Day 2504

Dash followed a path this morning we hadn't been down in years and all of the sudden it was like old times. It was a nice day and we ended up walking three miles. We used to do this every day, but it's been a long time. I noticed that leaves are already starting to turn in some sections of the park. Late Fall flowers are blooming. It was good to get reacquainted with this part of the neighborhood. On the way home, I noticed some new houses under construction and even talked with a few neighbors.

I asked one guy about a home that has remained vacant ever since it was completed several years ago. "Are you guys ever going to move in," I asked the owner. "I haven't been able to convince my wife to move yet," he told me. It seems like they would have worked this out before they built the elaborate house, but what do I know. When I asked whether he was going to sell the place now, he indicated that it was turning out to be a pretty great man cave for him. It must be nice to have the resources to build a million dollar house and then not even bother to live in it. The guy drove away in a perfectly restored 1966 Corvette and Dash and I continued our walk.

I love the cooler weather. Maybe that was why Dash was eager to take a longer walk this morning. Of course, he might have just wanted to get away from the chaos he woke up to. Dot had pooped in her sleep and then rolled over in it when she woke up. She was a smelly mess and I still had to figure out how to get her outside before she peed all over the place. After I took her out to pee, hosed her down, cleaned up the soiled blankets, and washed my hands several times, it was time for breakfast. I've decided that weekdays are easier than weekends. The discipline of getting up very early just works out better for everyone.

My convenient Scan and Go app crashed while I was grocery shopping this afternoon. I thought I'd have to start over, but discovered that the app saves your scanned items to the cloud and all the purchases I'd made before the crash were still there after I re-booted my phone. I decided to use 4G instead of the store's WiFi to complete my transactions and everything worked just fine. Even with this weird glitch, I still managed to get out of the store much faster than I would have if I'd gone through the check-out line.

Janet went to a friend's gallery opening after dinner. While I was cleaning up the kitchen, Dot came out to greet me, covered with poop. She'd done it again. I stopped what I was doing and took her outside and hosed her off a second time. Then I did a forensic search of the house and cleaned up the mess. Dot's not even aware of what she's doing. I can't get mad at her, but I do swear a lot now. This is very tiring.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do tomorrow. There are a ton of chores that need my attention, but I'd like to do something interesting for a change. Unfortunately, the only thing that interests me at the moment is sleeping.

Dot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2476

Weekends always start off with an accident these days. We don't sleep in that much longer, but it's enough to throw Dot off her schedule. Once again, when she woke up, she wasn't able to make it outside in time and left a trail of pee on the rugs leading to the back door. It's not a big deal, but it does make sleeping in kind of pointless.

The Scan and Go app didn't work at the grocery store today.  Everything worked fine on my end, but the little hand held device the store uses to confirm your purchase as you leave the store was broken again. The store manager was called and he wrote down my information on a piece of paper and said he'd confirm my purchase by hand. This is the third time this has happened. When you're an early adopter of anything, you run into these little glitches frequently. I'm not sure this new system is ready for prime time. It's supposed to be a time saver, but if the manager has to write all your information down by hand, it doesn't save any time at all.

I took my dog walking boots to the shoe repair shop for the third time to get new taps put on the heels. I thought that shoe taps were a great idea that would extend the life of the shoes, but they only seem to last about a month. The shoe repairmen always screws the taps on the shoe using three little screws, and as soon as the head of the screw wears off, the taps fall off and get lost. I keep asking if he could just Superglue the taps on instead, but the man speaks limited English and I'm not sure he understands. Maybe there's a good reason why glue wouldn't work. I just got the three little screws again today.

The Dalmatian Rescue Golf Tournament was supposed to be tomorrow, but it got postponed because we're scheduled to be getting some severe weather very soon. I thought the storms were going to start tonight, but so far it's still dry. There was a lot of thunder and lightning about an hour ago, but it appears that were were right on the edge of the storm and the bad weather moved to the North of us. The thunder and lightning was loud enough to scare the dogs. Dot started barking and Dash went looking for a safe corner to hide in. I hurried to get the rugs that were drying in the back yard back on the porch where they wouldn't get wet, and started charging backup batteries in case the power went out. By the time I had everything ready, the storm had already moved out of the area.

I decided to remove Google Drive, Dropbox, and Evernote from my computer today. I used to need these things to keep corporate clients happy, but they are just a nuisance now. Google Drive is the worst, because it seems to talk back and forth to Google about a hundred times a day. They probably gave it away for free just so they could suck information out of your machine. It feels good to be free of the cloud. My computer boots up faster too. I'm sure Apple is still sucking information out of my computer, but I can't figure out how to get rid of Apple's intrusions. They're built into the system.

I'm not sure what I'll be doing tomorrow. If the weather is as bad as the forecast says, I won't be going anywhere. Here's hoping that the power stays on and that Dot and Dash stay calm.

Scout is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2469

I find all this talk about the candidate's health amusing. These guys are my age. They may be healthy compared to other people approaching seventy, but they aren't thirty-five anymore. It's amazing how quickly the body starts to deteriorate when you approach seventy. My Dad was like John Wayne in his younger years, but between seventy and eighty, his decline was swift and debilitating. I'm starting to experience the ravages of time myself. I just don't understand why we nominated two people who are so old and so disliked. Didn't we learn anything from Ronald Regan? Many doctors and even his own son now say that he suffered from Alzheimers Disease while he was still in the White House. You'd think in a country of over 300 million people, we could find at least one decent, healthy person in their early 40's to run for president.

I certainly didn't see many healthy people this morning. When I took Dash on his morning walk, we  somehow found ourselves in the middle of one of those charity running events. We must have been at the tail end of the race, because there weren't many people actually running. There were a few Moms pushing strollers, but mostly we shared the trail with some very overweight folks who definitely shouldn't have been wearing yoga pants. I guess some of the bystanders thought Dash and I were in the race, because when we passed, I could hear them saying "Keep it up. You can do it." It was kind of embarrassing, since some of the fat people were beating us. They weren't stopping to pee on every tree though.

I had quite a bit of website work to do today. I guess working on weekends is considered normal now. I got everything finished, but it didn't leave me with a lot of time to do anything else. At least I got to sleep in late this morning. When there's no alarm clock, both dogs seem content to sleep until at least 7:30 AM. The only problem with sleeping longer it that I end up cutting things pretty close with getting Dot outside to pee in the morning. If she's still sleeping when I wake up, I get everything prepared for the race to the door. First I unlock and open the back door, put my shoes on, and then I wait. As soon as Dot starts to stir, I lift her up and guide her by her harness straight out the open door so that she'll hopefully pee outside. There is no margin for error. If I forget to unlock the door, she will pee in the living room while I'm fiddling with the lock. If I forget my shoes, I just have to go outside barefoot. Today, I was successful. Some days, I'm not.

I've grown to love the iPhone app that lets me do my grocery shopping without standing in the check out line. This app not only saves me time, it also save me a lot of needless aggravation. Now, I wish there were other apps that let me avoid people in my daily life. I wish there was an app that would tell me exactly when to leave the house in order to avoid traffic jams and irritating drivers. I wish there was an app that would tell me when the strawberries were fresh. I hate buying a package of strawberries and discovering a rotten, moldy strawberry hidden in with the others when I get home. An app that allowed me to buy clothes that fit without having to try them on first would be nice as well.

Dot is walking better today. The extra rest she's been getting seems to be helping. The only downside to extra rest is that it virtually guarantees that Dot will poop in her bed. When I anticipate that this is going to happen, I put a pad under her and take off her harness so it won't get soiled. Sometimes this works like a charm. Other times, Dot decides that she wants to get up again and go outside as soon as I get her harness off. Such is life.

I sorted through several months worth of unread bank and brokerage statements, medicare notifications, and reminders about upcoming events this afternoon. Why do people keep sending me these things? I have no interest in reading them anymore.

Princess is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2462

Nothing works anymore. Our security light went out last night. When the electrician replaced the fixture a few months ago with a new LED light, he said this would be the last security light we would even need. Wishful thinking, I guess. The last forever fixture lasted about six months. It's not like this was the only thing that wouldn't work this morning. I got a no signal error when I turned on the TV and had to reboot the set top box. My phone wouldn't connect to the WiFi network as well. Rebooting fixed both balky devices, but why should I have to do this every other day? When I went to get groceries, the Scan and Go app that I've been bragging about had trouble reading bar codes. The oven seems fine though. Just three days ago, I thought the oven was a lost cause. The point I'm trying to make is that very few things are reliable these days. You're always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I never open the sunroof on my car because once Janet's sunroof got stuck in the open position just before a rain storm and everything inside the car got soaked. I've never had much faith in people, but it sure would be nice if I could have faith in my machines again.

I had some complicated website revisions to make this afternoon. The job should have been easy, but the files I received had been corrupted and I had to recreate them from scratch. I get a lot of work on weekends now. The people who send me these assignments must not read the blog or they would know how I feel about working on weekends. Working 24/7 is a badge of honor to some people. Maybe these guys mistakenly think I'm one of them. Not that it matters, but I did get the job finished.

It rained a lot last night. The sound of the wind woke me up and that's when I noticed that it was really dark in the back yard. Normally, I go right back to sleep when I wake up, but the darkness make me uneasy and I walked around the house checking things before I eventually went back to bed. Nobody else woke up. By morning, everything seemed normal again and I wondered if I'd just imagined things. The ground was wet and the temperature was a lot cooler, so the brief storm must have been real.

One of my doctors called and told me that my PSA levels were too high and they wanted to retest them in a month. Years ago, I would have been alarmed by this news, but today I was just irritated. My PSA levels have fluctuated wildly my whole life and I don't think they mean very much. I've read numerous studies that confirm my skepticism. I suspect that this test, like many others, is mostly a way for doctors and labs to generate extra money. The older I get, the less a lot of this stuff matters. No matter what I do, I'm not going to live forever. I'm starting to feel the same way about Dot's cancer rechecks. If one of her periodic scans showed the tumors were growing again, what could we do? Not much at this point.

Dash seems kind of lethargic today. I hope nothing is wrong with him. I feel a bit lethargic too, but my problem is just a lack of sleep. Hopefully, we'll all sleep well tonight. I'm going to need some extra energy to make it to the gym tomorrow.

Cleo is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2448 - Dot's Birthday

I feel bad about not doing more for Dot's birthday. We're all getting old and tired. I know Dot is at least 16 years old and may even be 17. It hard to know the exact age of a rescue dog. Usually their birthday is just the day you adopt them.

We used to have elaborate parties for all our dogs, but they seem like distant memories now. The few dog friendly restaurants that remain in town are too far away and I don't think Dot would enjoy being transported in the car anyway. Even if she wanted to go, I don't think we can get two dogs in the same car anymore. Dot needs a lot more room with her injuries and I don't know where we'd put Dash. There used to be two places in town that made beautiful birthday cakes for dogs, but they both went out of business. The cakes were expensive and a lot of people didn't want to pay that much to treat their dog. After trying to make similar cakes myself, I quickly realized that these cakes were a bargain. It's a shame that these businesses didn't succeed. That's all in the past though. Last year, we got them some dog cupcakes at Sprinkles but it wasn't much of a party. They both ate the little cupcakes in about two seconds.

I saw a snake in the back yard this morning, but I wasn't able to catch it before it slithered away. I was trying to lift it up with a stick and toss it over the back fence, but the snake was faster than I was. I didn't want to pick the snake up with my hands, because it looked a lot like a baby copperhead. I don't want to mess with those things. The venom is actually stronger in baby snakes. I don't know why. Hopefully, the snake continued it's journey and is somewhere in the park by now. I definitely don't want Dash to discover it.

We went to a concert tonight because one of Janet's friends was performing. We hear this group almost every year. They are a large a cappella chorus that performs all over the world. When we first started going to these concerts, I wasn't that wild about this barbershop style of singing, but either they've gotten better over the years, or I've grown to appreciate them. The concerts are quite good.

When I used the Scan and Go app at the grocery store today, I noticed that there was a new welcome screen that said "No purchases over $750." I'm never going to buy that many groceries, but I wonder what this message means. Apparently, even though the app has been around less than a month, someone has already figured out a way to scam it. I wish everyone was honest and played by the rules. If everyone were honest, I wouldn't even need passwords on all these apps.

It was really hot today and there were no Summer showers to cool things down. I don't know about you, but I'm ready for Winter.

Dot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2441

In an ideal world, I'd get up early on Saturday and have all my shopping done before 11 AM. It just makes sense to get your chores done before everyone else in town starts doing the same thing. Unfortunately, it also makes sense to sleep in when you don't have to get up. We got off to a late start this morning. I should have checked the weather radar as soon as I got up. It looked like there would be plenty of time to walk around the block before it started to rain again, but I was wrong. We only walked about 300 yards before the skies opened up and the deluge began. Oh, well. Dot needed a bath anyway. We were all soaking wet before we were able to retrace our steps and return home again.

Oddly, this ten minute downpour was the major rain of the day. If we'd just waited until after breakfast to walk the dogs, we would have stayed dry. It didn't start to rain again until I was on my way to the grocery store. I probably could have avoided this as well, but I'm getting sloppy. It's getting way too hard to do everything at the best possible time. I was trying not to leave the house this morning until Dot had pooped, but she wasn't very cooperative. Eventually, I just gave up and decided I'd take my chances on coming home to a big mess.

I love the new Scan and Go app on my phone. It makes grocery shopping so much easier.  I can't wait until all stores give you the option of bypassing the checkout lanes. The app is perfect for grocery stores, but it would be useful for clothing stores as well. I hate it when sales people hover nearby, trying to be helpful. I know my own size and am perfectly capable of selecting a pair of pants myself. Groceries are a good start to this brave new world of automated shopping. Maybe someday, I'll never have to stand in a checkout line again.

I couldn't figure out why the pump on the roof wasn't working and then I remembered that the roofers disconnected everything a few weeks ago when they applied the patch material. I went up on the roof to reconnect the pump and was pleasantly surprised that all the new patches had survived the recent rains. The roof was under about three inches of water, but other than reconnecting the sump pump, I didn't make much of an effort to dry things out. Why bother. It's just going to rain again tomorrow.

Maybe it's just a coincidence, but Dot isn't having quite as many problems with incontinence lately. She still poops in the house, but the intervals are less frequent. For the past three nights she's slept all the way through the night without making a mess. It would be great if she was actually improving, but I'm not going to get my hopes up. Neurological problems are weird. Things don't progress in a linear fashion. There are good days and bad days, and just when you think you've got things figured out, something completely surprising will happen.

I hope the weather improves tomorrow. I made dinner reservations again and I'd hate to have to cancel two times in a row. I've given up on keeping the car clean. I'm going to the gym tomorrow morning rain or shine.

Blackjack is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2434

I used my new Scan and Go app when I went to the grocery store today. It worked like a charm. I was really pleased at what a time saver this was going to be until I finished my transactions and was leaving the store. Evidently, part of the process is having someone scan the receipt on your phone to verify the transaction. The lady who normally counts the number of items in your buggy seemed unfamiliar with the hand held device and couldn't get it to work. She called her supervisor for help. The supervisor said the machine was broken and called the manager. "Wasn't this supposed to make things faster," I asked the manager. "It's really fast when it works," he told me. Eventually, the manager found a backup machine and pointed it at my phone. As soon as I heard a beep, I was good to go. I could have checked out faster today the old fashioned way, but I still like this new technology. I bet it won't be long before they replace the person at the front door with a machine that just senses the phone in your pocket. People always seem to be the weak link in the chain.

I got my 2017 vehicle registration sticker today, so my car is legal again for another year. The hardest part of this whole process is removing the old sticker from your windshield so you can attach the new one. You can't just peel these stickers off. Parts of the sticker always remain attached to the windshield and you have to carefully scrape them off with a single edge razor blade. After I cleaned all the sticky residue off with window cleaner, I attached the new sticker, wondering why we don't still put the vehicle registration sticker on our license plate like we used to.

Dot's digestive system seems to have calmed down a bit. Compared to yesterday's disastrous series of accidents, today was a piece of cake. She pooped in her bed right after she woke up this morning, but that was my fault. We don't usually set the alarm clock on weekends, but Dot has her own alarm system. She expects us to be up by six AM and to be fed and ready to walk before seven. If I'd gotten up at six and immediately taken her outside, we wouldn't have had a problem.

We got a little rain today and I think we're supposed to get some more tomorrow. Since the roof has been patched and the patches appear to have cured well, I welcome the rain. The yard is really dry and our old fashioned sprinklers don't really do a good job of keeping things green. Since I don't think we'll be getting a fancy underground sprinkler system anytime soon, rain will have to do.

I'm having all sorts of minor computer problems. My phone keeps sending me messages saying that there is no SIM card attached. I can make the error message go away if I reboot my phone, but I shouldn't be getting it in the first place. There's a weird little process called mDNSResponder that is sucking up all my memory in my main computer. I can't just delete this process because it is used to connect me to the Internet. The battery has gone bad in my iPad, but they tell me that it is not replaceable in my older Series 1 model. I don't know about you, but I think Apple hardware and software was a lot more reliable when Steve Jobs was alive.

The weeks go by so fast these days. I'll try to make to most of my trip to the gym tomorrow.

Emma is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2420

I've seen the future. When I was at the grocery store today, I noticed that they were promoting a new app that allows you to scan, purchase, and pay for items using your phone. You purchase as you shop and bypass the checkout line entirely. As soon as you scan the last item on your list, you are done. This is what I've been waiting for. I downloaded the app immediately. I used to like the automated checkout aisles, but now that people have overcome their fear of them, they are just as bad as the regular aisles.

I'm always standing in line behind some idiot who keeps inserting expired credit cards into the machine, hoping that one of them will work. This new app will allow me to bypass all these delays. If one store is doing this, pretty soon all stores will have apps that let you scan and go. Restaurants won't be far behind. You'll just sit down at a table, order from your phone, and the food will appear at your table.This is what I don't understand about politicians who promise to bring back jobs. The jobs aren't coming back ever. If there's a robot available that can take the place of an employee, the robot wins.

I got the roof prepared for the roofers today. It's dry now and as clean as I can get it. The standing water was so hot that I was surprised that it hadn't boiled away yet. If someone would invent a way to turn standing water into energy, I'd have free power for life. This roof is such a nuisance. I wonder if Janet and I will ever live in a house with a normal roof again? There was a time when I thought we would have moved to some idyllic location in the mountains by now, but life got in the way. The older we get, the more daunting another move seems. I may be stuck with this stupid roof forever.

Dot had a good day. Some days she seems lucid and other days she seems totally out of it. Today she seemed happy and had enough energy to get up by herself a few times. Aging is definitely not a linear process. It meanders around, trying to catch you by surprise. I saw this with my Dad as well. One day he'd be making plans for the future, and the next day he'd just be staring off into space. I hope I never succumb to dementia. They say a network of friends is vital to older people. I'm not looking good in that department. On the other hand they say that writing keeps the mind agile. I write constantly. Maybe it's a wash.

I accidentally erased my backup drive today. This is why I have two backup drives. I thought I could just reformat the drive and back everything up again. For some reason, the information wouldn't fit. WTF? Everything fit on the drive yesterday. Why won't it fit today? I'm sure there's a logical explanation for this, but I can't figure it out. Maybe dementia is already devouring my brain. I'm trying to convince myself that one backup drive is plenty.

I actually got a decent amount of sleep last night. That was a surprise. Would it be too much to ask for a few extra hours tonight as well?  I guess it's all up to Dot.

Penny is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day