Day 3774

We walked Dawn before breakfast this morning. The weather was cool and the walk was enjoyable. As we begin to enter the Summer months, I think our walks are going to get earlier and earlier. It's the only way to beat the heat. The walks will probably get shorter too. You got to be careful with dogs during Texas summers. Dogs can't sweat and can easily succumb to heatstroke. Dawn does pretty well now, but she's not a young dog. We don't want to push her too hard.

My computer upgrade went perfectly. All the data transferred to the new drive overnight and my applications seem to work. I did have to register Microsoft Office again, but I've done that so many times that it wasn't a big deal. Everything works now and I don't have to subscribe to Office 365. It's weird that the computer is silent. I've gotten used to the noise over the years. There is no whirring noise from the hard drive anymore and since the computer runs cooler with the solid state drive, I rarely hear the fan. I was pleased that I was able to complete this complicated repair. I saved over $200 as well. Replacing a hard drive is no big deal, but taking the entire computer apart to get to the hard drive is. Since I was able to do all this without breaking anything, I might try putting a solid state drive in my laptop too. These SSD drives are really fast.

The city is running behind on picking up bulky trash in our neighborhood, so I thought I'd add a little more to our pile on the curb while I had the chance. I resumed cleaning out the tool shed this afternoon and managed to find quite a few things I didn't need. I seem to have a terrible habit of buying supplies for repairs I never end up making. I found a lot of tile grout and sheetrock mud today along with about a dozen tubes of various kinds of caulking. All this stuff had gone bad from sitting on a shelf in the damp tool shed for many years. I must have been much more ambitious about fixing things back in the day. I wouldn't even bother buying this stuff today.

I found a canister of helium for blowing up party balloons and wondered why I bought it. We never have parties. It must have been for some Dalmatian adoption event. I thought about keeping the helium because it is a rare commodity these days. In the spirit of practicality, I threw it away. I have no need for helium.

I still haven't gotten my stimulus money. It's not a big deal, but I wonder who decides when the payments get made. 80 million people got their money on the first day, but it's crickets for a lot of the rest of us. I've heard that some people who are eligible might have to wait months. With my luck, the country will be up and running again before my turn comes and they'll just cancel the program. I'm never very optimistic about getting anything from the government.

It's time to get supplies again. I basically use the car just once a week now. The grocery trips aren't long now. We've basically got plenty of everything. I go to the store mostly for fresh fruits and vegetables now. We've got enough paper towels, toilet paper, bottled water, and soap to last us until next winter. I don't think I'll need gas this week either. A tank of gas lasts a long time now.

Sadie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 3770

It's a shame that it took a plague to get me to clean out the house. Janet likes to clean and I have absolutely no excuse not to help her now. We continued our efforts to clean out the tool shed today. There were so many things we had completely forgotten about. Most of the stuff was worthless. There were a few keepers though. I found a strange looking brass humidor that looked like it was made from an artillery shell. When I looked at the engraving on the side I realized it was my grandfather's. He was the commander of a tank company in Northern Africa during World War II and the humidor was presented to him by his men in 1943. It was made from a tank shell and hand engraved with an eagle on one side and my grandfather's name, rank and presentation date on the other. Pretty cool piece of history.

I decided it was finally time to throw away my original advertising portfolio from the 1970's. I've carried the big black art case around with me since I started my career, but I haven't taken good care of it in recent years. Actually, I completely forgot that I still had it. It's a shame I didn't put this in the storage warehouse decades ago. When I unzipped the case to take a look inside, the smell of mold and mildew was overwhelming. All the paper ad samples were ruined by moisture. I didn't even bother to sort through the mess. It was time for this part of my past to go.

Actually, throwing away the portfolio was a bit of a breakthrough. There is no need to hang on to this stuff. Nothing is permanent anyway. During the entire time I operated my own company, I never showed those samples to anyone. They were already old and obsolete when I started the company in 1990. Maybe now it will be a little easier for me to throw away a lot of other obsolete things that are gathering dust in my office. I need to start looking ahead instead of backwards. Hey, I'm not an ad guy anymore. I'm a space journalist.

The weather forecast looked good when I cleared the water off the roof again this morning. Unfortunately, later in the day the forecast changed and now it looks like rain tomorrow. Keeping the roof clear of water is an endless battle. I'm really thinking now that I need to find a contractor who can build a completely new roof with a pitch so water will drain quickly. This is beyond the scope of most roofing companies. They all just want to recover the flat roof. The only way to get rid of this problem forever is to totally eliminate the flat roof. Maybe if I can get rid of this troublesome roof along with the damaged, aging trees in the back yard, I can cover the new roof with solar panels and get rid of the power company as well.

Janet bought Dawn a big piece of astroturf so she can lie in the backyard and sun herself without getting muddy. Dawn loves to sit out in the back yard. Unfortunately, she also loves to roll on her back in the dirt and the run back into the house and hop on the bed. The experiment seemed to work. Dot likes the big astroturf rug and didn't get muddy at all today. I was surprised that Janet was able to get this big outdoor rug delivered. I guess you can get anything on Amazon these days.

I wish people would just admit that they know nothing about this virus yet. Opinions change wildly from day to day. Millions are going to die. Nevermind, we meant to say thousands are going to die. We desperately need ventilators. Everybody needs to make ventilators. Oops. Now we have too many ventilators. Maybe we can give them to Italy. You remain infectious for 14 days. No, that's 27 days or 35 days. Maybe you stay infectious forever. On and on it goes. Could everybody just shut up for a few days.

Life goes on. I certainly haven't changed much. If anything, I'm more optimistic and productive than I used to be. Go figure.

Wilson is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 3769

It's bulky trash removal time again. I've never seen such huge piles of trash in front of our neighbor's houses. Everyone appears to be using the lockdown to clean out their garage and tidy up their yards. We added our own pile on the curb today by cleaning out the tool shed next to our carport.

As the pile became larger I kept thinking "What is this stuff and why did I buy it in the first place?" I have a habit of buying supplies for repair projects and then never getting around to doing the project. When I finally get motivated to start working, I can't find the supplies I bought and go to Home Depot and buy them all over again. I found unopened boxes of tile grout that had become solid bricks after years of sitting on a shelf. There were dozens of tubes of caulk, glue, and paint that had turned solid as well. Some sheetrock I'd bought for repairs had turned into a crumbling, soggy mess after sitting in the leaky shed for way too many years. I found four large and very heavy steel bars that I had bought for something but couldn't remember why. Such a lot of unfinished projects! There were rusty tools that had to be thrown away because they simply didn't work anymore. I found two large boxes full of gimme caps with different corporate logos on them. Lord knows where I accumulated those. We made quite a pile for the trash truck to haul away, but we're far from finished. The other half of the tool shed remains untouched. Sorting through thirty years of accumulated junk felt a lot like clearing out my Dad's house after he died. We weren't trying to save this stuff. It just seemed to grow and multiply.

After today's initial cleanup effort, I'm really dreading cleaning out my office. Nothing is rusty or ruined in here, but a lot of things will never be used again. In my line of work, equipment become obsolete fairly quickly. It's hard to throw the stuff away though. I'll remember how something saved the day twenty five years ago and fool myself into thinking that maybe I'll use it again. Truthfully. I'll probably never use a film camera again. Modern digital cameras are so much better. I'll probably never use most of my audio gear either. I don't play in a band or produce commercials anymore and the equipment is woefully out of date anyway. All this stuff is hard to throw away because there are memories attached to everything. Eventually, the stuff in the office will be just like the stuff in the tool shed. I'll forget what it is and then it will be easy to throw away.

We miscalculated on our walk this morning and ended up getting caught in a thunderstorm. Luckily, we were close to a picnic pavilion when the heavy rain started so we didn't get very wet. It was nice to discover that Dawn wasn't scared of storms at all. She just sat calmly at our side until the storm passed. It's amazing what a calm, well behaved dog Dawn is. She still doesn't like to ride in a car, but other than that, very few things seem to bother her.

We got a lot of rain today but the roof still hasn't leaked. I'm not about to declare victory yet, but things are looking good. When normalcy returns to the world it might be time to make some serious improvements to the house. We need a lot more than a new roof. I think it's time to find a good general contractor who can fix everything. It's probably better to spend the money and have a nice place to live rather than watch it disappear in an investment account when the next pandemic arrives.

One hidden benefit of these crazy times is that we are eating very well. Janet is quite a good cook. I imagine we'll go back to take out meals when things get busy again, but for now life is good. Long walks and great meals are hard to beat.

Marley is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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