Day 1429

It's that time of year again. I brought home a big pile of photo and lighting equipment from the storage warehouse in preparation for the first of our Santa Paws photo events this weekend. If it seems a little early for a picture of your dog sitting on Santa's lap, just look around you. The Christmas season is already in full swing. There are Christmas tree lots on every other corner. Stores are filled with lights, cards, and decorations. Some people are even starting to decorate their yards.

Every year the equipment seems heavier and it seems to take me a little longer to set up for these events. These Santa photos are all for a good cause though. I guess lugging this heavy gear around is what I've been doing all the workouts for.

I picked up my suit from the tailor today and the moth holes are gone. Reweaving is kind of amazing. Even when I look at the repair with a magnifying glass, I can't see any evidence that a moth hole was ever there. Now that I've taken care of the moth problem, I need to take care of the ticks. Dash seems to attract ticks like a magnet. Oddly, even though they walk together, I rarely see a tick on Dot. I check Dash for ticks every evening, but sometimes I miss a few. This morning I found one crawling on me. Yuck. It's all part of having dogs though. If you have a dog, you're eventually going to find a tick.

Dot did really well at her water therapy session today. She seems to enjoy these sessions. The water is nice and warm. The place is quiet. And the vet techs all like her and feed her treats. Dog class is another story entirely. Sometimes the dogs like their training class too, but not tonight. The only thing Dot and Dash wanted to do at class this evening was go home again. I can't really blame them. It was really cold this evening. I thing the temperature is supposed to get down in the mid-twenties later tonight. I finally remembered to set the outdoor faucets dripping, so they won't freeze. Since there are no valuable plants to bring inside, I guess we're all set for the first hard freeze of the season.

It looks like my breakfast recipe is actually going to be published in the SXSW Cookbook. I had to sign a release form today verifying the my recipe was original and not copied out of another cookbook. I'm glad I didn't have to sign anything guaranteeing that nobody would get sick from eating my recipe. I'm not really a very good cook. If somebody told me a few years ago that I would end up being featured in a film festival cookbook, I would have just laughed at them.

I wish tomorrow was Friday. This week is kind of dragging along. I've got lots of writing and website assignments to finish tomorrow. It's time to go to the gym again as well. One of these days I'll surprise you with something new and original. It won't be tomorrow though.

Puppies are today's Dalmatians of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1418

When I went to mow the lawn this morning, the mower wouldn't start. I was baffled. Everything worked perfectly the last time I mowed the grass. I went through all the normal troubleshooting procedures, and then out of frustration, I hit the mower with a hammer and it sprang back to life. It's sad that it's come to this. I just don't have the patience to carefully and methodically take things apart and put them back together anymore. I used to be able to fix anything, and now I just feel like hitting my recalcitrant machines with a hammer.

I had a hard time getting to sleep last night. Sometimes this happens for no apparent reason. When you can't sleep, the night can seem pretty long. Listening to the two snoring and farting dogs on either side of me didn't make the time go any faster, but eventually it was morning again.

When I went for my blood test at the health food store, there was already a line of old people waiting ahead of me. I usually try to go early and avoid the lines, but I couldn't seem to get organized today. The line moved surprisingly quickly and since I has to fast for the test, I went to breakfast at a nearby restaurant afterwards.

I took the suit with moth holes to the tailor and listened to a little Chinese lady explain the process of re-weaving to me. Somehow, I don't think the results will be nearly as invisible as promised, but what are you going to do? I can't let the moths win this one.

By the time I made a few remedial website updates, did the laundry, and made the bed, it was time to feed the dogs again and take them on their evening walk. This might be the last full daylight evening walk for a while. The sun will be setting an hour earlier now, so we'll be taking a lot of sunset walks during the month of November.

Puppies are today's Dalmatians of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1417

It was a busy day. After walking the dogs and eating breakfast at my favorite restaurant, I went to help a friend get a website set up. We accomplished everything we needed to do over a cup of coffee at Starbucks while using public WiFi. Before I finished my coffee, we were done. It was that easy. In a nutshell, this is why there is no money in website design anymore. Well, there's no money in designing private websites anyway. As we've all learned recently, there's apparently still plenty of money available to design websites for the government. Maybe I should have bid on designing HealthCare.gov myself. My site might have crashed too, but the cost would have been way lower than the reported $112 million that the government has already paid the main contractor.

I found a moth hole in the suit I wore to last Wednesday's networking breakfast. I went to a tailor in the neighborhood to see if they could fix the suit. They said that they probably could, but that the cost for reweaving would be $70 per moth hole. Jeez, it's tiny little moth hole. I hope I don't have a lot of moth holes. I'd better check the rest of my suits to make sure that they aren't riddled with $70 holes. It's been ten years since I've worn some of these suits, so the moths have had a long time to do their dirty work. The odd thing about these old suits is that they are back in style again. Lapels, pleats, and fabrics have changed quite a bit over the years, but now they are right back where they started from. I kind of lucked out, since my weight is right back where it started from as well.

As an experiment, I've been submitting some of the same photos to both Shutterstock and iStockphoto. As you might expect, some get accepted and some get rejected, but there is no consistency between these two stock photo sites. Since both sites are incredibly picky about the images they accept, you'd think they'd reject the same images. Nope! An image that has too much grain for Shutterstock might be just fine for iStockphoto. An image that iStockphoto considers out of focus might be perfect for Shutterstock. There is no rhyme or reason to the process. I've had pictures taken with an iPhone accepted and pictures taken with a Hasselblad rejected. Go figure!

I'm not really looking forward to the change back to Standard Time this weekend. I can always get up a little later to walk the dogs in the morning, but there's no escaping sunset anymore when I walk the dogs in the evening. I try my best to avoid walking the dogs after dark. The coyotes start coming out around dusk and I'd hate to be attacked by a pack of them. I know that some people say coyotes aren't a threat to anybody, but it is well documented that urban coyotes are losing their fear of humans. I just don't trust them.

It looks like we're going to have another beautiful weekend. Since the grass is still growing in the front yard, I might have to drag out the lawn mower one last time.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day