Day 3399

Watching Notre Dame burn left me with an uneasy feeling that civilization itself was coming to an end. Paris has always been my favorite city. Every time I've been there, it seemed to represent what a great civilization could become. The place was magic. I'm not sure I'd feel the same way if I returned today. Terrorist attacks, civil unrest, squalid homeless camps, and this horrendous fire have changed the place. I don't know if the fire was caused by simple carelessness or malicious intent, but it shouldn't have happened. We can do better. This building was constructed during the Middle Ages. It survived the French Revolution and two World Wars. The cathedral was a vibrant and important part of European life long before the United States even existed. The fact that it burned today just seems like a bad omen to me.

I've always loved great cathedrals. Janet and I have climbed to the top of St. Peter's and looked out over the Roman skyline. We've stood in awe in front of Gaudi's Sagrada Família in Barcelona. We visited Salisbury Cathedral on our way to Stonehenge. Once, my German hosts took me on a special private tour of The Cathedral of Saint Lorenz at the end of a business trip to Nuremberg. These places were all amazing to me, but probably Notre Dame was the best of them all. It was very sad to see it burn today.

This morning I made arrangements for Dash's funeral. It isn't really a funeral I guess. Just a private cremation. It will seem like a funeral to us. We will spend some time with Dash in a quiet room with candles and say our final goodbyes. The staff will make a paw print and we will wrap him in his favorite blanket. Then I will carry him to the crematory and we will leave. All this ceremony may seem silly to some, but it brings us closure. We have done this for all our dogs. There are five little cedar boxes on our coffee table. Soon there will be six.

I took a walk by myself this morning. I followed one of the trails the dogs used to love when they were young and active. Jeez. We used to walk a long way. I was winded by the time I returned home. Dot and Dash's decline has been so slow and gradual that I never really realized that our walks were getting shorter and shorter. I forget sometimes that I have been walking dogs in this park for thirty years. I know every inch of this place. We are lucky to live near the largest urban lake in the country. Our park is larger than Central Park in New York. It is very pretty. If you were a dog, this is definitely where you would want to live.

I took some more of Dash's things to the storage warehouse this afternoon. The warehouse is getting full again. Sometimes the whole idea of downsizing seems futile. There are always things you want to keep. I have things of my Dad's that I will never use but it seems disrespectful to throw them away. It's easy to throw away an old computer. It's much harder to throw away dog blankets. You should never throw away your dog's collar. We've accumulated a huge collection of dog collars.

I'm still not used to getting enough sleep. It almost seems unnatural.

Krissy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3137

I didn't go out for breakfast this morning. There was too much to do at home. Getting Dash ready in the morning is quite a challenge. He is very reluctant to get up, but as soon as he does start moving, he immediately needs to poop. There is a clear path to the door but he hasn't been able to make it outside yet. I have to try to give him his meds before I clean up the poop, because if I wait too long he'll go back to bed and we'll have to start all over again. So far, the only pill pocket that works is a little cube of rare steak. There are lots of pills, so he gets a fair amount of steak. This usually spoils his appetite and he won't eat his breakfast.

I clean up the poop as quickly as I can and get him ready for his morning walk. I wish we could get started earlier, but we're doing the best we can. We've only been walking about half as far as we usually do, because it's already starting to get hot when we leave the house. I'm glad that Dash has the good sense to head for home early when the weather is hot. Usually he will finish his breakfast when we return to the house, but sometimes I end up saving it for lunch. When Dash has cooled down and goes back to sleep, I fix my own breakfast.

Dash has been very slow and lethargic this week. I don't know whether it's the heat, or if something had gotten worse with his heart. Whatever is going on, it's troubling. I don't want to overwork him, but I don't want him sleeping 24 hours a day either. We've got to strike a balance. We go back for another big recheck at the cancer center next week. I really hope his condition hasn't deteriorated.

I took my last remaining synthesizer to the repair shop today. I'll probably try to sell this one too. It isn't as rare as the two I've already consigned, but there isn't as much wrong with it either. I think all this one needs is a new backup battery. Why this battery is soldered to the main logic board in a hard to access place, I'll never understand. Probably I just wasn't supposed to keep the thing this long.

The keyboard technician told me that the damage to all my synthesizers was probably caused by heat.  The storage warehouse just wasn't cool enough. The fact that you should never keep musical instruments in a storage warehouse has been an expensive lesson to learn. I should have sold all these things immediately when they were no longer being used. Most of the guitars weren't as damaged as the synthesizers, but heat took their toll on them as well. All three of the good guitars will need some major setup work.

It's discouraging to realize that my desire to keep things has always been at odds with the realities of living in a small house. There never was room for this stuff. I always thought that the storage warehouse was like a giant pause button. Maybe I could keep things in suspended animation until a mythical much larger house materialized. Life doesn't work that way though. Time marches on whatever you do.

I just finished giving Dash his evening meds, but he hasn't touched his dinner yet. Usually he will get hungry before we go to bed, but you never know. I guess I should look on the bright side. He hasn't thrown up yet.

Deuce is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2052

I renewed my storage warehouse lease for another year. I always rent the storage unit for a year at a time, because I get thirteen months for the price of twelve this way. I've had the storage space for so long that I think I've received an entire year in free rent by now. When I first got the storage space, it was just a convenient place to store amplifiers and guitars between gigs and bulky lighting equipment between photo shoots. Now, it has become a repository of memories. The remains from just about everything I've ever enjoyed doing in my life is sitting on a shelf somewhere. There are wind surfing boards, electric trains, framed pictures from old gallery shows, obsolete computers, old guitar amps, and much more. I wish I didn't need a storage warehouse at all, but I get very attached to things. Even broken things are hard for me to throw away.

The latest thing I'm trying to resurrect is the old Sony laptop I told you about yesterday. I asked the guy in the repair shop at Fry's if he could install a new hard drive for this 1997 machine and he told that I could get a brand new laptop for less than the cost of repairs. When I explained that I didn't actually need the computer and that it was just something I wanted to fix, he gave me a blank look like he didn't understand. Maybe the guy had a point. Why would anyone want a computer that only ran Windows 98 and had a hard drive that with less capacity than the memory sticks I use with my cameras. I did a little research on Google and discovered that nobody even makes IDE hard drives any more. All the replacement hard drives are SATA. I found a website that showed how to disassemble the computer, but it looked a little tricky. The article with the hard drive upgrade instructions was dated 2008 and the author considered this particular computer to be ancient even back then. It might be harder than I thought to bring this thing back to life. Jeez, if it's this hard to bring a modern looking little Sony laptop back to life, I wonder how hard it would be to get my old Osborne-1 running again?

Dot had kind of a rough day today. She was a bit shaky on her morning walk and walked with a limp around the house. I still can't figure out what makes some days good and other days bad. I may be wrong, but I think it has a lot to do with how she sleeps at night. If she goes to sleep with her bad leg tucked under her, she always seems to have a limp the next day. I always try to make sure she is sleeping on her side with the bad leg on top, but it doesn't really help. She always wakes up two or three times a night to circle around and reposition herself. Usually when I wake up the next morning, she has managed to get the bad leg tucked up under her.

I managed to find a replacement the tiny watch part I destroyed yesterday. The little screw cost me $5.00 but I considered that a bargain. I'll try to be more careful when I try to reassemble the watch this time. I received another writing assignment toward the end of the day, so maybe doing this new article will keep me busy enough so I won't be tempted to fix anything else this week. I've broken enough things for one week.

Tink is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1406

There are occasional benefits to dumping everything in the storage warehouse instead of just throwing it away like a normal person. While I was taking some things to the storage room today, I noticed some dusty old coats hanging in one corner. Among the coats was my favorite leather motorcycle jacket. This jacket was fairly snug even when I used to wear it in the 1970's. I haven't been able to get into the thing in decades. On a whim, I tried the jacket on again, and lo and behold, it fit. I know I've lost a lot of weight, but I didn't think that jacket would ever fit again. I dusted the coat off, put it on and continued my errands feeling younger than I have in years.

Although there were no new assignments today, there was still plenty to do. I have a long wish list from website clients that I'm still not sure how to fulfill. Whenever I have some extra time, I do a little research and see what I can learn to make these mostly odd wishes come true. I used to think I knew everything about the web, but increasingly I'm feeling like a stranger in a strange land. A lot has changed since 1995. I try to keep up, but I think I'm probably still a few years behind.

Dash saw a loose dog in the park this morning and panicked. Ever since he was attacked by another dog in the park several years ago, he gets extremely nervous whenever he sees a large dog off leash.  He has good reason to be afraid, since the other dog almost killed him during the attack. I feel terrible when I see how fearful Dash has become, but there isn't much I can do. I can't keep the dogs cooped up in the house all the time and Dallas is full of idiots who think it's perfectly fine to let their dogs off leash, even though there are sign ever 100 yards saying that it is illegal to do so. I just try to stay very aware of what's happening up in front of us and change direction if I see a loose dog.

I tried to make a doctor's appointment today and kept getting a message that said "due to unusually high call volumes, your wait will be longer than normal." I guess never is a lot longer than normal. They never did pick up the phone. I suspect that there never were high call volumes in the first place. It's a lot more likely that the receptionist just didn't show up for work this morning.

That bad thing is that other than driving across town to resolve the problem in person, I'll probably have to repeat this exercise in futility tomorrow. I still need to make the appointment. I did manage to get my toll tag account changed to my new license plate number though. Now, all I got to do is remember what this new number is. It took me years to remember the number on the old Defender plates.

Lance is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1104

I am finding it much more difficult to de-construct a life than it was to construct it in the first place. I've been trying, with some degree of difficulty, to fill the packing boxes I bought a few days ago and cart them over to the storage warehouse. When I discovered that the small book boxes I had bought were perfectly sized to hold vinyl record albums, I decided to retire my record collection. I should have done this several years ago, since I no longer have a turntable and couldn't even play these records if I tried.

Sometimes I wish I had Janet's ability to simply throw things away. I continue to make excuses and invent reasons why I need to keep everything a little while longer. Hey, I'll sell it on e-Bay someday, I tell myself. This brings back good memories, I'll think. Hey, what's wrong with good memories? Occasionally when I'm cleaning out the office, I'll become so enthralled with some old treasure I've retrieved that I'll actually start using it again.

I doubt that I'll be playing these vinyl records that I boxed up today anytime soon. It's much easier to listen to digital versions of the same songs on my computer or phone. One thing I noticed while I was boxing things up was that I used to have a very eclectic and extremely wide ranging taste in music during the days of vinyl. I sorted through hundreds and hundreds of records in every genre imaginable. Steve Reich's process music epic "Come Out" sat next to vintage Aerosmith, which in turn sat on top of a hodge-podge of Dave Brubeck, Paul Simon, The Doors, and Bedrich Smetana's The Moldau. There was a little bit of everything. Some of the albums I'm boxing up are quite rare, since DJ friends used to give me promotional copies of albums they received at the radio station from unknown musicians that didn't get any airplay. Like my watch collection, my record collection mostly consists of stuff that nobody has ever heard of.

Dash threw up again last night, which seems to prove that the antihistamines the vet prescribed aren't doing any good. Once again, after he woke everyone up at 4 AM, he was completely fine for the rest of the day. I don't know what is wrong with the dog. Maybe nothing is wrong with him. Dash has always been a very sensitive animal and manages to get himself worked up over nothing time and time again. Maybe he just got upset that Dot stole his place on the bed last night. If Dash could talk, I'm sure we'd get to the bottom of things in just a few minutes.

It's hard to believe that it's Christmas Eve tomorrow. Somehow it seems like we should still be getting ready for Thanksgiving. Things just move too fast these days. While those Mayans were predicting the end of the world, I wonder if anyone else was predicting that time would actually speed up some day and entire years would zip by before you could get anything accomplished. I think it's already happening.

Katy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 976

I don't visit my safe deposit box very often. Perhaps I should go a little more frequently. I had to retrieve something today and discovered a household inventory list that hadn't had any new entries since 1990. I also discovered a very out-of-date will where all the beneficiaries were already dead. These worthless documents will go straight to the shredder, but I wonder how many other totally worthless documents still remain. There's probably plenty of worthless documents over at the storage warehouse. Once, my accountant told me that I needed to save all my financial records for at least three years. At another point in time, the same accountant told me that I should keep things seven years. I think I've been keeping records for ten years just to be safe. What is the point though?  Most of these records could have been generated by aliens from another planet and I wouldn't know the difference anymore. I just look at this stuff and wonder what it has to do with me.

I will admit to saving a few totally worthless documents from the shredder today. They were both publishing contracts from record companies that had gone out of business over a decade ago. I saved them because they reminded me of a day when I actually thought I had a future in the music business.

As you might expect, the city didn't get finished with their aerial spraying program last night. I don't know if they ran out of insecticide, or the planes were too slow, or what, but they only got half the city sprayed. That means the spray planes will be back tonight. They're starting earlier this time as well. The dogs will have to get all their peeing done by 8:30 PM this evening. Why do I think this isn't going to work? The dogs always want to go out around midnight. On a positive note, I didn't see any mosquitoes today, so maybe the spray is working.

I got a great little condenser microphone today that connects directly to an iPhone or iPad. The sound quality was amazing. It sounded very similar to some Neumann microphones I've used. It makes as much sense to use the phone for interviews now as anything else I've got. I predict that in a couple of years, I'll be using the phone for everything I do.

Unfortunately, the iPhone still can't cook breakfast. I had Eggs Benedict this morning on my weekly breakfast outing. I thought they would be a real treat, but Janet's Eggs Benedict are a lot better.

Toby is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day