Day 866

I'm increasingly feeling like the captain of a sinking ship. Everything is broken. Lately, when I embark on a repair project around the house, I find myself having to repair my tools before I begin. When I retrieved the handy aluminum garden cart from the greenhouse this morning to begin installing the St. Augustine sod, I discovered that both tires were flat. No problem, I thought. I got the air compressor out of the utility shed and began pumping them up. Neither tire would hold air. The rubber was so dry and brittle that the tires wouldn't make an airtight seal around the rim. Oh, well. I tried. While I had the air compressor out, I decided to check the tires on the Defender. One rear tire was inflated to 40 PSI, while the other was only inflated to 17 PSI. I could understand the low, leaky tire, but how did the other tire get more air in it? A mystery for sure. I never inflate tires to more than 32 PSI.

After two trips to the grass store and many more trips transferring the grass sod from my car to the back yard using my broken garden cart, I was ready to begin. Janet bought some top soil in big bags yesterday. We spread the top soil on the tilled soil to smooth it out and then put the squares of St. Augustine sod on top. The grass looks good, but after we installed all the sod I bought today, only 1/3 of the yard was actually covered. Either the yard had gotten bigger, or the squares of sod had gotten smaller. By my rough calculations, this means at least four more trips to the grass store and 100 more squares of sod before the job is complete.

Our regular Sunday trip to the dog park was the most relaxing thing we did all day. The city could stand to plant some new grass too, because the park is starting to look just as bare as our back yard. The dogs didn't seem to mind the lack of grass. There seems to be an unwritten rule among dogs that the dirtier you are, the more status you have. All the dogs in the park today seemed perfectly content digging holes and rolling around in the dust.

It's hard to believe that it's almost May already. April just zipped by. With tax season out of the way and a real estate agent trying to sell my rent property, there is nowhere to go but up. Hey, I may even try to make some new business calls next week.  That would be a first for a year that is now almost half over.

Parker is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 401

The colder the weather, the geekier I become. Anything to stay inside where it's warm, I guess. Today I looked for lost e-mail. Now that I've got half a dozen devices that can access the Internet, something as simple as checking my e-mail is turning into a real mess. I still use an old fashioned POP mail server and I'm beginning to realize why a lot of people are saying that the newer IMAP protocol is a much more practical solution for the way we live today. Every time I check my mail, it is downloaded to a different device and by the end of the day my messages are as hard to find as the reading glasses I'm constantly losing. Is the message I'm looking for on the iPhone, the iPad, the new computer, or the old computer? Who knows. It sure isn't on the server any more, since the messages are erased as soon as they are downloaded. Maybe I need to ask my ISP if I can switch over to IMAP mail.

Did I mention it was cold today? I put the dogs warmest coats on for their walks, but they still didn't want to go outside. The problem wasn't really the temperature, it was the wind. When you combine freezing temperatures with a thirty mile an hour wind, even your warmest clothes start to feel like an old T-shirt. When I went up to sweep last night's rain off the roof, I discovered I was too late. The standing water had already turned to ice. It will make a nice little ice rink for the possums and squirrels who wander around on the roof at night.

I have my first new business meeting of the year tomorrow. I really need to have a new business meeting every single week this year. Things are so expensive now that I'm really starting to feel poor. My health insurance premiums have gone up over 20% seemingly overnight. Gas is back up over three dollars a gallon. Worst of all, my new Snow Leopard operating system is forcing me to buy my business software all over again. None of my existing software seems to run on Snow Leopard. It's almost as bad as converting a record collection from vinyl to CD and then realizing you still have to turn the whole mess into MP3 files.

I think the dogs have the right idea. While I fret about technology, they just curl up under warm blankets and sleep until it's time to eat again.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day