Day 4322

I did a lot of walking today but my Fitbit showed no more steps than a normal day. Either I'm imagining things or something is wrong with the Fitbit. I guess it shouldn't matter. It was a nice day to be outside. Dawn probably agreed with us today. She seemed to have a great time on both her walks.

When we were taking Dawn on her Sunday outing, we stopped at a hardware store and bought a bag of dirt. Janet wanted to fill in a hole where she takes Dawn for training class so she wouldn't trip in it in the dark. When we arrived to fill in the hole, there was a family having a picnic at the same spot. We didn't want to interrupt their picnic so the bag of dirt is still in the car. I guess we'll take care of this sometime. 

When we got ice cream this morning I noticed that the person at the drive up window called in "two child's cones." Who knew. I never thought we'd been eating children's cones all this time. I usually just have a little bit of my cone and give the rest to Dawn. Janet does the same. A whole ice cream cone is probably too much for Dawn.

Dawn's Sunday outing was the highlight of the day. Not much else happened all day. I cleared out a slow drain in the bathroom, but that's not worth talking about. There's always something that needs attention in an old house. I get tired of fixing things but it kind of goes with the territory. I still need to get a carpenter out here to replace some rotten wood but I can't remember who the carpenters are in my contact list. I have three carpenters in my address book. One is good and two are terrible, but I can't remember who is who. They all have generic sounding names like Mark or Luke. I don't want to ask one of the bad ones to come over and then have to tell him to go away after I recognize him at the door. I probably should just start over. I haven't used any of these guys in years and there's a good chance they don't even live in Dallas anymore.

I looked for the eagles on my long walk today, but they were nowhere to be seen. I did see several Blue Herons, dozens of White Pelicans, along with the usual Canadian Geese, Coots, Monk Parakeets, Mallards, and Muscovy Ducks. The lake is really a birders paradise. I'm not really that interested in birds, but I do take a lot of pictures. Birds are willing subjects who seldom cause problems. Hey, I'm a photographer. I've got to take pictures of something.

Tomorrow it's time to visit the Dalmatians again. I don't think anyone new has arrived, so we'll probably just play with Pepper, Oliver, and Charlie. Occasionally I think my life is starting to seem a little too much like the Ground Hog Day movie, but the repetition is actually kind of comforting. I don't mind doing the same things over and over again.

I just heard thunder outside. That's odd. It wasn't supposed to rain today. The forecast says it's still clear outside, but the radar does show a little storm headed our way. I guess nature doesn't like predictability as much as I do.

Ellis is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 4173

Our weird weather continues. I saw the sun for a while this morning, but by mid-afternoon the sky was dark and I was hearing a lot of thunder. My schedule revolves around finding a time to walk these days. I usually manage to stay dry, but sometimes I end up cutting it pretty close.

While I was waiting for a good time to walk, I wrote a bunch of letters. I wrote the tree trimmer, thanking him for his estimate and told him that Janet and I still couldn't decide whether to remove the big Oak in the back yard or just trim it. I wrote SpaceFlight Magazine, asking them if there were any upcoming launches they particularly wanted to cover. I listed the launches I was interested in attending and am hoping that at least one of them will be something the magazine is interested in. I also wrote the observatory asking whether they were planning to continue their new photography night program. I heard back from the observatory in just a few hours with an affirmative answer. I think I'll probably be going back sometime this Fall. Maybe I'll get that little telescope I've had my eye on and take it with me.

Dawn seems to be getting more relaxed around me. We spend time in the back yard together every day when weather permits. She is very relaxed in the back yard with me and reasonably relaxed when we are napping on the bed together. The kitchen is still a problem though. I have a feeling that this is not going to change. 

The training class that we used to take Dot and Dash to has opened up again. It's another sign that Covid restrictions are over. Janet has decided that training will be good for Dawn and has enrolled her in a beginner's class. I'm not sure whether I'll go along or not. I used to train Dash while Janet trained Dot. There's not much point in going to the class without a dog. Dawn might do better in class without me around anyway, since I tend to make her nervous. I'm real curious to see how Dawn will do in this class. She really seems to want to be around other dogs.

The sky was already starting to look dark by the time we got around to walking this afternoon. Dawn was adventurous today and ventured off on a new route she hadn't tried before. She enjoyed smelling things and ended up walking much further than her normal one mile loop. It's encouraging to see her try new things.

We stayed dry on Dawn's walk but I had a feeling that I might get wet on my own longer walk. I continued walking anyway, checking the weather radar on my phone from time to time. For a while I thought I might be able to complete my regular six mile route until I started hearing thunder. I never saw any lightning, but the thunder was very loud. There must have been cloud to cloud lightning high overhead. I headed home expecting to get wet, but only experienced a few light sprinkles. I kept seeing heavy rain falling off in the distance and somehow managed to make it home before it arrived. It wasn't a great walk, but I managed to get enough steps to keep Mr. Fitbit happy.

I thought about mowing the grass today but it was still too wet. Some of my neighbors were mowing their grass, but they had gas mowers. My electric mower just isn't powerful enough to cut through wet grass. I hope we get some dry weather soon. The grass is growing fast and pretty soon it will be too tall to mow. 

It's time to make a grocery list again. I'm glad I got new windshield wipers because it looks like I'll be doing my shopping in the rain. This has been an unusually wet Spring. It probably means that we will have an unusually dry Summer.

Sam is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3415

For almost as long as I can remember, the first of the month was the day we gave the dogs their heartworm pill. We've seen so many heartworm positive dogs in the rescue program over the years that we knew how important it was to treat our own dogs. It felt weird to skip this monthly ritual today. After thirty two years it was almost the way we measured time. Eventually I'll get used to a life without dogs. Not today though.

I hear thunder, but we still haven't seen much rain. There appears to be a huge storm to the North of us but it looks like we'll get lucky again. Unless the wind changes, the storm will be in Oklahoma soon. At the most, we'll just get a few showers. I hope this trend continues. I've been able to take my morning walk and run my errands without incident. I haven't even had to turn on the pumps yet.

Today's errands were minor. I had to go to the bank and then I took a thank you letter to the post office. Janet and I debated about who would write the letter since our handwriting skills have become so bad.  My handwriting turned out to be marginally better than hers, so I ended up writing the letter. There are very few occasions to write in cursive anymore. You kind of forget how to do it. My writing is still readable, but it certainly isn't very pretty. My sister has written the first draft for several books completely in longhand. Not me. It's so much easier to use the computer.

I'm trying to do at least one useful thing every day. Today I sorted through a huge pile of socks and threw away all the ones with a hole in the heel. When I was done I had filled a kitchen trash sack with socks, but I still had way too many. A lot of the remaining socks are brand new but I doubt that I'll wear them. I have trouble finding the right size. Medium adult socks often feel too small and large socks are almost always too big. My foot must be somewhere in between. It ought to be easier to find perfectly fitting shoes and socks. Why aren't all shoes available in different widths? A wide shoe is much more comfortable to me. You can't always find wide shoes. I don't like to shop either. I often just buy stuff without trying it on. I don't think you even can try on socks before you buy. No wonder I have so much stuff that doesn't fit.

The last White Pelican is still at the lake. The bird was sitting on a different log today, so at least it can move. I kind of identify with this straggler. All the other pelicans are probably in North Dakota by now. Did they leave this guy behind on purpose?  Birds can be pretty mean.  Maybe the pelican just felt no desire to migrate. It is a long way to fly and the lake is pretty nice. Who knows. A group of Quaker parrots decide to make the lake their permanent home a few years ago. Maybe this pelican will too.

I wonder if I can find something useful to do tomorrow. It definitely won't be counting socks. A two hour task sounds about right. Anything longer could seriously cut into a day of doing nothing.

Betsy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2079

We heard thunder off in the distance when we woke up this morning, but we went on our morning walk anyway since the weather radar showed the storm would pass to the East of us. Distant thunder doesn't bother Dot as much anymore since she is so hard of hearing. She's still scared of lightning though, but I had that covered. I upgraded my weather app recently to show real time lightning strikes and there was no lightning in the vicinity. Personal weather radar has made it so much easier to walk the dogs. I could live without a lot of things, but I'd have a hard time giving up my weather radar.

I hope my broker didn't decide that today would be a good day to pick up some bargains. The market was up over 300 points while I was eating breakfast and then went up and down like a yo-yo for the rest of the day. At the close it added another 200 point loss to an unrelenting week of big declines. I don't even look at my stocks these days. It's just too depressing. Even stop loss strategies can't really protect you in times like these. In a volatile market like this you can get stopped out of a good stock in a matter of seconds when an unpredictable wild move triggers a sale that you didn't really want. You can't chase trends either, because they change too quickly. You pretty much have to stick with your convictions and weather the storm. I agree with Dot and Dash on this one. Weathering a storm is not much fun.

Today was pretty slow. Slow is good though. I wish things were even slower. I stayed busy by finishing a writing assignment and making arrangements for an upcoming photo shoot. There were several vet appointments I had to schedule for Dot in September and Dash was low on phenobarbital, so I made a trip to the vet to get another month's supply. That was about it. I kind of wish I had one new writing assignment each day and one new website to design each week. This would give me an almost ideal workflow with minimal boredom or stress. It seldom works this way though. Writing assignments tend to come in clumps and most of my website work is just maintenance and updates now. Designing a brand new website is much more fun. I don't even solicit photography jobs anymore because I hate carrying the heavy equipment. I'm kind of dreading my photoshoot this weekend and hope my shoulder doesn't go out again.

Don't get me wrong. I still like taking photographs, I just don't like hauling a ton of strobes, power packs, soft boxes and backdrops to a location shoot. I was actually kind of pleased this afternoon to capture two ducks gazing into each others eyes. It sure looked like duck love to me. Photos of duck bills don't pay my bills though. Luckily, I'm still pretty good at lighting, even though the equipment seems to have grown a lot heavier in recent years. Maybe I've just gotten grumpier.

I'm really starting to fade. When I played in a band, I used to lug our entire PA system, my guitars, and a huge bass amp to every gig. I couldn't even lift those large speakers anymore. Some of the equipment has gotten lost over the years, but some of it is still sitting in the storage warehouse. It will probably stay there forever, because it has become too heavy to move.

Getting old sucks. Just ask Dot. I'm sure she'll agree with everything I say. At least I can still walk normally. I thought switching back to Benicar would stop my cough, but it hasn't helped much. The cough must be something else. Do I go back to the doctor and have him add yet another drug to the laundry list of prescriptions I take every month, or do I just forget about it and live with the cough? It probably doesn't even matter. I'm inclined to do nothing and just switch back to the old blood pressure medication. It was certainly a lot cheaper.

Listening to the current crop of political candidates is certainly more entertaining than watching the stock market crumble, but it is equally depressing. I'd like to say "Not my circus, not my monkeys," but they actually are my circus and monkeys. I've got to vote for one of these clowns. So far, I don't like any of them.

Pinky is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1950

This may be shorter than usual. Our power just went out. There's a big storm headed our way, but it hasn't even arrived yet, so a power outage with no wind and no rain is a bit unusual. A feather could knock our power out though, so I'm not terribly surprised. If I'd known this was coming, I'd have charged up all the device batteries. The laptop is only half charged and the phone is even closer to dead than that. I do have the little generator now, but it's so much trouble to hook everything up, that I'm hoping that I can write fast and get this posted before everything goes dead.

The power outage wasn't the only thing that caught me by surprise today. I didn't have a clue that a big storm was headed in our direction. It was clear and sunny for most of the day. Since the weather was nice, I thought it would be a good time to get the water off the roof. I spent two hours getting everything cleaned up. That was a total wasted effort. In two more hours the storm will be here and the roof will fill with water again. I think the roof must have sagged a bit in the center, because a few years ago there was never this much standing water after a hard rain.

There wasn't really that much to do today. After I finished sweeping the water of the roof, I got groceries, filled the car with gas, and listened to a few more tutorial videos about responsive web design. Creating adaptive, mobile friendly websites might seem easy for a hard core coder, but the learning curve is going to be pretty steep for a visual designer like me. I'm curious whether I still have it in me to learn something difficult and new, so I'm going for it. Ask me in six months whether the experiment was a success.

It's harder to keep an eye on Dot now that she's feeling better. She wants to move around, but she's still pretty shaky. I try to maintain a balance between giving Dot some freedom around the house, while still being able to get to her quickly if she looks like she'd going to fall. I had to put her in her pen while I was up on the roof, but for the most part she wandered around the house on her own this afternoon. She's really a lot happier if she has a little freedom. We can't overdo it though. She was pretty tired after her short evening walk.

The first wave of rain has already arrived and we're starting to hear thunder and lightning now. The dogs are getting restless and my backup batteries are getting low. I've got both dogs penned in the office with me. We have two small camping lights and each dog has their bed. It seems cozy to me, but Dot and Dash still look nervous. I definitely don't want Dot to wander off in the dark house and trip over something. This seems as good a time as any to call it a day and get under a blanket with the dogs for the rest of the evening. This usually calms them down. I sure hope the power is restored before morning.

Mattie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1313

It's hard to believe that it's been 44 years since we landed on the moon. I still remember those grainy pictures of Neil Armstrong slowly exiting the Lunar Excursion Module like it was yesterday. I was in college at the time and watched the landing in the ballroom of the university student union because I didn't have a TV of my own in the rooming house where I lived while going to architecture school. Those were good times. The Summer of 69 was a magical period in history when anything was possible. A month after the moon landing was Woodstock. Jimi Hendrix and Neil Armstrong defined my world. A few years later I graduated, completely convinced that both the moon landings and the spirit of Woodstock would last indefinitely.

I was wrong of course, but I'm certain that the optimism I felt during the Summer of 69 contributed to my early success. It was easy to get a job back then. I was hired as a junior designer by a well known architect in Seattle. I was given an opportunity to make documentary films. Nothing really seemed like a struggle. I don't think I would have fared nearly as well in today's world.

I still can't really tell you how the kid who thought he was going to be the next Richard Avedon wound up taking pictures of Dalmatians instead. It's been quite a ride though and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Actually, taking pictures of Dalmatians is quite enjoyable. Janet and I photographed one of our new rescue dogs today. Sterling is a young guy who seems to be filled with the same exuberant optimism I felt in 1969. It was hard to get a good picture though, because Sterling wouldn't stay still. Hopefully, I captured the happy boy that he is. He should find a home quickly.

Later in the afternoon when I took Dot and Dash on their afternoon walk they both heard a loud thunderclap off in the distance. The noise triggered their storm phobia and I could barely hold on to them as they tried to make a hasty retreat back to the house. I tried my best to get the dogs to slow down, since this was exactly how Dot lost a nail last year. It never did rain very much, but the thunder alone was enough to convince Dot and Dash that the sky was falling. I got under a blanket with them and watched a cooking show on PBS until they calmed down.

I made another attempt to figure out what was wrong with the garbage disposal today. I took the faceplate off the control panel for the oven and other kitchen gadgets and tried to trace the wiring for the disposal. No loose or burned wire found. Everything seems completely normal. The disposal still doesn't work though. I added making an appointment with an appliance repairman to next week's to-do list.

It's hard to say whether the dogs will get their Sunday trip to the dog park tomorrow. The mornings start out clear and sunny and then by mid-afternoon little thunderstorms start springing up all over town. We'll see what happens. So far, it's been a nice weekend.

Lady Jane is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day