Day 2250

While I was eating breakfast this morning, I watched a dad teaching his kid math by counting things in the restaurant and pointing out the corresponding numbers on the menu board. The kid was really little but he seemed quite interested. Instead of looking at Facebook like all the other people, the man was using some sort of drawing app on his phone to show the kid how to make the shapes for each number. As I was leaving, I saw him demonstrating how to add two numbers together. I think this kid will do well.

I wish I could teach the dogs a little math. Maybe if they could count, they wouldn't constantly return to their bowls looking for dinner ten minutes after I just finished feeding them. Maybe if they could put two and two together, they would realize that barking while I am trying to write is not the best way to get additional treats. Sometimes I wonder how I get anything done at all with these two underfoot.

I didn't feel like cooking today so I picked up some chicken salad, potato salad, walnut grape and blue cheese salad, and Caesar salad for dinner. I wouldn't recommend an all salad meal every day, but sometimes it is exactly what is needed. I added a little sushi for variety, but didn't go near anything that required me to turn on the stove.

More of Dot's lab results came back today. The results weren't perfect, but they were a lot better than I expected. We'll have to monitor her every week for a while to make sure the new blood pressure medication is working and take her back in a month for new blood work. We still haven't decided whether to resume Dot's chemotherapy again. I guess it depends on how fast the tumor is growing. She had a bad reaction to chemotherapy the first time we tried, but maybe a much smaller dose would be OK. The good news is that she can continue eating her current food. The oncologist thought that Dot's current diet was just fine.

I made sure my cameras were functioning properly today and charged all the batteries. I'm not really looking forward to working on Saturday, but sometimes weekend jobs are unavoidable. Hopefully, I can get everything finished in time to give the dogs their evening walk. Janet has an office function in the evening, but the photoshoot couldn't possible take that long. If it were just me, I'd be done in an hour, but since there are lots of people involved, it will probably take all afternoon. Lets hope that everything goes smoothly.

Dot almost caught me by surprise several times today. I managed to get her outside both times before she pooped, but it was a close call. I've learned that you've got to watch Dot's tail. When the tail starts to twitch, you've got to get her outside in a hurry. It's a weird life when your main activities are cleaning up dog poop and watching the humidity levels. Janet went back to work because she said the isolation she felt just hanging around the house was driving her crazy. By those standards, I probably went crazy ten years ago.

Lucy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1308

It's been raining for two solid days and I haven't gone up on the roof once. There's still a lot of water up there, but I'm not nearly as worried about it because there are no longer any leaks. Any regular reader will quickly realize that two days of standing water on the roof with no attempt to remove it is nothing short of astonishing. Even without troublesome roof leaks, rain can still be problematic though. It's hard to walk the dogs. Today was a waiting game. The rain was fairly steady throughout the day, but I discovered if I kept an eye on the iPad weather radar, I could still manage to find little pockets of relative dryness when the rain would slow to a trickle and the dogs became brave enough to venture outside. It was one of those days where I used up a lot of towels. We would get wet. Then I would dry everyone off. And then we would repeat the process again.

I was invited today to send a recipe to be included in the 2014 SXSW Interactive Cookbook. It was quite an honor, since my recipe will apparently be included with other recipes from luminaries like Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, Zappos founder Tony Hsieh, and BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti. This invitation just shows how far I have fallen in recent years. Yes, I not only used to attend SXSW on a regular basis, I used to be a speaker there as well in the early years. There's only one problem with submitting a recipe of mine to this cookbook. I don't have any. I can only think of two original recipes I have created in the past twenty-five years and I can no longer eat either of them.

These days I hardly cook at all. I've succumbed to stopping by Central Market several times a week and picking up some tasty, semi-healthy items from the Chef Prepared section. It's kind of like eating out, except that I can eat at home with the dogs and there are no waiters to tip.  Today, I picked up a container of Kale, Chard, and Orange salad and another container with Walnut, Grape and Blue Cheese salad on the way home from the gym.

The gym is already starting to feel like a familiar place. I'm starting to establish a routine that suits me. I stay about an hour or so and work mostly on exercises designed to build up my upper body and core strength. A lot of people at the gym seem to be doing cardio workouts using treadmills and elliptical machines. I don't think I need this type of workout quite as much, since I spend so much time walking the dogs. Maybe I do though. I'm just making this up as I go along.

Even though it was a slow day, I still managed to get a few writing assignments finished. I have a feeling that tomorrow will be busier.

Lizzy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1164

I'm amazed at how much daily temperatures have been fluctuating this February. This morning I wore a heavy goose down ski jacket while I was walking the dogs. We barely missed getting soaked by a chilly Winter rainstorm. When we walked again late in the afternoon, the skies had cleared and the temperature was over 70 degrees. I wore a t-shirt. The entire month has been this way. One day, signs of Spring are everywhere and I'll see daffodils along the path. The next day, it's 35 degrees outside and feels like it is going to snow.

I took a break from my writing chores around mid-afternoon to pick up some new slacks I was having hemmed. I wonder how long it will be before I actually wear these pants. There is literally no reason for me to dress up anymore. All my work is conducted over the Internet these days and the dogs certainly don't care what I look like. The neighbors probably don't care either. It's probably only a matter of time before I start taking the trash out to the curb on Thursdays in my bathrobe.

I made a big salad for dinner using all the leftover vegetables in the fridge. Tomorrow I'll go to the store and get a new supply. I think I'm learning to manage meals better than I used to. Usually, something has gone bad in the fridge by Thursday, because I've simply forgotten about it. This week, I made a conscious effort to eat the things with the shortest shelf life first. Other than that carton of milk that inexplicably turned sour, everything stayed fresh this week. The big chef salad was actually pretty good too.

I'm fascinated by the little activity tracker I wear on my wrist. I never realized that it almost always takes me exactly 38 minutes to get the water off the roof. I usually burn up 250 calories doing this. My longest activity of the day is my morning walk with the dogs, and I am sometimes more active sleeping than I am writing. It's a good thing I take the dogs on long walks, because I burn up no energy at all writing.

I'm disgusted with the stock market again. As recently as a month ago, I was doing pretty well. Now, everything is headed downhill again. There is no rhyme or reason to anything anymore. I have no idea why gold and commodities are in the toilet right now. The price of gas is going up, but oil stocks are going down. I have shares in a 3-D printing company that were stratospheric a few months ago. Now, the shares are going down as quickly as they went up. Nothing has fundamentally changed about the company.

If yesterday was full of bad omens, today was full of good ones. The car ran smoothly. So did the furnace. I got a large number of website updates finished today, so it doesn't look like I'll have to work this weekend. We'll just forget about how much I lost in the market today and concentrate on what I'm going to have for breakfast tomorrow.

Lizzy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1097

I was watching PBS while eating breakfast this morning and happened to catch this program about how eating the right foods could prevent and even reverse the effects of everything from rheumatoid arthritis, to lupus, and even type 2 diabetes. I've heard this argument before, especially from the guy who owns the neighborhood health food store down the street from us. This presentation on TV was so clear and logical however, that I wanted to change my diet immediately. In short, eating the right amount of foods like beans, onions, mushrooms, raw nuts, kale, broccoli, and cabbage, while simultaneously limiting your intake of red meat, processed flour, and sugar can significantly boost your immune system and prevent disease. I wonder why more doctors don't tell you this? Probably because prescribing pharmaceuticals is a multi-billion dollar industry.

The only problem with eating lots of salads and fresh vegetables is that they don't stay fresh all week. With only two of us, it's hard to eat up lots of fresh produce before it goes bad. It's equally hard to find time to go to the grocery store more than once a week. It would certainly make more sense to go to the store once a day though and get a small amount of really fresh healthy food, than to continue to taking a mountain of pills for the rest of my life. I'm supposed to see my hepatoligist tomorrow. I'll ask him about rejuvenating my liver with a better diet. I bet he just prescribes another pill though.

Dot and Dash had a great time at the dog park today. The temperature was almost 70 degrees and all the dogs were friendly. We stayed about an hour and then returned home to finish our weekend errands. Janet went off in one direction, while I went off in the other. I wanted to find a high capacity USB-2 hub, so I wouldn't have to keep plugging and unplugging things from the main computer. I finally found a hub that would let me plug in seven different things. It wasn't enough, but it will have to do.

After a weekend of trying diligently to clear out my office, the room looks pretty much the same. There are lots of things in different places now, but the office looks just as cluttered as ever. I distinctly remember taking a big pile of stuff to the storage warehouse, but I still don't see any empty shelves or tabletops. How can this be? I was supposed to end up with a clean desk.

Hannah is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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