Day 1571

Friday's are a bit different now. First Dash goes to the cancer center. Next Dot eats breakfast and gets a walk by herself. After that, I go out for breakfast and get groceries. When I come home, I take a shower, and then I usually get a phone call saying that Dash is finished with his treatment and ready to come home again. You pay by the week at the cancer center, and every Friday they hand you a bill when you arrive. Time passes quickly. We have already finished nine radiation treatments.

I didn't feel like my usual poached eggs and pulled pork this morning, so I went to a different restaurant. This place has had some management changes and although the menu hadn't changed, everything featured on the menu is cooked differently now. I ordered a familiar omelet dish and what I received looked very unfamiliar. Maybe the reason I like my favorite restaurant so much is that the chefs are actually the owners and nothing ever changes.

Considering that the today's beautiful Spring weather was tailor made for gardening and mowing the lawn, I actually got quite a bit of writing done. I managed to complete three articles today and still had time to update at least one website. My website woes are far from over. I'm discovering that as web hosts continue to move and upgrade their servers, many of my favorite scripts no longer work anymore. One of my sites lost all its online forms recently when the hosting company changed how customers are able to access the CGI/BIN directory. I suppose the hosting company still supports CGI, but I will have to re-write some code to get the forms to work again. If they eliminated the directory entirely, I'm going to be really mad. I've always been a firm adherent to the time honored "if it's not broke, don't fix it" idiom. Apparently very few people approach life this way. I am continually having people change things on me that were working perfectly fine.

I've started noticing poison ivy growing in the park again. First snakes, and now poison ivy. It's enough to make me start longing for winter again. Every year, the patches of poison ivy seem to grow larger and more pervasive. Pretty soon the remnants of Texas Native Prairie that everyone is so proud of will be nothing but a big patch of poison ivy and Johnson Grass.

Luckily, these invasive pest plants haven't ruined the park yet. Today I noticed that one of my perennial favorites, the diminutive Prairie Verbena was in bloom again. Almost overnight, the meadows have become filled with these ringlike circles of small flowers.

It looks like it's going to be a nice weekend. An absence of pending chores and a mercifully short "to do" list might make the next two days even nicer. Dash gets a rest this weekend, and hopefully, so do we.

Dottie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1211

I paid a visit to my watchmaker today. A lot of my clients are irritating, but I always enjoy talking with the watchmaker. He's a charter member of that dying breed of people who can actually fix things and understand how mechanical things work. When I was growing up, the United States was full of these clever, industrious men, but there are very few left. I tried to explain social media to the watchmaker while he repaired a beautiful old Angela Cummings watch of Janet's. The watchmaker and I both love cars, so we talked about exotic machines we've owned and would like to own. The watchmaker has a vintage Porsche and I have an old Maserati. At least his car runs. Mine doesn't. The watchmaker regaled me with stories about inept customers who destroyed their expensive Rolex by trying to fix it themselves. I told him about ad campaigns that failed miserably when the client refused to listen. It was a very pleasant afternoon.

I made an appointment to take Dot to see a neurologist next week. She's going to need a CAT scan to make sure she doesn't have a brain tumor. Apparently, the symptoms that she's been having could be caused by epilepsy, a tumor in the brain, or by something else entirely. A CAT scan, or possibly a MRI of her brain, will help pinpoint the cause of her recent seizures. It's too bad dogs have trouble staying still on their own. A CAT scan or MRI is a relatively simple procedure for humans. I've had many of these scans myself. Part of the procedure involves holding your breath for up to 20 seconds at a time while the image is being created. Not surprisingly, dogs have trouble holding their breath, so they have to be sedated under general anesthesia during the scan. Dot is not going to like all this, but it needs to be done.

My poison ivy is starting to get better. The steroid treatments really do work. There's a downside however. It's not a good idea to take steroids for this sort of thing more than once a year. It  looks like I'm going to have to be extra careful not to catch another case of poison ivy later this summer. This is going to be tough, because I'm seeing the stuff everywhere now. I see fresh, green little poison ivy plants on either side of the trail during our daily walks. I've told Dash to help me out on this, but I don't think he was listening.

There are supposed to be thunderstorms tomorrow, but I hope they don't materialize. I'm not sure if I was able to pinpoint the source of the latest roof leak during last week's round of storms. Not really looking forward to plastic buckets strategically placed all around the living room floor again. Dot is scared of storms too and I'm worried that thunder and lightning might trigger another seizure. Maybe the weather will surprise me and turn out to be nice. I think I deserve that.

Livy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1208

We went to another casino party tonight. Janet and I usually play roulette at these charity fundraisers, mostly because we are the designated roulette dealers whenever Dalmatian Rescue has similar events. Sometimes we can pick up tips from other dealers that we can use ourselves. Not tonight. The pair at the roulette table this evening were the most inept roulette dealers we've come across yet. They didn't know the odds on the board. They would routinely pay numbers that didn't win and forget to pay number that did win. They seldom paid winners the right amount either. These dealers didn't even appear to know how the game was played. Nobody got mad though. We were just playing with monopoly money and the entire evening was for a good cause. Janet and I are much better roulette dealers than these bumblers though.

The weather finally cleared up today. With an abundance of clear skies and warm temperatures, the dogs finally got the enjoy the newly landscaped back yard. It would have been a good day to do a little more gardening, but I'm still not sure where all the poison ivy plants are hiding. The meds are starting to work, but I still think it's going to be at least another week before the itching subsides.

I had to get all my Saturday chores finished a little early today, since we needed to leave the house for the fundraiser by 6 PM. We ate dinner at the event, so that saved a little time. The rest of the day was spent grocery shopping, doing laundry, vacuuming, making fresh juice out of a big bag of oranges, and looking for the source of the latest leak up on the roof. I couldn't find where the water was coming in, but I did get clean sheets on the bed and gave the dogs a nice long walk before we left for the evening.

I hope I remembered how to use the DVR correctly. I set up the machine to record the new Dr. Who episode this evening, but I haven't had time yet to see if my efforts were a success. So far, the new season of Dr. Who looks like it's going to be a good one. I'm kind of pleased that I've finally mastered the television. I no longer have to watch shows when they are aired. Now, I can watch them any time I want.

Tomorrow is definitely going to be a dog park day. I can tell Dash has cabin fever from being cooped up too long. He needs a chance to run off-leash. With all the rainy weather we've been having this Spring, we've missed our Sunday visit to the dog park for several weeks in a row.

Sam is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1207

I got an enormous amount done today. Once again, I had to spend the day waiting for the FedEx man, and he was very, very late. I have one supplier who insists on marking all shipments direct signature required, while at the same time denying me the opportunity to re-direct the package to a nearby FedEx office for a more convenient delivery. I find this very annoying, but there is a hidden benefit. While I am waiting endlessly for an envelope that needs my signature, I tend to get lots, and lots accomplished around the office.

Today I re-configured an entire website and launched the new version. Ordinarily, this would have taken me three or four days, but what else did I have to do today? I was trapped.

Today's little exercise provides a good illustration of why I've never been fond of SEO types. My client had hired an SEO wizard to boost his Google rank and get his phone to ring more often. The SEO wizard didn't like the site I had designed. He said it had way too many pictures and not enough searchable text that could be indexed. There was plenty of text on the site, but unfortunately, it was all embedded inside pretty JPEG images. To fix the problem and get the SEO guy off my back, I needed to learn something new. To keep the layout intact, I belatedly learned how to create layers in Dreamweaver. I placed Google-friendly text in these new layers and then positioned the layers directly over the pictures I wanted to keep. Amazingly everything worked. After a day of coding confusing CSS scripts, I had a site that looked remarkably similar to the old site, while containing all the new information that the SEO guy said was missing. We'll see if this makes a difference. Probably not.

The temperature was back in the 70's by mid-afternoon. It's still not dry enough for me to determine where the water is getting in on the roof, but it was certainly warm enough for the dogs to enjoy a little sunbathing time in the back yard. I'm a little leery of doing any more gardening in the back yard, unfortunately. I'll probably never know if I got my Poison Ivy from inadvertently pulling up Poison Ivy plants hidden in the ground cover, or from Dash curling up with me at night after a day of running through a field of the stuff. Hopefully, the steroid shots will work their magic soon.

I used a Klout gift card to go out to dinner with Janet this evening. I like these Klout perks, although I have no idea why I keep getting them. So far, I've gotten dog blankets, gift cards, magazine subscriptions, and books. Maybe if I write a nice review about the restaurant, they'll send me more stuff. I wouldn't even have to lie. The food was actually very good.

Angel is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1206

I had to go get a steroid shot for my Poison Ivy this morning. As luck would have it, the doctor who treated me was one of the same doctors I photographed several weeks ago. Luckily, she liked her picture. It's always awkward to get an injection from someone who hates the photo you took of them. Yeah, I know that I told you guys I don't like steroid and cortisone shots just yesterday. It's just about the only remedy I've been able to find that can clear up a bad case of Poison Ivy though. Hopefully, this will be the only case I get this season. I'm very susceptible to Poison Ivy, and the dogs run through patches of the stuff in the park all the time. I'm doomed.

I completed two difficult retrofits to client websites today. Whenever I get these type of assignments, I feel like blurting out "Why didn't you tell me you wanted this when I first designed the site? It would have been so much easier then." The client is always right though, and all of them are a lot more fond of change than I am. I don't think I've ever changed my own website.

I'll really be glad when this cold, wet weather we've been having this week runs its course. It's a constant chore to keep the water of the roof and the mud off the dogs. My boots are just as muddy as the dogs paws when we return from our walks, so I've got to clean those too. The only saving grace is that we've got brick floors. Brick is the most dog friendly surface you can have. Does your dog track mud in the house? No problem. Does your dog occasionally poop in the house? No problem there either. Even water dripping from a leaky roof does far less damage to a brick floor than it would to wood or carpet. I'm a big fan of brick floors.

Good news! I finally got one of the best architects in Dallas to tell me the name of his favorite roofer. Now we're talking! Maybe there's hope for my roof yet.

Dottie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1205

The day started out with a roof leak in the living room and kind of went downhill from there. I had to have an insurance agent over to the house today and the dogs set some sort of new record for continuous barking. The agent liked dogs and thought he could win their trust by feeding them treats. What the hell. It sounded like a good idea to me. A half a box of dog biscuits later, Dot and Dash stopped barking about guarding the house and immediately started barking for more biscuits. Both dogs were a total embarrassment. You never would have known that they'd been in obedience training for almost six years.

Dot made matters worse by getting herself so worked up that she pooped in the living room. The old girl has trouble controlling her bowels when she gets too excited.

There was a lot of website work today. It was all stuff that the clients probably thought was trivially easy for me to implement. In reality, everything that was asked for today was fairly difficult. I'm still not done. On days like this, I have to bite my tongue and repeat to myself "The client is always right."

The one roofing company that I thought might actually have the solution to my problems refuses to return my calls. The last time I talked to them, I got the strong impression that they weren't interested in residential work, but I haven't given up yet. It's frustrating. Several companies are eager to put on a roof just like the leaky one I have now. But how about a roof that can be actually guaranteed against leaks for ten years? Well, those guys aren't interested in me. They just want to do hospitals and football stadiums.

My accountant called today and said he needed some information from when I bought my rent house back in 1978. Yeah, right! That information is going to be real easy to find. He needs the information to complete tax preparation on the sale of this property, but that doesn't make it any easier to find the documents he needs. I had to really scratch my head to even remember when I bought the place, or what I paid for it.

I had to pick up a part for the Defender at the Land Rover dealer this afternoon and while I was at the dealership, I noticed a brand new Defender 90 on the showroom floor. I asked how they got this car, since Defenders aren't imported to the U.S. anymore. The salesman said they were selling it for a collector who bought the car in Europe. What really caught my eye was the price. They were selling this this simple, utilitarian jeep with roll-up windows and no interior to speak of for $74,000. That seemed like an insanely high price for a car that looked exactly like mine. I asked why the price was so high and the salesman said this European version was very rare and he thought they'd get the price. This seems just as crazy as vintage guitar prices, but whatever. I may have to re-think my plan to get another Defender some day. This one was out of my league entirely.

I'm starting to think that my 'spider bite' is actually an early case of poison ivy or poison oak. I think I'd rather have a spider bite.

Lexi is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 862

I finally got all the new orphans added to the rescue site I've been working on for the past several days. I wanted to get things finished before the backlog of animals became an issue at the board meeting we're having tomorrow. I have a sneaking feeling that when I go to the meeting, I'll discover that there are dozens of other animals that still need to go on the website.

I found enough time this afternoon to disassemble one of the big shelves and move it over to my larger storage space. With the shelf in place, I can now start clearing away some of the clutter that has accumulated on the floor of the new room and hopefully begin to realize some of the benefits of the additional real estate I now have. I need to ask my accountant how long I need to keep financial records and receipts. I didn't realize I had so many records. If I can get rid of some of this obsessive record keeping, I'll have more room for obsolete electronic equipment.

I'm going to have to come up with a new route for our daily dog walks. The poison ivy is everywhere this Spring. There are entire fields of the stuff. Luckily, Dot and Dash haven't walked through a big patch of poison ivy yet, but it will happen sooner or later. As soon as the oil from the plants gets on the dog's fur, I break out in a rash. I don't think there's been a single Summer in the last ten years when I didn't catch a case of poison ivy. You'd think I'd build up an immunity to the stuff after all this time, but I think the opposite has happened. It seems like I've actually become more sensitive to poison ivy lately.

It's finally become warm enough that I don't need to wear a coat to our Wednesday evening dog training class anymore. At first glance this is a good thing, but I no longer have a convenient pocket for the treats I take to reward Dash when he does something good. If I just put the treats in a pants pocket, Dash smells them and spends the entire evening trying to stick his nose in my pocket. I guess I could put the treats in a fanny pack, but I wouldn't be caught dead wearing a fanny pack. I'm certainly not at my sartorial best during dog class, but I do draw the line at fanny packs.

Pogo is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 508

Tonight is the big Wine on the Roof fundraiser for East Lake Pet Orphanage. This is the event that the big poster featuring the dog and cat as Rhett and Scarlet from Gone with the Wind was created for. This year's guest of honor is Loretta Swit from the old M.A S.H. TV series. Radio personality Richard Hunter will be there as well. The event seems to grow every year. I remember doing the very first poster for these events over ten years ago when 13" x 19" was considered a large size. This year's poster is six feet tall. That's not the biggest change to me however. The big difference between those early events and this one is that I can't drink any more. A wine tasting event is much more fun when you can drink the wine.

My bee stings have stopped hurting and started itching. I don't know which is worse. Now I feel like I've got a bad case of poison ivy. I guess I ought to just get used to it, since I'll probably come in contact with the stuff within the next two or three weeks anyway. I see large patches of poison ivy now whenever I walk the dogs. All it takes is a few minutes of idle daydreaming on my part, and the dogs will walk through a big patch of the stuff and the urushiol oil will get all over me when the dogs curl up with me to go to sleep.

It looks like tomorrow is going to be a work day whether I like it or not. There are a ton of things I'm behind on after my week in Houston. I guess I could put everything off till Monday, but I like to start off the week with a clean slate. Somehow if I'm still working on last week's jobs on Monday morning, I never seem to get caught up.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 471

Everything is turning green. The grass in the backyard is growing nicely. The Dogwoods, Azaleas, Redbuds and other flowering trees in the park are in full bloom. I'd say that everything is coming up roses, if it weren't for the fact that I'm also seeing huge fields of poison ivy starting to grow as well. It's only a matter of time before one of the dogs wanders though a patch of of fresh poison ivy and transfers the itchy oil to me while I sleep. For some reason, the dogs never catch poison ivy themselves, but once the urushiol oil gets on their coats, I'm almost guaranteed to catch it within a week. Poison ivy isn't the only nuisance that returns every Spring either. The bees have returned as well. When I go out in the yard with the dogs now, I see tons of bees. They seemed to have arrived with the new grass, although I'm not quite sure why. We don't really have any flowers in the yard, but the bees sure seem to like something.

I finished my "Gone with the Wind" poster today. I was going to present it to the rescue group at our regular Thursday meeting, but the meeting got canceled at the last minute. I guess I'll just present the poster here. Just about everyone who goes to that Thursday meeting has become a blog reader anyway.

I'm starting to think that my bid for the trade show project in Houston has hit a snag. I haven't heard anything yet and the event keeps getting closer and closer. If I'm bidding against a local supplier in Houston, I'm at a disadvantage anyway, since they won't have to factor hotel and travel expenses into their bid. Truthfully, I wish I never had to bid against other companies. I think my prices are fair. Life would be a lot easier if customers either gave me the job or they didn't. I'm just not a very competitive person.

I made another wasted trip to the pharmacy today to pick up a prescription, only to learn that it was no longer renewable. I've got a doctor's appointment tomorrow and prescriptions that expire too soon is right at the top of my list to talk about. Some of these things I'm going to be taking for the rest of my life. Why can't they just make the prescription for three or four years instead of for six months? I'm sure it all has something to do with money. If I didn't continually need to get my prescriptions renewed, I probably wouldn't go to the doctor nearly as often.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day