Day 3224

Well, it couldn't last forever. We're cleaning up poop on the floor again. Dash does the best he can. So do we. I could tell a little incontinence wasn't going to stop Dash. He was still hungry for breakfast and eager for a walk. There were no blue skies this morning, but at least we stayed dry. Dash was very slow today, but he was determined. Considering that it was a Monday, I think we both got off to a good start.

Even on a good day, Dash worries me. I've noticed that the tremors he often experiences have increased. It looks like he is shivering, but he is not cold. The shivering is something else. Often the tremors continue even after he has gone to sleep. Today, Dash was shivering quite a bit. I tried covering him with a blanket, but it didn't seem to help. I think the tremors have something to do with his vestibular disease, but we may never know for sure. It also may have something to do with his heart problems. We've asked several vets about the periodic shivering, but nobody seems to have a definitive answer. Luckily, the tremors eventually go away. Dash seemed fine this afternoon.

After breakfast I went looking for a new storage warehouse. It looks like it might be worth the effort to move. I was somewhat surprised to discover that I could save almost 40% by simply moving to an identical storage unit in a different facility. All storage facilities raise your rent every year. Some even raise the rent every six months. After a while you end up paying a lot more than you did when you started. The storage companies don't care. They know that most of their customers only stay for several months. I'm the odd duck here. Almost nobody keeps the same storage unit for fifteen years. I think it's time to start over.

Moving will be problematic. How do I move a wind sail board when I don't have a roof rack on my car anymore? How do I move the speaker enclosures for my old band's PA system when they've become too heavy for me to lift? How do I disassemble the extensive shelving system I built in place inside my existing unit? I wouldn't have any of these problems if I wasn't such a pack rat. I should have never saved most of this stuff.

There were more bills to pay and a prescription to pick up. That's all I seem to do these days:pay bills and pick up pills. I still haven't dealt with the water on the roof or tried to clean the house. In both cases it seems to be better to just wait until all this rain stops. I just heard that we are expecting another wave of heavy rain next week. Evidently there is a hurricane headed toward Mexico and when the storm breaks up and heads inland it will pass over Dallas. I think this has been the wettest Fall on record. The rain ultimately proved to be too much for the little circus in the park. They took down their tent today and were packing their truck to leave. I hope they have better luck wherever they wind up next.

I need to get a haircut this week. I actually need to do a lot of things, but a haircut seems like something I can cope with. I've got a week to decide what to do about the storage warehouse. That decision is going to be a lot more difficult than deciding when to get a haircut.

Dot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2173

It's official. 2015 is now the rainiest year in Dallas history. When I look out my window, it's easy to see why. Some parts of town have had over six inches of rain during the last 24 hours. It rained more than usual this Spring. It rained more than usual this Summer. And it is definitely raining more than usual now. The traffic was horrible today. I saw five accidents on my way to the grocery store this afternoon. Last night was a lot worse, when three people died after they were swept away by high water. I try to stay inside on days like this.

The weather may be getting worse, but Dot's condition is definitely getting better. She didn't throw up at all today and is still holding down her food. We are continuing to feed her the Hills I/D and are gradually increasing the amount she is allowed to eat. Getting back to her regular diet couldn't come quick enough for Dot. She is very focused on food. I still don't know what caused all the vomiting. With dogs it could be almost anything.

The cold, damp weather gave me an extra incentive to make a decision about a dehumidifier. After talking to a patient, very nice customer service representative at an air quality specialty company for about twenty minutes, I finally decided on the best model for our house and ordered it online. It was hard to find a dehumidifier that had everything I needed. Some units were too big and noisy. Others didn't have an internal water reservoir, so they constantly had to be hooked up to a drain hose. Many of the smaller, high capacity units were designed to be installed in a crawl space under the floor. These don't work very well if you don't have a crawlspace. The dehumidifier I initially wanted turned out to be too small for our house. I wondered who would buy this rather expensive, built like a tank unit if it wouldn't dehumidify our rather small house. The customer service representative told me that police departments loved the compact machines and used them to dehumidify their gun safes. In the end, I never could find a commercial dehumidifier that would work well in our house and ended up buying a much less expensive consumer model instead. Hopefully it will last at least a couple of years.

I kept thinking it was Saturday all day. I didn't go out for breakfast this morning because Janet was off work today. We slept in a little later as well. My initial reaction was to get Dot up as early as possible, since there had been no accidents by the time I woke up. She was sleeping so peacefully though, that I decided to let her sleep as long as possible. We all got an extra hour of shut-eye until Dash eventually started barking for his breakfast. We got lucky and found a forty-five minute break in the rain right after we ate, so the dogs got their morning walk as well.

Since the rain is supposed to continue all the way through Monday, I don't know what I'll do this weekend. I certainly have no intention to participate in the pre-holiday shopping frenzy. Why would you go to a store and stand in long lines to buy something you could get for the same price online anyway? There were tons of Black Friday deals in my inbox this morning. One looked way too good to pass up. There was a picture of a new model Mac Pro laptop with a price of $15. I immediately put this deal in my shopping cart and went to get Janet so I could show her this amazing price. By the time I returned, the price had gone up quite a bit. The Black Friday price was really $1500. The store sure fixed that typo in a hurry. I bet they had a flood of orders the minute the deal went online. I wonder if they'll have to honor the deal for the few people who were fast enough to check out before the error was corrected. I bet somebody's in trouble. Unfortunately, I wasn't fast enough to get a $15 Mac. I'm rarely fast enough for anything anymore.

Spots is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1975

I should be used to the rain by now, but it still amazes me how wet it's been this Spring. This has to be one for the record books. Today was another near all-day rain, punctuated with small, well-placed intervals where I was lucky to get the dogs out for shortened morning and evening walks. It's not raining now, but I think the weather is just taking a breather. There is even more rain in the forecast for tomorrow.

Previous rainy days this week have allowed me to get caught up on work, so there wasn't really a lot to do today. I finally got my May invoices in the mail, but that was about it.

I contemplated just watching movies on Netflix today, but couldn't find anything I really wanted to see. Instead, I decided to do some more work on my mobile friendly test site. I think I've learned all the easy stuff, because I had difficulty grasping some of the concepts I was trying to learn today. I ended up making a mess of the test site and had to upload an older archived version to get back to square one. I don't know why I'm spending so much time with this, since most of my clients don't seem very interested in mobile anyway.

I thought I try to get through the day without any pain pills for my teeth. Things must be getting better, because it wasn't all that bad. It's probably time to stop taking Ibuprofen anyway, since it isn't very good for the liver. I still had my breakfast banana milkshake, mostly because the dogs love bananas. I always share with them. Even though it took a while to rinse out the food particles, I had solid food for dinner. There was a tasty casserole in the refrigerator that would have been awful if I liquified it and turned it into soup. Everything in moderation, I guess. Once my mouth has healed completely, I'll still use the Vitamix, but I doubt that I've have soup more than once a week.

I wanted to find out if there were any more NASA launches that I could apply to attend and discovered instead that all the NASA websites are offline. There used to be a ton of NASA sites and they're all gone. Budget cuts I guess. As a web developer it would seem like it might actually be more expensive to take a large site down than to simply leave it up and not update it as frequently. What do I know though. The government works in mysterious ways.

Did you know that the Rolling Stone song Can't Get No Satisfaction was recorded fifty years ago yesterday? Jeez. These guys are still touring and selling out huge stadiums too. When I was learning to play to this song in high school, I never dreamed that we'd still be listening to a seventy year old Mick Jagger singing it fifty years later. Yep. The Stones are coming to Texas Stadium this Summer and the show is already sold out. In just a few more years, it will be fifty years since we landed on the moon. Amazing! What have we really accomplished since then? Sure, we all have smartphones now, but I can tell you from experience that life was a lot more interesting in 1969.

I'm not sure how interesting it is going to be tomorrow. My clever phone tells me that there will be thunderstorms tomorrow. Back in 1969, I never knew when it was going to rain until I got wet.

Haley is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day