Day 4274 - Labor Day

I'm making progress. I completed my full six mile walk in the park this morning. I was pretty slow, but who's counting. It helped that the weather was nice. For most of the walk it was overcast with a nice breeze. When I returned home, I felt no different than any other day. I'm still not supposed to lift anything heavy, but I think my recovery is progressing nicely. The big black and blue blotch on my belly is even starting to fade. When that disappears, I'll consider myself back to normal again.

The park was really busy today. I guess Labor Day is a real holiday after all. There were even a lot of people on the trails when we took Dawn on her sunrise walk. When I took my long walk right after breakfast it felt like the Fourth of July. I wouldn't mind seeing a lot fewer people in the park, but it's still nice to have a huge wooded area right outside your back door. When we moved here many years ago I didn't realize that we'd accidentally picked the best part of the entire city.

When I left on my walk this morning. I had to put Dawn's cone on because Janet hadn't returned from the gym yet. Dawn was totally disgusted. Dawn hates the cone, but her paws are looking so good now that I'd hate to see all this progress go down the drain. Dawn could still do a lot of damage if she started licking and biting at herself again. Luckily, I'm never gone for long. I don't think Dawn has it too bad.

I need to find some new ways to occupy myself. For the past several years most of my activities have been centered around trips to McDonald Observatory and Kennedy Space Center. I've learned a lot about astrophotography and made some valuable contacts at the space center. I wrote quite a few articles and many of them got published. Somehow, that all seems to have disappeared. Many of my contacts have retired and Covid restrictions have changed everything. I kind of feel like I'm back to square one and I'm not all that excited about starting over.

It's way too easy to spend the day sleeping. You'd think that if I slept during the day I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. This doesn't seem to be a problem. I've been getting a lot of sleep lately. I've been able to convince myself that all this rest is helping my recovery, but I won't be able to get away with this excuse much longer. I'm either going to have to find a new project or just admit that I'm lazy.

Dawn and I should be soulmates. She likes to walk and she likes to sleep. This sounds pretty good to me as well. Dawn still seems a little miffed that she has to share the bed with me, but she's learning. The room is quiet and I never watch television. Dawn usually falls asleep before I do. It bothers her if I'm staring at her so I usually turn away. We coexist pretty well, although she still hops off the bed and races to the front door as soon as she hears Janet's car in the driveway.

I've got a pile of bills I need to pay tomorrow. I find no joy in paying utility bills. The gas bill is lower in the summer, but the water and electric bills are much higher. You've got to water the grass in the summer and the air conditioner is running non stop. At least the air conditioner is working. The house is nice and cool.

Tomorrow will be much like today. Probably the entire week will be much like today. You realize that it's been a slow summer when the only excitement is a trip to the hospital.

April is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3658

We introduced ourselves to the new Dalmatians today. They are a good looking, friendly group of dogs with ages ranging from nine months to six years. Two of the newcomers are already in the process of being adopted. I'm glad that most of the new dogs are finding homes quickly. They all deserve a chance for a normal life. We spent quite a while playing with the dogs this afternoon, but it was time well spent. Ginny went to her forever home over the Christmas holidays. Hopefully, when we return next week, a few more will have found homes as well.

Before going to the kennel, I went up on the roof. It must have gotten really cold last night because there was ice on the roof this morning. Removing standing water in the Winter is depressing because it never evaporates. If I ignore the water after a rain, it just sits there forever. Eventually, it will find a way inside. So far, all the patches I've made are holding up well, but I keep finding new areas that need attention. My five gallon bucket of silicon is almost empty now. Hopefully, my recent repairs will take me through the rest of the Winter. The silicon material seems to do better when you apply it in the Summer.

I got off to a slow start this morning. I felt tired, but Fitbit said that I got a good night's sleep. Sometimes I wonder what Fitbit and the Apple Watch actually measure. The readings don't always correspond to the way I actually feel. I dream a lot. I have a feeling that my dreams are more stressful than my day-to-day life. I'm always lost in my dreams. I seldom feel this way when I'm awake.

We got home from the kennel fairly late and I ended up taking my walk in the dark again. It was such a clear day that I thought I might be able to do a little stargazing while I was in the park. No such luck. It certainly got dark enough, but the light pollution in Dallas is so bad that it's hard to see much of anything. An hour after sunset, all I could see was Venus, the Moon and two stars.

I wonder whether Janet and I will be able to stay awake until midnight tomorrow. For the past several years it's been difficult. Midnight is well past our bedtime these days. I can't imagine going out for New Year's Eve anymore. It seems like an eternity ago when my old band used to routinely play New Year's Eve parties. I usually wouldn't get home until 2 or 3 AM. How did I do this? Staying up late is the one misgiving I have about getting more involved with astronomy again. Unfortunately you can't see stars in the daytime.

Tomorrow I'll add the new dogs to the Dalmatian Rescue website. Maybe I'll use this picture of Larry.  He looks pretty handsome here.

Penny is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3648

I'm trying to expand my horizons. I went to a different part of town and tried a German restaurant for breakfast. The place was crowded with affluent older people and the food was pretty good. This was not like the food I used to eat when I worked in Germany. I had a big plate filled with smoked pork chops, eggs and skillet potatoes. I remember Germans started the day with much lighter fare. In Erlangen I always ate a piece of toast and a single soft boiled egg in an egg cup like all the other locals.

When I returned home, I watched a video of the Starliner launch that I'd really wanted to attend in Florida. I has planned to watch today's launch live on NASA TV, but slept through it. Things didn't go so well. A spacecraft clock got confused and sent the capsule into the wrong orbit. It will be unable to dock with the space station and they'll probably have to do the important orbital test all over again. Oops. Boeing has certainly had its share of high profile problems. First the 737 mess and now this. The big Artemis rocket I visited in New Orleans is also a Boeing project. I bet the Starliner failure will slow Artemis down as well.

It was another cold day. I wasn't that eager to take my walk this morning, but I didn't want to sit around and do nothing. I put on two coats and a pair of gloves and off I went. I wonder if I even have a warm enough coat for winter nights at the observatory. It's much colder in Fort Davis than it is here.   There was light rain in the forecast today, but I managed to complete my walk without getting wet. Today I saw a very tiny woodpecker I need to identify and a tree with strange translucent orange berries. The woodpecker flew away but I did get a picture of the berries.

I learned today that Amazon videos won't play on Safari, Firefox, or my TV. Janet has no problems watching them on her iPad, but the only way I could get them to play was to download a new version of Chrome. I don't really like to use Chrome. After a little research, I discovered that all the problems I was having had something to do with digital rights management. Evidently my older computer doesn't play well with the new rules. Oh, well. As I said yesterday, I'm not all that interested in movies anyway.

Every year around this time I need to decide whether to renew my Avid subscriptions. Last year I decided to drop Media Composer and this year I'm dropping Pro Tools as well. These licenses are expensive and I just don't use this stuff anymore. I have to admit that it's finally getting easier to acknowledge I'm retired. Who was I kidding. I'm not going to shoot any more corporate videos. I don't even know any corporate people these days.

I still can't figure out why I don't sleep as well under blankets. It's counterintuitive. It seems like you'd sleep better when you are cozy and warm. Fitbit says otherwise though. Could it be that I'm sleeping just fine and my Fitbit just doesn't work under a blanket? As I learned from my Amazon Prime experience today, technology can be confusing.

Lexi is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3523

All the grocery stores seem to be replacing cashiers with self-checkout stations. When I was shopping this morning there were only two cashiers and a long row of brand new automated stations. I've read that people don't like these things, but why not? Self-checkout is faster and you don't have to interact with anyone. I've already gone one step beyond self-checkout. Whenever I can, I buy things using an app on my phone. I scan the items as I find them and when I'm finished I just walk out of the store and leave. Like it or not, this is the future. Cashiers, bank tellers, and even waiters at restaurants are going away. Probably a lot of manufacturing jobs I don't see are going away too. Many already have. The simple truth is that companies prefer robots. Robots don't complain. They don't need health insurance. And they never go on strike. The little kids who are growing up now playing games on their iPads instead of going to a playground with their friends will probably prefer robots as well. Why not. They grew up with them.

I'm glad I grew up before all this happened. I did well in an old fashioned analog world. I'm not sure how well I'd thrive in a world where the best jobs went to the people who design and program the robots. Maybe I could repair them though. There will always be a need for people who can fix machines.

I was going to try and fix the old dehumidifier today, but I never got around to it. By the time I finished my Saturday shopping and took my long walks the day was almost over. There are YouTube videos that show you how to fix almost anything, but I can't find one about my particular brand of dehumidifier. I won't let this deter me though. Eventually I'll figure out how to take the thing apart, clean it, and put it back together again. There's no hurry though. We've got a new dehumidifier now that seems to work perfectly.

We've also got a new toaster oven. Janet bought one while she was doing her shopping today. She said she was tired of using the big oven just to make cinnamon toast. Works for me. The little oven is probably great for cooking a pizza too. We ran out of space for new appliances long ago, so we just set the toaster oven on top of the little emergency refrigerator. It's not actually in the kitchen, but it's close.

When I was walking this afternoon, I saw a guy with a guitar and a microphone on a stand singing to no one at all. He had a little battery powered amplifier and his voice was quite nice. Nobody was listening though. Not even the ducks were listening. I wondered what this was all about. Was he trying to attract an audience, or did he prefer putting on a little concert for himself? It was very hot outside too. There are certainly better places to practice on an August afternoon. I'll probably never know what the guy was doing. I see a lot of strange things in the park.

I slept better last night. I have no idea why. All the variables are always the same. I go to bed at the same time. The temperature in the house is the same. There is very little stress in my life. My sleep should be very consistent, but it's not. One of life's mysteries I guess. I go to sleep quickly, but I wake up too soon. Maybe this means that I'm actually getting all the sleep I need. Old people always seem to wake up early.

Toby is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3244 - Veteran's Day

It was a slow day at the gym. Moving the storage warehouse has taken its toll. Every bone in my body protested as I went through my routine today. Maybe it was worth it though. I did feel better when I was finished than I did getting out of bed this morning. I hope the aches and pains subside. I don't like feeling this way, but I don't like being too old to do things either. Maybe I'm just out of shape. I'm certainly not as active as I was when the dogs were younger.

Today was even colder than yesterday. Janet and I both wore our Winter coats when we walked Dash this morning. The weather was way too cold for me, but Dash seemed to enjoy it. He was more active than usual and wanted to walk down by the shoreline. It's always good to see Dash with a little energy because these days are becoming rare. After an hour out in the cold, we were all ready for breakfast.

If I didn't turn on the television this morning, I'd never have known it was Veteran's Day. Both my parents, who served in the Navy, are long gone. I had an art director partner who was a Marine and had two friends who used to be fighter pilots, but I've lost touch with all these people. When I listen to the tributes and Veteran's Day memorials on TV, all I can think of are the many pointless wars that have taken place in my lifetime. Vietnam and all the wars in the Middle East that followed didn't really liberate anyone or advance the cause of freedom. A lot of good people died needlessly. I guess I'm an isolationist at heart. My parents couldn't have ignored Hitler and the attack on Pearl Harbor, but a lot of the regional conflicts that my generation found themselves involved with were different. We didn't change anything for the better in Vietnam. The Middle East has been a mess for thousands of years. We should have stayed home and let some of these countries sort things out for themselves.

The shoes that seem to be doing a good job of protecting Dash's feet are wearing out fast. I don't think these new boots will last another week. I can envision the type of boot Dash needs, but nobody seems to make it. Since his rear paws turn under when he walks, he needs protective rubber on both the top and bottom of the boot. The rubber needs to be durable while remaining very flexible. It is impossible to get a thick rigid boot on. The shape of Dash's paws makes him very hard to fit. It's too bad I couldn't make an impression of his rear leg and have someone fabricate a custom fitted boot. For now, I guess I'm just have to keep buying these off the shelf dog boots fairly frequently.

I guess advertising does work. Lately, I've been real tempted to buy one of those "My Pillows" you always see advertised on TV. They probably aren't any better than any other pillow, but when you aren't sleeping well, it's always easy to blame it on your pillow. Maybe I should blame the mattress as well. It used to be really firm, but years of dogs playing and sleeping on the bed have worn it out. Dalmatians can be rough on furniture when they're young and active. I think my back would feel better if I slept on the floor. I'm not going to try that though. The floor is cold and full of dog hair.

I think I'd better get a flu shot next week. I rarely get the flu and often skip the shot. Maybe my luck has run out. I volunteered to take pictures at a children's event this month. The flu doesn't bother me, but children do. I always manage to catch a cold when I'm around children. I wish I'd remembered this before I volunteered.

Dolly is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1639

The roofing folks knocked on my door this morning and said they were here to inspect the roof. I had asked them to give me some advance notice before they came, but since I was here anyway, I guess it didn't matter. I went up on the roof with them and they said that considering I lived in a wooded area and the roof didn't drain properly anyway, it was doing pretty well. This was hardly a ringing endorsement. I showed them the spots I thought might be deteriorating. Sometimes they said "We can fix that." and other times they told me that there was nothing wrong. I told the guys to repair any areas that they thought might cause me problems in the future and went back inside to work. Later in the day, I went back up on the roof to see what they'd done. There were a bunch of little repair spots scattered over the roof, but none in the areas that I thought might be a problem. I actually have no idea what the roofers did.

I got a request to add some custom features to a client's WordPress theme today. Many of my clients love WordPress themes because they are cheap and easy to update without any coding skills. Themes are easy to switch too. The problems start when people like their existing theme but just want it to look completely different. You should really just pick a theme and leave it alone. I get requests that would be very easy to implement using HTML. Unfortunately, with my limited knowledge of PHP, it always takes me longer to modify a dynamic site than it would to create an entire static site from scratch. I've grown to hate WordPress, even though many people absolutely love it. I'm trying to keep up with the times though. I'm learning to develop nice looking, full featured dynamic websites, even though I'd really rather still be doing magazine and newspaper ads.

Dot did really well using the underwater treadmill today. We generally do the treadmill workout first, let her rest a bit, and then finish with acupuncture. The acupuncture relaxes Dot, and she almost always leaves her session feeling relaxed and happy. I wish there were something that did the same sort of thing for me. Relaxed and happy is definitely not my normal state. Maybe I ought to just sleep eighteen hours a day like the dogs. It seems to work for them.

We are still supposed to get some severe thunderstorms tomorrow. I sure hope that whatever they put on the roof today dries fast. If there is a downpour tomorrow, it would be just my luck that all the new coating material washes away in the rain. Who knows? Tomorrow might be hot and sunny. I never put much faith in Texas weather forecasts. I'm still glad I got Dot's vet appointment taken care of today. Driving around with Dot in a thunderstorm is not a pleasant experience.

Willa is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1394

Wednesdays are tiring. I'm up before dawn to drive to my business networking breakfast and can't call the day officially finished until we return from dog training class well after sunset. In between these two activities, a lot of typing takes place, along with a two hour trip downtown for Dot's weekly acupuncture and physical therapy session.

During today's visit with Dot's physical therapy vet, we made arrangements for her to get an MRI scan of her brain sometime next week. I've had a scan of my own brain and I can see why they want the dog anesthetized for this procedure. Being stuffed inside a narrow tube and listening to what sounds like a jackhammer pounding right next to your head is probably enough to freak any dog out. Hopefully, Dot does not have a brain tumor. The other likely causes of her seizures are much easier to deal with.

The traffic was terrible today. I can't imagine driving around in Dallas traffic on a daily basis. You never know what to expect. Usually, the trip to see Dot's acupuncture vet isn't that bad, but today it was bumper-to-bumper all the way. Bad traffic is usually the first topic of conversation during the Wednesday breakfast meetings too. Most of the folks in the group seem to drive continually. I don't know how they stand it. I would go stark raving mad, if I had to deal with rush hour traffic every day.

Writing in a quiet room with a dog under your desk is so much better than getting up and fighting traffic every day, just to arrive at an office where you probably don't want to be anyway. If you can tolerate the insecurity of never knowing where your next meal is coming from, the writer's life isn't bad at all. I finished two more articles today. There's plenty to do tomorrow as well. The best thing is that I seldom have to talk to anyone.

I fell asleep last night watching an old episode of Perry Mason. When I woke up, I thought I was still watching Perry Mason, but it was actually a very similar looking black and white show called the Untouchables. I couldn't figure out why Perry Mason was defending Al Capone. Then I went back to sleep again. I hope I sleep well tonight. It's been a very long day.

Maverick is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1328

It's a shame to drive thirty minutes to a nice dog park, only to find an overly aggressive dog getting in fights with the other dogs when you get there. This doesn't happen every week, but it certainly happens more often than I'd like. Usually, the owners of these aggressive dogs aren't even apologetic about their dog's deplorable behavior. They'll typically pull the fighting dogs apart, then let the instigator go right back to mingling with the other dogs like it was the most normal thing in the world. Meanwhile, Dot and Dash are huddled in one corner of the park until the mean dogs leave. As far as I'm concerned, there are no bad dog breeds, but there are plenty of bad dog owners.

Yes, I'll admit I'm geeky enough that I turned on the TV this afternoon to catch a live special where the BBC announced the identity of the next Dr. Who. Will Peter Capaldi make a good Dr. Who? He's certainly a lot older than recent era doctors, but I've enjoyed watching him in The Thick of It. He'll probably make a very good Twelfth Doctor. I'm pretty accepting of these changes anyway. After each regeneration, I usually completely forget about the previous doctor in a matter of weeks.

I got a little lesson in how automated our lives have become this afternoon. I had to go to Home Depot to pick up some odds and ends. The furnace filters and grass seed didn't present a problem, but there was only one of the little stainless steel sink strainers I needed left in the plumbing department and it didn't have a UPC code. I told the checkout clerk what the price was, but he couldn't ring the item up without a bar code to scan. After several unsuccessful attempts to enter the price manually, he just gave me the strainer. Apparently, it just wasn't worth the effort to sell something without a bar code.

I'm not sleeping well. I can't blame it on the dogs anymore either. Dot and Dash have been sleeping quietly all week, even leaving me plenty of room in the bed for a change. I'm still waking up with bad dreams in my head. I've never gone through such a sustained period of bad dreams. When I was young, I had fabulous dreams where I could fly. Then I went through an odd period where I dreamed I was walking from one city to another and could remember every step of the journey. Now, the dreams are just a jumbled mess. Nothing works. I'm lost in giant hotels. My dogs run away. I'm playing with my old band, but we can never get our instruments tuned. I'm looking for a restroom, but they are all occupied. There are never any monsters. Just a lot of small irritations that keep piling up until they eventually wake me. Sometime it's hard to tell when the dream ends and real life begins.

Pebbles is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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