Day 4974

I can cross one more thing off my to-do list. I got the car safety inspected today and picked up my new window sticker. It doesn't seem like a year since I've done this, but time goes by quickly now. Safety inspections are much faster than they used to be. Probably the process is smoother now because I take my car to a little neighborhood garage instead of going to the Land Rover dealer. It used to take forever to get the car inspected at the dealership.

Each day seems a little hotter than the previous day. We take our sunrise walk earlier now, but it doesn't help much. The temperature never really cools down anymore. At least there's a breeze on these early morning walks. Even the breeze disappears later in the day. Dawn still enjoys these early morning walks. I do too. Pre dawn is about the only time when it feels comfortable outdoors anymore.

It's back to shredded wheat and fruit for breakfast again. There's a new restaurant in the neighborhood that I'm vaguely curious about, but I'm just not very hungry anymore. I think my restaurant breakfast days are over. It doesn't matter. I like my boring meals. A bowl of mini-shredded wheat with strawberries is pretty good. I always use half and half instead of regular milk and have a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice and a cup of coffee. How did I drink those huge breakfast smoothies for so many years? Things change, I guess. What I eat for breakfast has changed radically over the years. It will probably change again one of these days.

I didn't want to go to the gym too early so I did a load of laundry after breakfast to kill time. I ended up being early anyway because getting my safety inspection didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would. I've decided that I like going to they gym during the lunch hour because there are fewer people on the floor and I can almost always find a place in the parking garage. The car is much cooler on the way home when it's been inside the garage. 

I still complete the same unambitious routine every day. I try to walk three miles on the indoor track in under an hour. Yes, I know this is pretty slow. I then try to complete ten free throws on the basketball court in less than ten minutes. I still miss a lot more shots than I complete, but I'm getting better. I've added a few upper body exercise to improve my arm strength, but I really ought to do more. I usually leave the gym when I'm bored instead of when I'm tired.

Janet cleans the house on Monday afternoons, so I vacuumed the carpets so I wouldn't feel guilty just lying around while she was working. The house never stays clean long when you've got dogs. Dalmatians shed a lot and there's always dog hair everywhere. My standards are a lot lower than they should be. It seems like I was a lot neater when I was right out of architecture school. These days it's hard to care. Janet doesn't even like to come in the office because it is much messier than the rest of the house.

I'll put the new inspection sticker on my windshield tomorrow morning. I'll think about fixing the cracks in the living room ceiling, but I probably won't do anything. I've been staring at the mess for months now. I'm not even sure I can do these repairs myself, but I need to try. If I hire a tape and bed guy to do the job it will be a huge production and there will be dust everywhere. 

We'll still be under a heat advisory tomorrow. There's lots of rain in the Northeast but it's bone dry here. I wonder how long this can continue? We're setting records for triple digit temperatures now. This too will pass I guess. I just hope our air conditioner keeps working.

Lou is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 4918

It was a busy day. We had quite a storm last night and we woke up to find some fallen branches in our yard. It turned out that these branches were from the neighbor's tree. No limbs fell from our own trees. I decided to climb up on the roof to see if there might be more branches up there. The roof was clear of debris, but there was standing water. I was so disappointed. One of the main reasons I got the new roof was so that it would drain properly. The puddles of standing water were in the same places I usually found them on the old roof. I'll call the roofers, but I doubt that there is anything they can do at this point. The roof is finished. I'm sure they'll just tell me that everything Is OK and that I've got a good warranty on the roof. "Call us is you have a leak," they'll say. The roof definitely doesn't leak now, but I'm still disappointed. Standing water is never good on a roof.

I promised Janet that I'd vacuum today and ended up spending more time cleaning the clogged Dyson than I did vacuuming. I wish I had our old Hoover back. The Hoover never needed cleaning or repairs and all I ever needed to do was change the vacuum bag when it got full. Why did I get sucked into believing the Dyson was better? It does clean reasonably well, but it's been a total nuisance the entire time we've owned it. 

I noticed that the utility room floor was wet this morning. This hasn't happened in quite a while. Did the washing machine drain overflow while doing a load of wash? Was this water condensation coming from the air conditioner? Who knows. It could have been either, or both. Both the washer and the AC use the same floor drain. I usually stuff a rag down the drain to keep water from backing up while the washer is running. This works well unless it is a very humid day and there is a lot of condensation from the AC. At any rate, I cleaned up the water and hoped that this was just a fluke. The main problem is that the old house has 2" drain lines where modern washing machines do a lot better with 3" drains.

The weather was all over the board today. It was clear when we took Dawn on her sunrise walk. I checked the weather forecast before I took my long walk and it was supposed to be cloudy for the rest of the day. As soon as I got a few miles from the house I got rained on. The weather apps on my phone are basically worthless. They are pretty accurate about what is going to happen thirty minutes from now. If you want to find out what is going to happen four hours from now, the apps just take a wild guess.

There were a ton of downed trees in the park. The storm last night didn't last long, but there must have been some really strong winds. I feel lucky that none of our own trees were damaged. It's going to be a while before the rainy season is over, so I expect more heavy rain this month. The problem is than when the rainy season is over, it is immediately replaced by hot, dry Texas summers. By July I'm usually wishing the rain would come back.

Janet wanted me out of the way when she was cleaning this afternoon, so I thought it would be a good time to install the latest software and firmware for the star tracker. As usual, the installation went smoothly, but the star tracker didn't work any more reliably than it did before. Getting it to connect to the camera is kind of like starting a car with a bad battery. The camera never connects immediately and often randomly disconnects during use. I keep turning the thing on and off again and switching cables around until I get the tracker to connect. I've had the thing for over a year and some functions still don't work. I still have problems taking a panorama shot. After several hour of monkeying around with the Polaris, I put the thing away again. I probably won't look at it again until the next software update.

I hope tomorrow is less problematic than today. My holy grail is always a day where nothing bad happens at all. I don't mind if nothing good happens either. I can always take a long nap. 

Winston is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 4836

What a weird Spring we've had. It's been hot, it's been cold, it's been all over the place. Today the temperature got up to 81 degrees. If that wasn't enough, the humidity was almost 100% this morning. It was so damp that all the bricks on the back porch were soaking wet. That didn't stop us though. We got up, dressed in summer clothes and took Dawn on her morning walk. Dawn is still taking shorter walks, but she seems to be doing fine.

This was another one of those days where the furnace was on when we first woke up and then the air conditioner kicked in later in the day. Eventually the heavy dew everywhere evaporated, but it was a very muggy day. A quick look at the yard confirmed that my annual Spring chores need to start soon. It's almost time to start mowing the grass again. I need to cut back the dead growth in the Asian Jasmine at the back of the yard as well. It will be time to battle the ants and wasps soon. I'll need to go and get some insecticide for ants and something stronger to kill the wasps. The wasps build their nests everywhere and they are very aggressive. I've been stung many times. I don't want Dawn to get stung by these things.

If I was a sensible person I'd start getting rid of things in the office and storage warehouse. Instead, I keeping wanting to repair things I seldom use. I'd like to repair the big production printer so I could make a few large prints of my best astrophotography. Never mind that I have no place to display the pictures. There's a big Sony TV in the storage warehouse I'd like to get fixed as well. I need to retrieve some of the equipment I still have on consignment at a local music store. If it hasn't sold in two years, it will probably never sell. Where will I put this stuff? The storage warehouse of course.

That's all for another day. Today I just followed my familiar routine. I ate breakfast, checked my messages which were mostly just spam, and then got ready to take my long walk. It was so warm today that I just wore shorts and a t-shirt. Wasn't it just a few days ago that I was decked out in all my winter gear? I can't keep up with this constantly changing weather at all.

I left Dawn alone in the house while I took my walk. As I expected, she didn't move an inch. She was asleep on the bed when I left and still asleep when I returned. She wasn't at all interested in getting up until Janet returned from the gym. Dawn gets excited when Janet comes home but hardly even looks up when I enter the house. She's fine though. As soon as Janet returned, Dawn's tail was wagging and she was ready for lunch.

I vacuumed the carpets this afternoon. The carpets in the bedroom and office need to be replaced, but that will come later after the new roof is installed and the damaged sheetrock in the ceiling has been replaced. For now I just continue to vacuum the old worn out carpet and am still amazed at how much dirt is collected. The carpets don't look any better when I'm finished, but the Dyson canister is filled with dirt and dog hair.

Tomorrow is going to be another unseasonably hot day and Friday it's going to start raining again.  Probably as soon as this weird Spring is over I'll be complaining about the hot Texas summers again. This is supposed to be our nice season, but I think we got cheated this year. 

Brooke is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 4819

Today was a good day. The weather was almost perfect, but more importantly, Dawn is back to normal again. We may never know what was wrong with her yesterday. I suspect that she just pulled a muscle or something when she got too wild during her grocery day shenanigans. She gets very excited and races around the house when Janet brings home the groceries. At any rate, we saw no signs of problems today. She walked normally and had no problems getting on and off the bed.

If it's Sunday, I go walking at the mall. I went earlier this morning and the place was almost empty. I need to remember this since I'm perpetually trying to avoid crowds. I can't get over how much the place changes from week to week. I always see stores that have closed and others that have just opened. A surprising number of businesses seem to just move from one location in the mall to another. You have to watch where you're going while mall walking. So many people never look up from their phones while walking that you'd bump into them if you didn't move out of their way. I see this in the park as well. We have an entire nation of people who've become addicted to their phones. The young people are the worst. Very rarely l'll see an older couple actually talking to each other without a phone in sight.

Since Dawn was feeling better we took her on a Sunday outing this morning. She seems to enjoy new places now, so we drove her to the other side of the lake. We didn't take a long walk because we didn't want to push our luck, but Dawn had a good time smelling new things and looking for critters. As always we ended our outing with a trip to the ice cream store. The ice cream cones are no bargain, but it's a nice little Sunday treat. Even though Dawn rides terribly in the car, the ice cream seems to calm her. On the way home from the ice cream store she appears almost normal.

I thought about going up on the roof this afternoon and looking for the remaining leak, but quickly changed my mind when I realized what was involved. Chances of failure were very high and I really didn't want to deal with the messy silicon coating again. Even though I keep a roller on the roof to spread the stuff around, I always seem to get some of the Armor Flex on my hands and clothing. I still need to try this before the next rain though. My last attempt slowed down the leaks considerably. If I can just find where the remaining water is getting through, I may be able to stop the leaks entirely. I'm probably being too optimistic, but I need to give it a try.

Instead of going up on the roof, I vacuumed the carpets instead. I need to do this more often because the carpets were really dirty today. Dawn used to sit on the bed and stare at me while I cleaned the bedroom. Not anymore. She left the room and wouldn't come back until I was finished and put the vacuum cleaner away. She wouldn't stay in the room when I took a short nap after I finished my chores either. It's kind of sad. If Janet isn't around to keep her safe, Dawn wants nothing to do with me.

I'm going to have to call the roofers tomorrow because they seem to have disappeared. Several weeks ago I couldn't get rid of the guys. Now it's crickets. I need to get this job scheduled so we can get on with our lives. A new roof won't solve all my problems, but it will certainly help.

Hopefully tomorrow is an uneventful day with no surprises. A day where nothing happens is always a good day as far as I'm concerned.

Rory is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 4616

Mall walking has become part of my Sunday routine. This is the third week in a row that I've done this and it still seems like a pleasant activity. The stores are starting to look pretty familiar now. The window displays must not change often because so far everything looks exactly the same. Surprisingly, the art on display does change ocassionally. I've noticed a few new pieces that weren't there several years ago, along with several favorites that are gone. I wonder where they store this art when it isn't on display. Some of the sculptures are huge.

We need to start our sunrise walk with Dawn earlier on weekends. We didn't leave the house until after 8 AM this morning and the park was already bustling with activity. Now that school has started there are high school sports teams that run in the mornings and there are always lots of bicycles to watch out for. The park is a lot quieter in the mornings when the weather cools down. In the winter it is practically empty. Dawn enjoys walking more in cooler weather and so do I. I'm ready for winter so I can start complaining about something else.

The weather was a littler cooler this morning, so we took a short walk in Dawn's Sunday park on her outing today. We didn't walk far though. It is still too hot for a dog to be out in the middle of the day. The price for cones at the ice cream store has gone up at the same time the cones have gotten a little smaller. This doesn't seem fair, but I'm not running a business. People are still buying ice cream, so I suspect that they  are just seeing how much they can get away with.

The real estate market in town seems to have really slowed down. We're seeing for sale and for lease signs stay up in the neighborhood a lot longer than they used to when interest rates were near zero. Houses for rent near the lake used to be snapped up almost immediately. Lately I've seen a couple of real estate signs standing in people's yards for well over a month. Sign of the times I guess. Who would want to commit to a major purchase with so much uncertainty in the world?

I wrote a letter to my sister this afternoon and will mail it tomorrow. I also vacuumed the carpets. The Dyson vacuum still takes longer to clean than it does to vacuum, but I guess it does a good job. There is sure is a ton of dust and dirt in the clear plastic tube when I'm done. I still think old fashioned vacuum cleaner bags are a better solution, but what do I know. When the bags were full on our old Hoover, I just took them out and threw them away.

There is a new version of the star tracker software available now, but I haven't had the heart to install it. I keep thinking that updates to this thing should start slowing down soon, but the Benro team seems relentless in their efforts to add new features. Sometimes the new features work and other times they don't.  This experience has made me wary about buying anything new before all the bugs have been worked out. I have tended to buy computers just before they are discontinued because you can often get great deals. I've rarely had problems with these older computers because mature products are just more stable. I think the same thing can be said for cars. I've been interested in the new Bronco, but early buyers seems to be plagued with problems. Maybe a few years from now this car will be more reliable.

Tomorrow I return to my weekday routine. I'm sure there will be a trip to the gym and maybe a nap with Dawn. I've got a few bills to pay and it's time to take bulky trash out to the curb. I don't think I will mow the lawn though, even though it really needs some attention. Will I finally get details about the Artemis launch press itinerary from NASA? Somehow I doubt it. 

Elliott is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 4539

It was a nice day. It was a little warm this afternoon, but there was a pleasant breeze all day. Dawn was in the mood to walk today which is always a plus. There was no hesitation like there was on previous days and she enjoyed both her sunrise walk and the Sunday outing later in the day. It may seem weird that I measure a day's success by Dawn's reaction to it, but that's just the way it is. Our days go much smoother when Dawn is in a good mood.

Basically all I did today was walk. I did vacuum the house this afternoon, but that doesn't really count. Walking is much more fun. It's amazing how dirty the house gets in a week. We live in a dusty area. Dust blows in from the park and dust blows in from the street. Dawn tracks in a fair amount of dirt as well. At any rate, the house is a bit cleaner now, even though it won't stay that way long.

Our first two walks with Dawn were enjoyable, but my third walk later in the afternoon was just to make sure I got my steps. By mid afternoon it was much hotter outside and my feet were starting to hurt. I would have gone back to the gym, but unfortunately it isn't open on Sunday anymore. Weekday hours aren't as long as they used to be either. A lot of Covid cutbacks have become permanent now in all types of businesses. When companies learn they can get away with giving you less, that's exactly what they tend to do.

I was working outside this afternoon and a spider must have fallen on my head. I didn't notice at the time, but about thirty minutes later when I was back inside and sitting at the computer,  I noticed something on my lip out of the corner of my eye. I thought it was dirt or a small leaf and brushed it off with my hand. I was quite surprised when a small live spider fell on the desk. Have I mentioned that I dislike spiders almost as much as I dislike snakes. I wonder how that spider could have been walking around on my head for half an hour and I never felt a thing.

Dawn continues to leave the room when I come into the bedroom to take a nap. She doesn't go far. She just goes out in the hallway and lays on the bricks in a place where she can peek around the corner into the bedroom door and see if I am still there. As soon as I leave the room, she immediately returns and hops on the bed again. I wish she'd realize that we both like to do basically the same things. We eat and we sleep. If she'd just learn to relax, she will have a lot more fun when Janet goes on vacation. The weird thing is that Dawn is fine with me as long as Janet is in the house.

When we went for ice cream after Dawn's Sunday outing today I asked for a waffle cone instead of the regular cones we usually get. The waffle cones are a little more expensive, but I was curious to see if they would fill these cones to the bottom. Nope. It's still a scoop on top of a basically empty cone. The waffle cones leak too. I guess I'll go back to regular cones next week.

We won't be able to visit the Dalmatians tomorrow since the kennel is closed for Memorial Day. Don't worry. The dogs are still fed and looked after. The place just isn't open to the public tomorrow. I'm going to miss visiting the guys. Visiting the rescue dogs has become a permanent part of our Monday routine.

I hope my gym is open tomorrow. I think it's going to be too hot to take a long walk outside. If Dawn would cooperate, I might just take a long nap inside. 

Emmitt is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 4105

I think I accidentally threw away an important part of my video kit while I was attempting to clean up the office a few weeks ago. I threw away some empty boxes but neglected to check and see if they were really empty. I was pretty sure the boxes were all empty because I knew what used to be in them and they all felt really light. Now, I remember that I kept this component in one of the boxes. The component was really light too. All this makes me mad because there is nobody to blame but myself. It just goes to show that you should never throw anything away. It's always possible that the missing component is in the storage warehouse, but that doesn't help much. I have no idea what is in the storage warehouse anymore.

I vacuumed the house today and I couldn't figure out why the vacuum wasn't picking up much dust. It turns out that Janet had already vacuumed the house a few days ago and I didn't even notice. Oh, well. The house is even cleaner now. It won't stay that way long though. If you have a Dalmatian there is always an enormous amount of dog hair. I don't know how these dogs manage to keep such a nice looking coat because they are constantly shedding.

The weather continues to be almost perfect. Dawn is enjoying spending more time outdoors. She took two short walks today, but we still can't get her to take a longer one. I continue to take my long daily walk although my feet are screaming at me to quit. I don't know if it would prove anything to go to the gym instead of taking these daily walks. If I did more upper body exercises, it would be my shoulders and wrists screaming at me to quit. I walked a lot slower today, but I did manage to complete five miles.

I watched a few more instructional videos about my new camera this afternoon. I'm finding that I learn a lot more watching YouTube videos that reading the instruction manual. Instruction manuals for Japanese cameras have always left a lot to be desired. One of these days I'm going to have to actually take some pictures with this camera. I've basically just been using my phone for photography all winter. I'm planning on taking the new camera to the astrophotography workshop, so I'd better become proficient in using all the fancy new features. I thought I knew everything there was to know about cameras, but that was before they all turned into computers. I think this new camera is a lot smarter than I am.

I promised Janet I'd get some bids for taking down the damaged Oak tree in the back yard. I should have done this months ago, but I hate to lose these old trees. This tree does need to come down, because it probably won't survive another really bad storm. It's such a hassle though. The tree is near power lines and has branches that extend over the neighbor's yard. Oh, well. It needs to be done. Dealing with an old house is discouraging. It always seems like a losing battle. I remember how nice things looked forty years ago. I probably looked better forty years ago myself.

I'm not sure if Spring Break is over yet, but we'll probably go visit the rescue Dalmatians again tomorrow. I think we've skipped two weeks now and Charlie probably misses us.  

Big Boy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day