Day 3370

I'm glad I saw Apollo 11. The film got mixed reviews, but I think that anyone who is old enough to remember the event will agree with me. This wasn't just a movie, it was a time machine. The 65mm footage of the launch itself was spectacular, but what struck me the most were all the little details that brought the sixties back to life. Everybody smoked back then. It was amazing to see how many of the engineers and technicians at mission control were smoking cigarettes and pipes. Each of the flight controllers had a black rotary dial land line phone next to their console. Reporters were calling in their stories using pay phones. Some were typing on small portable manual typewriters. The men had crew cuts and a surprising number of women had beehive hairdos. This is exactly the way it was. It's funny how modern I thought the world was when I was in college. Back then I couldn't have imagined the world we live in today.

You can forget a lot in fifty years. As I was exiting the theater, a couple of older looking guys were commenting on the film. "How old were you when we went to the moon," one guy asked. "I was 8," his friend replied. "I was 6," the other guy said. Good grief. I must be really old. I was in college when the launch happened. The guys ahead of me at the theater looked old enough to be retired and I was at least ten years older than them. I not only remember Alan Shepard and John Glenn's first flights, I remember Ham the monkey. I was pretty young at the time, but I even remember Sputnik 1 in 1957.

When I went to the theater this afternoon I realized I was totally out of the loop. The guy at the ticket counter asked me to pick a seat on a touch screen. "I can't just go inside and sit where I want," I said. "No," said the attendant. "You have to pick a seat first." I guess even going to the movies is done on your phone now. You can get your ticket and pick a seat in advance. That explained why some of the best seats were already taken, even though the theater was almost empty when I went inside. I was so confused that I ended up sitting in the wrong row. "But it says Row G right on my ticket," I said to the guy next to me. "No, this is a G-Rated film," he explained to me. "Your seat is over there."

Later today, I watched another short film on my computer called Seattle is Dying. What a contrast. Apollo 11 was an incredibly optimistic story about one of the greatest achievements in human history.    Seattle is Dying is basically a cautionary tale about how civilization is literally crumbling under our feet. I guess that's the difference between 1969 and 2019. I used to live in Seattle. It was a great place in the early 70's. Seattle used to be called the Emerald City because it was so beautiful. The city now has one of the highest crime rates in the country. Drug abuse and homelessness are out of control. Parts of the city look like a third world country. Citizens don't feel safe anymore. You wonder how things deteriorated so quickly. It's sad. No wonder I would prefer to live in 1969.

It was nice to have a break from the usual Sunday chores today. I didn't really miss going to the gym. I'll catch up on chores tomorrow. The only useful thing I did today was make some temporary repairs to the balky French toilet. I've discovered that there's a weird little rubber piston in the flush mechanism that causes the toilet to run if it gets dirty. Periodically, I take the piston assembly apart and clean all the parts with alcohol. This usually fixes things for a few months.

Dash had a good day. He was still as slow as molasses, but he really enjoyed his outings in the park. The weather was beautiful and there were lots of things to smell. I wish I could do a better job of keeping him from stumbling. I do the best I can and we're still walking, so I guess that's all that counts. I evidently didn't do a great job of cleaning him up last night when he pooped either. He still had a brown tail when I woke up this morning.

I promised myself that I'll get started on my taxes tomorrow. I don't always keep my promises though.

Allie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1589

I stopped to get some tickets to a neighborhood tour of homes when I was driving home from the post office today. Unfortunately, they wouldn't take credit cards, so I'll have to make another trip later. Sometimes these local home tours are fun. I know where most of the houses are and and am often curious what they look like on the inside. Our house could easily be on one of these home tours if we had picked designer decor instead of Dalmatians many years ago. I'm glad we picked Dalmatians though, even though they've made a mess of the doors and the furniture.

If you know where to look, you can still see impressions in the woodwork left by Spot's puppy teeth when he was teething.  There is still a giant hole that Petey tore in the carpet while he was trying to dig a hole to China during a thunderstorm. I've conveniently covered up the hole by placing the large format printer on top of it. Greta was the most destructive. She chewed holes in most of the decorative throw pillows in the living room and completely destroyed a beautiful set of Palazzetti Tomasa dinning room chairs. Despite all this, there is no doubt that the dogs have made me a better person. I don't care about all the dents and scratches. It wasn't always this way. If you think I'm OCD now, you should have seen me back in the days when I arranged all the furniture with zen-like precision and didn't even want anyone to sit in it.

We watched a news crew from the local NBC affiliate set up for a live segment on the evening news while we were taking our evening walk. It looked like a big deal because they even had a news helicopter overhead. There's a big controversy right now about building a restaurant in the park. The city wants the restaurant. The neighbors don't. I have a feeling that the neighbors will ultimately lose this battle, but who knows. The city has already turned an arboretum on the other side of the park into a hugely profitable venture. They'd probably like to do the same thing with our section of the park. I'm sure the park department would monetize every square inch of the park if they could get away with it. Personally, I don't mind the idea of a restaurant. I don't like to drive and it would give me a place to eat that I could easily walk to. I do hate the city's efforts to turn the park into an urban entertainment center though. When I first moved to the neighborhood, the park wasn't even on the city's radar. It was largely abandoned and seemed authentically wild and natural. Now it's just becoming a park department version of Disneyland.

Dash sailed though his annual physical with flying colors today. This is usually when he gets his rabies shot and any other necessary vaccinations, but we decided to wait on these until his cancer treatment is finished. Dash has more than enough to deal with right now, without the addition of even more meds that might cause an adverse reaction or additional stress. We'll catch up on the vaccinations later.

Work has been unusually slow this month. Since I had the time, I decided to gather up all the twigs and dead limbs I could find and take them out to the street for bulky trash day. I was surprised that there was still so much brush around the yard to gather up. Wasn't this what I hired the landscape guys to do last month?  At any rate, for the first time in about six months, I managed to get this chore completed before big trash day. I think the trucks are coming to pick things up tomorrow.

Mindy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day