Day 3516

I just noticed that the cicadas are gone. I don't hear them anymore on my daily walks. When did this happen? I'm trying to be more observant, but there are so many things to notice in our daily lives that a lot of things fall under the radar. I heard a few individual bugs chirping when I took out the trash this evening but the constant buzz appears to be over. I wonder why these bugs do everything together. It's all or nothing with them. I doubt that the cicadas stopped singing today. I have been hearing a lot of other birds lately, but I failed to notice that this was because it was quieter outside. It's interesting how the brain works. I'm finally starting to notice things that I've actually been seeing for years. When I was walking dogs, I was always focused on them. I was looking ahead for other dogs. Especially loose ones. I kept an eye out for critters the dogs might go after. Was someone limping? Were the dogs too hot? I was busy and totally ignored a lot of other things in the park. The only time I noticed cicadas when I was walking Dot and Dash was when one of the dogs was trying to eat them.

There was no blood in Hank's stools today. We've changed his diet and this seems to be helping. It would be convenient if all the dogs in the rescue program could eat the same thing, but they can't. Some Dalmatians tend to develop crystals in their urine and there is a special diet for that. There are diets for kidney problems and even diets for cancer patients. Dot could eat anything, but Dash was on a special diet for most of his life. Hopefully adjusting Hank's diet will prevent the bloody diarrhea from reappearing.

The grocery store is playing hide and seek with the strawberries again. They hide the boxes of good berries underneath boxes of berries approaching their expiration date in hopes that people will buy the bad berries first. I had to sort through a lot of berries this morning to find two boxes of fresh, bright red strawberries. Who is the produce manager trying to fool? Everybody knows the good berries are on the bottom. I always see other people doing the same thing I am. They ought to sell the older berries separately at a lower price? People always buy cheap stuff. They could even make juice out of the darker berries. You'd never know the difference if you were looking at a bottle of juice.

I stopped at a rental car place on the way to the grocery store to ask about renting a car for our trip to McDonald Observatory. I thought all locations for a particular brand would be the same, but they're not. You can get a lot better selection of cars at the airport than you can in town. The lady I talked to basically encouraged me to just go to the airport. She said that they would probably never have the car I wanted. "Couldn't you just get the airport location to sent one over," I asked. "That's not the way it works," she told me. Apparently very few things work the way they should.

It keeps getting hotter. We're supposed to have triple digit temperatures for another week. When cooler weather returns it will still be in the nineties. Personally, I'm ready for sweater weather. I've got lots of sweaters but only one skin. Sweating might be good for you but I doubt that tanning has the same benefits.

It's funny that absolutely nobody seems to believe that Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide. Some people even think he faked his own death and is already in the witness protection program. The rest seem to think Hillary did it. This is the world we live in. When the conspiracy theories start to seem more plausible than the "factual" information, you are already living in the Twilight Zone.

J-Lo is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1804

When I was driving to the gym today I listened to a TED Talk about a guy who had taken a vow of silence for seventeen years. He was explaining how he wanted to see if he could go an entire day without talking. The day then became a week, and the week became a year. Every year on his birthday he decided to keeping going one more year. The talk was mostly about how staying silent all those years had fundamentally changed his outlook on life. Yup. I imagine this would change a few things.

TED Talks are like this a lot. Somebody starts doing something simple and relatively innocuous and just keeps going until it turns into an amazing revelation. I wonder what I would talk about if I were ever asked to get up on the TED stage?  I've become an excellent observer over the years, but my observations haven't really gelled into anything significant. Maybe I just need to keep looking.

Another thing I need to do is go to the dentist. I know I've been saying this for months now, but things have reached a tipping point of sorts. I think an old crown has gone bad. The suspect tooth has become very sensitive to cold and I've noticed that I've started chewing on one side of my mouth to avoid the pain. I bet I need a root canal on that tooth. My whole mouth is a house of cards. I'm sure as soon as I get into a dentist's office they're going to want to pull all my wisdom teeth. I've been avoiding this for years, but the wisdom teeth slowly keep pushing my other teeth out of place. I really need to put aside my fear of dentists and make an appointment tomorrow.

After I made a special point of buying new winter gloves and some special cold weather leggings a few weeks ago, the temperature has gotten warm again. The frigid polar vortex temperatures only lasted a day or two and now its back in the 70's again. I wore shorts and a t-shirt when I walked the dogs this afternoon. This is actually pretty typical Texas weather. You never know what to expect. There's a fierce wind outside now that threatens to blow apart my repairs to the greenhouse. We'll see what further surprises tomorrow brings.

It's hard to show restraint at this time of year. The grocery stores are filled with an abundance of absolutely scrumptious looking food and all the other stores are overflowing with all manner of intriguing but largely unnecessary gadgets. I almost came home with a pecan pie, a big wedge of imported cheesed, and a red Pebble smart watch today. Luckily I am finally getting a bit better at showing restraint. All I actually bought were some vegetables and a box of Swiffer dust pads.

It's going to be a short week. I doubt that I'll be able to get a dental appointment, or even a haircut before Thanksgiving. We do have our Thanksgiving dinner reservations though. It's all a matter of priorities

Petey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1592

My breakfast restaurant is a great place for people watching. Every large city seems to have a little hole-in-the-wall place like this where the aroma of suburb simple meals seems to lure the wealthy and the working poor in almost equal numbers to the same humble tables. This is the only place in Dallas where I routinely see Ferrari 458 Spiders and McLaren MP4's parked right next to beat up white work vans filled with plumbing tools. Of course, since the place is still considered cool in some circles, there are an inordinate number of hipster bicycles as well.

When a diverse group of people start to gather in a small room, you begin to notice things. I've noticed that thin bald men of a certain age aren't really Olympic swimmers or in training for a triathlon. They are just making a fashion statement. I've noticed that it is remarkably easy to identify who is still working for a large organization. They are all wearing those laminated plastic badges around their neck with a bar code  that lets them enter and exit their permanently locked place of work. I guess it has come to this. We are all in lock-down mode now.

I have a certain amount of admiration for the young entrepreneurs. They arrive with a backpack full of electronic devices that all have to be turned on simultaneously. Many of these people seem to be trying to crowdsource their latest project on Kickstarter, or find an elusive venture capitalist who will watch the Powerpoint presentation on the iPad in their packpack. Most of these people will fail, but at least they are trying.

Dash's doctors are trying their best to keep his incision site from getting infected. The effects of radiation treatments are cumulative and after 17 visits to the cancer center, the area that is receiving most of the radiation is really starting to itch. Since Dash is a dog, it is hard to keep him from scratching something that itches. We've tried the cone of shame, a cloth scarf held in place with Velcro, and even leaving his special harness on during the day, but nothing seems to work. When Dash was attacked by another dog years ago, Janet sewed a special t-shirt that Dash wore permanently while his wounds healed. That seemed to work. Maybe she can make another this weekend.

Every Friday afternoon I hand my credit card to the receptionist at the cancer center and settle Dash's bills for the week. This is when I wish that all my client's paid me in 30 days like they are supposed to. Yes, you know who you are. What is the point of hanging on to the money for as long as you can when you are going to have to part with it eventually? I just don't get it. When I made most of my income producing commercials and corporate videos, I always paid my crews immediately. Life is just simpler that way.

Pogo is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1058

I went to get some lab work done this morning in preparation for my upcoming physical exam. On the way home from these mandatory blood tests, I drove by a new breakfast restaurant that I'd never seen before. It was odd that I didn't know about this place, since it was less than four miles from my house. I learned long ago however, that there are lots of thing I don't know about.

When I went inside, I was greeted by some very old people eating a late breakfast. They didn't look happy. Most were talking about last night's election results. "When do you think he's going to change the flag," said a white haired woman to her companion at the table next to me. "You know he's got his own flag." she continued. At the other end of the dining room I overheard a man say. "There's plenty of jobs. These kids today are just too damn lazy to work."

I'm a chameleon. I blend in easily at places like this. I blend in equally easy at restaurants where the patrons all sport tattoos, raise their own urban chickens, and have long discussions about sustainability. It's kind of sad. In a world that has gone tribal, I still haven't found my own tribe.

I'm not a religious person, but I feel more comfortable around Christians and Jews. Somehow, people that put their faith in a higher power seem much nicer to me than the secular humanists who have become convinced that they are the higher power. Although I strongly believe in the importance of family values, I haven't talked to my own family in years. On and on it goes. Although I have become very good at my chosen profession, it still hasn't stopped me from thinking that advertising is basically rubbish. It would be nice to believe in something, but I'm not sure what that would be.

In lieu of becoming a true believer, team player, or tribal chieftain, I have become a good observer. I see things that I think have meaning and I take pictures of them. I observe the world around me and write my observations down. I seldom make judgements about what I see. That's your job.

Maybe all this is why I appreciate the wisdom of dogs. Dogs are very good observers. Dot and Dash are extremely alert and notice everything around them. Lord knows what they actually believe.

Chase is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 845 - Easter

No sunrise services or egg hunts for us anymore. We still have a traditional ham dinner on Easter, but for the most part, it's just another day to go to the dog park. For many in Dallas, Easter is a day to have huge family picnics in the park behind our house. We saw people setting up tents and stoking barbecue fires early this morning. Unfortunately, most of the families were gone by mid-afternoon. A big thunderstorm swept through town a little after noon and undoubtedly dampened quite a few holiday plans. We did manage to get the dogs to the dog park before the deluge started. They had a nice outing and were ready to come home again as soon as they heard thunder off in the distance. It rained much of the afternoon, and stopped just in time to give Dot and Dash their evening walk. The park was almost empty. The picnickers had all gone home.

The rainy afternoon was a good time to bring the Dalmatian Rescue website up to date. While our own Dalmatians hid from the rain under my desk, I made new webpages pages for our three newcomers: Crosby, Bunny, and Milo. I also marked another dog as "adopted." Molly got her forever home today.

Our dishwasher isn't broken after all. Janet and I had thought it was broken for months, because the dishes weren't dry anymore after a load finished washing. I just noticed today that an inconspicuous little button on the front panel had been switched from "heat dry" to "air dry." Personally, I think Dash pushed the button when he was trying to get at food on the counter. At any rate, when I switched the button back to "heat dry" again, everything worked perfectly. It's strange that this situation has been going on for months and I never noticed that little button before.

There are probably a ton of things around the house that I just don't notice anymore. I wish I could train myself to be more observant when I'm up on the roof. Maybe I could finally find that pesky leak. I certainly didn't discover any secrets today. I just pushed this afternoon's rains off the roof with a broom, so we're ready for the next Spring deluge.

Cooper is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day