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 3421

We enjoyed visiting with the rescue dogs this afternoon. We'd do this more often if it wasn't such a long drive. Some of the dogs were new and some we'd seen before. They were definitely all Dalmatians though. Although each had their own personality, they were all charming, full of energy, and eager to play.

I photographed the new dogs for the website and we played with the others. Several of the active dogs were obsessed with chasing a ball. A small, quiet one just wanted to crawl in your lap. It was good to be around Dalmatians again. The kennel staff was nice and let us stay as long as we wanted. I think we all knew that being around people was beneficial for the dogs.

Visiting the Dalmatians was the big event of the day. Everything else was pretty routine. I made my fruit smoothie and slowly drank it with a cup of coffee while watching the morning news. After I did the dishes and checked the mail, I took my morning walk. My allergies were worse today. It was a windy day and pollen was definitely blowing in from somewhere. The White Pelican is gone. My three mile route provides a good view of the lake and I couldn't find the bird anywhere. I did see a lot of turtles though.

The band on my Fitbit broke this morning. Luckily, you can buy replacement bands for these things. When the strap on my old Jawbone UP band broke, the whole thing was toast. I wish fitness trackers were more durable, but nothing is durable these days. My boots need to go to the shoe repair guy as well. I was pleased that the shoes don't hurt anymore, but the heels are already getting worn. Things just don't last very long when you're active.

It was weird that the stock market did pretty well yesterday and terrible today on exactly the same news. I wish people would hurry up and get all the China trade jitters out of their system. Maybe a few things get a little more expensive in the short term, but nothing is going to fundamentally change.  Tariffs don't worry me a lot. I get more concerned about headlines that say thousands of animal species will become extinct within 50 years. It's also a little troubling that NASA thinks the chances are good that an astroid could hit  Earth during our lifetime. I'm glad that I've lived most of my life in simpler times. Pick any scenario you want. The future just doesn't look that promising.

I almost got caught in a bad storm on my evening walk. It was sunny when I left the house, but the wind picked up quickly and I could tell that something was about to change. Pretty soon I saw very dark clouds to the West of me and it was easy to see that heavy rain was falling downtown. The park was full of joggers and dog walkers so I definitely wasn't the only one caught by surprise. I tried to pick up the pace a bit and managed to make it home again before the rain arrived.

Tonight's rain didn't really amount to much. It looks like we are going to get a lot more tomorrow though. What else is new. We've had a very wet Spring. Despite my watering eyes and runny nose, today was a good day. I hope all the dogs we saw today find great homes. They certainly deserve it.

Spot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 2462

Nothing works anymore. Our security light went out last night. When the electrician replaced the fixture a few months ago with a new LED light, he said this would be the last security light we would even need. Wishful thinking, I guess. The last forever fixture lasted about six months. It's not like this was the only thing that wouldn't work this morning. I got a no signal error when I turned on the TV and had to reboot the set top box. My phone wouldn't connect to the WiFi network as well. Rebooting fixed both balky devices, but why should I have to do this every other day? When I went to get groceries, the Scan and Go app that I've been bragging about had trouble reading bar codes. The oven seems fine though. Just three days ago, I thought the oven was a lost cause. The point I'm trying to make is that very few things are reliable these days. You're always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I never open the sunroof on my car because once Janet's sunroof got stuck in the open position just before a rain storm and everything inside the car got soaked. I've never had much faith in people, but it sure would be nice if I could have faith in my machines again.

I had some complicated website revisions to make this afternoon. The job should have been easy, but the files I received had been corrupted and I had to recreate them from scratch. I get a lot of work on weekends now. The people who send me these assignments must not read the blog or they would know how I feel about working on weekends. Working 24/7 is a badge of honor to some people. Maybe these guys mistakenly think I'm one of them. Not that it matters, but I did get the job finished.

It rained a lot last night. The sound of the wind woke me up and that's when I noticed that it was really dark in the back yard. Normally, I go right back to sleep when I wake up, but the darkness make me uneasy and I walked around the house checking things before I eventually went back to bed. Nobody else woke up. By morning, everything seemed normal again and I wondered if I'd just imagined things. The ground was wet and the temperature was a lot cooler, so the brief storm must have been real.

One of my doctors called and told me that my PSA levels were too high and they wanted to retest them in a month. Years ago, I would have been alarmed by this news, but today I was just irritated. My PSA levels have fluctuated wildly my whole life and I don't think they mean very much. I've read numerous studies that confirm my skepticism. I suspect that this test, like many others, is mostly a way for doctors and labs to generate extra money. The older I get, the less a lot of this stuff matters. No matter what I do, I'm not going to live forever. I'm starting to feel the same way about Dot's cancer rechecks. If one of her periodic scans showed the tumors were growing again, what could we do? Not much at this point.

Dash seems kind of lethargic today. I hope nothing is wrong with him. I feel a bit lethargic too, but my problem is just a lack of sleep. Hopefully, we'll all sleep well tonight. I'm going to need some extra energy to make it to the gym tomorrow.

Cleo is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2358

Some days you shouldn't get out of bed. Today was one small blunder after another. I decided to wash a bunch of small rugs that are hard to vacuum and the rubber backing came off in the dryer, leaving the rugs and the dryer in much worse shape than when I started. I eventually got the dryer cleaned up, but in the process ended up spilling a bottle of liquid Tide in the utility room. Laundry detergent is much harder to clean up than little bits of burned rubber in the dryer drum. As soon as I managed to get all the rugs clean and back on the floor, Dot pooped on one of them and it had to go back in the washer all over again. It was that kind of a day.

I never did make it to the gym because I couldn't seems to get finished with my list of chores. The chores weren't hard. I just didn't have my wits about me today. It didn't help matters that the dogs were both restless. Every time I'd get started cleaning something, one of them would want to go outside. I took Dot out half a dozen times and she just stood around for a minute or two and wanted to come in again. This is actually fairly normal behavior for dogs, but when you have to act as their rear legs, it can take a lot of time. Maybe they were edgy because of the weather. The weather certainly was strange today.

The sky was clear and blue when I took Dash on his afternoon walk. It was perfect holiday weather and the park was filled with families having picnics. Not more than five minutes after we returned home, I heard a giant thunderclap and it started pouring rain. Where did this rain come from? I didn't even notice any dark clouds on our walk. I bet there were quite a few picnics ruined this afternoon.

The internet is still working fine, which is amazing since I did nothing to fix the problems I've been having. Everything started working the minute the UPS man delivered the replacement router that AT&T sent me. I think I'm going to pay the penalty and keep the new router as a good luck charm. I'm convinced that as soon as I return the equipment to AT&T, my problems will resume and I'll have to ask tech support to send the router back. It's much easier just to keep it. For the time being, the lucky router will just sit in its box as a spare. I'm sure it will eventually be put into service. Nothing stays working that long in our house.

Tomorrow is a holiday, but we had out holiday meal today. Janet cooked a pork shoulder roast in the slow cooker and it was delicious. Now, that I think about it, this is what probably made the dogs restless and active today. When there's meat cooking in the crock pot, the dogs can smell it all day long. Now that dinner is finished, the house is quiet and peaceful again. Dot and Dash are both sleeping and I'm looking forward to calling it a day myself.

Emmitt is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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