Day 3338

I knew it was going to be a long day when Dash refused to pee before he went to bed last night. I wish he'd plan ahead. Sure enough, he got me up to go outside around 3 AM and then I woke up twice more to change out puppy pads when he pooped in his sleep. When I finally woke up this morning, the sun was up and Janet had already left for the gym.

Taking care of Dash is definitely a team effort. It always takes a lot longer to get him ready for the day when I'm on my own. Dash would look like he was sound asleep until I left to do something in another room and then almost immediately I could hear him struggling to get up. He never wanted to be in the same room I was in. When I was trying to make the bed, he wanted to be in the kitchen. When I was in the kitchen, he wanted to go back to the bedroom.

Eventually I got him to take him morning pills by making little ham roll ups that I fed to him one by one while he was laying in his kitchen dog bed. He had no interest in eating his breakfast and definitely didn't have enough energy for a morning walk. He slept for most of the morning. This behavior used to alarm me, but I was almost certain that he'd be fine in a few hours. Sure enough, he perked up about five minutes before Janet came home. He was standing on his own and waiting at the front door when she arrived and I don't think Janet even believed that I'd had trouble with him earlier.

Dash seemed like a different dog when we took our morning walk around noon. It's still a mystery how he can go from seeming half dead to wanting a walk in the park in just a few hours. We had a nice walk and for the rest of the day, Dash seemed fine. Maybe he's just conserving his energy for the things he likes. Makes sense to me. I'd conserve my energy for the things I liked too, if I could just figure out what I liked.

I made one short excursion to pick up a new supply of Plavix for Dash, but that was about it. The rest of the day was spent just dealing with the basics. It's amazing how long it can take to make the bed when it's covered with protective material to keep your dog from ruining the mattress. It also takes a long time to do the laundry when there is always something soiled. I usually have the TV on during the day, but I don't have the attention span to watch a movie and I'm totally fed up with political news. There ought to be a channel that has nothing but dog rescues, weird weather stories, and updates from NASA. I'd watch that.

I did watch a press conference where the Opportunity Rover team officially called an end to to the little rover's mission. Kind of sad. Hard to believe that it's been fifteen years since I learned that Opportunity and its companion Spirit had both successfully landed on the red planet. I watched the landing on the same computer I'm using now. I'm amazed that Opportunity remained functional that long without regular trips back to the dealership for repairs. Even my computer has been repaired several times during the past 15 years. It's pretty clear that Land Rover could never make a Mars rover. I've never had a car that lasted fifteen years and I don't even drive very much.

I hope I can convince Dash to do his business before he goes to bed tonight. When Dash sleeps well, I sleep well.

Tessa is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3134

I think I'm getting used to the heat. The temperature was only 95 degrees today and it actually seemed cool. Janet didn't have to work this morning, so she got me up early and we were able to give Dash a nice morning walk before the sun ruined everything. Walking before sunrise really makes a big difference.

I'm still wondering how I'm going to maintain this routine while Janet is gone. It takes two of us to get his boots and leg brace on in the morning. One person holds Dash still and lifts his legs one at a time while the other person puts on the socks and protective boots. I've been able to get Dash dressed alone before, but it continues to get harder as he gradually becomes weaker. We'll do the best we can. I know Dash loves his walks, so maybe he'll be cooperative.

I finally went up on the roof and inspected the repairs this morning. Generally, the workmanship looked pretty good, but there were a few glaring errors. There are several telephones lines on the roof. A series of wood blocks elevates these lines, keeping them about five inches above the roof's surface. The roofers removed the blocks and poured the elastomer material directly over the lines. Now, they have become embedded in the roof. There is no way I can remove these wires without ripping a hole in the silicon coating. There is also a mysterious air bubble in one section of the new coating. Where did that come from? I hesitate to complain about these things. All in all, the roofers did a pretty good job and I know they don't want to hear from me again.

The large production printer ran out of ink today while I was trying to clear the clogged lines. Against my better judgement, I called my supplier and ordered some more of the expensive ink. It's doubtful that I'll ever be making large Giclée prints again. I hate to give up on the aging printer though. Unlike some of my obsolete equipment, this thing still works as long as I keep it clean.

The light in the back yard stayed on all night and automatically shut off at sunrise. Weird. There is no rhyme or reason to this thing. Some days it works and other days it doesn't. I like things orderly and predictable, so this stupid light is driving me nuts. If I was a superstitious person, I'd have to conclude that the light was haunted. We'll see what it does tonight. I hate to keep bugging the electrician if the thing is actually working.

I think I've got Dash's complex diet and pill routines memorized. If not, Janet has written everything out for me. She, more than anyone, knows how forgetful I am. All Dash's daily pills are neatly packaged in sandwich bags, labeled with the appropriate day of the week. There is a bag for morning meds and a different bag for evening mets. The refrigerator is filled with tasty things to make improvised pill pockets out of. If Dash isn't eating chicken, there is steak. I think we'll be OK.

I wish I wasn't such a nervous person, but I've spent the past three years caring for sick dogs. There are so many things that can go wrong.

Molly is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2753

Janet and I have to do all our errands together now. She can drive, but her doctors don't want her to lift things. I've got one good hand for lifting things, but I can't drive. Together, we make a pretty decent team, although I still don't understand why we are doing our shopping on busy weekends. When we were out today, I saw a couple of old people who had personal assistants. "We need one of those," I said.

I'll be glad when I don't have to wear the splint on my wrist anymore. I wish I had the forethought to fall on my right wrist instead of my left. I am so totally left handed that it's hard to even write my name or hold a fork these days. I am getting better though. The swelling is starting to subside on my left leg and I find it easier to sleep now. I'm going to have to revise my position on pain pills a bit. They do have their uses. When I took a Tylenol-Codeine pill before I went to sleep last night, it really helped dull the pain in my wrist. I may not even need a pill tonight. The pain is not as bad today.

Dash is a lazy dog and loves to nap, but I think even he is becoming bored with us. Janet and I both get tired so easily now. After we finished our shopping today, we both went back to bed and went to sleep for two hours. Although it is becoming easier to walk, I still can't be on my feet for too long. Moving around a bit is good for circulation, but moving around too much is bad. You really have to stay focused on healing. You can't pretend that everything is fine when it isn't.

This whole incident has made me realize that you have to start taking falls seriously as you get older. I've fallen many times before. I've even landed on my wrists before. It's kind of natural to try to break a fall with your hands. Although I've fallen hundreds of times for dozens of reasons, I've never put myself out of commission like this before. I'm going to have to be real careful when I go up on the roof. Old, brittle bones aren't very forgiving.

The animal control people were back in the neighborhood today. They were still looking for the owners of the dog who bit me. Janet and I have told them several times that the owners are out of town, but that doesn't seem to make any difference. When the guy knocked on my door again this morning, I gave him the owners cell phone numbers and asked him to please call them directly. Just knocking randomly on neighbor's doors and asking people if they'd seen the owners isn't going to prove anything. It's weird that animal control is ruthlessly efficient, but I can't get the sanitation people to empty my trash. When I look at how city government functions, it's no surprise that our national government doesn't work very well either.

My newly upgraded computer seems to be working well. Even though the cloned hard drive was supposed to be absolutely identical to the old drive, I'm noticing all sorts of little differences. The computer seems to know that there's been an organ transplant. Some icons look different now and the computer seems to want to go into hibernation and disconnect from WiFi when it has been sitting idle for more than thirty minutes. Maybe this is a good thing. The computer is idle quite a bit. Lord knows how much electricity I've wasted over the years.

I'll be glad when I can get back to walking Dash again. I miss our early morning walks. One of the best signs that I've been totally out of it lately is that the battery on my fitness tracker has been dead for three days and I only noticed this morning. I'll try to keep the battery charged, but it's going to take a while to get back to taking 10,000 steps a day.

Trevor is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2189

We're done! I always say that I never want to do one of these pet picture marathons again, but that's just my aging body talking. When it's all over, I usually think we've done something good. Hundreds of people now have their Christmas card photos. We've made a lot of people happy. And we've raised a fair amount of money to help my favorite charity. Shooting Santa photos with people's pets is the only team activity I get involved with all year. Maybe a little teamwork isn't such a bad thing. I'll have to say that we're a pretty good team. It takes eight people to put together these Santa Paws events and over the years we've become experts at it. People come back year after year to dress their pets in ridiculous costumes and have Santa hold them on his lap. They say we have the best Santa photos in town. I believe we do.

Today was tiring, but everybody was in a good mood since we knew we were on the home stretch. I think most of the bad, misbehaving dogs decided to come today. We definitely had our hands full. Our set got peed on again. Several dogs were nervous and didn't want to have anything to do with Santa. Other dogs couldn't stand still for two seconds. Quite a few drooled a lot and couldn't keep their tongue in their mouth. It takes a lot of patience to be a pet photographer. It also takes a lot of dog treats. Eventually, we got a good photo of almost everybody, but some dogs took longer than others.

Texas weather is remarkably inconsistent. When I went to bed last night it was warm and muggy. During the night it poured rain and by the time we called it a day at our Santa Paws location this afternoon, it was thirty degrees cooler and felt like it could snow. I thought there might be a lot of no shows because of today's rain, but I think all the weather did was make people late for their appointment. I never criticize people for being late anymore, since I'm late so often myself. Dallas traffic is terrible and encountering a single traffic accident or construction site can put you twenty minutes behind. With some of the wild dogs we photographed today, I'm amazed that many of these people made it to the photo shoot at all.

With the Santa Paws season behind us, it's now time to catch up on other things. I'll make a trip to the storage warehouse tomorrow to return some of the equipment we used and hopefully return with a box or two of Christmas ornaments. Putting up a Christmas tree is definitely on this weeks to-do list. So is putting up the new set of mini-blinds I bought last week. I'd like to sleep in tomorrow, but it's a work day. Janet will be getting up at the crack of dawn to get ready for work and we'll all go on a morning walk as the sun comes up. After that, who knows. There is a fresh bunch of bananas and a tub of strawberries in the kitchen for my morning smoothies. There is certainly plenty to do tomorrow, but it will be hard to resist the temptation to take a long nap as soon as Janet's car leaves the driveway.

Cookie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2182

For the first time in a very long time, Blogger appears to be down. When I logged on to write my post tonight, I couldn't view my blog at all and kept getting a message saying "Whoops, that's an error. We apologize for the inconvenience." Somehow this seemed like a lot more than a minor inconvenience when I was faced with the prospect of missing my first daily post since I started the blog 2182 days ago. I did a quick Google search and discovered that other people all around the world were having the same problem. Somehow this was comforting. My blog didn't just disappear. Google is working on the problem and if I write slowly, there's always a chance that they will get everything fixed before I finish telling you about today's activities.

There were certainly plenty going on today. We completed our second Santa Paws photo shoot and for the most part, everything went well. Everyone was tired. Some volunteers wore the same clothes that they did yesterday. I didn't even have time to take a shower. It was a long drive to today's location, so I had to get up even earlier than I did yesterday. We got Dot and Dash walked and fed, packed the cars with equipment, and off we went. I wish I had time to diagnose what was wrong with my camera yesterday, but that will have to wait. I just took a different camera with me today and all was well. Camera problems are mine and mine alone. The rest of the crew has their own problems to deal with. Sometimes the printer refuses to cooperate. Other times our credit card reader won't work. Frequently, people are late for their appointments and we get off schedule. We're a good team though. At the end of the day, everyone has their pictures and goes home happy.

Our luck ran out with the backdrop today. Several dogs peed on it and one dog pooped. I need to remember to pack a bottle of Nature's Miracle enzyme cleaner with the rest of my gear. It's the only thing that works with these types of stains. Our host had some disinfectant cleaners, but the backdrop still smelled like pee when I got home. I hung it outside to dry and will see if I can salvage it after I deal with the U-Verse people tomorrow.

I'm being optimistic and assuming that the U-Verse repair folks will actually show up tomorrow. Sometimes they don't. This has been the longest service outage I've had in a long time and it's starting to get on my nerves. As a web developer, I really depend on having a good internet connection. The Internet should be as reliable at your water and electricity. Oops. Now that I think about it, the Internet is actually more reliable than our electricity and water. After living without water for a week in a home that has power outages after every thunderstorm, I realize now that nothing is all that reliable anymore.

I hope the U-Verse technician can quickly and quietly fix our broadband without upsetting Dot and causing her to poop all over the house. I hope I can salvage the pee stained muslin photo backdrop so I don't have to buy another. I hope I can convince the client who was ready to dump me on Friday that I can provide the same quality of service at the new ad agency he's considering. I hope I can keep a smile on my face for the rest of the Christmas party season. Nobody needs to know how I really feel.

After spending most of this weekend eating fast food, I realize why so many people are overweight and have diabetes. Junk food tastes so good that it's hard to resist. Too much sugar and salt is always pretty tasty. It's too bad I couldn't lose weight on a steady diet of pizza and burgers. I always enjoy the pizzas I eat while I'm working on location, but it's back to healthy food tomorrow. I have tremendous will power, but I often wonder what's the point of it all. The people eating junk food seem to be having more fun.

Emma is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1582

Not a bad day. The weather was absolutely gorgeous. It was cool enough to keep the dogs happy, and warm enough to keep me happy. There aren't many days like this in Texas, so I try to take advance of them. As an added bonus, I was able to start the day off with a clear view of the total "blood moon" eclipse. As luck would have it, I actually did wake up to to to the bathroom about 2:30 AM and this was just about the middle of the eclipse in our time zone. I'm glad I went outside and took a look, since the dark red moon was quite spectacular. Red was definitely the theme of the night sky, since Mars made it's closest approach to Earth last night as well, glowing a rusty red slightly to the right of the blood red moon.

When the dogs were younger, it would have been impossible to go out in the back yard in the middle of the night without Dot racing out the back door and waking up the entire neighborhood with her barking. Neither dog woke up at all last night and slept soundly through the entire eclipse. I'm glad they didn't wake up. As soon as Dot and Dash wake up, they think it is breakfast time.

I generally don't like meetings, but I had a surprisingly good meeting with a client this afternoon. We tackled a tough problem and came up with a innovative solution that we both thought would work. Trust me. This doesn't happen very often at client meetings. I even got the go-ahead to develop a prototype and see if the idea works. If this happened every day, or even every week, I might actually enjoy working.

My mechanic called today and told me he might have a buyer for my old Maserati. The potential buyer is some guy in Holland why likes to buy cars in American and ship them back to Europe to restore. Unfortunately, the guy wants the car for a dirt cheap price. I could get a lot more for the car if it was running, but then I'd have to pay quite a bit to make the necessary repairs. Some of the parts the car needs are virtual impossible to find anymore. They just don't exist. My gut tells me that it would probably be better to sell the car "as is" in non-running condition. I could spend a small fortune fixing the thing with no guarantee of finding a buyer when all the repairs were finished. Selling an old car is a lot like selling real estate. Often the best time to sell is when you actually have a buyer.

I'm proud of myself. Janet got a free loaf of delicious looking artisan bread from Central Market last week when she was grocery shopping. So far, I haven't touched the bread, even though I would have loved to have turned half the loaf into a big stack of french toast this morning. As tempting as french toast drenched in maple syrup sounded, I had my regular bowl of oatmeal and fruit instead.

Sometimes it's hard to stay strong, but when I was watching Dot trotting along in the water treadmill this afternoon, I kept thinking "Hey, if she can do it, so can I."

Krissy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day