Day 4202

I've had to switch to a different grocery store because the store has become too efficient in measuring its customer's buying habits. All stores do this. Your purchases are scanned at checkout and the information is used to determine what items will be restocked. Basically stores want to sell what people are buying. This often leaves me on the short end of the stick. For weeks I haven't been able to find my favorite cheeses, beers, spices, or even bottled waters. I switched stores today and found an abundance of everything I like. I have to drive a little further, but that's better than being continually frustrated.

Inflation is real. Everything I buy has gone up in price. Sometimes the price increases are small, but they add up. Prices for fresh fruit and vegetables still go down when the produce is in season. Paper products and processed food always go up though. It's amazing how expensive those blue Scott shop towels have gotten. Gas is pretty high too. I'm glad I don't drive a lot.

Dawn enjoyed her early morning walk. I'd easily sleep an hour longer if we didn't walk Dawn so early. I guess it's worth it though. The weather is very nice just before sunrise. Today we had the added benefit of a pleasant breeze. We definitely aren't the only people who have discovered the benefits of walking early. You see a lot of people walking their dogs at this hour. I thought that Dawn might like to walk a little longer this morning because it was so nice outside. Nope. One mile is still plenty for her.

I knew the gym was going to close early today so I decided to take my long walk right after breakfast and then do my weekly grocery shopping later. This turned out to be a good plan. It had warmed up quite a bit by 9 AM, but the temperature was still in the low 80's. When the sun was behind a cloud, I was quite comfortable. Some group was having a charity race in the park this morning. You don't see many of those in the summer. It must have been a short race, because it was all over by the time I returned home. 

I probably should have started looking for the source of the leak on the roof this afternoon, but by the time I took my walk and finished all my Saturday errands it was way too hot. I've slowed down so much that there is never enough time to finish everything I need to do anymore. If I accomplish anything at all it's a plus. Things never seem to get easier either. Now my Saturday errands will take a little longer because I have to drive further to go to the grocery store. Roof leaks don't disappear on their own unfortunately, so I will have to make an effort to find the source of the leak and patch things very soon.

We'll probably have to combine Dawn's Sunday outing and early morning walk tomorrow. I'm sure that will be fine with Dawn, but it may be too early for ice cream on our way home. I wish my gym would reopen on Sunday, but it might be a while. They seem quite happy with reduced hours and a smaller staff. There still aren't as many people using the gym as there were in pre-pandemic days, so they probably won't go back to their old schedule until demand increases significantly. It is what it is. I'm beginning to think that life will never return to normal. Normal has changed.

I wouldn't want to own a condo on the beach right now. You'd have to wonder if your building is going to fall next. Nature is relentless. If it only took forty years for salt air and shifting sand to destroy this building, imagine what Miami is going to look like in 200 years. You might think that moving inland to a remote corner of Wyoming will keep you safe, but then there's that huge super volcano under Yellowstone waiting to explode. If you look at the world through the eyes of a geologist, it's kind of amazing that we're here at all.

Derrick is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 3748

I spent a long time trying to salvage files today and reassemble them on an external hard drive so I can continue staring at a computer as I always do. I'm amazed at how prolific I've been over the years. There were hundreds of client folders filled with tens of thousands of work related files. There were even more pictures. Pictures and videos are what fills up a 4 terabyte hard drive. I was amazed to discover that I've taken over 50,000 Dalmatian pictures. Admittedly, some of the pictures are of other breeds. Dalmatian Rescue has been doing Santa Paw Christmas pictures for many years and I add thousands of Santa Photos to the folder every year. That still leaves a lot of Dalmatians though. Sometimes dogs aren't very cooperative. Occasionally I've had to take a 100 pictures to find one good enough to put on the website. There were thousands of pictures of Dot and Dash. It was kind of sad to see them fly by year after year on my screen as I was copying them to the new hard drive. I lead a solitary life, but you can't say I haven't been busy. I guess you can add over ten years of blog posts to everything else.

I guess the effort was worth it today. I've now got a working, bootable external drive that closely resembles what I had on the desktop computer. To get everything to fit on a much small drive, I threw away mountains of huge WeTransfer, Dropbox, and Zip files that clients sent me over the years. I almost always got way more input than I needed for writing jobs. I don't know why I saved all of my completed projects. Maybe it was just for nostalgia's sake. I actually liked working.

I'm starting to see tons of people posting on the Internet about how to cope with the coronavirus. It's tempting to add my own opinions, but few people would listen. As someone who chose social distancing as a lifestyle many years ago, I don't really have much to say about building a virtual community. I never even heard of Zoom until all this started. I'm not craving a hug either. Couldn't you all just learn to love isolation? It's actually very peaceful. Especially if you turn off the television and put away your phone.

I tend to take the long view on everything. That's why I like geology and astronomy so much. These fields study processes that take millions and even billions of years to complete. I keep hearing so much about global warming and destroying the planet. Do humans really think they can destroy the planet? The planet has been doing fine for billions of years. Humans are just a tiny blip in the grand scheme of things. Dinosaurs were around much longer than we've been here. What if plagues, ice ages, and the occasional asteroid strike are just nature's way of hitting the reset button. The coronavirus has only been around for a couple of months and already skies are starting to clear in many parts of the world. Life is slowing down. People are discovering that they don't have to spend hours each day on crowded freeways driving to work. Maybe we don't need all the things we compulsively buy. Maybe globalism wasn't such a great idea after. What if this was nature's plan all along? If we didn't have the wisdom and willpower to slow down on our own, she'd do it for us.

I hope the city doesn't shut down the parks. For the most part, all the walkers and cyclists have been acting vary responsibly and keeping their distance. If the city does close the parks, it won't be because of these people who love the outdoors. It will be because of the other people who are staying inside and complaining to the city on their phones about walkers and cyclists. Hey, don't try to shame me about social distancing. I'm the king of social distancing. I'm not going to get anywhere near you inside people. You're all batshit crazy.

Elliott is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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