Day 4723

I think we got a one day reprieve before Winter arrives. It was really nice today. It got up to eighty degrees with clear skies this afternoon and I was able to take my long walk wearing shorts and a t-shirt. That's about to end. A cold front just rolled through town and the temperature is already falling rapidly. Tomorow morning it is supposed to be twenty-eight degrees. I know Texas weather is unpredictable, but this is ridiculous.

We walked very early this morning and had to wear our lights again. I kind of thought that walking in the dark was over after the time change, but I forgot that the days are still getting shorter. I was a little wary when we entered the park this morning. I noticed that the were a lot of feathers but no bird in our front yard. This is usually a sign that coyotes or bobcats are nearby. We didn't see any critters this morning, but I wouldn't be surprised of something was watching us. Bobcats and coyotes are not uncommon in the park.

I took my long walk right after breakfast because I knew that Dawn had a vet appointment later in the day. It was really a pleasant day for a walk. It's hard to beat seventy degrees and a light breeze. I saw one of the Bald Eagles again today. I can't really tell the difference between the male and female eagle, but I just assume that if the eagle is in the nest it is Nora and if it is sitting at the top of a nearby tree it is Nick. The word seems to have gotten out that the eagles are back. I"m seeing a lot more people with binoculars and cameras every time I pass by the nest.

There is still a lot of work taking place on the five new stone gates the park department is building. There must have been some leftover money in their budget because these gates are very elaborate. I still have no idea what their purpose is although I'm assuming they will be used to regulate traffic. Maybe this is useful, but there isn't a lot of traffic in this section of the park anyway. 

After a quick lunch we took Dawn to the vet to get her flu shot. I didn't realize that this vaccine needs a booster in three weeks. All vaccines seem to require a booster these days. The shot was uneventful, but the vet said that Dawn was showing early signs of gingivitis and that we needed to do a better job of cleaning her teeth. This is easier said than done because Dawn hates getting her teeth cleaned. None of our dogs have enjoyed having their teeth brushed, but Dawn seems the most determined to avoid having anyone near her mouth. Brushing her teeth is a challenge.

We took Dawn to get a bath after her vet appointment. The groomer told us that canine flu was going around and tried to convince us that herbal remedies were the way to prevent it. When we mentioned that Dawn had just gotten her flu shot, she kind of rolled her eyes at us. She obviously didn't believe in vaccines. We didn't mention that we had both recently gotten a Covid booster. It is pointless getting into an argument about vaccines.

Dawn doesn't like getting a bath but she always seems to feel better afterwards. We've noticed that she doesn't lick her coat after a bath. She was probably itchy before her bath. It's Fall and there are a lot of allergens in the air. At any rate, Dawn's coat looks nice and white again and she smells good. This probably won't last long.

I'm not looking forward to sub-freezing temperatures tomorrow morning. I guess the cold weather had to arrive sometime. It's almost December. At least our furnace is working well and the roof leaks have stopped.

Petey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 3792

I got my second of two Shingles shots today. I was a little late, but still well within the recommended time period. I was initially going to postpone this injection until things returned to normal, but now it appears that normal is out the window. My pharmacist gave me the usual warning about side effects. "I didn't have any side effects with the first vaccination," I said. "Well, you might this time," the pharmacist told me. So, what are the most common side effects you might experience after getting a Shingles shot? Fever and flu-like symptoms. Great. That's exactly what I need at this moment in time.

I mainly got the shot today because I have my annual physical exam tomorrow and the injection costs twice as much at a doctor's office. Why? Bureaucratic nonsense. The Shingles vaccine is classified as a prescription drug and most healthcare providers haven't set up billing systems to file claims through prescription drug plans. So if you end up getting vaccinated at your doctor's office, you are required to pay the full retail cost of the vaccine. Why isn't the Shingles vaccine classified as a necessary preventive service under Medicare Part B like flu and pneumonia vaccines? Your guess is as good as mine. Oh, well. The deed is done. Hopefully, my doctor won't turn me away if I have a fever tomorrow morning.

When the doctor's office called to remind me of my appointment tomorrow, they went over their new post-pandemic procedures. They weren't as bad as I expected. No doctors wearing spacesuits or anything drastic. I'll need to wear a mask and they take your temperature at the front door before you enter. That's it. No valet parking anymore either.

We got caught in the rain again while we were walking Dawn this morning. Timing these Spring storms is tricky. After looking at the weather radar, we thought we'd have plenty of time to take a shorter walk. Wrong. We got wet, but luckily we weren't that far from a picnic shelter when the rain started. We waited for about fifteen minutes for the storm to pass while we were inside the shelter and then continued our walk. I'm so glad that Dawn isn't afraid of storms. Thunder and lightning doesn't seem to bother her at all.

Since I've been successful with my first two computer upgrades, I asked Janet if she wanted me to fix her computer as well. She's been telling me that she can't go to several websites she needs. It turned out that she just had an ancient browser installed. The system was pretty old too, but I left that alone. The system seemed to be working fine. My rule of thumb is if it's not broke, don't fix it unless you are really, really bored. After installing a modern browser, everything seems to work fine.

I have to fast tomorrow since the doctor will be doing new bloodwork. With an early morning appointment I won't be able to enjoy my morning smoothie. Janet will probably have to walk Dawn while I'm gone. It's weird that even tiny changes in my personal schedule bother me. Most of the huge sweeping changes imposed by the pandemic I don't even notice. For the most part, my life in the slow lane is just the same.

Dixie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 3777

I have a feeling that three years from now we'll look back at our current situation as the most colossal overreaction in human history. How did we get here? When British scientist Neil Ferguson published his widely cited Imperial College report predicting that 2.2 million Americans and more than half a million British citizens would die if life as we know it did not shut down for at least 18 months, it caught the attention of politicians around the world. Nobody wanted this kind of devastation on their watch. Even our own president did an about face and radically changed his tune. The country shut down. Ferguson predicted that the demand for ICU beds would be 30 times greater than the available supply and the entire hospital system would collapse. Overnight, convention centers were turned into field hospitals and all the other hospitals stopped doing everything from chemotherapy to brain surgery. The entire hospital system was turned upside down and mobilized to treat the coming surge of coronavirus patients.

A strange thing happened though. After tens of thousands of restaurants, bars, and small businesses shut their doors; after the world economy ground to a screeching halt, Neil Ferguson quietly retracted his predictions. Nevermind, he essentially said. He now feels that the hospital system is well equipped to handle the peak of the epidemic and that British deaths will be closer to 20,000 than the half million he originally predicted. Ferguson never apologized for his wildly inaccurate prediction, but he did say that “We’ll be paying for this year for decades to come.” At least he got that right.

I'm a university brat. I grew up around scientists. I think I learned around the dinner table at a very early age that scientists are not magicians. They are frequently wrong. The scientific method is based on trial and error. You experiment. You learn from your mistakes and eventually you might come up with a solution. Sometimes what you learn is that you started with a false premise.

Do people who are counting on a vaccine to fix this mess realize that the best scientists in the world have never managed to come up with a vaccine for an existing coronavirus? They were never able to come up with an effective vaccine for SARS. To this day there is not a vaccine for the common cold.

There have been some amazing success stories over the years. Polio has been eliminated. Measles has almost been eliminated as well. It took a massive effort to vaccinate the entire world before the polio vaccine was really effective though. Nobody shut down the world while this was happening either. A lot has changed since then. We didn't have a choice about taking the polio vaccine. We all ate the sugar cube. Do you think you could convince everybody to take an unproven vaccine these days? There would be a revolt. We forget that the whole reason for taking vaccines is to speed up the process of building herd immunity. It is not a magic bullet. If everybody doesn't take the vaccine, it doesn't work. It might not work anyway. Most seasonal flu vaccines are only about 50% effective.

We are getting close to the point where the cure is worse than the disease. I think the Chinese knew this all along. With a population of over four billion people, the Chinese government has always been more worried about social unrest than disease. The virus start peaking in China during Lunar New Year Celebrations. Chinese New Year is a huge cultural event that often involves traveling to visit relatives. Rather than forcibly curtailing these activities and risk massive social unrest, the Chinese government let hundreds of thousands of Wuhan residents travel freely around the world for at least a week before mentioning anything about the virus to the rest of us. Do you think this had anything to do with the mess we are facing now? I thought so.

We will never fix this unless we we rediscover honesty. Nobody is honest about anything these days. The Chinese were never honest about the virus in the first place. Our own politicians aren't honest either. Everyone is trying to use the pandemic to score political points. The media is far from honest. You have your truth and I have mine. We all listen to news that supports what we already think. Sadly, nobody believes the news media anyway. We just believe what our friends say on Facebook. It's all a giant clusterfuck. Personally, I don't think what we are doing now is going to work. Maybe three years from now some of you might agree with me.

Chance is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 3651

I got my shingles shot today. Well, I got the first of two shots anyway. I really wasn't planning to do this now, but my pharmacy had the vaccine available and I knew I'd feel foolish if I went back next month and they were out of the stuff again. It's a mystery to me why the vaccine has been in short supply for over a year. It's somewhat of a mystery why I even need these shots. When I got the older Zostavax shingles vaccine a few years ago, that was supposed to be effective too. I'm pretty good about following doctor's orders though. I think it's one reason why I'm still reasonably healthy today.

On the way home from the pharmacy I picked up some more LED bulbs to replace the ones that are burning out. I think the reason these bulbs are failing is that I was a very early adopter of this technology. Today's bulbs are less expensive and last longer than the first generation bulbs I bought. Most of them even have a ten year guarantee now. This is the curse of the early adopter. I'm ofter the first to buy a new type of computer or camera. It's been irritating to realize that if I just had the patience to wait a few years, I could have gotten something that was much better, often for a lot less. I'm glad I wasn't the first to buy a flat screen TV. The early models used to cost over $5000. Now you can get something much better for a few hundred bucks.

I finally got my tree guy to commit to removing one of the remaining Oak trees in the back yard. I like the trees, but they are all getting very old and part of this tree has already fallen. I definitely don't want to have the rest of this large tree falling on my house or the neighbor's cars. I'm also thinking of relocating my driveway to the back yard. The traffic on the street in front of our house keeps getting worse and worse. During rush hour it is almost impossible to get out of the driveway. As luck would have it, the big Oak tree is right where a potential driveway might go. This is kind of an ambitious project, so it may never happen. A lot of my ambitious projects don't.

I'm continuing to watch Series Four of The Expanse. I still don't think the new series is as good as the shows first three years, but it's good enough to get me hooked. It's a good thing to watch during this holiday week. There isn't much else to do anyway.

I've noticed that some of the White Pelicans wintering at our lake are wearing little leg bands. You can see a band on the leg of the bird in today's picture. Who put these on and why? A little research revealed that ornithologists have been banding pelicans and other migratory birds for a long time to study their migration patterns. A lot of White Pelicans were initially banded at Marsh Lake, Minnesota between 1972 and 1998. Evidently Dallas is right on the migration route between Minnesota and Mexico. One question remains. How do you catch a pelican? These are large, powerful birds. They don't even want you to get close to them.

I started washing the windows on the house this afternoon. I'd like to show Janet that I made at least a minimal effort to straighten things up while she was gone. It's hard to do more though. The house has a lot more problems than I have energy.

Ziggy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 3646

I went and signed up at my pharmacy for a shingles shot today. My doctor has been urging me to get this vaccine for a long time, but it has been in short supply. Usually, I get all shots and vaccinations at the doctor's office, but for some reason most people are getting the Shingrix vaccine at their local pharmacy. I think it has something to do with insurance payments. I've already had the older Zostavax shingles shot, but this new two part vaccine is supposed to be much better. I thought I'd get the shot today, but of course the process was much more complicated. It always is. I was given a long form to fill out. The pharmacy said they needed to get me approved by insurance first. When I'm approved, they'll order a dose of the vaccine and contact me to come in for the shot. After the first shot, I'll need to go get a second shot three months later. Ordinarily, I wouldn't bother with all this, but my doctor has told me three times that all older people should get this vaccination. OK. You win. I haven't filled out the form yet, but I will.

I also paid my property tax today. My tax rate is supposed to be capped because I'm over 65, but it seems to go up every year anyway. I think only the portion of the tax that goes to schools is capped. There are still a lot of other government agencies that want this money as well. We don't have a state income tax in Texas, but the government always finds a way to get the money it needs. I have a little house and am still surprised at how much I have to pay. People with large houses must really hate property taxes.

I think there's something wrong with the washing machine again. I'm hearing a new clunking sound during the final spin cycle. I guess I'd better call the appliance repairman. The tub on this front loader spins really fast and I'd hate for it to self destruct in the utility room.  The furnace and the water heater are in this same room. An exploding washing machine is definitely something you'd want to avoid.

Other than a brief trip to the pharmacy and post office, today was uneventful. At least the weather was nice. There was so little to do that I ended up vacuuming the house before I took my walk. I think I identified a new tree today. Was it a White Fringe tree or Swamp Privet? You know I'm bored when I try to identify ugly scrub trees in the park.

Janet has been getting pictures of Hank and Jelly Bean in their new homes. They both look really happy. It's amazing how quickly dogs adjust to having a real home. Now we just need to find homes for the rest of them.

Alvin is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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