Day 4456

It was a busy day at the kennel. We met the three new females. Candy is a very active eight month old pup. Julip is a small four year old who loves to smile. And Sammy is a sweet three year old mama who is going to have puppies soon. Sammy will go to a foster next week to have her puppies and Candy and Julip will soon be joined by Rocket, a three year old male who is still at the vet. Considering what these puppy mill dogs have been through, they all seemed happy and remarkably well adjusted.

We spent a lot of time taking pictures of the new dogs, but we didn't forget about Charlie, Oliver, Jo Jo, and Willie. The rescue group hasn't had this many Dalmatians for quite a while. Each of these dogs has their own unique personality, but they are all wonderful. I would have a hard time choosing a favorite. When we left the kennel this afternoon I wondered if I would see some of these dogs again. The younger Dals often get adopted very quickly.

Winter has returned, but I hope it doesn't stay around long. It was so cold when we took Dawn on her early walk this morning that she didn't want any part of being outside. As soon as she did her business, she quickly turned around and wanted to go back to the house. While I was eating breakfast it was even sleeting for a while. Eventually the sun came out, but it never got very warm. It was still cold when I took my long walk later in the afternoon when we returned from the kennel.

I didn't walk far today because my feet were bothering me again. Every day is a new day. Some days I can walk almost normally, while other days I just hobble around. The inconsistency makes no sense to me. I probably spend way too much time wondering about my feet. If things were really bad I wouldn't be able to walk at all. The simple truth is that just about everyone my age deals with aches and pains. I'm probably still doing better than most.

I noticed on my calendar that Spot's birthday is tomorrow. If Spot hadn't been such a good dog, we probably wouldn't have continued having Dalmatians after he passed away. Spot changed everything. So many Dalmatians have been a part of our lives over the years. We've had some serious health issues and there are still teeth marks in some of the furniture, but I wouldn't change a minute of the time we've been able to spend with these dogs. Hopefully the people who end up adopting our friends at the kennel will feel the same way about their Dalmatians.

I'm just about finished with my taxes, so I'll probably take the files to my accountant tomorrow. Next on the list is re-applying for press credentials with the Space Force. With NASA you apply to attend individual launches, but Space Force credentials last for the entire year. It's good that I am thinking about going to Kennedy Space Center again. For a while this Winter I didn't feel like going anywhere.

Tomorrow I need to get the new dogs up on the Dalmatian Rescue website. I probably need to get the star tracker out of the box again too. There have been several software and firmware upgrades recently and I need to keep up. I keep moving along but I still have trouble doing more than one thing a day.

Connor is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1552

I'm usually completely oblivious to anything that's not on my "to do" list. Whenever Janet travels, I become painfully aware that there is a lot more on her list than I thought. I've been going to the store quite a bit lately because I realize we've run out of something that is not usually on my list. So, wherever you are in the sunny Caribbean, thanks for looking out for me. Life is easier when you only have to remember half the stuff that needs to be done.

The only productive thing I did today was write a letter of resignation and formally end my membership in the Wednesday morning networking group. In fairness, this is a great group of guys, and I'm sure what they do makes perfect sense for them. I'm just not a group person and probably never will be. I thought it was time I finally admitted that I was just going to these meetings for the bacon. Hey, I like breakfast a lot more than I like business. What's wrong with that?

The rain finally stopped today, but that doesn't mean that Spring has returned. It actually got colder. A lot colder! I had to get out the duck down ski jacket again for our morning walk. I wonder how many more of these extreme hot cold cycles we are going to go through before the warm weather is finally here to stay? Even the landscape guy told me yesterday that this is the weirdest Winter he has ever seen.

Tomorrow is going to be interesting. Dash needs to fast because I'm taking him to the cancer center in the morning for another CAT scan. Both dogs need to go on a walk right after they get up, so they will poop and pee. The only thing Dot and Dash think about when they wake up in the morning is food. So how do I feed Dot without Dash noticing? I guess she'll just have to wait until I get back from dropping Dash off for his CT scan. It won't be so bad Dot. I'm not eating my own breakfast until I get back anyway.

I was going to get my taxes ready this afternoon and drop them off with my accountant on my way back from the cancer center. That didn't happen. The day just got away from me. Maybe I can still get all the files ready after breakfast tomorrow and drop everything off at the accountant's office on my way to pick Dash up later in the afternoon. That sounds like a good plan, unless a paying job magically appears overnight.

I need to figure out how to change the alarm on the clock radio. Janet gets up early and it's been going off at 4:45 AM every morning. It would probably only take me five minutes to find the instructions on Google for disabling the stupid thing, but so far it's been easier to just hit the snooze button.

Ruthie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1547

It was that kind of a day. I went out for breakfast this morning, just because I didn't feel like making coffee or doing the dishes. I didn't go far because it was a busy day, but it was nice to have someone else take care of things for me. I have a feeling that my Friday breakfasts are eventually going to expand to other days of the week. I save money eating at home and I can keep an eye on the dogs, but I'll have to admit that I enjoy eating a lot more than I enjoy cooking.

While I was waiting for my meal, I overheard a group of people at the next table casually talking about getting robbed. Apparently they had all worked in retail at one time or another and they all seemed to agree that everyone in retail eventually gets robbed. The guy who used to work at a jewelry store clearly got robbed the most. I don't know what was sadder: that these people had all been victims of a robbery, or that they seemed to accept these robberies as an inevitable part of modern life.

I called about Dash's pathology report today and discovered that it had been sitting in the oncology clinic for four days and nobody had bothered to notify me. This place had fabulous physicians, backed up by a terrible administrative staff. They really need to do something about this. I finally ended up talking with a surgeon who went over the report with me. Yes, Dash definitely had cancer. No, he wasn't sure if the results indicated that Dash would need further radiation of chemotherapy. He told me that I needed to talk to the oncologist to get an in depth interpretation of the results. It was never clear why I wasn't talking to the oncologist in the first place. Hopefully I will be able to touch base with this guy tomorrow. I know nothing about the pathology of cancer cells, but I did hear one good thing from the surgeon I talked to today. Evidently, there were compressed thyroid tissue cells all the way around the periphery of the growth they removed. I asked the surgeon what this meant and he suspected that the cancer was still encapsulated and was pressing outward toward the edge of the thyroid, compressing the remaining thyroid tissue. Maybe this means that the cancer has not fully metastasized yet and hasn't spread beyond the thyroid gland. I wish I'd found out more today, but something is better than nothing.

Jawbone sent me a new UP fitness band today and Klout sent me some dog food as a Perk. Klout is finally learning what motivates me. Maybe this means they'll send me fewer tickets for movies I'll never attend and more things I'll actually use. It's not my favorite brand of dog food, but it's a step in the right direction. I'm glad Jawbone honored my warranty and sent me a new UP band too. I bet they've built sending a new band to customers every year into their cost structure. They probably already know that the internal batteries only last a year. This continual replacement strategy would certainly explain why these little bands are so expensive.

Today was a busy day. I did a lot of writing and a fair amount of website updates. I never got around to starting my taxes at all. There are so many things on my "to do" list that I don't think I'll ever get caught up. Things involving the dogs and their health and welfare come first. Things involving making money to pay the bills come second. Things involving my own health come third. Things involving broken things in the house come fourth. Things involving fun? Well, I haven't gotten to those yet.

Tyson is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1423

The return of nice weather meant it was time to take care of some things I'd been postponing. I removed falling leaves and standing water from the roof. I got a big bucket of soapy water and washed the car. I gathered up all the trash and took it out to the curb. I went to the grocery store and finally made it back to the gym.

In between these activities,  I found time to update several websites as well, but it was definitely a day where my body got more of a workout than my mind. As I grow older, I'm finding that the physical side of my day is growing, while the mental side is shrinking. One reason for this is that I'm slower than I used to be. It takes me longer to do simple things like mow the grass, make the bed, and walk the dogs.

A more fundamental reason for the decline in brain strain is that people seldom ask me to do mentally challenging things anymore. In the early years of my creative career, I would frequently be asked to do amazing and impossible things. Things that required imagination routinely came my way, because people just assumed that creative people handled all the imagination stuff. Now that's all changed. After several generations of teachers telling their students that they are all special and unique, everybody thinks they genuinely are creative. Perhaps they are. It's not for me to judge. All I know is that I'm not the Wizard of Oz anymore. People don't send me to exotic locations to edit commercials, or pay me exorbitant sums of money to write a headline. If there's something cool to do, most  people tend to want to do it themselves these days. Hey, I don't blame them. I've always wanted to save the best stuff for myself.

What passes for work today is usually stuff that other people don't want to do. They all think they could do these things just as well themselves if they had more time, so they don't really value anything new that I might bring to the party. What they want instead is for me to execute their idea. Advertising has always been like this to a certain degree, but at least there used to be an illusion of glamor. Now, I'm just an idea monkey. Writing ads and sweeping the water off the roof get all mixed up in my head, because one thing seems no more intrinsically valuable than the other.

Maybe that's why physical days like today seem more honest to me. I can actually feel my muscles getting stronger. Hey, maybe I'll live a few days or a few months longer as a result. Physical activity is something tangible I can understand. I'm not so sure what completing other people's ideas brings me. Mostly it's just a lot of frustration.

Chase is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 944

Do you procrastinate? I do. Although I get quite a bit done on most days, I am continually reshuffling the deck and putting the most loathsome tasks at the very bottom of my to do list. There is a downside to this strategy. If you haven't guessed it already, there comes a time when all the fun projects are finished and you are left with an endless list of things you never wanted to do in the first place.

I can probably stave off disaster for a few more days, but pretty soon I am going to have to buckle down and do the nasty Javascript coding for the pretty website shell I have already finished. Even worse, I'm going to have to rid our house of bugs. Bugs have been particularly bad this year. With dogs in the house, I hate to use insecticides. About the only safe way to exterminate the little beasties is to use a a special poison bait that you place inside your electric wall outlets where your pets can't reach it. This involves removing all the baseplates in the house and sometimes even unscrewing the metal outlet box itself. You put a little of the putty-like bait inside each outlet and light switch and then put all the baseplates back on again. This technique actually works, but the last time I did it, it took me all day. Yeah, I know that it's disgusting to think that bugs make their home in between your walls, but they do. I'd much rather have the bugs die quietly behind the sheetrock than inside the bathtub.

I woke up to sunlight this morning. The power is back on, all the battery devices are charged again, and life is back to normal. In a surprising move, the power company restored the electricity last night exactly when they said they would. Power outages are so common in our neighborhood that I've seriously considered getting a big backup generator. So, what stopped me from this practical solution to an ongoing problem? Well, the expense, for starters. A generator to power your television while you're camping is one thing, but a generator large enough to power your house and keep the air conditioner running is an entirely different animal. Not only is the generator itself quite expense, you then need to hire an electrician to install a switching system to take your generator power on or offline. This is not something that you would want to do yourself. If you hook things up wrong, you could end up sending your generator power back through the grid and fry the repairmen on the pole behind your house who is trying to restore your power. I've decided that a better solution is just to go to bed early when the power is out.

If there is anyone from the BBC reading this blog, please send some new episodes of Dr. Who and Top Gear over to the states. I think I've seen every available episode at least five times by now. Too bad these shows are the only thing I like on TV.

Laura is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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