Day 2814

It was chilly this morning. I wore a jacket on our morning walk for the first time since early Spring. It's hard to believe that in other parts of the country people are dealing with raging wildfires, flooded homes, and an approaching hurricane that is even larger than Harvey. In our little corner of the world the weather is perfect. This weather won't last long, so we'd better enjoy it while we can.

It's been nice having the weather cooperate while I work on the roof. I didn't finish today, but I'm done for a while. I've completely used up the five gallon drum of elastomer material the roofers sent me. I would guess that it's going to take at least ten more gallons to complete the repairs. I wasn't really expecting the repairs to be so extensive, but that's what I get for trusting the roofing crew to do their job properly. It really makes me mad that they simply poured the new coating right on top of the old damaged coating. They should have pulled all the damaged material off and let the water that had gotten underneath dry. It would have taken a little longer to do their repairs properly, but it would have avoided the mess I'm dealing with now. There is water underneath many of the patches that the roofers have made previously because they didn't make sure the surface was dry under the damaged areas they were fixing.  I always wondered how they could do their work so quickly. Now I know.

Janet has a niece living in Florida who decided to ride out the storm. This seemed like a mistake until I looked at the lines of cars trying to evacuate Miami and the Florida keys. These cars are just inching along as far as the eye can see and there's no gas available in many parts of Florida. What happens when all these cars run out of gas? I'd rather be inside a well constructed home when the hurricane struck than out on a freeway in a car that's out of gas. I mentioned yesterday that these were starting to seem like the end times. Nothing has happened today that would change my opinion.

Dash is not adjusting well to Janet returning to work. He liked having everyone home with him. I think he's trying to be the alpha dog now that Dot is gone, but he doesn't really know how. Dash has always been insecure and depended on Dot for leadership. Instead of being strong and confident, he just throws temper tantrums when he doesn't get his way. Maybe he'll eventually grow into the role of  being a proper alpha dog, but he has a long way to go.

After I finished working on the roof, I washed the car. For once this didn't seem like a chore. It was nice to be working with fresh, clean water instead of stick white goo. I'm tired of working on the roof, but I've still got to finish the job before our Fall rainy season starts. If history is any guide, it's going to be pretty wet around here by the time Halloween arrives.

It's not going to be wet tomorrow. I think our nice weather is going to continue for another week. I'll get up early, take Dash on a walk, and then go out for breakfast. After that, who knows.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2813

I'm screwed. I think the roofers have been doing shoddy work, but I still need their help. It doesn't matter what kind of repair you are doing. Once you start questioning the quality of the work, most repair people get defensive and never want to see you again. I'm kind of between a rock and a hard place. It will take me forever to repair the entire roof myself, and even if I can convince the roofers to come out again, they'll probably just continue to take short cuts that ultimately make the problem worse.

I spent about three hours on the roof today. Luckily, there was no wind, so I didn't have to worry about leaves falling into the wet elastomer this time. I've only got about a gallon of the material left, so I need to get the roofers to bring me more. If they refuse, I'll have to figure out where to buy the stuff. This silicon elastomer is so messy. It can't be good to get it on your skin, but I can't seem to avoid it. I thought the half full five gallon drum might be light enough so I could lift the entire thing up on the roof. It was still much heavier than I thought. I narrowly avoided a catastrophe when the rope I was hoisting the drum with slipped out of my hands and the sticky elastomer almost fell on my car. I made a save and kept the drum from falling, but still have rope burns on my hands.

My plan to start going to the gym on Wednesdays didn't even last two weeks. I was so tired when I came down from the roof that all I felt like doing was taking a shower and a nap. Since something major seems to break around the house on a weekly basis, I don't know if I'll ever have the liberty to come and go as I please. Even when I took a shower today I had to deal with the stupid leak again. I just can't find the source of this thing. The best solution would be to replace the shower pan and re-tile the entire bathroom. That will have to wait. There are still too many bills to pay.

The one piece of good news is that Dash is showing no side effects from increasing his phenobarbital dose. I hope this continues. I hate giving Dash a strong barbiturate like phenobarbital, but it is very effective at controlling epileptic seizures. Once when he was seizure free for several years, we thought it would safe to discontinue the phenobarbital entirely. That was a mistake. Within a few months, Dash had a horrible seizure. He will be taking phenobarbital for the rest of his life.

With major wildfires up and down the West Coast and back-to-back catastrophic hurricanes pounding the East and Gulf Coasts, it would be easy to believe the end times are here. There are so many things going on at the moment that are almost apocalyptic in nature. Maybe it's just a coincidence, but every year the latest disaster du jour seems to be a little worse. I'm pretty sure the world will be around for another twenty years, but if I was younger, I might be a little worried. I guess you can only worry about one thing at a time, so for the moment, stay safe Florida.

April is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 2803

Everyone in Dallas knows someone in Houston. I've been mesmerized by the news coverage today. The flooding seems biblical. It just doesn't seem possible that we are talking about feet of rain instead of inches of rain. I saw a picture of the Houston airport today. It was a lake. Freeways are under so much water that even the overhear directional signs are buried. I've been to Houston many times and I can't even comprehend this scale of devastation.

Dallas is 400 miles away and even we are getting rain from this storm. The rain here is gentle and in many cases needed, but the fact that the outer bands of rain reach this far shows you just how big this weather system is. I've heard that they're opening a huge center for hurricane evacuees here in Dallas tomorrow. Similar centers will probably be opening all over the state. The problem is that I don't think many people can evacuate yet. The roads in and out of the area are flooded.

I didn't do much today. Dash got his walks in between rain showers. It was so messy outside that I didn't feel like going to the gym. When I took a shower this morning, I noticed a small leak. I still haven't been able to completely seal the shower floor. I used to be much better at this sort of thing. I'm losing my touch.

Today would have been a good day to take a camera down to the shoreline and photograph water birds, but I'd let my camera batteries run down and by the time I got them charged again the light was fading. It's probably just as well that I stayed inside. If I took my camera down to the lake, I almost certainly would have gotten caught in one of today's many intermittent rain showers.

It would have been Dot's birthday today. We don't know if she was actually born on this day, since she was a rescue, but we adopted her on September 27, 2004. I remember the day she came home with us well, but it seems like such a long time ago now. We have had many dogs and some of the memories are starting to muddle together in my head. Dot's memories haven't faded yet. I still can't believe she's not here with me. I wonder if that amazing dog ever knew how important she was in my life.

It's probably going to be a while before I can use the can of elastomer coating material the roofers left on my porch. It looks like we'll be getting intermittent rain every day until Harvey completely dissipates. It's hard to believe that they're forecasting even more rain for the Houston area. How much more rain can that city take?

Janet has decided that she feels well enough to start driving again. She ran a short errand as a test this afternoon and will drive herself to the doctor tomorrow. I'm glad her recovery seems to be going so smoothly. I hope the surgeon approves of the way we've been changing bandages. I have a feeling that we're using twice as much gauze and tape as a proper nurse would, but we're doing the best we can. It hasn't been a great summer. I think 'doing the best we can" might sum things up for quite a few people this year.

Dot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 2203

I had no idea how bad last night's storm really was until I turned on the television this morning. This wasn't your usual Texas tornado scare. It was a major disaster. I had always thought we had been spared from tornadoes in the past because we lived next to a lake, but the worst damage from last night's storm was right next to Lake Ray Hubbard to the northeast of us. Entire blocks of houses were completely destroyed. At least eleven people died. Cars filled with people were literally blown off a freeway overpass. This was a very serious storm.

It was unbelievable how many dogs got lost during the storm. All day long my Facebook feed was filled with shared requests to look for a lost family pet. There were hundreds of lost dogs. Someone I know actually saw the tornado pass right in front of her while she was trapped on a busy road with no place to hide. We didn't realize just how lucky we were when the worst of the storm passed a few miles to the east of us on its way to causing so much destruction in Garland and Rowlett.

The tornado danger passed as soon as a cold front arrived from West Texas. The temperature dropped forty degrees, but the rain continued. It's been raining all day. I can't blame the dogs for not wanting to go outside today. I didn't want to go outside either. The rain never really stopped, but I did manage to find a few periods when it slowed down a bit. It was too cold and nasty to take Dot outside, but I did take Dash for a short walk. Luckily he was sensible enough to do his business quickly.

Other than two short walks so Dash could poop in his favorite place, I didn't leave the house all day. With the furnace working properly and the dehumidifier sucking moisture out of the air, the house was actually quite comfortable. I spent the day updating the Dalmatian Rescue website and watching Dr. Who episodes I had missed.

Updating the Dalmatian website wouldn't have taken so long if I could remember how to code responsive websites. I don't do these things frequently enough for the knowledge to stay permanently in my brain. It's complicated, and every time I have to update a mobile friendly site, I end up having to relearn things I've already done before. Initially the code looks like someone else wrote it. Hopefully, the new skills I've learned will eventually become second nature. I don't think anybody's going back to using Dreamweaver and it's getting frustrating becoming baffled by my own code.

It's a good thing I viewed the Dr. Who season finale a second time this afternoon. I found Hell Bent to be confusing the first time I saw it, but it made a lot more sense when I realized that I had missed a full twelve minutes of the show the first time around. Maybe I fell asleep when I was watching on my computer. Maybe the dogs distracted me. Those twelve minutes made a big difference though. I actually liked the show this time. I didn't get around to watching the Christmas Special. I'll save that one for another rainy day.

I hope everyone finds their missing dogs. I'm going to put leashes on ours the next time we sit huddled in a corner waiting for the all clear signal after a bad storm. Dash panics easily and if our house was damaged, he might run away too. Hopefully, the weather will clear up soon. There is too much to worry about already.

Taylor is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 2156

We've got water! The broken pipe was exactly where the plumber said it would be, which kind of amazed me. The leak was located right on schedule too, which amazed me even more. I was afraid it might take weeks to resolve this problem. If you're wondering what actually caused the leak, it turns out that a section of the copper pipe that supplies water to the house was located right next to a larger cast iron pipe that carries waste water away. There were places where the two pipes touched and over the years, the rusting cast iron caused the copper to corrode and fail. That's what the plumber said anyway. He showed me a small hole in the damaged pipe about half the diameter of a pencil. It's still hard to believe that such a small hole could have caused so much damage.

I asked the plumber if there might be other places under the house where the copper supply lines could be touching the cast iron drainage lines. "Sure," said the plumber. "There could be lots of places like this." "Is there anything you can do to prevent this from happening again," I asked. "Nope," said the plumber, "You could have another leak like this tomorrow, or it might never happen again." That wasn't the kind of reassurance I was looking for, but I guess I'll have to live with it. Even though there's a huge hole under the house, it only exposed a tiny fraction of what the builders had put there over sixty years ago. Lord knows what still lurks under the dirt.

In the grand scheme of things, the problems we've experienced this week are tiny compared to the disasters some people have to deal with. The house wasn't hit by a tornado. It didn't catch on fire. A tree didn't crash through the roof. Life was a little inconvenient, but it could have been so much worse. You always see these stories on TV about people rebuilding their lives from scratch after a major disaster has destroyed their home. I don't know how they find the strength to put the pieces back together. Just having no toilets or running water for a week just about drove me over the edge.

There is still a lot of cleanup to do, but life is already starting to return to normal. I ran the dishwasher today and will do a big load of laundry tomorrow. The tunneling company is supposed to come out in the morning and fill in the big hole they created. It's too bad they can't just add concrete walls to the sides and put a door on top. It would be the tornado shelter I've always wanted. They could just keep digging and we could put in a full basement, but it would be much cheaper to just buy a new house.

The environmental cleanup company is supposed to clean our vents before they haul away their big dehumidification machines and leave. When the water was off, I used the opportunity to re-grout the shower stall, so maybe we'll see some improvements there as well. We'll have a lot of bottled water left over when this is all finished with. I was anticipating a long siege and bought too much.

If there's a silver lining to all this, it would be that being trapped here at the house forced me to buckle down and finish the complicated mobile ready website I've been working on. I'm actually caught up with all my work now. Tomorrow I get to see whether the tunneling crew can make the huge mountain of dirt in our back yard disappear. I bet they can't. They'll probably leave us with a smaller pile of dirt and tell us to plant a garden. I'm going to miss taking showers at the hotel. Their shower was so much nicer than ours.

Puppies are today's Dalmatians of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1252

I've been watching the news coverage of the devastating tornado that hit Moore, Oklahoma this afternoon. Unbelievable! This was the very same town that got hit by the worst tornado on record in 1999. Tornado's are commonplace here in Texas, but it's hard to even imagine destruction on this scale. My heart goes out to the people of Moore. It's going to be a long, long time before the city returns to normal.

Earlier in the day, I was wondering why the roofers seemed in such a hurry to get an exposed section of the roof covered. They must have known that bad weather was on the way. It hasn't rained in Dallas yet, but there are thunderstorms in the forecast for tomorrow. In retrospect, it might not have been very wise to put on a new roof during what is traditionally known as Tornado Season in Texas. There is no good time to do this sort of thing in Texas, unfortunately. No matter what time of year it happens to be, there is always some sort of bad weather lurking just around the corner.

After the roofing crew left for the day, I went up on the roof to look at what they'd been doing. I think buyer's remorse is already starting to set in. When they were describing to me what the finished roof would look like, I was imagining the top layer of epoxy would be so smooth and shiny that I could see my reflection in it. Admittedly, the roof is not finished yet, but the top layer has already been applied to one section. It doesn't look smooth and shiny at all. It looks a lot more like white cake frosting applied with a butter knife. If the roof repels water, I guess I shouldn't complain. I am a bit disappointed though. I was expecting pretty. Maybe the roofers still have some magic up their sleeves, but so far the new roof is a long way from being considered pretty.

I think people must have spent the weekend thinking up new things for me to do. I was really busy today. Monday's aren't usually like this. I divided my time between solving website problems and writing articles. By the end of the day, I'd managed to get quite a bit done. Hopefully, things will be a lot slower tomorrow because Dot has her regular weekly acupuncture appointment. With a 45 minute drive to the vet, an hour with the needles, and a forty five minute drive back home again, acupuncture eats up quite a bit of time.

I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that it doesn't rain tomorrow. The roofers assure me that the leaking sections of the roof have already been replaced. I'm not so sure. The roof definitely isn't finished yet. Couldn't the rain just wait a few weeks and let me do this right?

Harley is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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