Day 2789

I hope my shower repairs are successful. I spent a lot of time today cleaning and preparing the ceramic tile for the silicon caulk that will hopefully make the shower stall waterproof again. If I had three weeks to let everything dry properly, I would have used a Dremel Tool to remove all the old grout and then re-grouted the entire shower. Traditional grout takes so long to dry though. If you use the shower too soon, the grout just washes away. The silicon dries quickly, but unless the tile is absolutely clean, it doesn't stick to the surface very well. If the contractors had done a good job when we remodeled the bathrooms fifteen years ago, I wouldn't be having this problem. Contractors could care less what happens fifteen years later. They're long gone by then. I really need to have a new contractor re-do the entire bathroom, but I'm afraid that I'd find someone even worse than I did the last time. Sanded silicon caulk will have to do.

We really got a lot of rain last night. We did lose power for a few minutes, but luckily it came back on again quickly. Even momentary power outages are a nuisance. All the clocks need to be reset and for some reason the washer and dryer always turn themselves on automatically when the power returns. I have to remember to turn the air conditioner and any other power hungry appliances off if I am anticipating a power outage, so a surge won't knock the power out again when service is restored. In theory, my neighbors should be doing the same thing, but I doubt that they are.

Last any rate, the storm came and went without causing any damage. Dash got scared and spent about three hours cowering under my desk, but eventually he came back to bed. At least he didn't throw up. We've started giving him his evening meds a couple of hours earlier, just in case he has another episode. So far, so good. We've also started keeping a record of whenever he vomits or won't eat to see if we can detect any sort of pattern to this seemingly random behavior. I hope we can figure this out.

I was using the leaf blower this afternoon to clean up the back porch after the storm and all of the sudden I noticed that there were hundreds of small ants crawling all over me. The ants were coming out of the leaf blower. This was certainly a surprise. I was able to brush most of the ants away before they were able to bite me, but I did about a dozen ant bites. I was glad these weren't fire ants. The bites would have been much worse if they were. What makes thousands of ants take up residence inside a leaf blower? Who knows. The insects are definitely winning this summer. I'll probably have to take the leaf blower apart to completely get rid of the ant colony, but they aren't as much of a problem as the spiders. It wasn't that long ago that I removed all the spiders from around the house with the pressure washer. Now, they're back again. Nature is relentless. Ants of all sizes are everywhere. Spiders love to spin their webs on our windows. Roaches seem to use our underground HVAC ductwork as their own private subway system. I still don't like to use insecticides because of the dogs, so eliminating these pests is fairly hopeless.

I missed the Perseid meteor shower this year and will miss the upcoming solar eclipse as well. Janet has the final part of her reconstruction surgery that day and I didn't really have the money to travel anyway. With all I've been reading about the eclipse, I'm almost glad I'm not making plans to travel to the totality zone. A lot of hotels have been acused of  price gouging by raising room rates by several hundred percent on eclipse day. People are selling fake eclipse glasses online that don't provide any eye protection at all. Monumental traffic jams are still predicted in many parts of the country. And then there always a chance it will rain.

I can live without seeing the eclipse. I just want a shower that doesn't leak.

Emma is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2788

Dash threw up again last night. It's always the same. He has a completely normal, uneventful day. He goes to bed at the usual time and then wakes up again an hour or two later with an upset stomach. Usually he goes outside and throws up and then goes back to sleep again. You'd think that if he was having digestive problems, they would show up after his morning meal as well. He eats exactly the same thing for breakfast as he does for dinner. Nothing really makes sense. Sometimes we think this periodic vomiting is related to his vestibular disease. Other times we thing he ate a June Bug. Since Dot vomited occasionally before we discovered that she had intestinal cancer, we worry about that too. Today we gave him his evening meds early, so that at least he won't throw up his phenobarbital if he vomits again tonight.

Today was busy. I decided that I really couldn't postpone fixing the leaking shower stall any longer. I got out the wet/dry vacuum and adapted an attachment so that I could suck out all the water that has seeped between the shower pan and the underside of the tile floor. It took several hours to extract about a quart of water through a crack in the tile. While the vacuum was running, I went to Home Depot and looked for some sanded silicon caulk that would match the tile grout. This won't last as long as completely re-grouting the shower, but it is much easier and if I can remove enough water from under the tiles, the repair should last at least a year. Hopefully, Janet and I will remember to not take a shower tomorrow morning, or then I will have to vacuum the water out all over again.

I woke up last night around 3 AM and though I'd go outside and look for meteors. This was supposed to be the ideal time to view the Perseid meteor shower. Surprisingly, the sky was mostly clear, but I didn't see any meteor trails. When I looked to the East where the meteors were supposed to be, all I saw were two very bright security lights on a house across the street. The combination of an almost full moon, the headlights from a stream of cars returning home after the bars had closed, and the glare from the security lights made seeing a meteor trail virtually impossible. After ten minutes of futile looking, I went back to bed.

We finally got that rain today. There was a pretty good downpour around mid-afternoon and It looks like we are going to get even more rain tonight. The last time I looked at the weather radar, it looked pretty ominous. I hope we don't lose power. It's always a pain to get this posted when there's a power outage. I hear thunder now, but at least Dash is sleeping soundly. The last thing I wasn't is to have him needing to go outside and throw up during a major thunderstorm.

Assuming that the roof doesn't leak and that we still have power in the morning, I'll probably go to the gym. Oh, wait. I need to finish caulking the shower stall before I go anywhere. Removing the water is only step one. The most important thing is making sure that the water doesn't seem back under the tiles again.

Ellis is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day