Day 4591

Today is the 53rd anniversary of the first moon landing. We need more events like this. It might have been the last time the entire world felt good about something. Nevermind the fact that the Apollo program was all about the Cold War and the moon landing probably never would have happened if we weren't in a race to beat the Russians. It was still a stupendous achievement. I remember those days well. I was in college then and wasn't nearly as cynical. I actually believed all those who said we would have cities on Mars by now. What happened? There are no cities on Mars and the cities on Earth are crowded and very unsafe.

Dawn didn't have training class this evening. It was too hot. The temperature slowly builds throughout the day and it is usually hottest right around sunset. The sun has already set and it is still 104 degrees at our house. Hey, it is only 80 degrees indoors though. By bedtime, the temperature will be down to 78 and tomorrow morning it will be 75 again. It is actually probably a bit cooler in most rooms. The thermostat is right next to the air return for the AC and this is the warmest place in the house. 

I've really started to appreciate our sunrise walks with Dawn because they are the only times when the weather seems tolerable. This morning there was a nice breeze and we had a very enjoyable walk. As soon as the sun peeks above the horizon you can instantly feel the difference. The sun feels hot even at sunrise. Dawn seems perfectly content to just get one walk a day now. She's basically a very lazy dog and spends most of her time sleeping on the bed anyway.

I try to stay busier, although sleeping on the bed during the day sounds pretty good to me as well. I went back to the gym again after eating breakfast and checking my messages on the computer. Until our heat wave is over, this will probably be my routine for the rest of the summer. I might even try mall walking this Sunday when my gym is closed. I just don't think it is healthy to be out in this heat for very long. My summer routine at the gym is pretty much the same every day. I walk several miles on the indoor track to get my Fitbit steps and then I shoot some baskets on the basketball court for fun before I head home again. I always hope that I can find a space in the parking garage, because the car heats up very quickly if left out in the sun. I don't want anything to melt.

There isn't a lot to do in the afternoon. This is when I often take a nap if I feel so inclined. Janet likes to watch movies on her devices, but I have trouble doing this. I have trouble picking up a book either. Occasionally I will look at Amazon or New York Times best seller lists but I don't see any literary masterpieces. Every celebrity has a book these days. I should have been a ghost writer. I know these guys didn't write their books themselves. Actually, I should just start methodically re-reading all the books on my office bookshelves. I can't remember what is in most of them, but I know that I used to have good taste in books and enjoyed them all. It's hard to believe that I really read all these books. There are hundreds of them.

There is all this squabbling right now about fossil fuel versus renewal energy. Absolutely nobody is talking about the real problem. There are way too many people on the planet chasing too few resources. Humans are like Kudzoo Vines. We chop down all the trees to make houses and eat all the fish out of the sea. We should be planting more trees. Everyone is worried about greenhouse gasses, but trees actually love CO2. They convert the stuff into oxygen. We just don't get it. Instead of planting forests, we create vast deserts and then build solar panel farms on them. Nature tries to help by sending us new diseases every year designed to reduce our population. We're like busy beavers though and always find a cure for these diseases. We never learn. We keep building bigger cities and can't seem to produce enough food. I still think at the rate things are going humans will be extinct in 300 years.

On that happy note I will continue watching a small line of storms to the North of us on the weather radar. I was hoping that we might get some of that rain later this evening, but the storms seem to be dissipating. Who would have thought that after all my complaining about roof leaks, I would actually be hoping for rain.

Lady Jane is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 3130

Persistence pays off. The roof has finally been repaired. Lord knows how long I've been complaining about this roof. I'm sure the time is measured in years, not months. I'll have to wait until the elastomer coating dries completely before I can inspect things, but at first glance, it looks like the guys did a good job. I really hope that these repairs work. I'm tired of having problems with the roof. I'm tired of complaining too. Truthfully, I'd like to forget about the roof for a while. In retrospect, I wish the roofers had told me in the beginning that the high-tech membrane roof wasn't appropriate for my type of building. An old fashioned tar and gravel roof would have worked much better. That's ancient history now. The roof is what it is.

Every year on this date I grow nostalgic about the moon landing. I feel really old when I hear adults who aren't that young themselves talk about viewing the landing with their parents when they were seven. I was in college at the time. 1969 was a great year. The moon landing and Woodstock both happened during the same summer. I miss those times. There was a spirit of optimism that had nothing to do with political parties. We were a country then. Now we're just a bunch of warring tribes.

We had our second consecutive day of record heat with temperatures topping out at 108 degrees. They say the heat wave should peak tomorrow when temperatures could reach 110 degrees. We're also setting new records for electricity and water usage. I hope the power company can meet the demand. I'm not sure that Dash could handle a power outage. We were without electricity for four days in July when we first moved here. It was miserable. Even without a power outage, I worry about the air conditioner. It's been running non-stop for several days now. I had an HVAC company as a client once and they told me that there were an unbelievably number of air conditioner failures during Summer heat waves. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. This oppressive heat can't last forever.

Our morning walk went well this morning. We got started before sunrise and there was a nice breeze. I shortened our route and we only walked about half the distance we usually do. This seemed to do the trick. Dash was normal when we returned home. The roofers got started early too. They were up on the roof before I left for breakfast. It was smart to get started early. The temperature was only 87 degrees at sunrise but quickly rose to triple digits within a matter of hours.

It goes without saying that I stayed inside most of the day. I did go out for breakfast and got some groceries on the way home, but that was about it. I ordered the same meal I had last Friday, but it tasted different. There must have been a different chef this morning. I don't know why consistency is so important to me. Breakfast was actually fine. I just wish it was exactly the same as last week.

We're setting the alarm to get up extra early tomorrow. It's going to be the only way to give Dash a decent walk.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 2410

Go outside and take a look at the moon. 47 years ago today Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down on the lunar surface with less than a minutes worth of fuel left. They navigated their way from the earth to the moon using a computer that was less powerful than the one you currently have in your phone. More than half a billion people watched live as Neil Armstrong stepped out of the lunar module and said, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” For one short moment in time, the world was united and the world was proud.

I was one of those proud people.  I was still in architecture school and had my entire life ahead of me. I never would have dreamed that almost half a century later we would leave the moon behind and never return. What happened? I think we were at our best when we were explorers and adventurers. We are at our worst right now. Nothing unites us the way Apollo 11 did. No politician is bold enough to commit the nation to accomplish the impossible in less than ten years. John Kennedy was my favorite president. Sadly, I don't think his own party would elect him today. He wasn't politically correct. He was an unabashed nationalist. I think John Kennedy would be appalled that we never returned to the moon.

The dogs got a little excitement today. The electric company arrived at the house around mid-afternoon and informed me that my electric meter had gone bad. I asked the guy at the front door how they knew the meter had gone bad and they told me that the meter sent them a fault warning. There aren't any meter readers anymore. The meter sits quietly behind my house, electronically informing the power company whenever I turn on the television, or cool down the house. The meter knows too much, so I hope nobody ever gets elected who decides I'm an energy waster and rations my power. It's already happening with water. I thanked the electric company guy for installing the new meter and apologized for the barking dogs. Somehow I think that this new meter isn't going to lower my electric bill at all.

I had some website updates to complete today, but I have a feeling that the slowdown in my business is permanent. As I watch Dot's slow decline, I am simultaneously witnessing my own decline. I hope I'm not witnessing the decline of my country as well. All I know is that July 20, 1969 was a much better time than July 20, 2016. I know you can't turn back time, but maybe you can change direction.

I canceled Dot's physical therapy session again today. We did increase the length of her walk a little though. So far, she's doing well. This is the kind of progress I understand. Tomorrow, we'll repeat the process and start all over again. In 1969 I was convinced that we'd have colonies on Mars by now. What I didn't know is that 47 years later, my life would be focused around Dalmatians and that the moon would just be a soft light shining through my window.

Lady Jane is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 2043

Having the cable guy in the house with a dog who can't walk and is suspicious of strangers, along with a friendly escape artist who will dart through any open gate or door and disappear, was not an experience I'd want to repeat any time soon. I'm sure the service technician would agree. Dot barked incessantly the whole time, causing Dash to race excitedly around the house. I couldn't keep the dogs safely corralled in one room because the technician needed to check the entire network. I had to keep moving the dogs from room to room. I had a hard time hearing what the technician was telling me above all the commotion, but it appeared that the router had gone bad. I really didn't want to replace this piece of equipment, because then I would have had to reconnect everything in the house with the WiFi network all over again. There's a lot of stuff on the network. I've done this before and it's a pain. The technician told me that she might be able to configure the new router from a backup copy of the old router's settings and save me the trouble of starting over, but that this procedure only worked 50% of the time. This seemed strange to me, but I told her to go for it. What did I have to lose? All I was really worried about at that point was Dot pooping in the house.

Amazingly, the backup proceedure worked. Even the WiFi thermostat and the weird WiFi Skype phone stayed connected. The technician was somehow able to trick new router into thinking it was the old router, so nothing had to be reconfigured or paired with the network. I'm a happy camper. I need to be real careful never to press the red re-set button on the back of the new router though. If I ever mistakenly restore the thing to its factory settings, it will forget everything and ask me for a different password while everything on the network becomes disconnected.

Once the technician packed up and left, the dogs calmed down and life returned to normal. Amazingly, Dot didn't poop in the house, although she was so upset that I thought she was going to have a stroke at some point. Dash didn't escape and run off, although I could tell that he was looking to see if the technician inadvertently left the front door open while she was working. It was hard to keep Dot and Dash in the same room while I was holding Dot's harness to keep her from falling while Dash was racing around, looking for opportunities to be bad. This would have been so much easier if the problem was with the outside line. I apologized to the technician about the dogs behavior, but I think she could tell that I had my hands full.

It's hard to believe that it's been 46 years since we landed on the moon. July 20 will always be etched in my memory because of what happened 46 years ago today. I thought I was an adult back then when I watched the landing on an old black and white Magnavox TV. What did I know? I was only 21. So much has changed and yet we still haven't returned to the moon. I was excited to see the first pictures of Pluto a few days ago, but I'd be even more excited if we had a colony on Mars. In 1969, most people were convinced that we'd have planted flags on several planets by now. When Stanley Kubrick made 2001, A Space Odyssey, he never would have dreamed that 2001 would actually end up being remembered for the attacks on the World Trade Center instead. I have a feeling that we'll be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing without ever returning to the moon.

It's Dash's turn to go to the vet tomorrow. We need to do a test to make sure he's been cured of Lyme Disease. At least I think it was Lyme Disease he was exposed to. When I called the vet to make the appointment, I couldn't remember whether he'd been treated for Lyme or West Nile. Hopefully, nothing else will break in the house for the rest of the Summer. I don't know if I could handle another day like today.

Lady Jane is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1624

I got up early to walk the dogs before Dash's 8:30 AM vet appointment. Although the skies looked dark and foreboding during the entire walk, we hardly got wet at all. Just a few sprinkles. No rain during the trip to the vet either. We got lucky. Dash is now current on all his vaccinations and should only have to go to the vet once a month for routine chemotherapy blood tests.

Today was busier than I expected. I completed a big website revision and returned to writing again, completing my first new article in over a week. It's good to stay busy as long as you're not too busy. Today was just about right.

Sometimes I wonder whether the Internet is increasing knowledge and awareness at all. Lately, it seems that our interconnected world is just providing a forum for idiots to find their soulmates. Today, I followed two different threads on Facebook that would have been hard to take seriously if it weren't for the hundreds of people who fervently seemed to believe them. One thread was filled with people claiming that airplanes never crashed into the world trade center towers and that the entire event was an elaborate illusion created by the CIA using holographic projections of commercial aircraft coordinated by a nearby invisible B2 bomber. I'm not making this stuff up. Next was an old thread that resurfaces every once in a while, claiming that the moon landings were a hoax and that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin never went to the moon at all. Why do people love conspiracies so much?  It's been around forever. Kennedy was assassinated by the mafia. All new advances in technology have been reverse engineered from wreckage found in the Roswell flying saucer. I was shocked to read recently that almost 40% of the world's population don't even believe the Holocaust ever happened. I guess it's not surprising that Duck Dynasty, The Kardashians, and monster truck shows are so popular. We're doomed.

I try not to get involved in arguments about whether we went to the moon, or if there were dinosaurs on Noah's ark. It's just not worth it. If I can't even convince the dogs that the cat they're obsessed with had left the yard, how am I going to convince someone that there's nothing worth looking at in Area-51? The ironic thing is that conspiracies do exist. We just don't seem to care about the real ones. I'm sure that the NSA knows much, much more about all of us than we could ever imagine. We did go to the moon though.

If I don't make an appointment to go to the dentist within the next month, I need to have my head examined. Despite brushing several times a day and using a water pic, I've still got a tooth that bothers me. I've also got a persistent metallic taste in my mouth, but I don't think that has anything to do with dental hygiene. The metallic taste is probably a side effect of the Metformin I take to control blood sugar. I wonder if I even need to take Metformin anymore? I've dramatically cut back on my sugar intake during the past year. Who knows if I am even at risk for developing diabetes? My blood chemistry is close to perfect now. I am at risk for needing a root canal though. Remind me to make a dental appointment soon.

Libby is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1612

Buzz Aldrin couldn't have said it better. "You promised me Mars colonies. Instead, I got Facebook." When I saw this quote today, it summed up the last several decades for me. There are no large dreams that capture the imagination of entire countries anymore. Instead, we have become a fractured, totally divided world that agrees on nothing and can't get behind anything of consequence. When I was growing up, the best and the brightest went to work in places like Los Alamos and Oak Ridge. Today they work for Google. I was an Oak Ridge kid myself for a while, since my Dad was doing something secret at one of the labs. My young friends and I were science nerds before the term was even invented. We were convinced that we'd be traveling among the stars by now. None of us ever dreamed we'd be downloading funny cat pictures instead.

Not only has the world become trivial, I have become trivial as well. When I was a young kid in Oak Ridge, I thought I'd be an astronomer when I grew up. I actually ended up becoming an architect. Then in my mid 20's I had an epiphany. I realized that I was a fairly shallow person and became an ad man instead. I thrived in advertising, largely because my shallow nature fit me like a glove. I thought having a few people like me made the world a more interesting place. It probably did. The entire equation changed when everyone decided to get a degree in marketing. You don't really need that many people like me. There is a reason why big companies hire most of their advanced technical talent from India and China. American college grads no longer want to split the atom and go to the moon. They'd rather have their own reality show.

I don't know where we go from here, but I do know that people like John Kennedy and Buzz Aldrin don't resonate with today's young people like they did with me. Going to the moon in ten years from a standing start was a ridiculously ambitious goal and we did it. These days it would take ten years just to agree on what we wanted to do.

I certainly didn't do much today. I went to my breakfast restaurant a day early, because I'm going to be busy tomorrow. The first thing I noticed was that the restaurant, which is typically packed on Friday mornings, was virtually empty. Could this mean that we already have a de facto four day work week? All my clients seem to have flex-time employees these days and I know quite a few people who don't work on Friday already. What's going to happen when the robots get really good?

Maybe some of my clients have started taking Thursday off as well. It was certainly slow today. The dogs got two nice walks, including one in the morning where the temperature was brisk and cool. Dot and Dash love the cooler weather. Later in the day, I filled the car with gas, went to the bank, and paid a quick visit to a Fry's electronics store in the neighborhood. The store was almost as empty as the restaurant was this morning. Sign of the times, I guess.

Sadie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1313

It's hard to believe that it's been 44 years since we landed on the moon. I still remember those grainy pictures of Neil Armstrong slowly exiting the Lunar Excursion Module like it was yesterday. I was in college at the time and watched the landing in the ballroom of the university student union because I didn't have a TV of my own in the rooming house where I lived while going to architecture school. Those were good times. The Summer of 69 was a magical period in history when anything was possible. A month after the moon landing was Woodstock. Jimi Hendrix and Neil Armstrong defined my world. A few years later I graduated, completely convinced that both the moon landings and the spirit of Woodstock would last indefinitely.

I was wrong of course, but I'm certain that the optimism I felt during the Summer of 69 contributed to my early success. It was easy to get a job back then. I was hired as a junior designer by a well known architect in Seattle. I was given an opportunity to make documentary films. Nothing really seemed like a struggle. I don't think I would have fared nearly as well in today's world.

I still can't really tell you how the kid who thought he was going to be the next Richard Avedon wound up taking pictures of Dalmatians instead. It's been quite a ride though and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Actually, taking pictures of Dalmatians is quite enjoyable. Janet and I photographed one of our new rescue dogs today. Sterling is a young guy who seems to be filled with the same exuberant optimism I felt in 1969. It was hard to get a good picture though, because Sterling wouldn't stay still. Hopefully, I captured the happy boy that he is. He should find a home quickly.

Later in the afternoon when I took Dot and Dash on their afternoon walk they both heard a loud thunderclap off in the distance. The noise triggered their storm phobia and I could barely hold on to them as they tried to make a hasty retreat back to the house. I tried my best to get the dogs to slow down, since this was exactly how Dot lost a nail last year. It never did rain very much, but the thunder alone was enough to convince Dot and Dash that the sky was falling. I got under a blanket with them and watched a cooking show on PBS until they calmed down.

I made another attempt to figure out what was wrong with the garbage disposal today. I took the faceplate off the control panel for the oven and other kitchen gadgets and tried to trace the wiring for the disposal. No loose or burned wire found. Everything seems completely normal. The disposal still doesn't work though. I added making an appointment with an appliance repairman to next week's to-do list.

It's hard to say whether the dogs will get their Sunday trip to the dog park tomorrow. The mornings start out clear and sunny and then by mid-afternoon little thunderstorms start springing up all over town. We'll see what happens. So far, it's been a nice weekend.

Lady Jane is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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