Day 3656

It rained a lot today. I tried to avoid getting wet, but there weren't a lot of breaks in the weather. I tried something different for breakfast this morning. Since I was out of fresh fruit, I made the dish I submitted to the SXSW Cookbook many years ago. I was actually an SXSW presenter back in the day. When they asked me if I wanted to be included in a cookbook featuring recipes from various other SXSW presenters and participants I jumped at the chance. Most of the recipes were from famous people like Sheryl Sandberg. And then there was me. Not surprisingly my recipe was something to eat for breakfast.

I managed to go to the grocery store after breakfast and get some more strawberries and blueberries before the heavy rain started. Luckily, the pumps on the roof were working today. Even though the roof hasn't leaked in quite a while, I'm always nervous when it rains.

I had to postpone my walk because of the weather. There wasn't a lot to do around the house. I did a little searching on the Internet and discovered a retired astrophysicist who offered private viewing opportunities on his rather large backyard telescope. As luck would have it, the guy only lives about an hour from Dallas, so I sent him an e-mail and asked if he'd be interested in giving another retired guy a refresher course in deep sky objects. It looks like I'll go visit this guy on a clear moonless night sometime early next year.

Eventually, the rain stopped a little before sunset. I took an abbreviated walk just to make sure I made my quota of 10,000 steps today. I knew the park paths would be muddy, so I just walked through the neighborhood streets. Wow. There are a lot of new houses since I used to walk these streets with Spot and Petey years ago. Everything is bigger and more expensive than it used to be. I probably couldn't afford to buy a house in this neighborhood anymore.

For a dismal, grey day we ended up having a spectacular sunset. I almost missed it, since I was walking back towards the East. I was quite surprised when I returned home and looked westward before going inside. The sunset was pretty, but I knew it would be gone before I could go grab my good camera. I took a quick picture with my phone and then began fixing dinner.

Hopefully, the weather will be better tomorrow. I had a bad case of cabin fever today. For some reason I'm not very interested in watching movies even though we have Netflix and Amazon Prime. I've been reading some interesting histories of the Davis Mountains and the McDonald Observatory recently. I have to read things two or three times before I start to remember everything.

I'm not sure I'll make it to the gym tomorrow. I'm not even sure I'll remember it is Sunday.

Petey & Dot are today's Dalmatians of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2563

I'm exhausted. My cold should be over by now, but it still persists. By Texas standards, the cold weather should be over by now too, but temperatures were still in the teens when we woke up this morning. I feel like I'm in some weird kind of boot camp. I get up early and go to bed late. In between, I clean up pee and poop, do laundry, and tend to the needs of a crippled dog who seems to have more energy than I do. It's very tiring.

I thought I'd try to write my remaining article right after breakfast, when Dot and Dash typically sleep. This was a good idea, but I guess I didn't write fast enough. Dot woke up before I finished and the last paragraph took longer to write than all of the preceding paragraphs combined. I didn't have a lot of luck with Dot today. She pooped while I was getting her food ready and was so excited to get to her bowl that she stepped in the poop and tracked it all over the kitchen. After I got this mess cleaned up, I thought she'd be safe for a while, but when I returned from walking Dash, I discovered that she'd pooped again.

I got a letter from Social Security informing me of my 2017 cost of living adjustment. I'm going to get an additional ten dollars a month. $10? What kind of cost of living adjustment is that? I don't know why they even bother. I'm almost certain that it cost the government more than $10 just to inform me of the news. I wish that Social Security didn't even matter, but it does. It matters to most people my age. As I grow older, I'm sure it will matter even more in the future.

I eventually did manage to finish my article and send it off to the client. I paid a few bills that were stacking up on my desk and that was it. The day was gone. I think I'm caught up now, so maybe tomorrow will be a little easier. I always think that tomorrow is going to be a little easier, but usually I'm wrong. I try my best to relax, but I'm not very good at relaxing. Today I thought I'd try some controlled breathing exercises while I was helping Dot wander around in the back yard. One channel of my brain was calm and serene, but there was still a back channel that was silently screaming "For the love of god, can you hurry up and pee. I'm freezing out here."

Tomorrow is the shortest day of the year. I guess that's why I've been taking so many sunset pictures lately. It's dark when we start on our morning walk and it's dark by the time I finish taking Dash on his evening walk. There was a pretty sunset tonight, but I liked the early morning picture of Dash in his Winter duds better. I suspect that I'll be taking more sunset pictures tomorrow evening. There really isn't enough light to photograph anything else.

I can't believe that Christmas is this weekend. I'm dreading Christmas this year. Janet leaves to visit her family soon and I'm still trying to figure out how to manage the dogs morning and evening routines myself. Janet has made me a labeled packet of the dog's pills for each day she is gone. That will help. I've been practicing walking Dot by myself. She's even slower without Dash to follow, but she is willing to walk by herself. That's good too. I'm already an expert at cleaning up poop. I guess we'll be fine.

Lexi is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2455

It's weird. Last year on September 3rd, I took a picture of a dragonfly. I haven't been able to capture one since. These critters are hard to photograph, since they move so fast and seldom perch on anything for very long. Imagine my surprise when I got my second picture of a dragonfly on September 3rd again. This must be a good day for dragonflies. I was waiting for the sun to set down by the lake and a dragonfly landed right in front of me. It's pretty safe to say that I won't photograph another one until next year at this time. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised at this strange coincidence. I've been blogging long enough to realize that a lot of things happen the same way year after year.

If I go back and read a post from exactly one year earlier, I'll often find that I ate the same thing for breakfast, dealt with exactly the same dog problems, and worked on virtually identical projects.  Often when it rains, I'll discover that it rained on the same day one or two years earlier as well. Am I living some sort of real life version of Ground Hog Day? It's hard to tell sometimes.

Today was one of those day where it seemed like I was busy all day long, and yet at the end of the day I had trouble thinking of anything I actually did. Weekends are like this a lot. There are so many mindless little chores to do that a whole day can go by and you don't think you've accomplished much of anything. Hey, the toilets are clean again. There are clean sheets on the bed. We have a fresh supply of groceries. There were other chores as well, but you get the idea.

The reason I was down at the lake at sunset was that today provided a good opportunity to see a thin crescent moon and three planets grouped together low in the Western sky right after sunset. I did manage to find the moon, but there was far too much ground haze to see Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury. Finding a day with really clear skies all the way to the horizon is even rarer than photographing a dragonfly. I read somewhere recently that one third of the entire world can no longer see the milky way at night because of urban light pollution. I can believe it. I haven't been able to see the milky way or any of the fainter viable stars for decades. If you like astronomy, it's probably a good idea not to live in a large city.

Dot seemed tired today. Maybe it was just me who was tired. Dash kept waking me up last night when he started squirming around during a dog dream and ended up pushing me off the bed with his feet. I sleep a lot better when both dogs sleep well. I didn't do so well getting Dot outside to pee in the morning either. She ended up peeing on her blankets before I could get the harness on her. No harm done though. The blankets needed to be washed anyway and now everything is clean again.

I haven't looked at my stock portfolio in a long time, because it was just too discouraging. I looked today for some reason and was pleasantly surprised to discover that things are actually looking up again. The past three months have been great. We haven't completely erased last year's carnage, but some of the decisions made earlier this year turned out to be good ones. If this proves anything it is that I should quit fretting about everything on a day-to-day basis. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen anyway.

Domino is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2058

I thought I'd go to the gym today. I didn't stay long. Before I started my workout, I checked the dogs on the baby monitor like I always do. It wasn't working. This was odd, because the Withings monitor is usually very reliable. I rebooted my phone in case that was the problem, but I still couldn't connect. Being the alarmist that I am, my first thought was that Dash had another seizure and knocked over the furniture again. His epileptic seizures are very infrequent, but when they do happen they can be alarmingly violent. Of course, my second thought was that the dogs were just fine and that the network was down. The network goes down a lot more frequently than Dash has seizures. I didn't want to spend the next hour and a half fretting about Dash, so I turned around and immediately went back home again to check on things. The dogs were fine. It was the WiFi network that had crashed.

It kind of bothers me that I have become a prisoner of fear. I worry about everything these days, especially when it concerns Dot and Dash. I feel like my one job is to keep the dogs healthy and protect them from harm. As both dogs age, it's getting harder and harder to do this. Dot is so fragile now that just getting her through a normal day is stressful. Dash is fine now, but he is a cancer survivor who has had horrible seizures in the past. If there was an emergency with both dogs at the same time, I don't know what I'd do. At any rate, I had no choice today. Once the seeds of doubt had been sown in my mind, I had to return home immediately.

Instead of a workout at the gym, I washed the car. I don't know why I like keeping the car so clean, because I seldom feel like going anywhere. If work doesn't pick up soon, I'm just a few steps away from binge watching an entire season of something on Netflix. I'd probably already have done this if I hadn't already seen everything that even remotely interests me. I've seen every single episode of Dr. Who, including the old black and white shows from the early 60's. I've seen every episode of Babylon 5, Lexx, Farscape, and Firefly. I've seen Gravity, Interstellar, and I'm patiently waiting for Ridley Scott to finish filming The Martian. Keep in mind that this is the same guy who used to favor authors like John Fowles, John Kennedy Toole,  Katherine Dunn, John Nichols, and Tom Wolfe. I was a voracious reader back in the day. Things change. The guy who used to enjoy reading Dostoyevsky in college now watches science fiction and reads instruction manuals.

We got a late start on our evening walk, but that was actually a good thing. The temperature had cooled down a bit and there was a beautiful sunset. Sunrise and sunset are the best parts of my day. It's that long interval in between that's the problem. Maybe I'll try to go to the gym again tomorrow. I'm not going to think that far ahead though. We'll just see what happens.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2023

I was hoping to see the conjunction of Jupiter and Venus this evening, but the Western sky was obscured by clouds. If you were looking for the Moon though, everything was fine. The Eastern skies were clear, so I did see a bright, almost full moon rising and a very nice sunset. I try not to miss comets, eclipses, meteor showers and other astronomical events. The constant haze and glare from all the city lights makes most of these night sky events almost invisible, but at least I make an effort to see them.

The weather continues to be unpredictable. If you remember, I was complaining about how hot it was getting yesterday. An unexpected thunderstorm blew through town around 3 AM this morning and cooled things down by at least thirty degrees. When we took our morning walk with the dogs just before sunrise, the air was crisp and cool again. What a nice surprise. According to the calendar it is the last day in June, but for a little while this morning it felt like early April.

I keep hearing about how today is a "leap second" day where an extra second is added to the year to keep our slightly imperfect calendar from getting out of whack. How will anyone ever know if this little slice of time has really been added? I have a couple of watches that are set by signals from the atomic clock in Colorado. I wonder if they'll reset themselves while I'm asleep tonight to add this extra second? If they don't, I'll probably be one second behind for the rest of my life.

I got a message from a cousin today saying that one of my aunts had died. She was 96. There is one aunt left who is 99 and still going strong. Amazing. The men in the family didn't do so well. An uncle died at a relatively early age from Alzheimer's Disease and my Dad has been gone for over a decade now. I wonder how I'll fare? They say genetics has a lot to do with it, but I think it has more to do with living a stress free life. People I've known who were under a lot of stress for a sustained period of time never lived very long.

We had a surprising amount of rain last night, so I had to get the water off the roof again. I think keeping the roof dry and cleaning up dog poop are starting to define my life. Oddly, I don't find these things stressful, so maybe I'll live to be 96 too.

Tucker is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1987

I'm running out of ways to describe a rainy day. Rain has become the new normal. Once again it was raining when we woke up and the dogs had to wait for their morning walk. We ate breakfast while waiting for the skies to clear and kept checking the weather radar until we found our opportunity. The ground is so saturated with water that everything is soft and spongy. Dot and Dash normally like to smell things in the grass, but even they prefer walking on the roads lately. It's amazing how green and lush the park looks this Spring. All the neighbors lawns look great and Spring flowers are blooming everywhere. I imagine that water bills all over the city will be lower this month.I haven't seen anyone using their sprinkler system all month. I was amused listening to an interview with a local car wash owner on TV this morning. He said that business was way down and that only ten people had washed their car today. I kept wondering how even ten people could think it would be a good idea to take their car to a carwash on a day like this.

I'm easily amused on a rainy day, so I spent the afternoon trying out all the attachments on the new Dyson vacuum cleaner. I had already vacuumed the office yesterday and was astounded to pick up just as much dust as I did yesterday in the supposedly clean office when I vacuumed the shelves and hard to reach corners with the special attachments. The shelves above eye level were exceptionally dusty, but luckily the clever Dyson people made a special tool to clean areas about your head that you can't see. The best thing about the Dyson is that it is relatively quiet and it doesn't scare the dogs. Our old Hoover always sent them into a panic, but they both just ignored me while I was cleaning today.

I keep thinking of ways to improve the mobile sites I'm building, so I went back and fixed some mistakes I'd made earlier in the week. I'm definitely a late bloomer when it comes to responsive design, but I'm starting to get enthusiastic about the possibilities it presents. As I continue to become more familiar with CSS and structured HTML, I doubt that I'll ever build a static site in Dreamweaver again.

I've started wearing a plastic Essix retainer at night that one of my dentists created for me just before I had my wisdom tooth removed. Since some of my upper teeth are unopposed by lower teeth anymore, this retainer is supposed to keep the upper teeth from continuing to grow downward. I thought only rodents had teeth that continued to grow, but apparently ours do as well if they are not held in check by another tooth directly above or below. I thought I'd hate the retainer, but it is strangely comforting. It fits perfectly and is not unpleasant to wear at all. Putting it on, taking it off, and cleaning it, will add one more element to an already lengthy  set of morning rituals.

The rain finally stopped around 6:30 PM. There was just enough time to give Dot and Dash their evening walks and take a quick photo of a surprisingly beautiful sunset. There will be more rain tomorrow, but we're getting used to it.

Ranger s today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1773

We had a nice view of the solar eclipse this evening. As luck would have it, the best viewing time in Dallas was right around sunset, so we actually got a chance to see the eclipse with the naked eye as the ground haze near the horizon filtered the sun's light. After I walked the dogs, I grabbed a camera and headed toward what I though would be the best viewing location. My instincts were right, because when I arrived at my destination, there were several guys with large telescopes already there. One of the guys had a fancy H-Alpha filter on his telescope and let me take a look. There were several very large sunspots and I noticed that there was a bit of a rough edge to the bite the moon had taken out of the sun. I suspect that I was seeing the silhouette of mountains and valleys around the moon's circumference.

I've only seen one total eclipse of the sun in my life, but I've seen many partial ones. I wonder if I'll ever see another total eclipse? These things are pretty rare and almost never pass directly overhead. I saw my first one while I was going to high school in Alaska and I've never seen another one since. It was pretty cool to witness this eclipse though. I've never seen a sunset eclipse before and might never see one again.

Dot had a good day at her physical therapy session today. She seemed confident and sure of herself, with none of the shakiness in her rear legs that we saw last week. I'm always happy when Dot has a good day because it makes me think that all the effort we've put into physical therapy is actually producing some results. Dot seemed to enjoy here acupuncture therapy too, so it was a very good day.

I finished my writing assignment right on schedule and I'm up to speed on all the websites I manage, so maybe I'll have a free day tomorrow. That would be nice. I need to start planning for an upcoming video project and there's always those new Dr. Who episodes I haven't seen yet. I'll do just about anything to avoid re-grouting the shower.

Yikes! I just heard that there is another confirmed case of Ebola in New York City. With so many healthcare workers becoming infected, you'd think that they'd self-quarantine for 21 days outside the country before returning to the United States. One can only hope that common sense will eventually prevail and we'll impose a travel ban, close the borders, and stop issuing Visas to and from these West African countries. This is getting out of hand.

Freckles is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1430

I wonder what my day would look like if I just did what the dogs wanted? We wouldn't get up until 10 AM. Our walks would slow down to a snail's pace, so there would be plenty of time to examine and smell every single bush along the way. When we eventually arrived home, we would spend the rest of the day eating. Truthfully, this simple canine hedonism sounds much better than the way I actually spend my day. Although my own temperament is very much like a lazy Dalmatian, I spend my days like one of those caged Hamsters continually on the run inside one of those spinning exercise wheels.

Yes, it was another busy day. I had writing assignments to finish. I had to go back to the storage warehouse to get the photo equipment I forgot the other day. There were bills to pay, groceries to buy, and a DVD full of pictures and videos to burn for a client's Facebook page. I managed to make it to the gym again as well.

At least I'm not in the insurance business. Those guys must be tearing their hair out tonight. After the government forced them to spend three years radically changing their entire business model, the president gets on TV today and essentially says "Never mind, Just kidding. You can all go back to the way it was before if you want." Something tells me that it isn't going to be easy to go back to the way it was before. The horse is already out of the barn on this one.

We saw a fantastic sunset on our evening walk tonight. A couple of years ago I could have taken along a high resolution SLR and gotten some equally fantastic images. Not anymore. Taking a large camera with me is close to impossible these days. Dot has gotten frail and Dash has completely forgotten how to heal at my side. Keeping Dash from knocking Dot over as he roots around trying to find fresh horse poop along the trail is a two hand job. Having two dog that would dutifully heal at my side is just a distant memory now. The dogs enjoy their walks as much as the ever did. It just seems a lot harder to keep them moving in a straight line.

If I had the time and the money, I'd probably go out to breakfast every morning. I'm surprised at how much I look forward to my Friday morning breakfast outings. I don't understand all the people who bring their laptops along with them when they go out to eat. I see these folks all the time. To me, the whole point of my Friday breakfast is to get away from the computer for a while. That's exactly what I'll be doing tomorrow morning.

Puppies are today's Dalmatians of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1419

You never realize how many clocks there are in your house until the time changes. Everything seems to have a clock hidden away inside it these days. There's a clock inside the television. There's a clock in the answering machine. There's a clock in the stove. It's not surprising that there's a clock inside the clock radio, but it is surprising that almost all my cameras contain clocks. If that's not enough, there are plenty of clocks on the walls and in the halls.

The dogs seems to have a built-in clock as well. They did not want to fall back with the rest of us this morning. So much for getting that extra hour of sleep. Dot and Dash insisted on getting us out of bed the same time they got up yesterday. Clocks mean nothing to these guys. In their defense, it was a nice day for a walk. The weather was perfect.

The time may have changed today, but nothing else did. Our Sunday routine went like clockwork. Janet fixed a delicious breakfast, we took Dot and Dash to the dog park, and then I went to the gym. I'm pleased that a trip to the gym has become part of my Sunday routine. I'm not usually that busy on Sundays anyway, and this certainly seems like a better use of my time than watching old science fiction movies on Hulu. Basketball and hitting the heavy punching bag are still my favorite activities. I don't really like free weights that much, and the resistance machines are quite effective, but boring. Now that I'm starting to see some real results from my efforts, it all makes sense though. Exercise will become a permanent part of my personal health triangle, along with weight loss and a better diet.

I thought I might see a nice sunset on our evening walk, now that the time has changed. I even charged up the batteries in the lightweight digital camera that I used to frequently take with me on dog walks. Unfortunately, it was cloudy this evening. It was a lot colder too. I think a front is moving through. There is rain in the forecast now, but that's OK. I have a dry roof these days and I don't think I need to drive or take the dogs anywhere tomorrow. Hey, let it rain.

Wolfgang is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1070

I should have left well enough alone today. It seemed like a good time to tackle the mess of spiderwebs and wasp nests on the East side of the house. This small section of the yard became a no man's land after our neighbor erected a tall security fence that turned the narrow side yard into a dimly lit corridor. Armed with a broom and a can of bug spray, I attempted to rid the walls and windows of the unsightly mess on the side of the house. I managed to remove three large wasp nests and cleaned up four windows before I got stung. Somehow a wasp got into my shoe and stung me on the arch of my foot. Ouch! This pretty effectively put an end to my clean-up activities for the day. I did make good progress though, so I ought to be able to finish the job tomorrow after the rest of the wasps have died.

It looked like there was going to be a nice sunset this evening, so I grabbed a telephoto lens and headed out with the dogs toward a small hill that provided a good view of the horizon. About halfway to my destination, I was intercepted by a neighbor who wanted to talk about a neighborhood issue. I tried to be polite, but I wasn't very interested. I watched the sun slip behind behind a cloud and knew I had missed my shot. Dot barked so much that the neighbor eventually got tired of talking and let me go on my way. All I was able to salvage from this little expedition was a single afterglow shot taken with my iPhone.

I don't know why the neighbors are wasting their time with me anyway. They are trying to stop a boathouse from being built on the lake. Since I like to look at architecture just as much as I like to look at trees, I'm not really opposed to this boathouse. The design is actually quite pretty. The neighbors don't have a chance of stopping this thing anyway. The city is desperate for additional revenue. If the city thinks that this building will be a moneymaker for them, a few disgruntled neighbors aren't going to slow things down a bit.

I've just about finished replacing all the incandescent bulbs in the house with high-tech LED bulbs. I'm doing this a little bit at a time, since the high output LED's are still kind of expensive. The front porch got LED bulbs today. I'm a big fan of these bulbs. They don't get hot. They don't burn much electricity. They practically last forever. And since they are daylight balanced, they give off a very pleasant natural looking light. It's weird to think that the light bulbs in my house are going to last longer than I will, but that's probably what's going to happen. Isn't technology great.

Jasper is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1068

Two down, three to go. As I pulled into our photo location this morning, I realized that I'd been to this particular strip shopping center in far north Dallas before. It used to be home to one of the only stores in Texas that sold astronomical telescopes. I bought a telescope here four or five years ago. I was disappointed to see that the cool little telescope store had disappeared. The building now housed a Condoms to Go store. A sign of the times, I guess.

We didn't have as many customers today as we did last week. The low turnout was more or less expected, since this was a new location for Dalmatian Rescue. Usually we do better in subsequent years after our customers tell their friends about us. The locations where we've been for three or four years now draw huge crowds.

One of the dogs peed on my backdrop today.  This always happens one or two times a season. It wouldn't be a problem if the twenty foot long muslin backdrops weren't so hard to clean. You can't just throw the big hand painted backdrops into a commercial washer, because the colors will run. Generally you just have to tread the stain with a bacterial enzyme stain remover like Outright and hope for the best. If you manage to get the stain out, everything is fine. If you don't, other dogs start to pee on the same spot and you're hosed. At that point you just have to throw the backdrop away.

Even though I didn't photograph as many dogs as I did last week, I was just as tired. At one point, during a lull in the activities, Santa and I both fell asleep. Everyone liked their pictures though, and for once we had plenty of room to set up. I think this will be a good location to return to next year.

The weather continues to be exceptionally nice. After the photo shoot, I got home just in time to feed Dot and Dash their dinner and go on our evening walk. We saw another beautiful sunset, but I didn't feel like doing any more photography today. You'll just have to imagine how pretty it was.

Puppies are today's Dalmatians of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1066

I picked up some more memory cards for this weekend's photo shoot. I continue to be amazed at how cheap flash memory has become in recent years. The SDHC cards I got today were half the price of some I'd purchased just a few years ago. I remember seeing a picture recently of a 5GB hard drive from 1955 being loaded on-board a cargo aircraft. The drive was as big as a refrigerator and had to be lifted into the airplane with a forklift. The little 32GB memory card I got today was as small as my thumbnail and only cost $16. If everything improved at this rate, I might be driving around in a brand new $400 Land Rover.

There is a downside to Moore's Law and the progress it brings however. Even though technology continues to get faster and cheaper, you still need to replace everything every two to three years. An old guitar may go up in value, but an old computer is just a fancy doorstop.

The current stock market free-fall is totally depressing. After some nice gains earlier in the year, most of my positions are at their lows of the year. Not only is the market going lower, it's still totally unpredictable. You can't just short everything when the market goes down these days. It's just too volatile. The whole thing drives me nuts. Is there good news just over the horizon? I'm not so sure. The Greeks and the Spaniards are rioting in the streets. The Israelis and the Arabs are about to go to war again. Our top spy has been caught with his pants down. And taxes are about to go up.

At least the sunsets are pretty. Some of you may remember that I got all excited several months ago when I discovered that the new Instacanvas website provided me with an easy way to sell some of these sunset pictures. Have I actually sold any? Well, no. It turns out that the Instacanvas business model was to sell prints to the photographers who actually took the pictures. I guess they are kind of an online vanity press for photographers. The last thing I need are more prints of my own pictures. I was kind of hoping you guys would buy them.

Dot is acting like she wants to throw up. I've taken her outside twice and she does nothing. I sure wish dogs could talk. If she could talk, I'm sure she'd join me in saying "at least it's Friday tomorrow."

Honey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1065

When I woke up this morning, I felt like I was going to explode. I take Simcor and one of the side effects of this drug is that it dilates the tiny capillaries near the surface of your skin, resulting in severe flushing. Usually this happens while you are asleep, because you are supposed to take the big blue pill just before you go to bed. Unfortunately, depending on what you eat for dinner, it can occasionally take a lot longer than expected for the medication to enter your bloodstream. I must have eaten something that really slowed down the process yesterday because my blood vessels didn't begin to dilate until I got up this morning. Yikes! My skin was red as a beet and I felt like I'd stumbled into a cactus patch. The discomfort only lasted a few hours, but it did remind me that some of my meds are pretty powerful.

I finished my website assignments earlier than expected today, so I decided to watch the first episode of the Firefly series. I only had time to watch the initial Serenity episode, but it was enough to make me a fan of Joss Whedon. I doubt that I'll start going to Comic-Con conventions or become a fanboy, but I'll be the first to admit that this short lived Sci-Fi Western is special and unique.

The weather is still brisk and cool, but it was warm enough for the dogs to lie out in the sun after lunch. They like that. While Dot and Dash lounged, I swept leaves off the porch and cleaned spiderwebs off the windows. I don't know what makes our house so attractive for bugs, but it seems to be a popular destination for them. As the weather grows cooler, they are renewing their efforts to come inside for the Winter. Since I refuse to use anything that could be toxic to the dogs to control the pests, it is always an uphill battle to have a bug free house. There are good things and bad things about living next to a park that is a nature preserve. One of the bad things is facing a continual invasion of bugs. At least the rats are gone. An influx of feral cats in the neighborhood has pretty well taken care of the rats. What the cats don't eat, the coyotes do.

The pretty sunsets have returned for another year. Just about every day this week we have encountered a spectacular sunset on our evening walks. The sunsets are just in time too. I had just about run out of wildflowers to photograph. I'll try to have something new for you tomorrow. It would be nice to have something new for me as well.

Puppies are our Dalmatians of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 751

The days are noticeably longer now. Pretty soon, all the sunset photo opportunities that seem perfectly timed with the dog's evening walk will be gone for another season. I'm sure the golden evening skies will be replaced by something equally interesting as the days grow longer, but I'm going to miss these spectacular sunset walks.

One of my European clients has started paying me using Paypal. The fact that it's so easy and safe to make international transactions with Paypal is one more reason I'm starting to use it for almost everything. Getting money from another country used to be a nightmare when I had to use wire transfers. The German banks always wanted information that the American banks didn't even use. Paypal is so much easier.

I almost upgraded my main computer to Lion today, but chickened out at the last minute. Lion seems to work well on my laptop, but I have much more software installed on the main computer. Every single time I've installed a major system upgrade on my desktop, the results have been disastrous. There is always some very expensive application that I use everyday which refuses to work under the new system. Since it's hard to reverse a system upgrade, I usually have to go out and buy all new versions of the software I already have. Typically, I don't like the new versions as well as the old versions, but that's another story. I wish Apple had some sort of app that would search everything on my computer and tell me if I was ready for Lion or not. Snow Leopard is running perfectly now, but I remember that it was a nightmare too in the beginning. One thing is certain. I'm going to have to upgrade to Lion sooner or later. Avid Media Composer 6.0, which I would like to start using, only runs under Lion.

The dead leaves are really stacking up in the back yard now. I'm going to have to break out the leaf blower pretty soon and blow them into big piles so I can bag them up and get rid of them before Spring. There are so many leaves on the ground already, that even if I bag up leaves every weekend, it will still take me until Spring to get the yard cleaned up and ready for a fresh load of St. Augustine sod. It would be so much easier to live on the 17th. floor of a luxury high-rise.

Lucy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 697

I shop at Sam's Club frequently. It's definitely not my favorite store, but prices are low. The irritating thing about Sam's it that once you get used to buying something, they package it in a larger container and make you buy even more. Instead of buying two bottles on Windex, you have to buy three. Almost every week, something gets less convenient to buy. Today, I needed to get butter, and instead of the normal boxes with four sticks of butter to a pound, they just packaged the butter in giant one pound slabs. You had to buy four of these slabs at a time. The huge mounds of butter wouldn't even begin to fit on a butter dish. Who needs this much butter? I passed on this item and went on to the next thing on my list: glucosamine chondroitin pills. I had to buy two large jars. Much to my chagrin, I found that I already had glucosamine when I got home.

When the shopping and laundry was done, I experimented with my editing software to see if it was going to be easier to edit files from my new video camera in Final Cut Pro or Avid Media Composer. Final Cut seemed the clear winner. This may be because I know Final Cut backwards and forwards, while I'm still learning to use Media Composer. On the other hand, Final Cut Pro may be easier to edit with, because it transcodes the AVCHD files to ProRes, while Avid tries to edit them directly. I don't think my computer is fast enough to edit AVCHD files directly.

We're still having spectacular sunsets. Tonight, the dogs and I got quite a show on our evening walk. The sky seemed like it was on fire. It was almost like that scene in The Poison Sky episode of Dr. Who where the earth's atmosphere burns. If the dogs would actually stay put while I told them to stay, I could have gotten a few more pictures. With squirrels to chase and strong smells everywhere, I'm lucky to get any clear images at all. The iPhone doesn't help matters either, since there is no control over shutter speed. At dusk, most iPhone pictures are blurry anyway.

Tomorrow is Pet Fair. I'll be taking video footage of the event from noon through 4 PM. This is an event for kids, so I'll probably have plenty of pictures of bounce houses, face painting, and children holding puppies. Hopefully, it won't rain.

Jada is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 694

I think the French Toast I made myself for breakfast might have been the high point of the day. I didn't have any writing deadlines, so I thought I'd try to finish the rest of the videos I've been editing for my medical client's website. I made pretty good progress, but I've still got one more video to go. The odd thing is that even though my computer is much faster than the ones I used to edit with ten years ago, it still takes me just as long to render things. Back then I was editing standard definition 4x3 video and now I'm editing 16x9 high definition video. There's so much more information to crunch that my speedy new computer doesn't save me any time at all.

One of these days pretty soon, I'm going to have to walk the dogs real early and then go back and retrace my steps with a camera. I've been encountering beautiful sunsets and evening skies just about every day this week. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to take any photos that I could sent to the stock photo agency, since all I have with me when I walk the dogs is my iPhone.

Today's market sell-off was discouraging. It's getting to seem like market fundamentals don't mean anything. The market just bounces around wildly on rumors and fears. There isn't much difference between investing and gambling anymore. People who bet on sporting events can produce just as many charts and statistics as market technicians. Unfortunately, neither bookies or brokers can predict the future. The best either can do is look at past results and establish probabilities. Actually, I think sports fan might have the upper hand these days. If you know your teams and players, you probably have a better chance of winning your bet than folks who play the market like me. Will Europe implode and create a financial black hole that sucks us all in? That's what the smart money thought today, but in truth, nobody really knows.

The dogs definitely knew there was training class tonight. By 7 PM, they were circling around the front door, waiting for us to put their leashes on. They're not always obedient in obedience class, but they do seem to enjoy going.

Dot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 683

I drove all the way across town today, only to discover that Elliott's Hardware on Maple Avenue had been torn down. Ever since I moved to Dallas, Elliott's has been my go-to place for odd fasteners, specialty tools and things that you just couldn't find anywhere else. For years, it was common knowledge that you could find anything at Elliott's. Maybe they just opened another store somewhere else, but even if they did, it won't be the same. The original Elliott's was unique, partially because some of the original employees still seemed to work there. These guys knew where every weird nut and bolt was hidden. They saved my butt several times on projects where I needed something that places like Lowes or Home Depot wouldn't even think of carrying. I'm definitely going to miss this store.

My trip across town wasn't entirely in vain though. I was able to find some light black ink for my large format printer at Competitive Camera so I could finish the Dalmatian Rescue Santa Paws posters I had promised Janet today. I can't believe it's almost time to start taking Santa pictures again. Our first holiday pet photo event starts on November 18, and we continue to do the Santa photos every weekend through mid-December.

Now that it's getting closer to dusk when I take the dogs on their evening walk, I'm starting to see lots of wedding photographers and brides again. Having a sunset shot of the wedding dress near a lake must be an essential part of every wedding photographer's package these days. I've seen a different bride being photographed just about every sunny day this week while I walk the dogs.

I was going to use today to get caught up on some things, and now I can't even remember what unfinished task was so important. I guess if I can't even remember what I needed to do, waiting until tomorrow won't be much of a problem. Probably waiting until next month won't be much of a problem either.

Dakota is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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