Day 4955

I paid for the water heater today. I hope nothing else breaks this summer. I've had enough. The roofing company people called me this morning and tried to convince me to add solar panels to the house. "Are you kidding," I told them. "I just finished paying for your roof." I guess old houses and unexpected expenses go together, but I'm getting tired of this.

I'm also getting tired of triple digit temperatures. Maybe we've had hotter summers before, but I don't remember any. This heat is relentless and there is no rain in sight. The temperature when we get up in the morning is what the high for the day would be in a normal summer. By the time I finish breakfast it's already too hot to do much outside. I put out water for the squirrels now. I don't know how the animals in the park are surviving.

I'm surviving by staying indoors. I go to the gym instead of walking in the park and if there are outdoor chores I do them very early in the morning. Luckily it's still tolerable just before sunrise so Dawn still gets her morning walks. She didn't go to training class tonight though. It was just too hot.

It's probably good that this blog is slowly winding to a close. I'm really running out of things to say. You know the routine by now. I get up. We walk Dawn. I make the bed. I eat some breakfast and check my messages. I go to the gym, walk three miles and shoot some baskets. Then I return home, eat some lunch and take Dawn outside to pee. In the afternoon I think about things I should be doing and then take a long nap. No wonder I get excited about going to Florida for rocket launches.

Maybe I'll think of something interesting to do tomorrow. I doubt it though. There's a new breakfast restaurant in the neighborhood, but I don't go out for breakfast anymore. The clothing store that I used to write for is having their big annual sale, but I've still got clothes from five years ago that I've never worn. Tomorrow will be very much like today except there's an Amazon delivery scheduled and it's trash day. Even when nothing's happening, you still need to take the week's trash out to the curb.

Jade is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2898

This was a good day to test a solar panel I'd purchased earlier this year. It was bright and sunny, so maybe this thing would generate a little electricity. Do I need a solar panel? Of course not. I"m fascinated by survival gear though, so the solar cell fits right in with the various small generators, camping lights, freeze dried food, and hand cranked radios that have caught my attention in the past. The solar panel didn't really generate much electricity. It would probably be great for camping if I liked to camp. I prefer nice, dog friendly luxury hotels, but I do like to be ready for the zombie apocalypse. Maybe I'm just a prepper at heart. After I determined that the solar panel worked, I put it away again. There were more important things to do, like walk the dog and eat breakfast.

I guess I'm done with my website project for a while. After doing some more work this morning, I've now got a working site that the client could go live with if they want. It took me two days to master the Wordpress template. Most of the things that puzzled me in the beginning were just because I couldn't find the right menu. This really makes me wonder about those people who call themselves "professional" Wordpress developers. What do they really do? I still find it hard to believe that my elegant custom sites are being replaced by these templates. Oh, well. It's a little late to complain now. The world has changed. It makes sense that templates would be popular in a world where customers expect things to be easy and free,

Today would have been a good day to work on the roof, but I'm finding it difficult to do more than one thing a day. I wasted a lot of time fiddling around with the solar panel this morning and then I wasted even more time looking for the hidden code that displayed the name of the template company in the footer of every website page I've been building. I didn't want that name there and was very pleased when I managed to find the Wordpress code that generated the company's name automatically on every new page. I deleted the code without destroying anything else. Don't mess with me Wordpress.

The Dow closed over 24,000 today. That's the good news. The bad news is that if the tax bill that precipitated today market rally passes, small companies like mine are going to be in a world of hurt. I've heard that most of the Schedule C deductions freelancers take are going away. I don't know if my business would have survived if I hadn't been able to deduct for having an office in my home and a host of other commonplace deductions. I'm glad I'm nearing retirement. It's a different world out there now. I'm not sure I'd do nearly as well starting today as I did twenty years ago. Hell, even ten years ago things were a lot easier.

I can't figure out why Dash is reluctant to take an afternoon walk again. This has happened before and it just doesn't make sense. Dash is usually eager to take his morning walk, but lately he'll stand at the back door for a long time sniffing the air in the afternoon and then turn around and go back inside. He isn't tired and appears to have plenty of energy. There is just something about the afternoon air that bothers him. If I can manage to get him to the park, he's fine. It's just those first 50 yards that are difficult.

Tomorrow I need to pack up all my equipment for Saturday's photo shoot. I think everything works. If I don't drop something and break it, I'll probably be fine. Every year I think this is the last year I'm going to be doing these Christmas pictures. Then another year goes by and I'm doing them again. I'm still a good photographer, but I'm older and crankier. If I want to do this again next year, I'm going to have to start going to the gym more often.

Belle is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day