Day 1193

In a lot of ways, days without much to do are harder than the busy ones. I was scratching my head to come up with ways to stay busy today. I did laundry. I watered the new grass. I unclogged the large format printer. I recharged all the portable devices. I even finished my monthly essay for my writers group a week early.

When I was walking the dogs this morning, I noticed that bulldozers were tearing down another house in the neighborhood. One by one, all the little frame houses are coming down and being replaced by mansions. Our part of town has become trendy and desirable in recent years, but apparently the new buyers are too snooty to live in the little frame houses that have surrounded the lake for as long as I can remember. Property values are going up, but only because someone wants to tear down your house.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover something new on the breakfast menu this morning. Since I was eating at the restaurant with the good bacon, I guess I never noticed the healthy section of the menu before. What I ordered were Eggs Benedict with Cuban black bean cakes and grilled tomato slices, all covered with a spicy Chipotle Hollandaise sauce. Although the meal was definitely not a diet item, it was probably much healthier than the plates piled high with sausages, bacon and waffles swimming in maple syrup that I used to order at this place.

My water bill is going to be huge next month. I'm supposed to water the new grass and vegetation for about an hour a day for the next thirty days. The trouble with watering our yard is that the roots from all the large oak and elm trees suck up all the water. The trees stay healthy, but the yard dries out quickly, no matter what you do. I'm determined to keep things wet this time though. Too much effort has gone into this yard just to see it dry up and die again.

Got a call from the Land Rover dealer around supper time saying that my Defender was ready to pick up. Damn. I was hoping to drive the trouble-free new LR2 loaner car for another week or so. Even with the new engine seals and a brand new fuel pump, I still don't trust the Defender. It has reached that awkward age when, as soon as you fix one thing, another thing breaks.

I'm hoping for a totally uneventful weekend. It's going to be cold outside, so staying inside and watching old movies on Hulu Plus and maybe playing the guitar a bit sounds pretty good to me.

Brooke is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 963

The heat is relentless. Since today was one of my two official weekly "watering days," I turned on the sprinklers before breakfast this morning. I gave the yard a good soak, but within a few hours it was bone dry again. It's going to be an uphill battle keeping the remaining vegetation  alive for the rest of the Summer. Lack of rain isn't the only problem the yard is facing either. Yesterday, I noticed a huge flock of small birds descend on the back yard and begin carefully pecking at something. At first I though the birds were eating bugs, but then I noticed that they were eating seeds. They were eating all the Rye grass seed I had sowed just one day earlier! No wonder I'm having trouble filling in the dead spots in the St. Augustine grass. The birds are eating all the seeds before they even have a chance to sprout.  Why couldn't the birds have gone after all the spiders in the yard? We have enough spiders to feed a small army of hungry birds.

When I was grocery shopping today, I couldn't resist picking up a 12-pack of Shiner beer. Yeah, I know. I can't drink any more. Although it was tempting, I didn't crack open a cold one when I got home. I just put the beer away for a special occasion. The times when I'm in a genuinely celebratory mood are so few and far between that I figure the occasional alcohol purchase couldn't possibly hurt my health. With the way things have been going lately, that little cache of beer should last me till Christmas.

Yesterday's U-verse repair seems to be working. The broadband signal hasn't gone down once since the technician installed the new gateway. Now, the only problem I have with AT&T is that they keep taking away my favorite channels and replacing them with programming that I wouldn't watch if you paid me. We've lost three or four channels already and just a few days ago, we lost another. When I tuned in today to watch one of my favorite shows, I was greeted by another Spanish language channel instead of the program I wanted to watch. Jeez, how many Spanish language channels do you need AT&T?  I would think 25 of these ridiculous channels would be enough. Maybe I just don't fit the demographic profile of the customer that U-verse is looking for. Oh, well. We could always switch back to Time Warner Cable I guess. It would certainly be easy enough. The cable guys didn't even bother to take down their wires when we switched services.

Tomorrow is dog park day. The grass up at the dog park is still nice and green. It's nice and green because the city doesn't think it needs to follow the same watering rules it imposes on everyone else. The dog park looks like it gets watered every day.

Pebbles is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 942

About this time every year I start to wonder what ever possessed me to move to Texas. Jeez, I used to live in Seattle. I even lived in Aspen, Colorado for a while. I still remember the first time I exited a red eye flight from Seattle to Dallas for a job interview and smelled the Texas air for the first time as I walked up the jetway. The atmosphere was moist and humid and the heat enveloped me like a cocoon. It was only 9 AM, but it was August and it was very hot. As I was waiting for my bag in the Braniff baggage claim, I had a strong feeling that this wasn't going to end well.

Oddly, I never moved again. Even though I still hate the heat, and the tornadoes, and the humidity, I've lived in Dallas longer than all the other cities I've called home put together. Dallas just happened to be where I got tired of moving.

Living here certainly isn't all bad. Dallas is a great place to earn a living. Through good times and bad, there has always been an abundance of jobs in this city. If you can't find a job in Dallas, you probably just don't want to work. Dallas was also where I discovered the joys of having a dog. I never would have considered a dog in Seattle. A dog might scratch the hardwood floors or damage a painting. Dallas was probably where I finally became a somewhat decent person and shed these silly values. Nevertheless, it's still too damn hot here.

I wish I could remember when my day to water was. Even though the lakes are full this year, the city has imposed severe restrictions on lawn watering this Summer. I don't have much of a green thumb, so I used to water my lawn whenever I saw my neighbors water theirs. Now the neighbors all have automatic sprinkler systems that are programmed to water during the middle of the night, so I never get the reminder I need. I hate to be the only one watering during the day, since I'll inevitably pick the wrong day and get hit with a big fine. My indecision about watering day is already causing my front lawn to turn yellow. This whole situation is ridiculous. I don't need another reason to hate Summer.

Do you ever find that social media is a beast that constantly needs to be fed? When I started this journey, I thought that I'd never run out of things to say. Now I'm beginning to wonder. The sheer volume of material you have to produce to keep posting something fresh and original every day is almost overwhelming. I might have to become more introspective in the days ahead. There just isn't much to report when it's so hot outside that all you want to do is take a nap.

Dolly is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 625

I'm enjoying taking my daily Instagram pictures. These casual little pictures remind me that there are still small moments of beauty in even the most ordinary of days. I guess the whole purpose of this blog is to remind me of these same small moments, but it's easy to forget when your day mainly consists of tasks and responsibilities.

The postman knocked on the door this morning and told me that he thought I had a plumbing leak, because water was streaming down the driveway and into the street. It really wasn't a plumbing leak at all. I was just watering a tree in the front yard and had forgotten to turn the water off. This lapse of memory falls into the same category as forgetting to move the laundry from the washer to the dryer after a load is finished, or forgetting to take the trash out to the street. I wasn't going to tell the mailman, but these things are common occurrences around our house.

I downloaded the new 9.1 update to Quark Express this morning. This upgrade contains the new ePublishing module that lets you create Kindle eBooks and simple iPad apps directly in Quark. I'm really intrigued with having the ability to create my own eBooks without outside help. I've written a ton of stories and it would be nice to have them all in a book sometime. I wonder if anyone would buy an eBook from me though. Virtually everything ever I've written is already available somewhere on the Internet for free.

I woke up this morning with a stiff neck. I thought the pain would go away in an hour or two, but it's still here twelve hours later. I can't hardly move my neck at all without turning my whole body. Sometimes this happens when I fall asleep watching TV with a pillow elevating my head. Whenever this happens, I usually blame the dogs. They move around on the bed so much during the night that they're always waking me up. One thing about neck pain is that it makes you forget about hand and foot pain. Hopefully, I'll sleep properly tonight and feel better in the morning.

Spot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day