

Pepper is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1065

When I woke up this morning, I felt like I was going to explode. I take Simcor and one of the side effects of this drug is that it dilates the tiny capillaries near the surface of your skin, resulting in severe flushing. Usually this happens while you are asleep, because you are supposed to take the big blue pill just before you go to bed. Unfortunately, depending on what you eat for dinner, it can occasionally take a lot longer than expected for the medication to enter your bloodstream. I must have eaten something that really slowed down the process yesterday because my blood vessels didn't begin to dilate until I got up this morning. Yikes! My skin was red as a beet and I felt like I'd stumbled into a cactus patch. The discomfort only lasted a few hours, but it did remind me that some of my meds are pretty powerful.

I finished my website assignments earlier than expected today, so I decided to watch the first episode of the Firefly series. I only had time to watch the initial Serenity episode, but it was enough to make me a fan of Joss Whedon. I doubt that I'll start going to Comic-Con conventions or become a fanboy, but I'll be the first to admit that this short lived Sci-Fi Western is special and unique.

The weather is still brisk and cool, but it was warm enough for the dogs to lie out in the sun after lunch. They like that. While Dot and Dash lounged, I swept leaves off the porch and cleaned spiderwebs off the windows. I don't know what makes our house so attractive for bugs, but it seems to be a popular destination for them. As the weather grows cooler, they are renewing their efforts to come inside for the Winter. Since I refuse to use anything that could be toxic to the dogs to control the pests, it is always an uphill battle to have a bug free house. There are good things and bad things about living next to a park that is a nature preserve. One of the bad things is facing a continual invasion of bugs. At least the rats are gone. An influx of feral cats in the neighborhood has pretty well taken care of the rats. What the cats don't eat, the coyotes do.

The pretty sunsets have returned for another year. Just about every day this week we have encountered a spectacular sunset on our evening walks. The sunsets are just in time too. I had just about run out of wildflowers to photograph. I'll try to have something new for you tomorrow. It would be nice to have something new for me as well.

Puppies are our Dalmatians of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 759

The furnace repair folks were over at the house promptly at 8 AM this morning. They worked on the furnace for about an hour and a half and during the entire time they were here, Dot barked incessantly. She worked herself into such a frenzy that she ended up pooping in the front hallway. I tried to keep her quiet, but it really didn't do much good. Dot is so bad about having other people in the house that I hate having to call repair people. I'm sure the repair people don't like all the commotion either. Half of them are convinced Dot will bite them and the other half are just irritated at the noise. I guess it wasn't really surprising that after the furnace technicians charged me $220 and left, the furnace wasn't working any better than it was before they arrived. This has happened before.

Since Dot had already had her little incident in the hallway, I didn't think the dogs could wait for their walk until I finished breakfast. As soon as the furnace truck pulled out of the driveway, I put on their leashes and took them on a belated morning walk. By the time we got back home, Dot and Dash were back to normal again, but it was too late for me to have breakfast. I had already entered the fasting period before my MRI and I couldn't eat at all. It was just that kind of a day. I didn't get anything to eat until dinner time.

The MRI was almost identical to a CAT scan, except it was a lot noisier. The machine makes a noise like a jack hammer while it is running, but you can hardly even hear it, because the technicians make you wear headphones during the scan and pipe in "easy listening" music at volumes even higher than the noise of the machine. The only thing I didn't like about today's scan is that it was one of those "enhanced" scans where they pump you full of dye to increase the contrast of the images. The dye stings a bit when it enters your veins, but it's no big deal. The whole process takes about thirty minutes. Periodically, you hear the technician telling you to hold your breath through the headphones and then it's over. I got dressed again, put all my metallic objects back in my pockets and went home.

Considering that I'd already had some blood drawn yesterday, had some more drawn today at the MRI place so they could formulate the right strength of dye, and will have even more drawn tomorrow for a cholesterol test, I'll well on my way to the Guinness Book of records. I don't think I've ever had as many tests done to me as I have this year.

In between the furnace repair and the MRI, I managed to find time to update several websites. One of the updates involved removing video clips I had shot and replacing them with similar, but fancier looking, clips shot by a local television station. I thought my videos were just fine, but hey; I got paid for putting them up and now I'm getting paid for taking them down. It's a living.

Tomorrow, we're finally going to see the Jean Paul Gaultier exhibit at the art museum. We planned to do this last month, but there just hasn't been time. I think this is the first thing we've done purely for fun since we went to the Pryamid Room for Thanksgiving dinner. At any rate, I'm looking forward to seeing the exhibit. Until then, I'd better go put on a sweater. The house is getting cold again. I can't believe that furnace is actually working worse now that it was before the repair guys came. Maybe Dot was trying to tell me this morning that these guys didn't know what they were doing.

Taylor is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 560

Dash always gets his antigen shot on Tuesday. Today, the vet and I spent so much time talking about all of Dash's other ailments that we forgot to give him the shot. Dash and I were walking out to the car to go home when I finally remembered what we were here for. Back inside we went, and yes, we did finally get the shot. Dash has to fast tonight, because tomorrow morning, he goes back to the vet again for blood work. The vet thinks there may be a problem with his pancreas and he needs a special blood test to determine if this is the cause of his recurring vomiting and diarrhea.

The boys in the family seem to have all the medical problems. Between us, Dash and I definitely spend a lot of time at the doctor. Janet and Dot never seem to get sick. The girls just have dental problems. True to form, Dot needs to have her teeth looked at again in July.

Some friends of ours are taking a car trip with their two dogs to see the American West. We get periodic pictures showing the dogs visiting Indian cliff dwellings in Colorado, the Grand Tetons in Wyoming, and dipping their paws in the Puget Sound near Seattle. I used to live out West and these pictures bring back good memories. So far, I've been to every place I've seen in the e-mail pictures. It makes me wonder why I ever moved to Dallas. If you asked me where a nice place to live might be, my answer would far more likely be a place like Flathead Lake, Montana than Dallas, Texas. Texas was were the jobs were though. That's why I moved here. Evidently, Texas is still where the jobs are. I saw a statistic on television the other day that said that over 30% of all the new jobs created in the United States last year were created in Texas. That's pretty amazing. There are 50 states and Texas has one third of all the new jobs? What are the other states doing wrong?

I hope Dash sleeps better tonight. Last night he kept waking me up in the middle of the night frantically scratching at the back door to go out. At least he didn't poop on the bed or carpet though. I'm still trying to get the smell of yesterday's mishaps out of the house.

Dalmatian of the Day

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