Day 4224

Sundays are all about walking. I usually take three walks on Sunday. We still get up early to take Dawn on her sunrise walk. We wait until around 11 AM to take Dawn on her Sunday outing, mostly because the ice cream shop doesn't open until eleven. This is plenty of walking, but usually around mid afternoon I feel compelled to take my long walk in the park as well. Sundays usually result in 20,000 step days. I'm sure I could think of better things to do if I tried, but a day of walking seems good enough to me.

Dawn woke me up twice last night licking her paws. She's figured out how to get the socks off. I don't understand the licking at all. It started rather suddenly. There are no injuries or hot spots. There are no signs of discomfort if you hold the paws or try to examine them either. She's an equal opportunity licker and goes after all four paws. This is either behavioral or medical and our goal next week is to find out what is going on. My guess is that it is a behavioral issue, but I could easily be wrong. We'll probably have to do a skin patch test for allergies as a starting point. There's got to be a specific reason for this licking, although our initial trip to the vet didn't turn up much. It's always something with dogs. We've had lots of dogs over the years and the times when there were no problems were few and far between.

For a long time I've noticed that there was a vertical pole above one of the water fountains in the park. I just assumed that there was a bird bath on top of the pole because there was a dish that certainly looked like a bird bath. Today I discovered that if you press a button on the pole you will get sprayed with a fine mist of water. I wish I knew about this before. I've been soaking my shirt and hat with water before I leave on hot days and I pass this handy pole just about when my clothes have dried out again. I sprayed myself with water today and it made the walk much more enjoyable. I can take advantage of the mist in both directions too, since I pass the pole again on my way home.

Today while I was walking I saw a guy with a cat carrier walk up to a bunch of ducks and release a duck from the carrier. There was a lot of quacking and some startled looks from people nearby. The guy explained that the duck had been living on his front porch and he thought it would be better off living with other ducks. This may explain some of the weird looking ducks I've seen in the park. This kind of looked like a domestic duck, but I don't know my ducks that well. We'll see how well this duck gets along with the wild ducks in the days ahead. Somehow, I doubt that this one is going to fly away.

I read an article last week saying that people are stealing duck eggs from nests in the park and eating them.   Maybe this explains why I've seen fewer baby ducks this year. It probably explains the no poaching signs as well. Stealing eggs from wild ducks seems all wrong to me, but then all eggs are basically stolen. I doubt that chickens lay eggs just so we can eat them.

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about what kind of car I want next while I'm walking. For a while I was convinced that I wanted a Sprinter Van that had been converted into an RV. These vans are large and inconvenient to drive around town and I think RV toilets are disgusting. The last thing I want to do on a trip is spend my time cleaning out the black water tanks. I've had passing fantasies about sports cars for years, but they are so low to the ground that it is frightening to drive on freeways with eighteen wheelers on both sides of you. Lately I'm leaning toward getting one of the new Broncos. I configured one on the Ford website today and you can basically get a Bronco with all the bells and whistles for less than the cost of a base model Land Rover Defender. I owned a Bronco once. It was very reliable. I don't think I ever opened the hood the entire time I owned the car. The thing I don't like is that the Bronco's rear seats don't fold flat. Nobody's rear seats fold flat anymore. Why doesn't anyone make a car with two seats in the front and a big flat area in back where you can carry anything? My old Defender came close, which is probably why I liked it so much.

I've heard that there is a new Dalmatian up at the kennel. I'll take my camera and hopefully we'll get to meet her tomorrow.

Beemer is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 2648

Janet went downtown to the auto show today to look at new cars. It seemed like a smart idea to me. It would take forever to go from dealership to dealership, especially if you had to listen to a sales pitch from each one. I asked her if she'd found a favorite when she returned and she told me that most of the cars in her price range just looked the same. I'd have to agree. Most cars look like they were designed by a focus group these days. I remember when cars had a distinct personality. It was easy to identify each brand from a great distance. One of my favorite games on childhood car trips was to identify as many different cars as I could. It was easy to tell the difference between a Plymouth and a Chevy. They don't even make a Plymouth anymore and I couldn't even begin to tell you what a modern Chevy looks like. Sure, cars can drive themselves these days, but I still don't think they are fun anymore.

Dot had diarrhea last night. Lord knows why. She wasn't sick and nothing has changed in her diet. At any rate, it was a mess. Diarrhea makes normal incontinence seem like child's play. We cleaned everything up and hoped that this was just an isolated event. So far, so good. We made it through the day without further incident. I even managed to get my Saturday errands done without a mess to clean up when I returned.

Last week I made a mental note to start doing my grocery shopping on Sunday because the produce looked so much better. Of course, mental notes are worthless with me. I completely forgot about the nicer looking fresh fruit and went shopping on Saturday just like I have for years. As soon as I arrived at the store, I realized my mistake. There were no blueberries again.

Janet brought home one of those one-bowl meals I was telling you about yesterday. I still think these things are a bit overpriced, but they are actually delicious. The version we tried today was called Soy braised beef with Kale. There were also lots of mushrooms, barley, cucumbers and other unidentified stuff. Nice presentation too. I'll have to try some of the other varieties when I run out of food during the week. An interesting meal is usually the high point of my day.

Somebody is spreading nails on certain streets in our neighborhood. These don't seems to be nails that fell off a roofer's truck. They seem to be placed on purpose to puncture tires. WTF? Who would do something like this. Now, in addition to coyotes, loose dogs, and snakes, I've got to worry about nails in the street.

I was daydreaming about Questar telescopes today. Several times in my life I almost bought one of these things. I did a Google search and discovered that a fifty year old Questar costs more today on eBay than a brand new model did when I was in college. Of course, I could say the same thing for a vintage Ferrari or a 1963 Stratocaster. Even if I had the money, I'm not sure that I'd buy a vintage Questar. My experience with vintage watches is that old stuff is nothing but trouble.

The only old stuff I'll be worrying about tomorrow is me. I'll eat a healthy breakfast and go to the gym. The grass looks like it's time to mow again, but I think I'll wait until next week. Enough is enough. Maybe I'll just be lazy. I heard about a new Sci-Fi show called The Expanse that I might like. Maybe it's streaming on Netflix or Hulu. The show is already in Season 2, so I wonder why I only heard about it today?

Petey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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