Day 2032

Dot did well during her physical therapy session today. We talked about what was causing her to limp and came to no firm conclusions. The vet agreed that the limp could be caused by a wide variety of things, including an underlying neurological problem, too much exercise, or the Palladia pills she's taking. I'm going to ask Dot's oncologist if it would be OK to discontinue the pills for a month after her next ultrasound scan. If there are no adverse effects from postponing the chemotherapy for a while, at least we could determine if this was the cause of her lameness. For the time being, we will decrease the distance she walks slightly, while still having her climb small hills each morning to strengthen her leg muscles.

I finally finished editing all the images for my client's multi-media project. We've got enough pictures now for a nice slide show or a short Ken Burns style movie. If they want a slide show, I'm going to try to convince them to get one of those little Chromecast streaming sticks and just link it to pictures in a Google album. I've tried this and it's a super easy way to make a quick, professional looking slide show. When you select the Chromecast stick as the input source on your TV, the Google photo album you select will end up being the default screen saver. I used to spend days creating lobby presentations for clients and the first time I tried using Chromecast, I had a great looking presentation up and running in less than five minutes. I never thought it would happen, but I'm I'm finally willing to admit that I don't really need a DVD drive anymore. Netflix, Chromecast, Apple Music, and a host of other cloud based solutions are just so much better.

I traded my Apple Watch for the larger model. Why? Who knows. Truthfully, probably the only reason I exchanged the watch was because I could. I was perfectly happy with the smaller watch, but I like this slightly larger version too. Really, they're both pretty much the same. Hey, it gave me something to do after I brought Dot home this afternoon, it didn't cost very much to upgrade, and now I've got a bigger watch. I'll have to figure out something else to occupy my time tomorrow.

The reason it's been a slow week is that my writing assignments have dwindled to almost nothing. I finally discovered why today. The person who sends me most of the writing assignments is on jury duty. She must have gotten selected for a trial because she's been out of the office for quite a while. At any rate, when I resume cranking out articles, I'm be just as busy as I ever was. I actually ought to be grateful for the opportunity to take a breather. It's been nice not having much to do for a while.

This week has gone really quickly. I'm looking forward to going out for breakfast tomorrow. It will be nice to eat in peace without two barking dogs on either side of me. I created a monster when I started feeding Dot and Dash a banana while I ate my breakfast. Now, if the don't get their banana, they bark and howl until I peel and slice one up for them. Are these dogs spoiled? Of course they are. I've got to figure out another way to deal with this breakfast commotion though. Dot is gaining weight again. With her weak rear lags, we've got to be especially careful about her weight. She really doesn't need to be eating bananas and extra kibble after she's finished her regular breakfast. I've thought about solving the problem by just going out for breakfast every morning, but then I'd be the one gaining weight.

Greta is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2009

Take care of your teeth. I've always had good strong teeth and when I was younger I would frequently go decades between dental visits. This was a mistake. Just because my teeth didn't hurt didn't mean there weren't any problems. The problems grew slowly and painlessly year-after-year, until one day my mouth just imploded with bad news. If you take care of your teeth you can probably just go to a regular dentist. I had to go to a place called The Center for Complex Dentistry.

I was in the chair for over three hours today. The dentist talked back and forth with his assistant throughout the procedure. At one point I heard him say "This isn't supposed to be that difficult." At another point he called hurriedly for a second assistant, saying "I don't have enough hands to do this." Toward the end, he told me "I think you've made my top 10 list." Apparently, the work I had done was very difficult. I only had two fillings and one crown replaced, but one of the fillings was almost impossible. The dentist lived up to his reputation though. He was very, very good.

Be sure to pee before you have major dental work. Three hours is a long time to sit in that chair. I still have to go back in early August to have my permanent porcelain crown installed, but my long dental saga is almost over. My teeth are in good shape again, and most importantly, I won't need to get implants. I still don't know why it takes over a month to get a crown made, but I guess it does. The temporary crown they made me today fits well and I don't expect problems. They dentist just told me not to eat anything really sticky like taffy or caramel while I have the temporary crown. No problem. I don't eat many sweets anyway.

I didn't get a lot of work done today, since I was at the dentist for so long, but I did figure out a clever way to do a lobby slide show for one of my clients. These type of things used to involve dragging a ton of still images into an editing program, creating dissolves or other transitions between each image, and then burning the Ken Burns style Quicktime movie to a DVD in continuous play mode. I hated to make these things. Now you just have to plug a little Chromecast stick into the back of your TV, link the TV to one of your existing Google photo albums using your phone and you're done. It took me less than 45 seconds to have a nice looking slide show up and running.

It rained sporadically throughout the day but I was lucky enough to have a dry spell at both the beginning and end of the day so I could get the dogs walked. Dot hasn't had any more accidents in the house since I started being much more conscientious about getting her outside frequently to poop.  The days of trying to fit the dogs activities to my schedule are over. In the long run it is a lot easier just to change my schedule to meet the dogs needs. My financial adviser called today to confirm an appointment for tomorrow. I told him I'd be there unless there was a bad storm and I needed to stay home with Dot and Dash. Nobody even questions these type of things anymore. They all know who comes first in my world.

Hershey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day