Day 3456

This is our third day without power. There is still no estimate for power restoration in our neighborhood, but we're starting to see power company trucks, so that's a good sign. I talked to a crew from Alabama this morning who were looking for downed lines behind our house. I've seen repair crews from Mississippi, Alabama, and Oklahoma so far. This is a major effort. Lots of people in the Northern part of town already have power again, but our neighborhood is almost always the last to get electricity. We have the most trees and consequentially the most downed lines. The repair crews need to be really careful with all these downed lines. I heard that they missed one yesterday and started a house fire when they tried to turn the power back on.

One of the guys from Alabama told me that they may get our power restored later tonight. I hope so. We've almost run out of clean towels and I may need to go to the laundromat tomorrow. My little generator definitely won't run the washing machine. Actually, I've been very pleased with the little generator. Technically it's called an inverter and delivers much cleaner electricity than a traditional generator. When I bought it I just wanted something to run the computers. I'm discovering that it will power quite a few other things as well. The small refrigerator runs fine using the generator. Janet was able to use her hair dryer as well. I was even able to fire up the Keurig machine this morning and make myself some coffee. The generator will run all day on two gallons of gas. That's pretty good if you ask me.

I discovered that my solar powered generator doesn't do so well on cloudy days. There wasn't enough sunlight today to use the solar panels to recharge the batteries. Gasoline came to the rescue though. I used my gas powered generator to recharge the solar generator. A lot of people drive Teslas in Dallas. I wonder how those people feel now. They are dead in the water for the time being. Their car batteries have run down and most of the charging stations in Dallas are dead. I haven't seen a single Tesla on the road for the past three days.

The best thing that happened today was that my tree guy came over and removed all the dangerous dangling limbs from the elm tree that got damaged. I was one of the lucky ones who got tree service in two days. A lot of people are still waiting. We discovered that a more of our tree had fallen in our neighbor's yard than we initially thought. Luckily neither of us had much damage to our houses. I did lose the greenhouse though. The tree crew will have to come back later to remove what's left of the elm tree. They are only doing emergency service right now and had two more jobs today after they finished with my tree. For now, everyone in the city is just dragging their downed tree limbs to the curb. I have no idea how long it's going to take the city to clean this mess up. There are huge piles of ruined trees everywhere. It's a shame to see so many mature trees destroyed in the neighborhood. These old growth trees were one of the things that made this part of town special.

Apparently yard work is better exercise than going to the gym. I haven't taken a long walk since the storm roared through town, and I'm still burning more calories and taking more steps than I was before. When you spend most of the day hauling logs and big tree limbs out to the street, you end up doing a lot of walking. By the end of the day, I'm tired. I thought this would help me sleep, but so far it isn't working. It feels stuffy in the house without the air conditioner running. It's also too quiet. I'm used to the sound of the dehumidifier running constantly and usually we keep the fan running on the HVAC system so there is some air circulating in the house.

I'm still sitting in the dark, but I saw a large power company truck one street over from ours just before sunset. That's a good sign. Hopefully, when you hear from me tomorrow, we'll have electricity again.

Willa is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3455

We still don't have power. Basically, we're camping now. The power company now says that we might not get electricity restored until late Thursday. It's a mess all over town. Traffic lights aren't working. There are still trees in the road. In our part of town businesses that don't have generator power are closed.

As I expected, the tree trimmer never made it over here today. He promised to come tomorrow. We'll see. There are still people ahead of me in line. I don't have a chain saw, but I was able to remove some of the downed tree using a reciprocal saw powered by a generator. Janet helps me haul the limbs out to the tree and by the end of the day we had a huge pile. Most of the neighbors had huge piles of their own.

We filled three large coolers with ice and were able to salvage most of the food in the refrigerator. The ice cream and a few perishable items went bad, but all in all we did pretty well. I discovered that I can run the small refrigerator off one of the generators, but the gas tank isn't very large and I don't think the generator will run continuously overnight. I ned to go buy some more gas tomorrow morning.

The solar powered generator can be completely recharged using solar panels in less than five hours. This works out pretty well since we only use this generator at night so we can run the network and get on the Internet. Some little LED camping lights provide all the lighting we need. I do miss the air conditioner though. It was pretty hot today. Neither of us slept well last night because it was too hot inside. I don't think we're going to start in a hotel though unless it gets really bad. I could buy a pretty capable generator for the price of three nights in a decent hotel. At least we've still got hot water. I definitely needed a shower after spending most of the day hauling logs out to the street.

The Falcon Heavy launch got postponed a week. This is just as well. I'd like to get all the power outage problems resolved before we start planning a trip. This is the first multi-day power outage we've had for a long time. I remember the bad one well though. Living without electricity takes a lot on ingenuity. I wish I had a really large generator that could run off natural gas. Some whole house generators do this. They're pretty expensive though. That's the thing with power outages. If you go buy a big expensive generator, it's almost guaranteed that you won't have another outage for five years. I haven't even gotten much use out of my little gas generator.

I hope I sleep better tonight. It probably helps that I'm really tired this evening. Sawing and hauling heavy logs is a lot more strenuous than walks in the park. I missy morning smoothie. One more reason to go out and get five gallons of gas for the generator tomorrow morning. Janet needs the generator for her hair dryer too. I'm not sure the generator can handle the hair dryer, but we'll see.

Escher is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3432

It doesn't seem to take much to knock out our power. Lately, every time a big storm passes through, the electricity goes out. We definitely got a lot of rain today. At least the tornadoes we were warned about never materialized. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to get both the fiber optic network and the pumps on the roof running again using various backup power supplies. A small gasoline generator powered the pumps and a solar powered generator took care of the WiFi and computers. When the power eventually returned, nothing important was disrupted at all.

Even though we had quite a storm today, I was still able to take both my walks and do the Saturday grocery shopping without getting wet. Accuweather's Minute-by-Minute  weather forecasting service is pretty amazing. Type in your street and zip code and you know exactly when the rain is going to start and stop within a two hour window. I knew how long it takes to walk three miles and the forecast said I was OK, so off I went. The sky looked a little menacing and I heard thunder off in the distance but the rain didn't start until five minutes after I returned. I love when technology works.

The storm had already passed when it was time for my evening walk. There must have been some high winds. Several large trees were down in the park and smaller limbs were scattered everywhere. One of the creeks feeding the lake was a rushing torrent. Even though the rain had subsided, the water level was still rising. Several piers along the shoreline were under water and the dock for a local rowing club seemed to have floated away. None of this deterred the fishermen. After a big rain fishermen are always attracted to the lake. I saw ten this evening. Are fish more likely to bite after a rain? There must be a reason for this.

There seems to be a reason for everything. I've been noticing that the wildflowers always bloom in a very specific order. The grape hyacinths seem to bloom first followed by lots of showy and evening primrose flowers. Next I'll start to see the bluebonnets. Next a variety of different daisies arrive. I see lots of cowpen daisies, shasta daisies, engelmann daisies, and blackfoot daisies on my walks. The firewheels are blooming now and I'm starting to see milkweed, coneflowers and mexican hat. There are always lots of tiny flowers like crow poison and blue eyed grass. I like to learn to identify the plants and animals I see. Jimson weed is blooming now. I learned to identify this poisonous plant a long time ago because I didn't want the dogs eating it. I learned to identify poison ivy, oak, and sumac a long time ago too.

It's still raining, but it's just a gentle shower and both pumps are working. All is well. Janet fixed chili tonight which is the perfect antidote to a dismal day. I'm recharging all my backup batteries and looking at dog pictures on my Facebook feed. I think I am ready for tomorrow.

Skippy 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

Day 2387

When I picked up my tape recorder at the repair shop, it occurred to me that I hadn't picked the best time to restore and refurbish my old studio. This was an ambitious project and I should have waited until all the unexpected expenses and emergencies subsided. Of course, when are unexpected things ever going to quit happening. If I waited until life was calm again, I'd be waiting forever. At any rate, there are still many things to fix, but I now have two functioning old school multi-track tape recorders again.

As most of you know, I'm fascinated with gadgets. Ever since we began having power outages in our neighborhood, I've been looking for the perfect emergency power source. Backup batteries don't last long enough to be really useful. Gasoline generators get the job done, but they are noisy, heavy, and you've got to keep them outside because of the exhaust. Lately, I've discovered solar powered generators. Even the largest of these devices won't power your entire house, but they seem perfect if you just need some LED lights, a laptop, a few cell phones, and a small portable refrigerator to keep you going. The only drawback I can see is that they are ridiculously expensive. Oh, and you need a lot of sunlight too. I was looking at the Goal Zero generators today. Very cool. All I need are a couple of these, an Airstream trailer, a satellite phone, and some acreage up in the mountains and I'm all set. Hey, there's nothing wrong with dreaming is there. My fantasy has always been complete self sufficiency. When I hear someone say "It takes a village," or "We've all got to work together as a team," it just makes me want to vomit.

The weather was weird today. When we woke up, the air was still and the humidity was oppressive. This was not the best environment for Dot. She got tired on her morning walk and we had to walk even slower than usual to make it back home again. I was a little worried about her at first, but she's back to normal now after a nice long nap. As the day progressed, it got darker and darker and by mid-afternoon we were in the path of a raging thunderstorm. Not surprisingly, the dogs got frightened by the thunder and lightning and I had to spend the rest of the afternoon calming them down. The only good thing about all this was that the temperature dropped twenty degrees. I won't have to water the grass tomorrow either.

I need to think of some better passive income ideas. With interest rates near zero, the stock market has been a big disappointment. The stock photography market has been an even bigger disappointment. I'm a good photographer, but you literally have to have thousands and thousands of images in circulation to make any significant income. Ditto for running ads on my websites. All these things showed promise and were even occasionally lucrative for me twenty years ago. I blame it all on globalization. When you are competing with billions of people instead of a few thousand, prices come down dramatically. Some bloggers started writing books when blogging fell out of favor. I don't think my life is weird enough to use it as the basis for a novel. I'm certainly not going to write a motivational or self help book. I've got nothing in the motivational department. Don't expect me to lift you up. If you're enjoying this, you're probably happy already.

Rascal is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day