Day 4471

It's Winter again. After a few seventy degree days I thought I could finally put my Winter coats away, but apparently not. I was surprised at how cold it was this morning. Wasn't I wearing shorts yesterday? Oh, well. It's bound to get warmer sometime soon.

The cold weather didn't seem to bother Dawn. She was eager to walk again this morning and seems happy that the whole family is back together again. Dogs have simple expectations. I think that all Dawn wants is the confidence that her life won't be disrupted again. 

It was a slow day for me. I paid some bills and wrote a letter to my sister. I never got around to mailing the letter, but I can do that tomorrow. I was finally ready to order the Hoka boots I've been thinking about, but discovered that they were out of stock again. Maybe they've always been out of stock. The website I was ordering from didn't let me know that the boots were not available until I placed the item in my cart and was ready to check out. Seems like they could have let me know when I first started looking.

I think the Axiom-1 launch that I applied to attend has gotten postponed. I haven't heard anything official yet, but I think the schedule has been pushed back at least a week. That's fine by me. I'm not really ready to go anywhere yet. I think the only reason I applied to cover this launch was because I thought it would be easier than usual to get approved. We'll see. I'm feeling ambiguous about everything lately.

I've cut a mile off my daily walk in hopes of preserving my feet. So far it hasn't made much difference. My feet bothered me quite a bit today. Actually the whole walk bothered me. It was way too cold for late March and there was a stiff wind. I make myself keep walking because otherwise I would probably do nothing. I'm getting plenty of rest already although I'm still not sleeping well. I don't think I'm going to sleep well until my nasal congestion is completely gone.

I do feel better today. That's a good sign. I'm not blowing my nose continually like I was on previous days, although  I still have to sleep on my back because of sinus drainage. I don't have Covid or even a bad cold. I've had these exact same seasonal allergy symptoms every Spring for as long as I can remember. Every year they seem to start a little earlier and last a little longer. It's irritating and it's easy to start looking for another explanation, but it's just pollen.

This doesn't look like a good year for wildflowers. The early bloomers like Wild Iris and Grape Hyacinth are looking puny this Spring. There are fields where I typically see thousands of blooms and this year there are only a few scattered flowers. There are lots of other flowers that I haven't seen at all. Several of the resident geese have disappeared as well. I usually see ten on my daily walks and lately I can only find seven. There is an extra Muscovy Duck though. I saw three yesterday. I wonder where the extra one came from. It kind of looked like the smaller duck that flew into our yard last month. I wonder about ducks a lot. I guess it's better than wondering why there are so many grey cars lately. Grey has suddenly become a very popular color.

I'm being bombarded with spam lately. Every single day I receive an avalanche of spam and Phishing attempts on every device I own. I never answer the calls that say "suspected spam" on my caller ID. I don't open suspicious e-mail messages that say my accounts have been compromised. I routinely block all the unfamiliar calls and texts I get on my iPhone. The attempts keep coming though. Janet and everyone I know are dealing with the same thing. It doesn't give you a lot of faith in humanity. 

Brooke is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1110

I thought I'd go look for a lamp today. I've been so pleased with the LED bulbs in the ceiling can lights that I thought I'd find a nice looking floor lamp that used these high tech bulbs as well. The floor lamps in the living room and bedroom are the only lights in the entire house now that haven't been converted to LED bulbs. I went to a lighting studio that I remembered from the days when I was obsessed by furniture and was astonished at how expensive nice looking lamps had become. I found a lamp that would look quite nice in the house, but I wasn't about to pay more for a lamp than I paid for my laptop computer. A floor lamp is not a complex object. It's basically just a bulb at the end of a pole. How something so simple could get so expensive is beyond me. Maybe I should have gone to Ikea instead of a fancy contract lighting studio.

Although I failed to come home with a lamp, I did get a few things done today. I found the air compressor and my tires are now all at the correct inflation pressure again.  I got Janet some fresh blueberries at the grocery store. I got Dash's antihistamine prescription renewed at the vet. I even found a little time to practice my guitar.

Am I the only one who's getting completely sick of hearing about the fiscal cliff every time I turn on the television? If congress does nothing, very little will change in our day-to-day lives. Conversely, if they get their act together and pass some sort of legislation before the end of the year, very little will change either. The country will still be in debt and most of us will still personally be in debt. No matter what happens, we will continue to get up in the morning and plod along the best we can. Some things will get better and other things will get worse. The world will change and the next generation will still think all the changes are completely normal. What's not normal is listening to some of the local news anchors continue to call this year-end financial mess the "physical cliff."  Don't they know? The physical cliff has nothing to do with spending and taxes. The physical cliff was what Thelma and Louise drove their car over at the end of the movie.

I hope Dash's sinus problems clear up soon. I'm getting tired of getting up at 4 AM every morning to let him outside to throw up. Even though he's a lot lighter on his feet than Dot, he still tracks in a lot of mud too. I've got to get better at cleaning muddy paws when I'm half asleep. The bed was covered with paw prints when I woke up this morning.

Alle is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1099

I got up extra early this morning, but it really didn't seem to make much of a difference. I still didn't get a lot accomplished. The problem with today's to-do list was that everything was tedious and time consuming. I did manage to get a new backup system in place, so I no longer have to worry about losing all my data in a hard drive crash. Not surprisingly, the very latest external drives were both faster and less expensive than the slightly older ones that would still connect to my computer. I wish I could have hooked up one of those superfast new USB-3 or Thunderbolt drives. Without them, it took me a long time to copy several terabytes of data.

It also took me an exceedingly long time to re-install Pro Tools, which happened to be the next thing on my list. Avid has never made it easy to install their software. First you have to get all the registration codes and serial numbers. Then you have to load all the codes into an iLok dongle that slips into an available USB port. Only then can you actually download the software.

I took a break from the computer tedium around mid-afternoon to take Dash to the vet. He's been waking us up almost every night around 3 AM, frantically wanting to go outside. When he gets outside, he eats grass and then throws up yellow phlegm. After he does this, he's completely normal for the rest of the day. After waiting in the lobby for almost an hour, we finally got a verdict on the strange behavior. Dash has sinus drainage. I have sinus drainage myself from time-to-time, but I don't need to go out in the yard and throw up. Oh, well. We'll give Dash some antihistamines and see if that clears things up.

I took a camera with me on our early walk, hoping to get some sunrise pictures. Unfortunately, the sun was already up. Hey, I'm not a morning person. Needless to say, I don't have many good sunrise pictures. Typically, it is the sun that wakes the dogs and I up each morning when it comes streaming through the bedroom window. I did manage to get a few nice pictures of geese swimming around in the lake. They must have gotten up earlier than I did.

Alvin is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day