Day 3436

I need to call the plumber. The leaking shower head is getting worse. I put a bucket under the drip after I took a shower today and it only took a couple of hours for the bucket to become full. I was surprised. It just seems like a little drip, but it is relentless. I don't think I can fix the faucets myself. I took the handles off today to look at the mechanism and it looked unfamiliar. I'd better leave this alone.

Since I couldn't fix the leak, I defrosted the little refrigerator instead. Melting ice is more my speed. I don't know why we even use the little refrigerator anymore. There's plenty of space in the big refrigerator. I guess I just like to be prepared. The little refrigerator can run off a generator. We may need it someday.

I keep wondering about the White Pelican I see on my walks. It is apparently never going to migrate. The bird seems content to live by itself on a quiet little bay at the lake. There are probably no other Pelicans within 1000 miles right now but the bird seems happy enough. It catches fish in the lake, sits on logs for hours at a time observing things and occasionally flaps its wings and flies. Maybe this is my spirit animal.

I tried out some different shoes today with thinner socks. Maybe this combination is better. I had very little foot pain on today's walks. The Vibram soles get caked with mud easily, but that's a small problem. Muddy boots clean up easily with a garden hose. I'll wear these for a while and see if they encourage me to walk longer.

I wrote a letter to my sister this afternoon and paid a credit card bill. Credit card bills are frustrating because they are always larger than I expect. It's amazing what you can forget during a month. My Webflow account auto renewed this month. I forgot about that one. I wonder if I even still need this? I subscribed to this advanced web development tool so I could build mobile ready websites for my clients. They all got really nice sites, but eventually left anyway. I haven't built a new website in almost a year.

I wish my plumbing problem would magically go away overnight. I hate dealing with plumbers. Somehow, little problems always end up turning into big problems. In theory, fixing some leaky faucets shouldn't be a big deal, but I've been wrong before. We'll see what tomorrow brings. I have a feeling that it's going to be a lot like today.

Rosco is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2001

I think some people should have just stayed in bed this morning. I needed to find out some simple information today and struck out everywhere I called. My insurance agent seemed about two weeks behind on everything and said they couldn't get to my questions because of all the flood damage claims they had to process. My doctor couldn't find the test results from lab work that was done almost a month ago. I had better luck with the veterinarians I called, but they seemed frazzled and overworked too. Jeez, it's only Monday. If everyone is already hopelessly behind on Monday, I wonder what the rest of the week is going to be like.

I'm certainly going to be busy this week. I asked when a new writing assignment was due and the client said as soon as possible. I think this means tomorrow. I finally got up my nerve to convert my most difficult website to a mobile friendly format and almost immediately began to wonder if I had bitten off more than I can chew. When I started working on the site this afternoon, I quickly realized why I had saved this particular client for last. Everything will get done in due time, but this conversion is going to take a while. This is a very large website. I hope Google is happy when all my sites are finally mobile friendly. I don't want to do this again for a long time. If they decide that websites have to look good and be readable on the Apple Watch, I'm going to scream.

I'm going to have to figure out how to keep Dash cool during our Summer walks. I can tell he's already starting to get too hot and it's going to get much, much warmer in the months to come. In the past I've tried soaking a bandana in water before we start and putting it around the dog's neck. I've also tried spraying them with a water mist before we start. There aren't any drinking fountains along the way and Dash hasn't mastered the art of drinking from a water bottle. I wish Dash would just take shorter walks in hot weather. That's what Dot does. Unfortunately, he doesn't realize he's too hot until we're about a mile away from the house. I'm sure we'll figure out something, but I'm already starting to wish that the rain would return.

I've got to figure out how to switch the new fancy thermostat to some sort of reasonable Summer mode. In the Winter, I had it programmed to let the house cool down while we were asleep and then bring everything back up to 74 degrees just before we got up in the morning. This actually saved quite a bit on energy bills. In the Summer, I guess you'd want to pre-cool the house while you were sleeping and then let it warm up again during the day. I don't think this will work as well as the Winter settings though. The house isn't well insulated and the temperature is always hot day and night. Basically, the air conditioner runs non-stop in the Summer. Oh, well. I guess I'd better get used to those high Summer electric bills again.

Dash seems to tolerate the doxycycline he's taking pretty well. So far, there has been no upset stomach or other side effects. I'm hoping when Dot has her mini-biopsy on Wednesday that everything is normal with her. It would be nice to have both of these dogs healthy again. Maybe when I get my dental work finished later this month, life will finally return to normal.

Lacey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1999

For the second night in a row, Dash woke me up at 3 AM to go outside and poop. Something isn't normal. He doesn't have diarrhea, but he can't hold it till morning either. He also began taking doxycycline for Lyme Disease today. I don't think these two events are related. They are just part of a never ending saga of dog problems. I'm still not sure whether Dash actually has Lyme Disease, or whether the antibiotics are just a precaution. We'll probably never know. The test just said that he was exposed to the disease.

The replacement part I ordered for the refrigerator arrived this morning. After a quick repair, the ice maker works again. It's probably too early to celebrate though. I still don't know what actually caused the auger inside the ice maker to break. I read on the Internet that there is a special sensor in the freezer that periodically triggers the automatic defrost cycle. This is why you don't have to defrost modern freezers anymore. If this sensor goes haywire, the defrost cycle can stay on too long, causing ice in the ice maker tray to melt a bit and then freeze back together in a clump. This big clump of ice is usually too much for the plastic auger which moves the ice to the dispenser on the freezer door. Big clumps of ice probably caused the auger in our refrigerator to break. If the new auger I bought breaks too, I'll probably wish that I had just called the appliance repairman. For the moment, everything works perfectly.

Things dry up quick in Texas as soon as the rain stops. I noticed that the ground wasn't wet and mushy anymore, so I ran the sprinklers for the first time in over a month. It would be a shame to let the lawn wither and die after it got off to such a great start in May. I don't think I have to worry about yellowing, dried up grass quite yet though. Everything in the yard is still growing nicely. Things are growing so nicely in fact that is was already time to mow the grass again.

With the grass mowed and the yard looking better, I went and ran my regular Saturday errands, stopping to pick up Dash's doxycycline at the vet on the way home from the grocery store. Dot was feeling stronger today, but neither dog wanted to spend much time outside. Dalmatians don't like the heat, and it was over 90 degrees this afternoon. The dogs were smart to spend most of the day napping on their dog beds. Just mowing the grass in the unfamiliar heat wore me out.

I followed the dogs lead and spent the rest of the afternoon indoors, getting started on my fifth mobile friendly website. I'm becoming familiar with this new landscape now and am designing in a much more structured way. I have to be much more methodical about coding than I was before. All-in-all, it is much harder to put together a website using this new responsive design methodology. What Google wants, Google gets though. I just don't see many other alternatives. One surprising bonus from my new found consistency is that my designs actually look better than they used to. Consistency was never one of my strong points, so the forced discipline of structured HTML is actually very beneficial.

Lets hope that Dash sleeps through the night this evening. It would be nice if whatever is giving him the runs turns out to be something simple like eating horse poop. If it is related to Lyme Disease, it could be more serious. I saw on TV that the new dog park in our neighborhood is finally open. I bet Dash would like to try out this new park. He's been so good at walking very slowly with Dot in the mornings, that he deserves a chance to race around like a nut in the dog park.

Wendy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1996

I finished my fourth mobile friendly website today. The site is up and running and the client likes it. I feel proficient enough doing these things now that I'm almost ready to try converting some of my more difficult designs. I've actually enjoyed learning this new skill, but if I'm true to form, as soon as I get really good at something, I lose interest. We'll see what happens. I doubt if there's going to be a stampede of people wanting me to build mobile sites for them.

I got a call from Dash's vet today. His test results have come back and one of the tests indicates that he's been exposed to Lyme Disease. This particular test gives false positives frequently, so the vet said there was no reason to get alarmed yet. She is going to contact Dash's oncologist to see whether he thought Dash should begin treatment even though he shows no symptoms yet. Evidently the veterinary community is not in agreement on whether a dog that is not showing symptoms of Lyme Disease should start taking doxycycline immediately. Some say yes, others say no. Ordinarily, I'd want to go ahead with antibiotics, just to be safe, but Dash has had a lot of Clavamox recently to treat his infected paw. You don't want to overdo antibiotics. One thing is certain. There are a ton of ticks in the park, so Dash could have easily been exposed.

It looks like our nice, mild weather isn't going to last very long. Even though yesterday was unusually cool for June, the temperature shot into the 90's today. That's Texas weather for you. It's always bouncing back and forth between extremes. It was kind of funny in a way that two days ago I was fixing the furnace so I could warm the house up a bit and today the air conditioner was running all day. At least the water bill was low this month. I hardly ran the sprinklers at all in May. I need to remember to get the roofers to come out again now that things have dried out. The patches they made earlier this Spring held up well during the May rains, but some additional areas of the original elastomeric coating have starting to bubble up. It is going to be a long, slow process to get a roof that I can completely depend on.

I've got a new business meeting on Friday with a potential website client. The project is for a small non-profit charity that doesn't have much of a budget. I promised one of my neighbors, who is involved with the charity, that I'd do the site, but otherwise I wouldn't be all that interested. I'll look on the bright side though. The simple site will be easy to design and it will give me another chance to polish my responsive design skills. Some of you will wonder why I never seem to be excited about work. Others of you who have been in advertising as long as I have will understand completely.

Since Dot and Dash have different vets now, I always have a chance to get a second opinion. I'll ask Dot's vet if she is at risk for Lyme Disease too when she goes for physical therapy tomorrow afternoon. Who knows. Maybe even Janet and I are at risk. Humans get Lyme Disease too. I had always thought that Lyme Disease was primarily a problem for people on the East Coast. I also thought that only deer ticks transmitted the disease. The disease is starting to creep into Texas though, so maybe I'm wrong on both counts. I'd never know if I had Lyme Disease anyway, since the most common symptoms are fatigue, muscle aches, and joint pain. This is the way I feel all the time.

Friday can't come soon enough this week. I'm tempted to go out for breakfast tomorrow morning and just pretend it's Friday. It's been a long week.

Freckles is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1994

Yay. I fixed the furnace all by myself this morning. Don't even ask why we needed the furnace running on the first of June. Texas weather is weird. The last time the HVAC technician came out to the house, he showed me how to fix one of our most persistent problems. In a typical year, I usually have to schedule several service calls because the furnace won't stay lit. The gas comes on and then shuts right off again. It's usually a faulty heat sensor that is causing the problem. At first, technicians would replace this sensor. Then one day, a helpful technician told me that the sensor wasn't broken, it was just dirty. He took the thing apart and sanded the heat sensing element with a piece of fine sandpaper. Good as new.

Eventually I got tired of paying $90 for someone to sand this little metal thermocouple and asked if I could do it myself. It was easy enough to remove the dirt and scale from the metal. Getting the sensor out of the furnace was the problem. When the technician came out to install my fancy WiFi thermostat earlier this year, he was nice enough to take me step-by-step through the process. Amazingly, I remembered his instructions this morning and I fixed the furnace myself. I could have just waited for things to warm up though. By afternoon, I had the air conditioner running.

Dash's blood test tomorrow is complicated. Not only does he have to fast, he has to take his thyroid medication exactly four hours before the test is done. Since his appointment is at 9:30 AM tomorrow, we have to get up at 5:30 AM to give him his pills. Since Dot and Dash would never wait until after 9:30 to have their breakfast, I need to drop Dash off at the vet immediately after we finish our morning walk and then return home to feed Dot. I'll then eat my own breakfast and return to the vet to pick up Dash again. Luckily, this particular test only has to be done once a year.

I worked on another mobile friendly website today. My strategy so far has been to make sure I know how to convert a client's website before I even mention the subject to them. Every website is different and some have proved quite difficult to convert. I don't want to promise something that I can't deliver. When I've got a site that functions properly offline, I'll ask the client if they'd like to convert their website to a mobile friendly version. Some folks are really happy that I'm looking out for them and others don't even know what a mobile friendly site is. I'm certainly not making much money doing all this work, but it is a necessary learning experience. In the near future, all websites will be done this way, so I only have a limited amount of time to get up to speed.

It's hard to believe that it's June already. The year is almost half over and the only things I can remember are Dot's spinal injury, my wisdom teeth, and lots and lots of rain. Hopefully the second half of the year will be far less stressful than the first. I did enjoy getting invited by NASA to view that satellite launch in California, but even that trip was marred by an unfortunate car accident. I've got a birthday later this month, but that just makes me even older than I am now. In just a few more days I will have posted something on this blog for 2000 consecutive days without missing a single day. That's probably a bigger deal to me than my birthday right now. If Dot continues to get better, I'll be a happy camper. The rest of the year can just slide by.

Charlie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1988

Short weeks always confuse me. It seemed like a Monday for most of the day, but is was really Tuesday. It's probably going to be like this for the rest of the week. After breakfast, I made an appointment for Dot to get her semi-annual ultrasound scan at the cancer center. This test was actually due a few months ago, but Dot was still recovering from surgery. Dash was due for some tests as well. I made an appointment to get his blood work done so the vet could re-check his phenobarbital levels. We do this once a year to make sure there is still enough phenobarbital in his blood stream to control seizures.

When I got all the dogs vet visits scheduled, I put together another mobile friendly website. I thought my client would be delighted when I told him that he finally had the mobile site he'd been asking for. The guy seemed strangely uninterested though. I explained how Google was already demoting sites that weren't mobile ready, but he still seemed to want to hang on to the old static site. Go figure.

The rain was more sporadic today. There was a light mist when we walked the dogs this morning and I actually caught a brief glimpse of the sun later in the day when I was taking Dash on his evening walk. It's so wet outside that I have towels strategically placed just outside the back door so I can dry the dogs off after their walk before they go in the house again. My jeans are usually soaked halfway to the knee from walking through the wet grass in the park. The wet pants go in the dryer and the equally wet shoes are placed on top of one of the furnace floor vents. With a little luck, everything is dry again by the time we take our next walk.

One of the worst things about all this rain we've been having are the mosquitoes. They're everywhere. I don't know how so many got inside, but they appear to be here to stay. The little beasts are hard to catch, because you usually don't even notice them until you hear one buzzing right beside your ear. At least we're on high ground, so we don't have to worry about flooding. The pictures I've been seeing on television from Austin and Houston are unbelievable. I've lived in Texas for a long time, but I don't ever remember a Spring like this.

I'll have to admit that I was a little disappointed that my client wasn't all that excited about the work I'd done today. I need to remember that most people don't spend that much time thinking about social media and Google rankings. A website is no different than a Yellow Pages ad to many of them. Oh, well. I learned some new things putting together this second mobile friendly site. That should be useful. Eventually, this knowledge will come in handy.

There is more rain on the way tomorrow. We'll be fine though. There are plenty of bananas for the dogs, lots of dry towels, and a ton of old static websites that I still need to make mobile friendly.

Chief is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1978

We began walking Dot and Dash together again, and just as I expected, Dot was much more energetic and seemed determined to keep up with Dash. Both dogs are incredibly stubborn. She just didn't want to walk by herself while Janet was away. We walked the dogs very early since Janet had a training seminar she needed to attend. I took the opportunity to go out for breakfast, since the rain kept me away yesterday. The dogs just went to sleep since they were both tired after their walk.

The ground is still too wet for me to mow the grass, so I decided to write another article on my to-do list before I ran my regular Saturday errands. While I was writing, I noticed that Dot was licking the blanket in her dog bed. Not a good sign. Sure enough, a few minutes later she began trying to throw up and began her frantic behavior again. I still don't know what causes this, but I suspect she might try to eat food crumbs that have fallen to the floor and end up swallowing a bunch of lint and dog hair instead. This might not be the cause of her problems at all, but it sure seems plausible. Dot is obsessed with food and a lot of it falls out of her mouth as she becomes older. Now that there are throw rugs everywhere to keep Dot from slipping on the bricks, it is much harder to keep the floors clean. At any rate, I sat outside with Dot until she become calm again and then she and Dash had their dinner, took another walk, and everything was back to normal.

Janet and I has an animal rescue fundraiser to attend tonight and I was a little nervous leaving Dot alone with a house full of rugs and carpets she could eat. I knew she was very tired and it seemed to be a safe bet that she would just sleep while we were gone. We weren't going to be gone long anyway. I think I enjoyed the annual wine tasting event more when I could still drink wine, but the food was good and so was the cause. We've been going to this event for over nine years now and it seems to get better every year.

Dot was still sleeping calmly in exactly the same spot where we left her when we returned, but I'd still like to get to the bottom of this strange grass eating frenzy. Something specific has to be causing this behavior. The episodes are so sporadic that it's hard for me to see a pattern. The vets mostly just tell me to give her a Pepcid AC and call them if the frantic behavior gets worse. They don't know what is causing this either.

I'm still working on my mobile friendly test site. I was making pretty good progress until Dot started trying to throw up. Despite the minor dog emergency, I did learn how to make translucent drop-down menus where you can still see a hint of what is underneath the menu. I don't know why writing structured HTML and giving everything a CSS class seems so difficult for me, but I'm slowly getting there. It takes a long time, because when I make a mistake, I need to figure out why things didn't work out as expected. I don't want to continue making the same mistakes over and over again.

All-in-all it was a good day. I had a delicious breakfast. The dogs returned to walking together again. Dot recovered quickly from her upset stomach. The Wine on the Roof fundraiser was enjoyable and both dogs are already tucked in for the night. Maybe I'll even get a good night's sleep. That would be nice.

Liberty is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1975

I should be used to the rain by now, but it still amazes me how wet it's been this Spring. This has to be one for the record books. Today was another near all-day rain, punctuated with small, well-placed intervals where I was lucky to get the dogs out for shortened morning and evening walks. It's not raining now, but I think the weather is just taking a breather. There is even more rain in the forecast for tomorrow.

Previous rainy days this week have allowed me to get caught up on work, so there wasn't really a lot to do today. I finally got my May invoices in the mail, but that was about it.

I contemplated just watching movies on Netflix today, but couldn't find anything I really wanted to see. Instead, I decided to do some more work on my mobile friendly test site. I think I've learned all the easy stuff, because I had difficulty grasping some of the concepts I was trying to learn today. I ended up making a mess of the test site and had to upload an older archived version to get back to square one. I don't know why I'm spending so much time with this, since most of my clients don't seem very interested in mobile anyway.

I thought I try to get through the day without any pain pills for my teeth. Things must be getting better, because it wasn't all that bad. It's probably time to stop taking Ibuprofen anyway, since it isn't very good for the liver. I still had my breakfast banana milkshake, mostly because the dogs love bananas. I always share with them. Even though it took a while to rinse out the food particles, I had solid food for dinner. There was a tasty casserole in the refrigerator that would have been awful if I liquified it and turned it into soup. Everything in moderation, I guess. Once my mouth has healed completely, I'll still use the Vitamix, but I doubt that I've have soup more than once a week.

I wanted to find out if there were any more NASA launches that I could apply to attend and discovered instead that all the NASA websites are offline. There used to be a ton of NASA sites and they're all gone. Budget cuts I guess. As a web developer it would seem like it might actually be more expensive to take a large site down than to simply leave it up and not update it as frequently. What do I know though. The government works in mysterious ways.

Did you know that the Rolling Stone song Can't Get No Satisfaction was recorded fifty years ago yesterday? Jeez. These guys are still touring and selling out huge stadiums too. When I was learning to play to this song in high school, I never dreamed that we'd still be listening to a seventy year old Mick Jagger singing it fifty years later. Yep. The Stones are coming to Texas Stadium this Summer and the show is already sold out. In just a few more years, it will be fifty years since we landed on the moon. Amazing! What have we really accomplished since then? Sure, we all have smartphones now, but I can tell you from experience that life was a lot more interesting in 1969.

I'm not sure how interesting it is going to be tomorrow. My clever phone tells me that there will be thunderstorms tomorrow. Back in 1969, I never knew when it was going to rain until I got wet.

Haley is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1963

Now that the swelling is subsiding, I'm starting to notice that there is a rather obvious hole where my wisdom tooth used to be. I had initially thought that they would stitch this hole up or do something to eliminate it, but apparently not. The dentist has indicated that the hole where the tooth used to be will eventually go away, but I don't see how. Right now it's a nuisance. It's almost impossible to eat anything without food particles getting stuck in the cavity. I can't brush vigorously, or use a water pic yet, because this would break apart the blood clot and I'd start bleeding again. I can swish warm salt water around in my mouth but that's about it. I wish I had my crooked tooth back.

Despite my eating difficulties, I went out for breakfast this morning. My favorite dish on the menu is fairly soft and easy to chew. No problems there. I did get iced coffee though, instead of my usual steaming hot cup of joe. Iced coffee is surprisingly good as a breakfast beverage. Who would have thought?

One of my clients recently upgraded their websites to "mobile friendly" status with an easy-to-use automated widget provide by their web hosting company. The whole process just took a few minutes and only cost $200. The finished mobile sites looked pretty decent and passed Google's "mobile friendly" test. Jeez, how can I compete with that? It would have taken me weeks to duplicate the site created by the point-and-click mobile widget. Although I'll soon be able to create decent looking mobile sites myself, I could never convert something this inexpensively or fast. It's all pretty discouraging. Why am I spending all this time learning to write complex CSS code? This train has already left the station.

My photoshoot went well this afternoon, but that was a bit discouraging as well. I was supposed to candidly capture the active, vibrant personality of a busy office, but I was only there a few hours. I did get some nice shots, but not nearly enough. I will have to come back many times to capture the images the client is looking for. The office staff could probably do far better than me if they would just start taking pictures with their cell phones whenever an interesting interaction took place. Cell phone pictures are looking better and better every day. I would use my own phone on photoshoots like this, but a big heavy camera with a huge lens looks much more professional.

Since the weather looks like it's going to stay nice for a few days, I went up and got the water off the roof this morning. It's been several days since the last heavy rain, but unfortunately not much water had evaporated. I'm almost resigned to the fact that keeping the roof dry is going to be a never ending process. One thing is certain. I'm never going to buy a house with a flat roof again.

I hope my mouth gets back to normal soon. Eating is one of my few remaining pleasures, and this tooth extraction has definitely thrown a wrench in the works. I almost feel like skipping meals, because it's just too much trouble. Nothing can be too hot, or too cold, or too chewy. Even if you eat very carefully, some sort of evil hidden magnet still pulls food particles directly into the empty socket. All this makes a liquid diet sound good. Especially if the liquid was Scotch.

Dolly is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1960

I think the antibiotics are working. Dash did a lot better at keeping all four paws on the ground today. He still limped a little when he tried to walk too fast, but his condition was visibly better than yesterday. It wasn't all smooth sailing though. Dash woke me up twice during the middle of the night to go outside. He raced around the yard on three legs like he was possessed. Dash acted like he had an upset stomach and needed to poop. After several tries, he eventually did. It could have been the Clavamox. On the other hand, it could have been something bad he ate in the park. The important thing was that Dash eventually did his business and we finally got some sleep.

I made some website revisions today and after I uploaded the new content, the client sent me an e-mail saying that nothing had changed. This happens all the time. Am I the only one who regularly clears my browser cache? I patiently explained that he was looking at an old version of the site and that if he re-loaded the page, cleared his browser cache in the preference menu, or just restarted the browser he would probably see the new changes. Since I never heard back from him, I guess one of those remedies worked.

I had some writing jobs today, but I got side-tracked experimenting with my mobile friendly test site. Today I learned how to create drop down menus that automatically re-size for different devices. Life was so much easier when everyone was looking at the same 17" CRT display and used their phones for making phone calls. I'm slowly getting comfortable working in this new responsive design environment, but I'm also getting bored with it. It's a race against time to see if I can learn enough to be useful before I get sick of the whole thing. It's getting harder to find a reason to stay on the cutting edge of anything anymore.

Tomorrow is the big day. I can't eat anything after 10 PM tonight and Janet has to drive me to the dentist tomorrow. I'm supposed to take an antibiotic and a pain killer one hour before surgery. There is a nice steak in the refrigerator, but Janet froze it, saying that I'll probably be eating soup for the rest of the week. The procedure is only supposed to take an hour or so, but somehow I think I'll be dealing with the aftermath for a lot longer. I just hope when I wake up from surgery that only one tooth is missing. I still have a fear than more than one will be removed if the oral surgeon decides that some other teeth can't be saved either. I know that the tooth right next to the impacted wisdom tooth has been damaged, but I'm hoping that all it will need is a filling. If the second tooth has to be removed, I will need an implant. Dental implants are a long, expensive process. Let's keep it simple. Just remove tooth number 32 and be done with it.

Tomorrow will be interesting. I've got lots of writing and website work that needs to get finished. The dogs still need their walks. Tomorrow's blog post needs to be written and published as well. I hope the anesthesia wears off in a hurry. I don't have time to be loopy all day.

Lucky is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1949

I woke up with an uneasy feeling about today and as the day progressed, it turned out that there were good reasons for my apprehension. Service was unusually slow at breakfast this morning because they were trying to work in a new employee and I just barely got home in time so Janet could leave for work. I hate feeling rushed before eight AM. Later, someone from my insurance company called and said they needed to to photograph my house again. Why? This would be the third time they have done this. I called my agent and he didn't have a clue why the company was requesting these pictures. It can't be good. They probably want to charge more for insuring flat roof houses or something. If this were true, it would be totally unfair. I'm probably the only one in the neighborhood who hasn't gotten a new roof as a result of storm damage. Sadly, leaks don't count as storm damage.

These minor problems were nothing compared to my growing apprehension about my future as a web designer. For over a year, I've been hearing that the static sites I typically create will all be gone in a few years. Over 30% of people primarily use their phones to view websites now. To reach this growing audience, it is becoming mandatory to create responsive websites that automatically resize themselves to fit any platform they are viewed on. It is no longer enough to re-direct iPhone traffic to a much smaller vertical site. There are so many different platforms and such a multitude of potential sizes that making a separate static site for all of them would be impossible. What you need now is smart code that makes your site look equally good whether it is viewed on a phone, a tablet, a laptop, a desktop, or something that isn't even invented yet. This is responsive design and I don't know how to code it yet. To me, it's kind of like going from addition and subtraction to calculus in a single step. I've been reading tutorials for a month now, and it still seems Greek to me.

I got a call from the cancer center today saying it was time for Dot's six month recheck and another ultrasound scan.They didn't even know about her spinal surgery and the long journey to teach her to walk again. When I explained Dot's current condition to the doctors, we all agreed that it would be best to postpone the exam for a while. Dot is making great progress, but she's not ready to be a drop-off patient yet. Dot sailed through her last exam with flying colors, but I'm a bit apprehensive about going through all this again. If the cancer ever returned, I don't know what I'd do. The poor girl has been through enough.

I know I've mentioned that nothing happens on Fridays, but today was surprisingly busy. I finished two articles, did some laundry and household chores, and spent quite a while researching responsive web design. If I don't learn how to create these adaptive, mobile friendly sites soon, I'll probably be out of business within a year. I'm pretty good at dealing with today's increasingly interactive world, but I really miss print. Creating a 4-color magazine ad was fun. Creating a website that looks just as good on a phone as it does on a 30" monitor, not so much.

It's raining now. To beat the rain, I had to leave Dot alone again while I took Dash on a quick evening walk to do his business before the thunder and lightning arrived. I could hear Dot barking when we left, but she was just fine when we returned. I remembered to take her harness off this time as well. We're definitely making progress. I have a feeling that Dot will be doing back-flips and handstands before I even begin to understand responsive design.

Bella is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day