Day 1515

Breakfast was definitely the high point of the day. It's still cold. There's still snow on the ground. And I'm still bundled up in sweaters while I work. The furnace is working fine. The hot air just doesn't seem to make it all the way to the office in the back of the house. The dogs are smarter than me. On cold days they hang out near the heating vents in the living room, where the air is still toasty warm. I guess I could take a laptop and work in a warm room too, but I can't even write a simple letter without staring at a huge high definition screen anymore. Yes, I'm running Microsoft Word on a high end video editing workstation. Hey, I've got to use this stuff for something.

Much to my chagrin, Dot and Dash seem to love being walked separately. Dot takes sedate ladylike steps along the path, stopping periodically to smell things along the way. Dash charges through the brush, feeling a new sense of power now that he's in charge of his walk. I like seeing the dogs happy, but they are making a shambles of my schedule. I still got everything finished today, but it was only because the weather was so nasty that I wasn't tempted to do anything else.

The stock market continues to confound me. Just a few days ago I was happy to see some stop loss orders kick in, seemingly protecting me from the day's 300 point loss. Now, just two days later, the market has already regained most of the losses from the big sell-off and I'm wondering why I sold some perfectly good stocks. That's the trouble with protection strategies. They may protect you from the next zombie apocalypse, but they don't protect you from human nature. It all comes down too fear and greed. My fear triggered someone else's greed and the market went back up again.

Dash is sleeping through the night again, so maybe the Probiotics we're giving him are working. Dot is visibly stronger on her walks, so maybe the water therapy is working as well. My new Hepatitis-C meds aren't making me sick either, so hopefully they are working as well. Medicine is great when it works. It just doesn't work all the time.

It's supposed to warm up this weekend. I've even heard that we may see a little sunshine. With all the mud that appears after a thaw, it's probably too much to ask for the dog park to be open. It would sure be nice though. Dash is getting cabin fever.

Stortz is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1511

Today was everything you'd expect from a Winter Monday. Cold. Wet. Not really worth getting out of bed for. Although I am reluctant to start any new week, a chilly, damp Winter day makes the hibernating instinct even stronger. I'm still getting used to living with one hand. Walking the dogs has turned out to be easier than I thought and getting dressed is harder than I thought. Things are getting better though. Each day the pain subsides a bit and the shoulder feels a little more stable. I'm trying to be as careful as I can, but you do have to continue going about your normal day-to-day life. When you get up, you make the bed. And when you go outside in the cold, you pull on as many layers of clothes as possible. Hopefully, tasks like these will soon become simple again. Creaky, arthritic joints actually look pretty good when you can't move them at all.

My work load continues to increase. The changes aren't dramatic, but each week I seem to be doing a little bit more than I was the previous week. So far, I'm still managing to get everything completed, but my current schedule sure doesn't leave much time for reading books or watching old movies on Hulu Plus. I guess it's always been this way. I either have way too much to do, or nothing at all. It's almost impossible to find that mythical happy median where you make enough to pay the bills and still have plenty of free time to yourself. That's the problem with working. You're always on somebody else's schedule.

I sure hope some of my stop loss orders kicked in today. With a 300 point drop in the DOW compounding last week's losses, it looks like the overdue correction analysts were predicting is finally here. Most people think the occasional 10% correction is a healthy thing, but I don't agree. It sucks to watch three months of steady gains disappear in a few days. I have a disciplined approach to investing, just like I have a disciplined approach to working and walking the dogs. None of this is any fun though. It's kind of like slogging up a muddy hill on a rainy day. Maybe that's why on days like this, I find myself envying those delusional people who think that life is nothing but rainbows and unicorns.

Dash is still having digestion problems. He goes to the vet tomorrow for his antigen shot, so that will give me another opportunity to ask how to get this dog back on a normal schedule where he isn't scratching at the door at 3 AM every morning to go outside. I don't know what is wrong. The stool sample we took in last week was normal. He's eating very high quality food. His blood work is just about perfect. Dash should be a healthy dog.

I'm supposed to start my Hepatitis-C treatment tomorrow. Since I am one of the early recipients of a brand new drug, I have no idea what the side effects will be. I'm hopeful and a bit wary. The experience ought to be interesting though. I hope I look back at all this as a giant step forward. It could just as easily be another thorn in my side.

Casey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1501

I'm having trouble telling whether things are even headed in the right direction anymore. Yesterday I thought I was almost finished with my ongoing battle with Hepatitis-C. Today a get a somewhat alarmed call from a nurse saying that my potassium levels were really high and I needed to get them under control before I could even begin my treatment. WTF? I've had hundreds of blood tests and my potassium levels were never in the danger zone before.

The nurse wanted to start me on some sort of medication immediately to remove the excess potassium. I wondered how the potassium got into my system in the first place and she asked me if I ate bananas, potatoes, or yoghurt, and drank a lot of orange juice. Well yes, actually. I do all those things frequently. The nurse told me to stop consuming potassium rich food and drive downtown to the hospital right away and pick up the medicine that would cause my body to get rid of the stuff. I still don't know why this was such a big deal, especially since other doctors have told me that potassium was a good thing. 

I've finally learned to follow my doctor's directions, so I picked up the medicine. I thought that I would be taking a pill, but it turned out I was supposed to drink a large bottle of horrible tasting stuff instead. The nurse said to chug the bottle in one sitting and then chase it with a soft drink to kill the taste. I don't drink soft drinks anymore and actually thought the Diet Coke I drank tasted worse than the medicine. I guess I won't be having a big bowl of bananas, blueberries, and yoghurt for breakfast tomorrow morning.

The tree is finally gone from my roof. The tree removal crew arrived while I was away having my Friday morning breakfast outing. When I checked on the dogs using the iPhone nanny cam, I noticed that Dash appeared very agitated and was pacing around the room. Dot was fast asleep on the bed, even though I clearly heard chain saws in the background on the phone. I know that old dogs sleep soundly, but this was pretty amazing. I think Dash was agitated because he knew that it was his turn to step up to the plate and protect the house from the offending noise, even though his older sister usually took care of this chore for him. The dogs were both fine when I got home, but since they are both prone to seizures, I stayed with them until the tree guys had finished their work. 

They sure finished a lot sooner than I thought they would. I had asked one of the tree guys if they could also clean up the dead branches the ice storm had knocked loose on one of the large oak trees in the back of the yard. Since the crew was already here, I didn't think it would be a big deal. The guy said sure, indicating that it wouldn't  be a problem to trim one more tree. A short time later the entire crew inexplicably drove off and left without an explanation. They didn't go anywhere near the oak tree. Why they left in such a hurry without bothering to trim the additional tree is as much of a mystery to me as my suddenly elevated potassium levels.

To complete the strange day, the stock market dropped over 300 points. I lost more in one day than I typically make in an entire month of writing.  I still believe that the market is my only real hope of permanently staying ahead of the game. Like I said earlier however, I'm having trouble telling whether things are even headed in the right direction anymore.  It's a very confusing world.

Holly is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 601

What a dismal day. I got my August invoices out this morning and was forced to acknowledge that everything I billed out for the entire month didn't even come close to offsetting what I lost in the market in a single day. I'm utilizing a complex strategy involving gold, managed futures and inverse ETF's to minimize the carnage as best I can, but there's no way to avoid losing money on a day like this.

On the business shows, I keep hearing about contagion. The pundits keep wondering if the contagion will spread. I've got news for you guys. It's a bit late to worry about contagion when the patient already has the disease. When you look at all the mindless riots in London, the ineffectiveness of our congress here in the United States, the endless unrest in the Middle East, and the fact that the entire world is drowning in debt, it's no surprise that the markets were in turmoil today. We've managed to make a big mess of things and I wonder if we've got what it takes to clean everything up. What did that nursery rhyme say? All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again.

On a brighter note, I'm now the mayor of the Post Office on foursquare. Pretty soon I'll be the mayor of everything in my tiny, self-contained world. Foursquare has made me realize that I really don't do all that much away from the computer. If Dalmatians could design websites, I think my life would be more or less identical to what my dogs currently experience. Eat. Work. Sleep. Repeat. That's about it.

For months now, I've kept thinking that one of the wooden mileage markers on a trail where I walk the dogs was out of place. There was a marker that said "1/2" that was placed after the one mile marker. I was convinced this marker should have been placed before the one mile marker, until I realized today that it was exactly midway between the one mile and two mile markers. Duh. It's been saying one and a half miles all along. What a dummy I am.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 597

The big news of the day has to be the 500 point drop in the market. I sold some things; held on to some other things; and bought an inverse fund that goes up whenever the DOW goes down. Will these strategies help to stem the carnage? Lord only knows. I've just about given up on predicting the stock market. The market seems to be totally driven by current events these days. It's all amazingly fickle. If anything good happens tomorrow, the world will breathe a collective sigh of relief and the market might go up 400 points. Who knows? Of course, if tomorrow's jobs report is dismal, as many expect, the market will inevitably drop even further. Whatever happens, there's a good chance that we will all be selling our stuff on eBay and picking up aluminum cans on the side of the road in another ten years.

The dream of substantial passive income seems as illusive as ever. I think I made three cents from Google Adsense today. I seem to have thousands of Twitter followers writing YA vampire novels, but I wonder if many of these aspiring authors are actually making money? My favorite Borders Books closed recently because the company went bankrupt. Half the Kindle books I see are given away for free. I have one author friend whose last book sold over a million copies and even he isn't rich. I keep hearing all these Field of Dreams people say that if you are doing what you truly love, the money will come. Maybe. In my own little world, the evidence says otherwise. The people I know personally who are doing really well all have jobs they hate.

It's hard to decide what car to take to the airport to pick up Janet later this evening. An old, brittle rubber hose could easily crack in the old Land Rover and leave me stranded on the side of the road. On the other hand, the heat might fry a computerized sub-system in the new Land Rover and leave me stranded on the side of the road. I'm really ready for this extended heat wave to be over. Even the simplest things seem twice as hard when it's 110 degrees outside.

At least it's Friday tomorrow. I've got the trash hauled out to the street already and I'm ready for anything.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day