Day 3565

Our power went out again today. There was no wind and no rain, but I did hear an explosion back in the alley. A squirrel probably shorted out a transformer again. It has happened before. Since there weren't problems in other parts of the city, our power was restored in just a few hours. We went out to dinner tonight and by the time we returned home, the electricity was on again. I did use the generator to keep the refrigerator running, but all-in-all this was a pretty painless outage.

When I went to the grocery store this morning I discovered that the app I've been using to bypass the checkout line wasn't broken after all. I was just using it wrong. One of the many updates apparently changed the way the app works and I never noticed. Jeez. Why do people keep changing things on me? As soon as I get used to something it changes.

The weather is still unusually hot for September. That's not the worst of it though. I'd forgotten that in addition to Spring allergies, there are also Fall seasonal allergies. Ragweed is usually the culprit, but on a windy day like today there is a lot of other pollen in the air as well. For the past several weeks I've had to stuff my pockets full of paper towels and blow my nose every few hundred yards while I'm walking. If there was ever a reason to start walking inside at the gym, this would be it. I'm a creature of habit though. Even though seasonal allergies make me feel miserable, they've never stopped me from doing anything. I doubt that this month's unusually high pollen counts will stop me either.

I got a note saying that it's time to make an appointment with the eye doctor. Has it been a year already? If you go to any type of doctor these day, you'll have to see them again a year later. There's nothing wrong with my eyes but I guess a regular checkup makes sense. My Dad had macular degeneration as he grew older. I certainly don't want to deal with that. I have to wear readers now when I'm working at the computer, but my distance vision is still 20/20. I'm sure my close range vision would be better too if I hadn't spent so many years staring at a computer screen.

I guess I'm ready for the golf tournament. The cameras seem to be working well and all the batteries are charged. I just need to decide what shoes to wear. Just about all my shoes feel uncomfortable after a long day. I probably won't be walking all that much anyway. I mostly just drive around in a golf cart and take pictures of each team. I've never played golf myself. I'm left handed and can't even hit the ball using right handed clubs. I doubt if I'd be much better using left handed clubs. I've never tried.

I'm glad we've got electricity again. The house heats up quickly when the air conditioner isn't running. It's always a pain writing the blog without electricity too. I haven't charged the laptop battery recently, so that might have been a problem. Power outages, loss of WiFi, and computer crashes have never stopped me yet. I would have figured out something, but everything is so much easier with electricity.

I need to get some sleep tonight. It's going to be a long day tomorrow.

Spanky is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2823

My Fall allergies have returned with a vengeance. It's a shame, because the weather has been beautiful lately. They say that most Fall allergies are caused by ragweed pollen. Since we had a lot of rain this Spring and Summer, the ragweed in North Texas is even worse than usual. I hate taking antihistamines, but I may have no choice this year. My eyes have been itching and my nose has been running constantly for several days now. These allergies are making me miserable.

Using a dehumidifier is supposed to help with allergies. I've got that covered. Running the air conditioner at night is supposed to help too. These things aren't helping much. It probably doesn't help that Dash sleeps right next to me and his fur is probably covered with pollen. There is so much pollen in the park now that our shoes are sticky when we return from our morning walk. I wipe Dash's legs off with a wet rag, but I'm not sure how much good this does. I always forget about Fall allergies when the weather starts to get nice. Them several weeks later I remember that there aren't really any good seasons in Texas.

When we were walking this morning, we discovered that we were on the same path with thousands of runners. We learned later that this was the annual Tour des Fleurs half marathon. Even though the path was crowded with runners, Dash still wanted to criss-cross from side to side like he always does. I didn't think the runners would appreciate this, so we eventually convinced Dash to walk down by the shoreline instead. This is probably why my allergies are so bad today. It was a windy morning and there were ragweed plants everywhere. The one benefit of taking this alternate route is that I saw some Buttonbush flowers. Of all the weird and wonderful flowers I see in the park, these are probably the weirdest.

When I was running errands today, I took my dog walking boots to the shoe repairmen to get some new heel taps put on. The shoe repairman didn't want to take a credit card for such a small repair, so I told him to keep the boots and dye them brown again. This made him happier, but when I got home I realized that I won't have any comfortable dog walking shoes for a while. I should have thought about this. The sturdy boots will look nicer now, but what will I wear tomorrow morning?

Dash has gotten in a bad habit of wanting something to eat every hour from 8 PM until it is time for him to go to bed. We started giving him his evening meds earlier in case he throws up in the middle of the night. The unintended consequence of doing this is that Dash still expects something to eat when he used to take his pills. When Janet was recovering from surgery we were going to bed earlier too, so we would give him a rice cake at 9 PM. Now that life is more or less back to normal, Dash expects something to eat at 8, 9, and 10 PM. If he doesn't get what he wants, he starts barking very loud. Training an old, stubborn dog to behave again is not easy, but we're working on it.

I finally vacuumed the house today. We've only got one dog now, but there's still a mountain of dog hair. House cleaning was my exercise today. Tomorrow, I'll need to go to the gym.

Phantom is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day