Day 3098

I was surprised that Dash and I got caught in the rain this morning. I'm obsessive about checking the weather and I wasn't expecting rain at all. Although we both got wet, it was a gentle shower and ended up taking the edge off the Summer heat. When Dash was younger, he hated walking in the rain. Today, he didn't even seem to notice. He maintained the same slow pace he does on dry days.

I'm continuing to look for things to consign at auction. Today, I took a small picture out of its frame to see if there was a signature on the back. In the process, I discovered how dusty a nearby bookcase had become. One thing usually leads to another around here and pretty soon I was carefully vacuuming all the nik naks on the shelves. Nothing has changed in the office for years. I need to throw away a lot of useless, obsolete stuff and give the place a thorough cleaning. Given the extent of the clutter, it seems like an impossible task. I always wondered how my Dad's place became so cluttered in his later years. He and Mom were neat as a pin when they were younger. So was I. In my early thirties, I was a devoted minimalist and nothing was ever out of place. I guess there is a little Grey Gardens in all of us as we age.

I sent the landscaper a text message today. Nothing else has worked. I hate to be a pest, but I hate being ignored even more. It continues to amaze me that so many people in the service industry provide terrible service. When my business was active, I tried my best to be responsive. I usually avoided making promises though. Promises can be hard to keep. It's OK to say you're not going to be able to get to something for a while. Just don't say you're coming over tomorrow and never show up.

I wonder if future generations will ever collect old computers. I have lots of old computers. Most things that are collectible now were considered worthless at some point. Who ever thought that baseball cards and school lunch boxes would become valuable? My Mom threw away a big box of baseball cards I had as a kid. She just thought they were junk. I wish I still had every guitar I ever purchased. I got rid of a few that later proved valuable. As I survey the office now, it's hard to tell the treasures from the junk. It's very tedious to research everything too. That's probably why the bookshelves are so dusty now. I still want to downsize, but it is a lot of trouble. I bet I'll still be thinking of downsizing next year when things are even dustier.

Rugby is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 3092

The grocery store said they'd have a new supply of blueberries today. I love blueberries. I drove to the store to pick them up and no blueberries. The landscaper said he'd be over to look at the lawn yesterday evening. I haven't seen him yet. The roofer said he'd drop by "soon." I've learned that soon can mean anywhere from a day to a year. Why do people even bother to tell me things if they don't mean it?

People probably wonder why I bother to tell them things too. I have to bite my tongue when the auction house folks ask me questions about the art I'm trying to consign. Every time they ask me something, I want to launch into a long winded story about how I acquired the art and what was going through my mind at the time. In many ways, the stories are more important than the art itself. When I was young, I used to joke with people that my goal when I retired was to have a little museum full of my stuff at the end of a long country road. Only a few people a day would ever find this place and I would spend my time showing them all the odd and interesting things I had stumbled across in my life. When the world became a less friendly place, I stopped having fantasies about this mythical sealander museum. Now, I'm starting to question the validity of the stuff itself.

I received several e-mails saying that NetworkedBlogs was going to shut down on June 6. It's still here. I wonder what that's all about? I managed to find an alternate syndication service, so now the blog syndicates to social media twice each evening. As you might expect from someone with OCD, the duplication bothers me. I watch for the posts to appear each evening and manually delete one of them. I think NetworkedBlogs has become a ghost site. A lot of defunct websites stay in operation long after they are officially dead.

I had to mail some documents today and was frustrated that I couldn't get the pre-addressed return envelope to seal. I kept licking the flap, but it wouldn't stick. I finally gave up and sealed the envelope with Scotch Tape. Later, Janet told me that this was a self sealing envelope and that I'd forgotten to peel the paper strip off the adhesive. That felt dumb. I'm really getting old when I try to lick a self stick envelope over and over again.

I'll probably do something equally silly tomorrow. The brain starts to get rusty when there aren't deadlines to meet and competitors to vanquish. Conventional wisdom tells me that I need a hobby, but who has time for a hobby when there are flowers to photograph, blogs to write, and dogs to care for? Truthfully, just getting repair people to come over to the house is a full time job.

Lucky is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 2667

AT&T has spent a lot of money laying fiber optic cable in our neighborhood. Now they want people to start using it. I have been inundated with marketing messages urging me to switch to this new service. They seem to be using a carrot and stick approach. The carrot is the promise of super fast download speeds. The stick is the threat that I'm going to have to switch to fiber anyway, because my present service is going away in a few years. I never trust anything the cable companies say, because I've been disappointed too many times. On the other hand, it would be nice to have super fast Internet service. I did some research today and discovered that fiber to the home is still a work in progress. Some customers complained that the router the phone company supplied couldn't handle the increased speed. Other customers complained that their WiFi network had actually slowed down after switching to fiber. There were happy customers too, but not as many as I would have expected. If I'm going to be paying twice as much to connect to the Internet, the service had better be really good.

I waste a lot of time investigating things that aren't quite ready for prime time. I'd love to live off the grid, but solar panels are still horrendously expensive if you want to power an entire house. They don't work very well in shady areas either. Electric cars turn out to be very impractical if you don't want to spend a lot of time sitting around at charging stations. Don't even think about recharging your Tesla with an extension cord in your garage. 4K cameras often crop part of the image to get the increased resolution they promise. Batteries in your laptop never last ten hours. I get sucked in by promises again and again, but I'm learning to be more skeptical. I don't think I'll switch to fiber optic Internet service yet.

Dot still sleeps as much as she always has, but she's thrown me a curve this week. Lately, she seems to be active in the morning and sleeps in the afternoon. This is exactingly the opposite of what was happening last month. I thought she was sleeping while I was eating breakfast this morning, but I was startled by some plaintive barking coming from the back of the house. Somehow, she had gotten up by herself, walked to the bathroom, and fallen on the tile floor. Dot is just like the people in those "I've fallen and I can't get up" commercials. I'm continually retrieving her from places where she has gotten stuck.

The refrigerator was looking empty today, so I went out and picked up a bowl of noodle soup for dinner. I've become fond of Pho and Ramen dishes. The only problem with these Asian noodle dishes is that they are terribly salty. I've been on a low salt diet for years and one of my pet peeves is that chefs love salt. Whenever I eat out, I feel like I'm consuming way too much salt. It must be possible to make a tasty, flavorful Ramen without salt, but I haven't found it yet. Dinner was delicious, but I'll have to eat something bland tomorrow. I feel like I got my weekly dose of salt in one meal.

I'm not sure what to do about breakfast tomorrow morning. Last Friday was a disaster. I had to race home before I'd even taken a bite because I looked at the baby monitor and noticed that Dot had tried to get up and gotten herself in trouble. I felt a lot more comfortable leaving the house when I was confident that Dot would sleep for at least three hours after her morning walk. Now, all bets are off. I have no idea how active she's going to be tomorrow morning.

Valli is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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