Day 3819

Another dog day afternoon. Every Monday, Janet and I spend the afternoon visiting the rescue Dalmatians at their kennel. It is one of the best parts of the week. Currently there are only three dogs in the program and we've grown to love each of them. Hank, Murphy, and Charlie all have their own unique personalities, but they all love to play. Hank is deaf and today we tried to teach him some simple commands. It took a lot of patience and a lot of treats, but I think he finally understands how to sit on command. We'll see if he remembers next week.

Dawn was happy to stay home and sleep on the bed while we visited the rescue dogs. She'd already had her five mile walk and was ready for a nap. We always get started before 7 AM but it seems impossible for us to get ready any earlier. I don't even make the bed or eat breakfast until we have finished our walk. In theory, we should be out the door around 5:45 AM but it's not going to happen. All three of us sleep pretty soundly in the morning.

I heard from my editor at Sky and Telescope today. She said that my article will be published early next year. This seems like an exceptionally long time to wait, but some magazines have always had a long lead time. Actually, six months from manuscript to publication is fairly normal for Sky and Telescope. I wish there was a way to speed the process along. The more published articles I can get under my belt, the easier it will be to get other publications interested in using me. I'd almost forgotten that I had to go through this same arduous process to establish myself as an advertising writer. It seems weird to have to pay my dues at my age, but that's how it works with anything new. I actually welcome the opportunity to reinvent myself one more time. I just need to learn to have patience.

For the first time in many years, Janet and I are talking about moving. It will probably never happen because the whole process is just too complicated. City life is definitely losing its appeal though. Where would you go these days? We enjoy excellent medical care now. So do our dogs. When we used to take Dot and Dash to the cancer center, it was common to meet people waiting in the lobby who had traveled for hours with their dog from a small town just to meet with the oncologist. Life in a little town like Fort Davis seems idyllic at first glance and then I remember all the stories people tell me about wells that go dry and living with septic tanks. Snakes in the garage doesn't sound very appealing either. Everything from getting your car repaired to buying groceries becomes more difficult in a small town. There are a lot of problems with urban life, but there are a lot of things you take for granted too. We definitely aren't interested in retirement communities or life in the suburbs. If we start taking car trips to visit picturesque small towns, you'll know we're getting serious. Actually, what I'd like is a time machine. Almost any place thirty or forty years ago sounds pretty nice to me.

The temperature is supposed to reach 100 degrees tomorrow. We'll have to get an early start on our walk. With clear skies predicted for the next two weeks, I won't have to worry about the roof for a while. Now we just have to make sure that the air conditioner keeps working.

Lacey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2290

I lost my web hosting and e-mail today. Damn. I knew this was going to happen but I didn't think I would have to deal with moving everything so soon. I've been with the same hosting company since the dawn of the Internet, so migrating all my websites and e-mail accounts is not a trivial matter. Even though I spent most of the day in tech support hell, I'm still not done. Every time you move a large website, a lot of things don't work anymore. It's going to take weeks before everything is back to normal again.

It would have been tempting to just abandon my personal websites, but there were some animal rescue websites on the server that people still depend on, so I decided to move everything. My company website has become a relic. I haven't kept up with the times. The sites I design for clients are much nicer than my own these days. My sealander.com site has become an anachronism. Lets face it, I just don't care about the Internet as much as I did ten years ago.

I do care about Dot, so I broke away from configuring the new mail server to take her to her physical therapy appointment. When I returned, I had to start all over again, because my session timed out and nothing got saved. Dot actually did better than I did today.  She had a good morning walk and kept up a brisk pace on the treadmill during her therapy session. Dot didn't poop in the car this week either. In sharp contrast, my own day was a mess. I still haven't gotten my new e-mail account working properly and there are big chunks of my company website that don't work at all. Hey, it's a start. I'll have everything up and running by this weekend.

Trying to find a new online home consumed most of my day, so I made no progress on preparing my taxes whatsoever and didn't get around to calling the landscaping guys or the roofers either. At least Dash was more or less back to normal today. These dogs are wearing me out. I'm going to try to finish migrating my websites to the new server tomorrow. I've got a little time before they pull the plug on my old server, but at the glacial slow pace I move these days, there isn't much time to waste. Dot's vet was telling me about the difficulties of running her business while moving to a new home today. This reminded me that Janet and I have one more move left if we are ever going to leave Dallas. I'm not looking forward to moving. I'm not looking foreword to growing old in a big city either, so I guess I've got no choice. I have a feeling that moving to a whole new city is going to be a lot more trouble than moving my website.

There's still plenty of time to think about moving. The big move may never even happen, since Janet is in no hurry to retire. In the mean time, I've got poop to clean up, bacon filled breakfasts to fantasize about, and a yard full of grass to mow. I wonder why I selected the fancy unlimited package on the new web server? I can add as many websites, domains, and e-mail accounts as I want. This would have been really useful ten years ago when my business was thriving. Now, most of this capacity will go unused. It will be a miracle if I can manage to add five rather simple websites to the server. So far, I'm having a lot of trouble configuring the first one.

Ariel is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1663

I complain so much about Dallas that one of my friends suggested I move to New Zealand. Not a bad idea. The place is beautiful. It's isolated. And the people are friendly. I wonder if they have Dalmatians there? Truthfully, I really don't know where I would like to go next. Janet doesn't have a favorite spot either. Maybe we ought to ask the dogs where they would like to go.

The only place I went today was the gym. The gym has turned out to be my go-to place when I'm bored. I have a feeling that some of the regulars go there for essentially the same reason. Whatever random day I happen to go, they're always there. I can't imagine being as faithful as these regulars, but it's not a bad place to hang out. It's nearby. The exercise has got to be doing me some good. You don't even have to think very much. There are definitely worse places to be.

There was a lot of complaining about fireworks displays on my Facebook wall this morning. It's funny. Young people love watching fireworks. Older people are more likely to tell you that they'll never go to a fireworks show again. It must be some kind of line in the sand when you stop saying "Wow" and start complaining about the ants, the mosquitoes, and the difficulties in finding a parking place. I agree with Dot when it comes to fireworks shows. They're loud and entirely unnecessary. I think I've already crossed that line in the sand.

There's a channel on TV that seems to play nothing but old Seinfeld shows. The episode where George Costanza became a hand model was on tonight and it still makes me laugh. It's weird that these shows are still funny decades later, while most new comedies don't even bring a smile to my face. The writing just isn't that good anymore. George Carlin was much better at political commentary than John Stewart. Johnny Carson is still the gold standard. Jimmy Fallon doesn't even come close. It occurs to me that I could save a bundle on my cable bill by cutting the cord and just buying boxed DVD sets of my old favorite shows instead.

There's a cool feature on Janet's sewing machine that lets you sew detailed lettering directly on fabric. You can pick fonts and sizes and everything. She wanted to sew the dogs names on bandanas today but neither of us could remember how to use the fancy and somewhat complicated feature. The "use it or lose it" nature of skills like this is starting to bother me. I am forgetting things at an alarming rate, simply because there is no need for the knowledge anymore. Lord help me if I ever need to do an old school analog edit using tape machines again. I've got a perfectly good video edit suite in my office that I used to use all the time. I haven't even turned the tape machines on in two years. Nobody needs tape in a file based world. I wonder if anyone needs me? Maybe I ought to start a museum. I'd be a great curator of old stuff. Ask me about Dinky Toys, Osborne Computers, Citroën automobiles, and Betacam recorders. If only these things were still relevant.

Isabella is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1129

I was hungry today, so I stopped by a nearby taco joint to get a taco. Four cops from the gang squad were sitting at the next table, watching ESPN sports on the big-screen TV behind me while they were drinking their coffee. All of them were laughing about Manti Te'o and his fictitious girlfriend. "How could that guy be so stupid," one of the cops said. I don't have the answer to that one, but I do think the whole fake girlfriend phenomenon is a lot more common than you might think.

I've known three people who were duped by fictitious girlfriends and I don't even know that many people. The first guy was a senior vice-president at an ad agency I worked at in Seattle. The Internet didn't even exist back then, so this guy was duped by plain old letters sent through the mail. He went on and on about this "perfect" girl he knew in Los Angeles. He had a picture of her on his desk and everything. After about six months, he finally flew down to Los Angeles to meet his perfect girlfriend and she stood him up. This rather obvious warning sign wasn't enough to dissuade the guy from his fantasy. He actually believed the lame excuse the people conning him made up and three months later, he flew to Los Angeles again. Only then did he finally admit the girl didn't exist. The poor guy took some time off from work for "personal reasons" and he never returned.

I needed to get some printer ink this afternoon and discovered that my favorite printer store had moved. Instead of a convenient 5 minute drive, the place was now over 25 minutes away via an inconveniently busy freeway. When I finally got there, my sales rep wanted to show me around. He was really proud of their new 40,000 square foot warehouse. I liked the little 11,000 square foot warehouse in my own neighborhood a lot better. The guy said that if I didn't like the drive, he could just FedEx my supplies to me. I guess that's what the world has come to: sending things all the way to Memphis on a plane so you can get them across town the next day.

I'm finally getting better about taking the trash out on Thursday evening. It took months to imprint this new habit on my brain, but I think I've got it down now. I haven't missed trash day for several months. Do you like the colorful electric sign I saw today? If I could find a smaller version, I'd put one in my office. It certainly seems to sum up the whole situation for me.

Chief is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 942

About this time every year I start to wonder what ever possessed me to move to Texas. Jeez, I used to live in Seattle. I even lived in Aspen, Colorado for a while. I still remember the first time I exited a red eye flight from Seattle to Dallas for a job interview and smelled the Texas air for the first time as I walked up the jetway. The atmosphere was moist and humid and the heat enveloped me like a cocoon. It was only 9 AM, but it was August and it was very hot. As I was waiting for my bag in the Braniff baggage claim, I had a strong feeling that this wasn't going to end well.

Oddly, I never moved again. Even though I still hate the heat, and the tornadoes, and the humidity, I've lived in Dallas longer than all the other cities I've called home put together. Dallas just happened to be where I got tired of moving.

Living here certainly isn't all bad. Dallas is a great place to earn a living. Through good times and bad, there has always been an abundance of jobs in this city. If you can't find a job in Dallas, you probably just don't want to work. Dallas was also where I discovered the joys of having a dog. I never would have considered a dog in Seattle. A dog might scratch the hardwood floors or damage a painting. Dallas was probably where I finally became a somewhat decent person and shed these silly values. Nevertheless, it's still too damn hot here.

I wish I could remember when my day to water was. Even though the lakes are full this year, the city has imposed severe restrictions on lawn watering this Summer. I don't have much of a green thumb, so I used to water my lawn whenever I saw my neighbors water theirs. Now the neighbors all have automatic sprinkler systems that are programmed to water during the middle of the night, so I never get the reminder I need. I hate to be the only one watering during the day, since I'll inevitably pick the wrong day and get hit with a big fine. My indecision about watering day is already causing my front lawn to turn yellow. This whole situation is ridiculous. I don't need another reason to hate Summer.

Do you ever find that social media is a beast that constantly needs to be fed? When I started this journey, I thought that I'd never run out of things to say. Now I'm beginning to wonder. The sheer volume of material you have to produce to keep posting something fresh and original every day is almost overwhelming. I might have to become more introspective in the days ahead. There just isn't much to report when it's so hot outside that all you want to do is take a nap.

Dolly is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 860

I resumed moving things over to the new storage warehouse today. I finally managed to completely clear off one of the large shelves in the smaller storage unit and was preparing to move the shelf itself when I realized that it wouldn't fit through the door. How could I have forgotten that I had assembled each of these shelves in place to take maximum advantage of the space available? Damn! To get the shelves over to the new location, I will need to completely disassemble each of them and then put them all back together again in the new space. This is turning into a lot more work than I had anticipated. So far, I have only emptied out half the contents of the old space. The new larger space already seems full, since nothing is stacked on tall shelves yet. As I'm starting to rediscover what I've been storing all these years, I'm having second thoughts about the whole endevour. A lot of this stuff is worthless.

Sure, I've discovered some useful stuff. I've discovered some valuable stuff. I've even discovered some very rare stuff. The trouble is that the time for all this stuff has passed. What do you do with a 5 GB hard drive that's the size of a shoe box these days?  What do you do with an electric typewriter, or even worse, a manual one? If I hired somebody to inventory all this stuff and then systematically sell it on eBay it would cost me more than the stuff is worth. On the other hand, if I try to sort through everything myself, I probably won't live long enough to make sense of it all. I'm in over my head here.

When I wasn't lugging stuff from one storage unit to another, I was updating various animal rescue websites.The Dalmatian Rescue updates went quickly, but the other rescue group was another story entirely. I used to get new animals to list from these guys once a week. Now I get one big list once a month. There are so many animals that I typically can't get all the new pages coded before some of the animals get adopted and immediately have to come down again. It's a quixotic task. Nevertheless, I thought today would be a good day to get started, mostly because the rest of my clients are mired in status meetings on Monday's . Tomorrow, I probably won't have time to work on the rescue sites.

I told the real estate agent that I was ready to list the rent property, but evidently there's still a lot that needs to be done before the sign goes out front. When I bought the place, I just looked at it empty and decided I liked it. Today, properties need to be staged. This means that furniture and artwork is brought in to make the place looked lived in, even though it is empty. I can imagine what an empty place would look like with furniture, but apparently a lot of people can't. When the staging furniture is in place, a photographer comes out and takes pictures for the MLS website and the game begins. I told the agent that I was a professional photographer and was once an architect. He still preferred to use his own photographer. Whatever! I'm just going to go with the flow on this one.

Wyatt is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 852

I managed to get about a third of my stuff moved over to the new storage warehouse today. The whole process of moving is a bit like an archeological dig. Today, I uncovered the entire PA system for my old band, a high performance windsurfer that would probably get me killed if I ever took it out on open water again, and a nice old leather motorcycle jacket that somehow lasted a lot longer than the motorcycle. Another couple of weeks and I'll probably have everything moved. Then the hard part starts. I've got to decide what to throw away. Probably a lot of old Macintosh computers won't make the final cut. What good are these things anymore? They don't even make good doorstops. They say you need to keep financial records at least three years. I've got some that go back at least thirteen years. Maybe they can be tossed as well. All the cameras stay.

I watched the tribute to Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes tonight. What an amazing life that guy had. I think he met just about every person of significance that ever lived. I've met relatively few famous people in my own life. I remember having dinner with Rudee Vallee and his wife at their house near Mulholland Drive. I remember listening to Larry Storch tell me how to hypnotize a chicken. I got invited on stage once by Steppenwolf back when they were really popular. I remember eating fried chicken with Richard Petty while filming a television commercial and realizing the guy was stone deaf from all those years on the NASCAR tracks. For the most part, my life has been fairly solitary though. Sometimes I envy people like Mike Wallace. I think you learn something from every person you encounter in life. I've learned a few things, but not much lately. How much can you really learn from two Dalmatians?

The dogs didn't get to go to the dog park today because the weather was pretty marginal. Instead of racing around smelling other dogs butts, they sat under my desk at home while I built new webpages for Betsy and Bogart, our newest members of the Dalmatian Rescue Program. As the day progressed, the weather improved and by dinner time, we were able to take our regular evening walk. Dot and Dash got the exercise they needed and I got a few more pictures of birds and squirrels.

Tomorrow I need to remember to pay my First Quarter Estimated Taxes, as well as a few overdue bills. I also need to call the plumber again. I've figured out what the problem is at our house. It's just not something I can fix myself. There's always something that needs to be done. As much as I'd like to sleep in to 10 AM every morning, I don't think it will ever happen.

Krissy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 563

Yep. It's definitely July. When I turn the sprinklers on, the ground is dry and cracked an hour later. Even with the air conditioner running all day, it's hard to get the temperature inside down to a comfortable 75 degrees. The dogs like to go outside after lunch to lie in the sun, but they come back in with their tongues hanging out five minutes later. I feel like I'm doing twice as much laundry because my shirts are soaking wet after ten minutes out in the muggy heat. This madness will continue through September.

I've lived in Seattle, Washington, Moscow, Idaho, and Aspen, Colorado. All these places were quite pleasant in the Summer. I still think it was just bad luck that I almost accidentally happened to be residing in Dallas when I realized I was simply too tired of moving from one part of the country to another to ever do it again. I still think that Janet and I will move somewhere really nice when we eventually retire, but doesn't everyone think that? My parents talked about moving somewhere nice, but never got any further than an assisted living community 50 miles down the road.

I'm looking forward to the Fourth of July weekend. There's something reassuring about this old fashioned, unabashedly patriotic holiday. Fourth of July makes me think of I Love Lucy on TV, cooking hot dogs on a stick over an open fire, and wandering around as a kid in peaceful neighborhoods where nobody locked their doors. Things are different now. I've got an iPad now and a computer more powerful than the ones that took us to the moon, but I think life was better when I just had a little plastic transistor radio that let me listen to WLS in Chicago.

Hope you guys have a great weekend. I'm in the mood for burgers.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day