Day 1108

Somebody please send me a little glamor. I spent the day chopping a big sheet of ice up on the roof into little blocks I could remove. When I got cold, I would come back inside and write articles that seemed a lot like the metaphorical equivalent of blocks of ice. The whole process reminded me of the woodpeckers I see on our morning walks. Such industrious little birds, but there must be a better way of finding food and sustenance.

A note to the folks who depend on me to write their fake press releases. I've got a nice wool Ralph Lauren tux that still actually fits. You might consider actually sending me to a few of those glamorous events instead of just asking me to pretend I was there. Another note to those who continue to send me Christmas cards long after they have fired me. Wouldn't it have showed a lot more Christmas cheer to have simply kept me on your payroll a bit longer?

While I was eating breakfast this morning, Dot had to go outside and pee. When I let her back inside again, her paws looked like they were wearing clown shoes. Big, brown oak leaves had cemented themselves to a layer of sticky red clay that was all that remained from this Summer's St. Augustine turf. The whole mess, in turn, cemented itself to each of Dot's paws. She looked ridiculous and I had to laugh, despite the fact that it took me at least fifteen minutes to clean her up again.

This is the trouble with Winter. It's just so messy. I don't mind the cold nearly as much as I mind the mess. Every Winter I am continually wiping condensation off of large expanses of single pane glass, so the window sills won't rot. There is a continual load of laundry running from all the towels I use to clean mud off the dogs paws. I never seem to catch all the mud on their paws either. I'm always discovering muddy little surprises on the bedsheets, the sofa and the dog beds. The zippers on my Winter coats always keep breaking too. I've got to take another coat to the tailor tomorrow.

At least it's Friday tomorrow. I'm already thinking about what to order for breakfast. There's a short week to look forward to as well. I always like a week with a holiday right in the middle.

Daisy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1092

For a while today, I thought it was Monday. That's the kind of day it was. I guess that yesterday was so uneventful it has already slipped from my memory.

It's was still unusually cold this morning. At least I remembered to turn the outside faucets on just a smidgen, so the lines wouldn't freeze. I'm always forgetting that the greenhouse has running water, since I never use the building anymore. There are probably other types of cold weather maintenance I've forgotten about as well, but it probably isn't worth worrying about. Sub-freezing weather seldom lasts long in Texas.

I got my December invoices posted today, but I didn't have time to take them to the post office. I did remember to make appointments with the hepatologist and the urologist. Most importantly, I remembered to take Dash to the vet. That's when I realized it was actually Tuesday. We're going to have to change his antigen dosage. After almost a year of no symptoms, his skin allergies are returning again.

I finished a couple of writing assignments today, but so far, it still looks like December is going to be slow. Actually, December is always slow for me. Things pick up quite a bit from January through March however. I sure wish someone would give me something exotic and exciting to work on. I'm tired of sitting behind this computer. There used to be travel assignments to break up the monotony, but those are rare these days. Sometimes when I'm doing press releases these days, clients just ask me to pretend I'm at the events I'm supposedly covering.

I wonder if the music store liked the repairs I made on the broken guitar amp? I noticed on the FedEx website that they received the package I returned today. I actually think I did a great job of putting the broken cabinet back together again. My woodworking skills are pretty good. From a distance of more than six inches, you'd never know the amp had been damaged at all. Although I'm delighted to have a brand new amp now with no damage whatsoever, I wonder if the music store ever realized how easy it would have been to convince me to keep the broken amp. All they would have had to do was sell me the broken amp at a special "damaged goods" price and they wouldn't have needed to send a replacement at all.

What a world we live in. I turned on the TV while I was eating diner tonight and within a span of three minutes I learned that there had just been a mass shooting at a shopping mall in Portland, the North Koreans had just launched a missile that could reach the United States, and huge crowds were still rioting in Egypt. I'm tired of all this chaos. When I retire, I'd think I'd like to live in a very small town, far away from anything exciting or dangerous. I'd still need to have broadband access, of course.

Emmitt is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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