Day 3823

We thought we'd give Dawn a treat this morning, so we took her out to breakfast at a dog friendly restaurant. I thought she'd like this little outing because Dot and Dash loved going out to eat. New things make Dawn nervous though and she had a hard time relaxing. Even getting to share our breakfast with us didn't help much. She was much happier when we returned home and she could hop up on our big bed again.

Dawn did enjoy her walk this morning and walks made her nervous in the beginning as well. We've already come a long way. Dawn was a breeding dog and had a hard life before she entered the rescue program. A lot of things we take for granted she has never experienced before. We'll try the restaurant again sometime. We know that she does love food.

The weather was still very pleasant in the morning. You have to get up really early to avoid the heat though. We took our walk right at sunrise and ate breakfast afterwards. A lot of other people seem to have the same idea. No matter how early we start there are always plenty of runners and cyclists on the trails.

It's been a year since the severe wind storm that blew down our Elm tree and destroyed the greenhouse in the back yard. It's amazing how quickly a year can go by. The greenhouse still hasn't been repaired and a large Oak tree that received some damage in the storm hasn't been removed either. I got bids on replacing the greenhouse months ago, but now we are just thinking of tearing it down and putting our driveway in the back. Traffic continues to get worse and worse on our street. Being able to easily get out of the driveway seems more important than a greenhouse now. Janet and I could never keep plants alive anyway.

I think the liquid nitrogen treatment I received is working. Some of the actinic keratosis spots on my face have already started to scab over and fall off. I may need one more treatment to get rid of this stuff for good, but it does seem like a fairly painless and easy remedy for something I was initially fearful of.

I'm still having trouble remember what day it is. Ever since the pandemic started all days seem more or less the same. I almost went to the grocery store this morning until Janet reminded me that it was only Friday. I did go to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription this afternoon. I think it was the first time I've driven the car this week. I used to fill up my tank once a week. Now, once a month seems plenty.

It looks like it's going to be another long, hot summer. During the Spring rainy season I can't wait for the rain to stop. As soon as it gets hot and things start to dry up, I'm wishing the rain would start again. This is the perfect time to finish repairs on the roof except that the roof is so hot it will burn your skin. We'll see how much gets done tomorrow. Maybe walking Dawn in the morning is enough.

Lucky is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3588

Needless to say, I didn't get a lot of sleep last night. I thought I was in the clear when the tornado passed to the north of our house. Then, as I was getting ready for bed there was another severe weather alert on my phone. A second storm system was headed or way. This new storm carried little danger of tornadoes. The worry this time was heavy rain and seventy mile per hour straight line winds. The threat of straight line winds made me nervous. This is what knocked down our trees and destroyed the greenhouse back in June.

The new storm only lasted about thirty minutes, but there was definitely a lot of wind and rain. When the squall line passed, it was a lot colder. The cold front I'd been hearing about had arrived. I made sure that all the trees in the yard were still standing and went to bed. There was no point in going outside and turning on the roof pumps. The wind had probably blown them over anyway.

This morning I turned on the pumps, made my morning smoothie, and listened to the local news. Wow. Last night's tornado was pretty bad. Some familiar parts of town had been wiped out. A large Home Depot near the Land Rover dealer had been demolished. A strip mall where Janet and I used to shop suffered the same fate. The best garden center in Dallas was totally destroyed. Here I was worrying about a roof leak and a few miles away people's homes were gone. It just seemed unreal that so much damage could be created in just a few minutes.

After breakfast, I went up on the roof and cleared away the standing water. The quicker I can remove the water, the less chance there will be of a leak. I don't know when I'm going to be able to apply the silicon coating. Our next cold front arrives Thursday and it will be preceded by a line of storms as well. Several people have suggested putting a giant tarp over the roof. A tarp can provide a temporary solution on a pitched roof, but they are generally just a nuisance on a flat roof.  I can guarantee that the standing water would find a way under the tarp.

The weather was so pretty today that it was hard to believe all the damage Dallas received last night. What a difference a day makes. I took my long walk when I finished removing the water from the roof and thought about how lucky I'd been. The house was fine, the trees were still standing, and I didn't even have a roof leak. Lord knows when I'll finally be able to apply the silicon coating, but you've just got to take things one day at a time during the rainy season.

I was unusually tired when I returned home. I guess I'd forgotten about how much effort it takes to clear the roof. This was a good time for a nap. I fell asleep almost immediately and didn't wake up until mid afternoon. I felt refreshed when I woke up and returned to my regular schedule. I paid a few bills, took them to the post office, and then finished trimming the trees in the back yard. I wanted to have this chore completed by the time Janet returns from her trip. I think bulky trash pickup is tomorrow as well.

It was a long day and I'm pretty tired. 22,000 steps on a weekday isn't bad though. I'm beginning to think that the little circus in the park brings bad luck. When the circus was here last year we had severe flooding. This year we have a tornado. Sure, October is the rainy season anyway but I'm blaming this on the circus.

Lance is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3477

Yay. When I was eating breakfast this morning, I heard some loud noises coming from the front of the house. When I went outside to investigate, I discovered that a handful of city workers with two large trucks were in the process of hauling away the huge pile of brush and logs that has covered our yard ever since the big wind storm roared through town on June 10. I was glad to see the woodpile disappear. I was beginning to think I'd be stuck with the unsightly brush for the rest of the summer. The grass that was underneath the brush pile is all dead. That's a shame because it took years to get the yard looking decent. Hopefully the grass will start to grow again after a few soaking rains. Otherwise I'll be faced with resodding the lawn later this summer. In the short term I've traded one kind of ugly for another kind of ugly, but at least we're making progress.

After breakfast I prepared some high resolution images I took at Kennedy Space Center to send to Spaceflight Magazine. The editor wants to use some of the pictures I took to illustrate my article. This surprised me almost as getting the article accepted. I know for a fact that there were better pictures taken of the launch because I met the photographers who took them. Nevertheless, I'm pleased that the magazine wants to use my pictures. Next time I'm at a launch I'm definitely going to take a better camera.

While I was working at the computer, I added the two new dogs to the Dalmatian Rescue website. Hank and Pongo ought to get a lot of attention. They are both very good looking dogs. Actually, I think my dog pictures are better than my rocket pictures. I guess I've had a lot of practice. I've been taking pictures of Dalmatians for a very long time.

I've started to see road construction signs in the neighborhood. No actual construction has begun but the signs have me worried. It's hard enough getting out of the driveway on a normal day. If our street is under construction, it will be even worse. I definitely don't want to get tar on my car. There's nothing wrong with the street, but that won't stop the city from tearing it up. I think half the streets in town are in a permanent state of repair.

It's hard to believe that a full year has passed since I began my downsizing campaign. Last July, my art was on its way to New York and my train collection had just arrived in Kentucky. A number of things have sold, but there's still a long way to go. I didn't realize at the time that this would end up being such a long, involved process. Maybe by this time next year I'll feel better about this whole endeavor. Right now, everything seems up in the air. Things do eventually sell. You've just got to be very patient.

I'm a patient person but things do seem to move very slowly. It take me an hour every morning to take my walk. Coincidently, it also takes me an hour to eat my breakfast. It took almost a month to get the brush removed from the front yard and it might be a year before I attend a space launch again. I'm in no hurry but sometimes I'd like things to move a little faster.

Bud is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3474

OK. I hear you. You guys like positive thoughts and accomplishments more than cynicism and despair. That's normal. You seem to appreciate a little emotion as well. Hey, if you keep reading long enough I'm sure you'll find both, but sometimes there are long dry spells. That's life. Truthfully, the only times you'll see any real emotion from me is when a dog dies or something life changing happens. Mostly life is about the little things. I go grocery shopping. I pay bills. I cope with the weather. And I wonder why the White Pelican got lost at our lake. It's all good. Little things matter. That being said, I do appreciate your approval when something big happens. I'm glad so many of you recognized that yesterday was a big day.

Today was a bit more subdued. There were no strawberries when I did my weekend grocery shopping and I had to stand in the checkout line again because the convenient little app on my phone doesn't seems to recognize that I'm old enough to buy beer. I picked up some toiletries at CVS and when the woman at the register asked if I had a rewards card I said no. "Why didn't I get my discount," I asked. "You need a reward card to get the discounts," the woman said. OK. I lied. I actually do have a rewards card but I always say no because I don't like getting that mile long CVS receipt. I gave her my number and she rang up my purchase again, tearing off the long roll of useless coupons on the receipt and throwing them in the trash.

I wonder when the city is going to haul away the debris from the wind storm. I see the trucks in other parts of town, but not ours. All the grass in our front yard is going to die because it has been covered up with brush for so long. I still need to get the tree guy to come back and remove what is left of the big Elm tree too. I haven't even begun to get estimates for replacing the green house. I have a feeling that I'll still be thinking about some of these tasks this Fall.

The only thing I've been doing consistently this Summer is walking. I've been walking at least five miles a day even on very hot days like today. One of these days I need to weigh myself before and after one of these walks. I feel like I'm sweating away about a pound of water every time I go outside. At least I'm always wearing a hat now. I discovered today that if I soak the hat in water before I leave, I'm a lot cooler.

The weather is so weird at this time of year. The sky was blue and full of puffy clouds when I began my evening walk. It looked like a nice Summer day. By the time I returned I was hearing thunder and there were ominous dark clouds everywhere. We were under a severe weather alert for a while, but didn't actually get much rain. I'm glad that the worst of the storm passed to the east of us. I'm not ready to go up on the roof again.

It's been two weeks since I've been to the gym. What I was doing last Sunday was certainly a lot more exciting than shooting hoops on the basketball court. I need to start planning a new trip. Maybe a dark sky trip to McDonald Observatory is next.

Sparky is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3457

Life is good. We finally got power restored early this afternoon. Most of the traffic lights are functioning again and people have stopped driving like maniacs. The gas company even fixed a gas leak in the neighborhood that nobody even knew existed. There's nothing like a four day power outage to make you appreciate the little things. Janet and I actually did pretty well without electricity, but there are so many things we take for granted.

Before the power was restored today, I took a walk through the neighborhood to see how everybody else fared. I was amazed at the devastation. We lost a tree, but it didn't wreck our house. Some people had serious roof damage. A few people still had trees on top of their cars. I was sad to see that Erykah Badu's Porsche had been demolished. It was one of the prettiest cars in the neighborhood. The sound of chain saws was everywhere. Almost everyone had a big pile of logs and tree limbs in their front yard. It's going to take months for the city to clear all the debris away. Who knows. Maybe the city won't need to clean up all that much. I've already started seeing people scavenging the log piles for Winter firewood. One guy I talked to today said he had a wood burning stove and he was specifically looking for pecan logs because he liked the smell when they burned. I think this guy might have hit the jackpot. The park is full of old growth pecan trees and these trees seemed particularly vulnerable to being uprooted by the high winds. Mesquite trees seemed to survive pretty well but a lot of pecan trees bit the dust. Our two large Oak trees survived the storm intact. It was our Elm tree that got toppled.

It took a while to reset the clocks, put all the food in the ice chests back in the refrigerator again, and reconnect everything on the network. During the outage I kept wishing I had a larger generator. As soon as the power returned the urge for a huge generator quickly faded. Big generators are heavy, noisy, expensive, and I've really got no place to keep one. My little generator actually did just fine. We just had to learn to do stuff one thing at a time. You could use the hair dryer and brew coffee. You just couldn't use two high wattage gizmos at the same time. I discovered that everything ran smoother if I plugged the big UPS backup battery I use for the computers into the generator and then plugged all the other things into the back up battery. This seemed to filter out the power spikes that gave the generator problems. Starting an electric motor takes a lot more power than keeping the same motor running. I could always tell when the compressor kicked in on the little refrigerator. That was the only thing that temporarily overloaded the generator.

I was shocked that I actually have some website work to do tomorrow. One of my few remaining clients wants to update his site. I'm usually very responsive, but I told him he'd have to wait until the power returned. Tomorrow would have been a busy day even without the website work, but I'm always happy to have the work. There's still tons of laundry to do. I need to get new tires for the car before the trip to Kennedy Space Center. It's been a while since we've seen the rescue Dalmatians too. No problem. It will all get done now that we have electricity again.

Lucky is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

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 3454

We had a terrible storm today. Our power is out. Our large elm tree got blown over and is sitting in our yard. The roof got blown off the greenhouse and I don't even know where some of it is. The worst thing is that the power company doesn't expect to have electricity restored before 8:30 PM tomorrow evening. We don't even have good cell phone service now because a lot of cell towers got knocked down during the storm.

This storm caught almost everybody by surprise. It certainly caught me by surprise. I had returned from the gym and was taking my three mile walk when the storm arrived. Luckily, I was near a shelter at the time, so I didn't get too wet. I'm so glad the shelter was nearby. The straight line winds were so strong that dozens of large trees were blown over. We kept hearing them come crashing down all around us. The wind was blowing sheets of rain horizontally through the gazebo. At one point there was a lot of nickel sized hail and I saw several power lines come down nearby. Even though I was wearing waterproof boots, my feet were soaked. The water was coming in through the top of my shoes.

A small group of cyclists, joggers, picnickers, and myself were trapped in the gazebo for over an hour as the storm passed through. We saw a large tree land on somebody's truck in a nearby parking lot. We kept hearing fire trucks and emergency vehicles off in the distance. This was a very bad storm. When the storm finally moved off to the East, I started heading for home. I knew the power would be out, but I was hoping that I wouldn't find a tree on our roof. I passed dozens of uprooted trees on the way home. They looked like they had just been ripped out of the ground by a giant hand.

The yard looked terrible when I arrived home, but when I went up on the roof I didn't see any serious damage. Luckily the tree appeared to have missed hitting the house when it fell. I tried to call my tree guy right away but the phones weren't working. I couldn't send or receive calls until Janet and I went out for dinner later this evening. Large sections of Dallas are still without power. We had to drive quite a way to find a restaurant that still had electricity. We'll see what tomorrow brings. I may need to fill a cooler full of ice to save the food that is in the refrigerator. We still have WiFi using backup battery power, but I don't know how long that will last.

I'm hoping that the power will come back on during the night, but I'm not very optimistic. The Oncor website says that over 300,000 people were affected by the outage. It's troubling to be so dependent on electricity. Everything grinds to a halt without it. Thank goodness the gas works. We can still take hot showers.

I was worried that I might not be able to upload tonight's post since cell service is so spotty. Luckily the fiber optic line doesn't seems to be dependent on electricity. All I need to do is use a backup battery to power the router and we're in business. If the power is still out tomorrow I might be in trouble. All the backup power is being depleted fast. We're both charging our phones now.

I'd almost forgotten how bad severe straight line winds can be in Texas. Today was a good reminder that the weather always has the upper hand.

Liberty is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2652

We got lucky. There was a horrendous storm last night with 70 mile per hour straight line winds. Our power was out for about five hours, but the electricity was restored around breakfast time so we hardly even noticed the outage. At some point during the storm I heard the heavy thump of a tree limb hitting the roof, but when I looked this morning there was no damage. The limb was small enough that I was able to remove it without much difficulty. For the most part, Dot and Dash slept through the storm, so we didn't have the usual thunder and lightning issues.

I didn't really realize how bad the storm was until we took our morning walk. There were dozens of large trees that had been blown over in the park. Some looked like a giant had pulled them out of the ground by their roots.  There were sticks and twigs everywhere. Some of the tree limbs were in fields where there were no trees, so the wind must have blown them there. Even the birdhouses for the Purple Martins had been blown over.

When I turned on the television I saw that entire houses had been demolished in some parts of town. Thousands of people were without power this morning. Often our electricity is the last to be restored after a major power outage, but this time it looked like they got to us first. As I said, we got lucky last night.

I really need to remember to always keep all my devices charged. My first thought when the power went out was that I hadn't charged my phone or laptop. When the company was busy and I had lots of deadlines, having a working computer available at all times was a top priority. Now the computers aren't as much of an issue. What I worry about these days is losing the washing machine. A day without a washing machine with Dot peeing all over the place would be a disaster.

The refrigerator was looking kind of empty, so I went back to Central Market and got another one of those bowls for dinner. These tasty one-dish meals are great. It would be difficult to make something like this myself. The shredded beef was braised in soy sauce. The kale and mushrooms were roasted and had kind of a smoky flavor. The carrots and cucumbers appeared to be marinated. Even the barley that everything was piled on top of was delicious. I'm not even going to pretend to cook things anymore. It's so much easier and fun to buy something like this.

Dot had a good day, but Dash was moody again. The first two times I tried to walk him this afternoon, he wouldn't leave the back yard. I gave up and walked Dot instead. After dinner this evening, Dash decided that he wanted to walk after all and we had a nice sunset stroll. I have no idea what goes through this dog's mind. Why would he refuse to walk at 4 PM, but be eager to walk at sunset? I have to stay flexible because Dot is not very predictable either. Some days she wants to walk first. Other days she is tired and doesn't want to walk at all.

I hope the nasty weather is over for a while. I know we'll have more storms, because Spring is all about stormy weather here in Texas. I'm glad I had the trees trimmed a few weeks ago, because I'm sure that some of the limbs they trimmed would have fallen last night. Actually, I need to get the tree guy to come back. I saw several more dead limbs when I was up on the roof this morning.

I need to get the water off the roof tomorrow. The car is dirty and the grass needs to be mowed as well. I guess it all depends on how well I sleep tonight.

Elliot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2203

I had no idea how bad last night's storm really was until I turned on the television this morning. This wasn't your usual Texas tornado scare. It was a major disaster. I had always thought we had been spared from tornadoes in the past because we lived next to a lake, but the worst damage from last night's storm was right next to Lake Ray Hubbard to the northeast of us. Entire blocks of houses were completely destroyed. At least eleven people died. Cars filled with people were literally blown off a freeway overpass. This was a very serious storm.

It was unbelievable how many dogs got lost during the storm. All day long my Facebook feed was filled with shared requests to look for a lost family pet. There were hundreds of lost dogs. Someone I know actually saw the tornado pass right in front of her while she was trapped on a busy road with no place to hide. We didn't realize just how lucky we were when the worst of the storm passed a few miles to the east of us on its way to causing so much destruction in Garland and Rowlett.

The tornado danger passed as soon as a cold front arrived from West Texas. The temperature dropped forty degrees, but the rain continued. It's been raining all day. I can't blame the dogs for not wanting to go outside today. I didn't want to go outside either. The rain never really stopped, but I did manage to find a few periods when it slowed down a bit. It was too cold and nasty to take Dot outside, but I did take Dash for a short walk. Luckily he was sensible enough to do his business quickly.

Other than two short walks so Dash could poop in his favorite place, I didn't leave the house all day. With the furnace working properly and the dehumidifier sucking moisture out of the air, the house was actually quite comfortable. I spent the day updating the Dalmatian Rescue website and watching Dr. Who episodes I had missed.

Updating the Dalmatian website wouldn't have taken so long if I could remember how to code responsive websites. I don't do these things frequently enough for the knowledge to stay permanently in my brain. It's complicated, and every time I have to update a mobile friendly site, I end up having to relearn things I've already done before. Initially the code looks like someone else wrote it. Hopefully, the new skills I've learned will eventually become second nature. I don't think anybody's going back to using Dreamweaver and it's getting frustrating becoming baffled by my own code.

It's a good thing I viewed the Dr. Who season finale a second time this afternoon. I found Hell Bent to be confusing the first time I saw it, but it made a lot more sense when I realized that I had missed a full twelve minutes of the show the first time around. Maybe I fell asleep when I was watching on my computer. Maybe the dogs distracted me. Those twelve minutes made a big difference though. I actually liked the show this time. I didn't get around to watching the Christmas Special. I'll save that one for another rainy day.

I hope everyone finds their missing dogs. I'm going to put leashes on ours the next time we sit huddled in a corner waiting for the all clear signal after a bad storm. Dash panics easily and if our house was damaged, he might run away too. Hopefully, the weather will clear up soon. There is too much to worry about already.

Taylor is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1753

Today was all about damage control. Yesterday's storm was a lot worse than most people thought. Over 250,000 people are still without power in the Dallas area. I'm one of them. The power came back very briefly about 2 AM this morning and then about two minutes later it went out again with a bang as a transformer in the alley exploded. As I was walking the dogs this morning, I heard at least six other transformers exploding in the distance. Evidently, the power company is having trouble because there are many more downed trees and telephone poles than they expected. If they attempt to restore the power before they find all the downed lines, the circuit shorts out and a transformer explodes. Actually, I think we're losing ground. When I went to breakfast this morning, most of the traffic lights were working. When I went out again later this afternoon to recharge my UPS backup battery at Janet's office, all the lights were out again. I have yet to see any power company trucks in our neighborhood. To tell you the truth, I haven't seen any power company trucks, period. I don't know where they all are.

With limited computer resources and a very dark house, I spent as much time as I could outside. Ironically, the weather was beautiful today. You'll never believe what happened just 24 hours ago. I cleaned up broken branches in the yard and then I went up on the roof where there were many more tree limbs. It was raining so hard yesterday that I didn't even hear most of these branches fall. All I heard was the wind. I was surprised at how many good sized tree limbs were up on the roof. I don't think any damage was done, but it sure was a mess to clean up. Without the help of my trusty electric sump pump to clear the water away, it took hours to remove all the standing water and debris.

You really can't get much done without electricity these days. It seemed like the whole city was just milling around waiting for something to happen. I've never seen my breakfast restaurant so crowded before. It was hard to find a parking place and even harder to find a table. Since the power was out in our entire neighborhood, I think everybody just decided to get out of their house and have a good breakfast.

My backup battery will recharge the laptop once and the phone two times before it goes dead. This give me time to write the blog and answer a few e-mails, but that's about it. The biggest problem with the backup battery is that it takes almost eight hours to fully recharge. My laptop doesn't seem to hold a charge very well any more and neither does the little 4-G hotspot I use for WiFi. Did I ever mention to you how much I hate batteries?

I heard on the news today that the CDC has narrowed yesterday's list of 100 people down to 50 that were thought to have "shared bodily fluids" with the Ebola victim. This amazes me. This guy managed to touch more people in two days than I do in a year. The HazMat team finally came today to sanitize the guys house. Better late than never, I guess.

It's probably better late than never when it comes to getting our power restored as well. Regular readers might remember that it took over four days to get our power turned back on the last time this happened. We ended up having to stay in a hotel for a few days. At least it's not freezing cold this time. Last Winter's big ice storm still seems worse than this, even though I think more trees and telephone poles were uprooted this time.

I'll have to learn to write faster, because my laptop battery is already getting low again. Given what I've seen today, it will be a miracle if our power comes back on tonight. There's a good chance we'll be sitting in the dark until next Monday.

Hobbs is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1752

As if an Ebola outbreak wasn't enough, our fair city is now shrouded in darkness. We are currently experiencing a massive power outage after a severe thunderstorm ripped through town about 4 PM this afternoon. I think that there are over 200,000 outage reports in the general area and one of them is ours. I've heard that the straight line winds were as high as 90 miles an hour at one point. This was certainly enough to uproot trees all over the city and blow a large section of our neighbor's roof off their house. The roof is currently sitting against our back fence. We were very lucky this time. There were no downed trees in our yard and so far, there have been no leaks through the roof. The wind was strong enough to blow water through the bottom of the back door, but that was about it. There is still a downed power line in the alley that was severed by the flying roof. I'm not sure if the wire is touching my metal fence at any point, but I'm definitely not going to touch the fence until the power company comes out and fixes the line. It goes without saying that I'm operating on battery power at this time.

Somehow the number of people in town who have been exposed to Ebola has gone from just a handful, to a dozen, to over 100 in less than 24 hours. This isn't good. I heard on the news today that one of the exposed, and presumably quarantined, kids went back to school yesterday. This in insane. Nobody even noticed the kid was gone until the school notified the CDC. So much for this "self-quarantine" they've been talking about. A judge had to get a court order to keep the people in their house. Now there are armed guards to make sure they don't disappear. The whole thing is a mess. The CDC hasn't even sent a HazMat team to decontaminate the apartment where the guy was staying yet. I've heard that the dirty sheets that the infected man slept on and even vomit are still untouched inside the house.

My vet is worried that nobody has even asked whether these people have a dog. Dogs are known hosts of the disease in Africa. If a dog was exposed and it is still running around around, Lord know what might happen. I'm still worried about poop. Did this guy use the bathroom on the plane? You know how airplane bathrooms work. They just open a little hatch and eject everything in the sky when they're at cruising altitude. There may be a little ticking time bomb in some farmer's field, or in your back yard.

Dot seemed tired and a little nervous during her physical therapy session. I bet she sensed that the storm was coming. Dot is unusually sensitive to weather changes and seems to be able to predict oncoming storms better than our local TV weathermen. Luckily, we made it home from the vet before the storm started. As severe as the winds were, I definitely wouldn't have wanted to be out on the roads during the worst of today's weather.

Who knows what will happen tomorrow in Dallas. The Cowboys are actually winning football games again. There's an Ebola patient who has exposed hundreds of people less than ten miles from my house. I'm sitting here in the dark, wondering if I can get this posted before my laptop battery or my little 4-G hotspot dies. Maybe this is the beginning of the zombie apocalypse. It's certainly been a weird week. I sure hope they've restored power to our neighborhood by morning. I'm going to need a good breakfast after all this and if my power's out, I bet my favorite restaurant is sitting in the dark too.

Bailey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day