Day 2170

It is tempting to join the political debate on Facebook. With a presidential election looming and WWIII on the horizon, my timeline is filled with wildly contradictory opinions every single day. How did I get so many friends who can't seem to agree on anything? My desire to clarify things by telling my Facebook friends the "truth" is tempered by the realization that my own opinions are probably just as misguided as theirs. Why join the fray? It's pointless. If Facebook is a proxy for how the world actually works, we are truly fucked.

Without getting into details, I tend to take the long view on things. When Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, All Lives Matter were popular memes, only one image spoke to me. It was an icy cold photo of the Andromeda Galaxy with the caption No Lives Matter. Whenever people talk about climate change, I keep thinking that it is pretty arrogant to assume that humans can actually destroy the planet. The planet has been here for billions of years. We've only been here a few thousand. We can certainly destroy ourselves. We're getting closer and closer to doing this every day. The planet will survive however. Earth will clean up the toxic gasses and the radiation on its own time schedule and maybe a wiser, less argumentative species will evolve the next time around. People don't like taking the long view however. They're more concerned about what is going to happen tomorrow. That's why I tend to keep my mouth shut.

Today was a good day for saying nothing. It's a short week and most of my clients are on holiday time already. Even the ubiquitous telemarketers seem to have disappeared this week. I went about my business, making sure the dogs had a nice morning walk and taking an inordinate amount of time to make the perfect fruit smoothie. I've almost sealed the leak in the shower stall, although a small amount of water still seems to end up on the bathroom floor. I've narrowed down the search for the ideal portable dehumidifier to two models, but can't decide which one is best. Neither of these machines is available in Dallas and all I've got to go on are people's comments on the Internet. I'd say my chances of believing the wrong person are about 50/50.

Since today was even slower than yesterday, I took the opportunity to catch up on Dr. Who. This time I watched the show while the dogs were napping and managed to see the entire episode without interruptions. I don't know what to think about Face the Raven. Personally I think Clara deserved a better send off. She might not have been the best companion ever, but she was a good and loyal one. She should have been sent to a parallel universe like Rose or just had her memory wiped like Donna Noble. Although I'm not a fan of the direction that Steven Moffat is taking the show, I'll have to admit that Peter Capaldi is a good actor. There is an intensity about him that Matt Smith never had.

I'm so habitual that's it's going to be harder than you might think to remember that Dot's physical therapy day is tomorrow instead of Thursday. Her appointment is early in the morning too. I'll have to start getting her ready right after breakfast. It's supposed to rain on Thanksgiving but I hope the forecast is wrong. I'd like to enjoy a nice relaxing dinner at our third choice restaurant without worrying about whether the dogs were having a panic attack during a thunderstorm.

Maggie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2169

It may be a short week, but it certainly was a long day. The days always seem longer when there is nothing to focus on. Without a crisis to deal with or a deadline to meet, I kind of floundered around today. I renewed a few domain names that expire next month, checked to see how much I'd earned this month from stock photo sales, and converted my personal Amazon account to a business account to get the free shipping. I'm getting closer to purchasing a dehumidifier, but kept finding myself wandering away from the industrial water removal web sites and looking at cameras instead. I actually need a dehumidifier and don't need another camera at all, but dehumidifiers are really boring.

When Janet was cleaning this weekend, she filled a cardboard box with small items she'd cleared off the coffee table in the living room and put the box in my office. I was tired of tripping over the box every time I got up to go to the bathroom at night, so I knew that I'd eventually have to deal with it. I actually liked all the little knick·knacks that had been designated as clutter, so I placed most of them on shelves in my already cluttered office and refilled the box with old Christmas presents that I didn't like. I took this box to the storage warehouse and considered my solution a win, since the same volume of unneeded stuff had been removed from the house.

I need to figure out a way to watch TV or read a book while I'm outside holding up Dot's rear legs. She is so slow now that it takes a lot of patience to be her outdoor companion. Sometimes I think she just needs to pee and I won't put on a jacket or warm clothes. This is inevitably when she wants to sniff the air for thirty minutes. I can't just run inside to get a jacket because she'll fall over. I think Dot enjoys being outside on crisp, cool days like today, so I never try to hurry her. In Dot's defense, she did manage to poop outside when I least expected it. This just proves that there can be happy endings to almost any scenario.

Since it was such a slow day, I thought I'd watch the Sleep No More episode of Dr. Who that I'd missed a few weeks ago. Monsters created out of the mucus that forms in the corner of your eyes while you sleep? Surely Steven Moffat could have come up with a more plausible plot twist than this. I continue to maintain that the Russell T Davies era had consistently better scripts than this new series. I don't think the dogs liked this episode either. Even though I watched the show during one of their regular nap periods, they were constantly interrupting me. When they started to bark, I would put the DVR on pause and go see what they wanted. I think all they wanted was constant attention.

One of my clients called and wants new employee pictures for their website. Wow. That was a blast from the past. I used to be shooting new employee pictures constantly, but this was the first request I'd gotten this year. I think most people finally figured out that putting employees on their website just showed the rest of the world how bad their staff turnover problems were. Maybe these guys are being optimistic. At any rate, it will give me something to do next week. I'll be able to find out if I have any looming equipment problems before the grueling Santa photo season begins too.

Maybe something more exciting than watching the humidity level will happen tomorrow. I hope the dogs let me sleep tonight. Doing nothing really wears you out.

Petey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2168

It's November 22 and I haven't heard a single thing about John F. Kennedy on TV today. That's odd for Dallas, because there's almost always a local feature about Dealey Plaza.

It was just an ordinary chore day for us. We are determined to regain control of the house. I finally got out the leaf blower and cleared all the leaves off the front and back porch. Maybe for a day or two we won't track in enormous amounts of dead leaves every time we take the dogs outside. Like all tasks, this one took longer than expected because I couldn't find a long, heavy duty extension cord to run the blower. I used to clear away leaves every week during the Fall when we first moved here. Now, once a year seems fine.

Janet cleared out the liquor cabinet to make room for several laptop computers that had been sitting on a living room chair for six months. We got rid of an unopened bottle of Baileys that said "best used before 2002.' There were several bottles of Scotch with duty free stickers. Neither of us could even remember the last time we traveled out of the country. We tasted several things to see if they were still any good. Scotch and Bourbon hold their own pretty well. Any flavored liqueur completely loses its infused fruity taste after ten or fifteen years. I think vodka just evaporates. So, why was there so much old booze in the liquor cabinet? Probably because I quit drinking entirely after I discovered that I had Hepatitis C and Janet prefers wine now. We kept some of the stuff though. You never know when a well prepared cocktail might brighten your day.

I continue to be amazed at how much dirt and dust the Dyson picks up. I would think that after the first good house cleaning, each subsequent vacuuming effort would yield less and less dirt. That hasn't been the case. Every single week there is an enormous amount of dirt and dog hair in the clear Dyson canister. It seems almost impossible that we could be tracking in this much dirt. I always feel better after I vacuum the house. The feeling doesn't last long though. Usually it rains the next day and the rugs and carpets get dirty all over again.

Dot pooped in her bed again last night. She soiled two blankets and I accidentally soiled another two trying to clean up the mess. I wonder how long the washing machine is going to last. We've been using the washer and dryer like a laundromat for the past several months. Dot's incontinence is so predictable that you'd think I would have come up with a solution by now. I don't think there is one. Doggie diapers don't work. They fall off and if you secure them tight enough so that they won't fall off, then Dot can't sleep comfortably. Creating a penned-in safe area doesn't work either. Dot likes to sleep right next to me and if we put her in the X-Pen at night, she just barks until one of us lets her out again. For a lot of reasons, it's easier to just spread blankets around the area where she likes to sleep, clean up the mess the best we can using doggie poop bags, spray any remaining stain with Nature's Miracle enzyme and throw the blankets in the wash. This system works pretty well unless I inadvertently step in the poop while I'm trying to turn the light on so I can assess the situation.

The weather was beautiful today. It was cold in the morning, but warmed up to "brisk" later in the day. I didn't even have to wear a jacket when I raked and cleared away leaves this afternoon. The dogs love the cooler weather and we were able to give them two good walks today instead of the single walk they typically get on weekdays. I'll be glad when the days start getting longer again. Now, it is completely dark before Janet gets home from work, so we've had to curtail Dot's evening walk.

I noticed that Google+ has changed its format again. Why do Facebook and Google keep changing their format and features all the time? It's irritating. One thing I like about Twitter is that it never changes. The new Google format features little square boxes right at the top of your profile page that showcase the Collections you've made and the Communities you've joined. I don't like this because I haven't made any Collections or joined any Communities. Because part of my job is helping my clients with their Social Media efforts, I can't ignore these things. I grudgingly made a couple of Collections this afternoon and added them to my profile. Google says Collections are the next big thing, but I think they're just a big nuisance. I've got two more Collections to make to fill up the empty boxes on my profile and then I'm done with Collections forever. The ironic thing is that I actually like to collect things in real life. It just seems silly to put something on my Google page that is a blatant copy of Pinterest.

It's going to be a short week, since most people get Thursday and Friday off. I don't know if this is good or bad at this point. I've already had to change Dot's physical therapy appointment. I'm sure there will be other changes to come.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2167

I never should have let my doctor convince me that I needed flu and pneumonia shots this year. I typically never get these shots, but they really push them as you get older. I reluctantly agreed to get the shots yesterday and asked the nurse to put the mildest one in my left arm because I'm left handed. This turned out to be a terrible plan, because I woke up this morning with a very sore left arm. The right arm is a bit sore as well. I think the nurse got things backwards. I should have had my pneumonia shot in the right arm.

Lots of laundry today. Dot woke up during the night and proceeded to poop in the bedroom before I could get out of bed and guide her toward the back door. I stepped in the poop because it was dark, making it even more difficult that usual to clean things up. By the time we had finished taking the dogs outside and cleaned up the mess, I was fully awake. I would have just gotten up and started breakfast if it wasn't still the middle of the night.

It wasn't until daylight finally arrived that I noticed how cold it was. Winter has arrived. I think it is supposed to dip below freezing tomorrow. It is encouraging that there is still no condensation on the windows, even though the temperature has been fluctuating wildly. It is becoming apparent that the big dehumidifiers removed a lot of moisture when we were drying the house last week during the pipe leak. I'm still looking for a portable dehumidifier, but I'm not having much luck. Today I thought I'd see what Fry's Electronics had. There was a nice looking brand I'd never heard of, so I looked it up on Google when I finished running my errands. It turned out that this particular brand had been involved in a big product recall after it had a tendency to catch on fire. Over 200 house fires resulting in over $2 million dollars of damage havell been caused by this machine. Nope. We won't be buying this one.

I hooked up a wet/dry vacuum with a special attachment to see if I could extract any water from a crack in the floor of the shower stall. After running the vacuum for about an hour I removed over a gallon of water. That's a lot of water under something I had previously thought was dry. I'll fill the crack with caulk now and see if this takes care of the problem. It probably won't. We need to re-tile the entire bathroom.

I haven't even bothered to watch Dr. Who for two weeks in a row. I don't seem to have time for the show anymore. I'm not all that wild about the direction the Steven Moffat had been taking the series anyway. I stayed with Peter Capaldi as long as I could, but the show seems like a waste of a valuable hour now. I need all the time I can get. The days continue to get shorter and by the time I've walked both dogs and eaten dinner, there's barely enough time to write the blog. Dot is taking longer an longer to do her business in the evening now. She seems to forget where she is. It's important to be patient and give her plenty of time to poop though. That's the only way to avoid unfortunate accidents like we had last night.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do tomorrow. There are still plenty of chores that need attention around the house. I should start going back to the gym as well. I guess it will all depend on how my arms feel tomorrow. Today, I couldn't have gone two minutes on the arm bicycle. I don't know why I let them talk me into those shots. I'm never around children these days, so I seldom get colds or flu. I'm not even sure how you get pneumonia.

Ranger is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2166

My doctor asked me today if I was under any unusual stress and if I was getting enough sleep. Apparently, my Cortisol levels were high and this is often an indicator of a sleepless, stress filled life. So, what else is new? I was talking about this just the other day with Dot's vet and a few of her vet techs. All of us led stressful lives and weren't getting enough sleep. We all seemed to average between four and five hours of sleep each night. This is just modern life. I doubt that I needed a blood test to tell me that I wasn't getting enough sleep. All you have to do is look at my face.

Despite the high cortisol levels, the rest of my blood work looked pretty good. Considering that my doctor had actually cut back on a few of my meds last month, I considered the test results a win. My cholesterol is under control, I don't have diabetes yet, and I don't have to take any additional pills. Who could ask for more?

Considering that my income is declining, my expenses are increasing, and I'm cleaning up dog poop every few hours, I think I'm handling stress pretty well. Maybe now that we have running water again, life will settle down a bit. It's always stressful taking care of an aging, sick dog, but I don't regret any of the time I spend with Dot. Both dogs have done far more for me than I'll ever be able to do for them. Making them my top priority now is the least I can do. I don't think the stress is going away though. All I've got to say is don't let your babies grow up to be web designers. Let them be plumbers instead.

I felt like having burgers this evening and was pleased that I returned from the grocery store with all the ingredients. I had the ground beef. I had the tomatoes. I had the lettuce. I had the cheese and all the condiments. It was only much later that I realized that I had forgotten to buy the buns. This always happens to me when I shop. It doesn't even matter if I make a list, because I'll always forget to add something essential to the list. This is one reason I go to the store a lot.

We didn't make our Thanksgiving reservations soon enough this year and ended up going to our third restaurant choice instead of our favorite. This is still better than cooking at home though. We'll probably never cook a big holiday meal again. Evidently, Janet and I aren't the only people who feel this way. When we started eating out on Thanksgiving years ago, you didn't even need a reservation. Now going to a Thanksgiving brunch has become so popular that you have to make reservations a month in advance.

Dot had a good day today. She was strong and energetic on her morning walk, and I was surprised to see her wandering around the house on her own throughout the day. Some days she can barely move. Other days she can still get up without assistance. As far as I'm concerned, every good day is a bonus.

Puppies are today's Dalmatians of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2165

I didn't have time to take a shower this morning because I was waiting for the HVAC guy to come over and give me an estimate for installing a whole house dehumidifier. The HVAC guy was running late, so he didn't make it over at all. Damn, I could have taken a shower after all. I tried real hard to be on time for Dot's physical therapy session, but I was late too. I just can't seem to get Dot out of the house in the mornings. If I point her toward the front door, she inevitably wants to go out the back door. I always oblige, because I think she might need to pee. I'd rather be late than have Dot pee in the car. For the second week in a row, I had to stop the car midway to the vet's office to re-position Dot after she had gotten stuck in an awkward position. Oddly, nobody seemed upset when we arrived fifteen minutes late. I suspect they were running late as well. It was just that kind of day.

There was extra laundry this morning because Dot pooped in her bed again. It's just as well that I didn't take a shower, because I discovered that there is still a leak in the shower pan. My caulking job appears to have failed. When people ask if life has returned to normal after the pipe leak, I just smile and say yes. It's easier to keep my mouth shut, because I know that nobody wants to hear what I really feel. At this point I don't think life will ever return to normal. I've kind of forgotten what normal is.

Even work was problematic today. For some reason only one of the four web cameras seemed to work after I created four new pages where customers could view the cameras online. Since the embed code for all the cameras was more or less the same, I couldn't figure out what was wrong. After talking with the client, we unplugged each of the cameras and then plugged it in again. This is what you do with electronic devices when you can't think of anything else. The reboot seemed to work. The client can see all the cameras now, although they still don't work in Firefox for me. Instead of scratching our heads for the rest of the day, we decided to tell people just to not use Firefox to view the website. Works for me. Very few people actually view the cameras anyway.

Janet had an office Christmas party tonight, so I had to improvise a way to take Dot on her evening walk without Dash at her side. I ended up walking backwards down the alley with a treat in my hand so Dot would follow me. Eventually her sense of smell kicked in and she started walking on her own, but it seemed to take us forever to go a single block. You have to be patient with Dot. If you try to hurry and don't give her plenty of time to poop on her own schedule, she'll inevitably go in the house five minutes after you return home.

I finally found a portable dehumidifier in a store that I could actually see and touch. The machine looked flimsy and was made entirely out of plastic. Yup. It was made in China. I remember the online reviews for this model said that the water reservoir was very hard to empty without spilling water on the floor. I tried to remove the reservoir on the showroom model and concluded that the reviewers were right. I'd be spilling water big time if I tried to empty this awkward plastic bucket when it got full. I still don't know what to buy, but I definitely know what I'm not going to buy.

As if to prove that this was not an auspicious day, a PVC pipe connected to an outdoor sprinkler system in the park broke right as Dash and I were walking over it on our evening walk. We were immediately soaked. Don't even ask why the city is putting a sprinkler system out in the woods in a public park. Just another example of your tax dollars at work.

I'm looking forward to going out for breakfast tomorrow. I don't really expect Friday to be any different than today, but it would be nice to start things off with an hour of relative peace and quiet.

Jasper is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2164

So, what did I learn today? For starters, I learned that a lot of water leaked out of our broken pipe last month. I received our first water bill since our plumbing problems began, and it was humongous. I called the city to see how to go about getting an adjustment on the bill and since I was dealing with a government bureaucracy, the procedure was about ten times more complicated than it needed to be. I'm supposed to go ahead and keep paying my bills like normal, and then fill out some paperwork and send it to a completely different department to apply for an adjustment to my bill. Supposedly, about three months from now the city will apply some sort of formula based on my historic water use averages and credit back some of this month's huge bill. I wonder if the people making the adjustment and the people currently taking my money even talk to each other. At least the problem is fixed now and I only have one wonky bill to deal with.

I was going to go look at dehumidifiers in several of the big box stores today, but discovered that nobody kept them in stock. Keeping an inventory is a thing of the past. Unless you're dealing with a popular day-to-day item, most stores force you to buy online these days. Some stores ship the item to a retail store where you pick it up. Other deliver it to your home. If you actually want to look at the item before you buy, you're out of luck. It's frustrating. The reason I wanted to buy a dehumidifier locally is that my UPS guy has a habit of breaking heavy objects by just dropping the package at my door. I've had to return a number of things delivered by UPS and FedEx because they were broken when they arrived. Fragile or Handle with Care stickers mean nothing to these guys.

Faced with the prospect of buying online, I started reading the online reviews more carefully. It appears that most people feel that dehumidifiers are too noisy, only last a year before they break, and are so poorly designed that you always spill water on the floor when emptying the water reservoir.  I remember one review in particular. "Your machine sucks water out of the air just fine," the review said. "It's too bad it immediately overflowed and spilled all the water it extracted on my new carpets and ruined them." Once again, you get what you pay for. With portable dehumidifiers you've got two choices. You can pay $1400 and up for a commercial machine designed to run 24 hours a day, or pay $200 for a consumer machine that will break in a year.

When I was running errands today, the Service Required light came on in my car. I hate this ambiguous message because sometimes it means that something is seriously wrong with your car and other times it is just a reminder that it's time for your next service visit at the dealership. I didn't want to take any chances since I have to transport Dot in the car tomorrow, so I drove over to the dealership and showed them the problem. There was nothing wrong at all. It was just reminding me about the service appointment that I had already taken care of last month.

I got a call from an IT guy today telling me that he had just replaced all the web cams in one of my client's buildings. This meant that the pages for viewing these cameras no longer worked. I told him I'd fix the situation if he'd sent me send me the information I needed to create new web cam pages. Ordinarily, this would be something I could do while I was talking to the guy on the phone. Not anymore. Since I've already converted this particular site to a responsive, mobile friendly format, it is much more complex to modify. There goes tomorrow. Between taking Dot to physical therapy and adding these four live cameras back to the website, that's my entire day.

It was clear this morning and I was surprised to see how far Jupiter and Venus have moved apart in the morning sky. The last time I looked, these two planets were almost touching. It appears that even the planets are moving faster than I am these days.

Puppies are today's Dalmatians of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2163

The day sure ended differently than it began. We were hoping things would dry off after an all night rain, but the weather wouldn't cooperate. Reluctantly, we took the dogs out in the rain and by the time they both did their business, everybody was soaked. I'm much more aware of humidity now. A simple walk in the rain raised the relative humidity in the house by 10%. Wet clothes, wet dogs, and a lot of open doors were all it took to upset the balance. Taking showers raised the humidity as well. Just about everything raised the humidity. When the skies cleared after lunch, the humidity went down again. I'm at the mercy of the weather.

My HVAC contractor said he'd come out and see if there was a way to install a whole house dehumidifier that worked in conjunction with the furnace and air conditioner. He told me that a dehumidifier was just a band-aid though and that something was fundamentally wrong with my house. I suspect he's right. "Everyone else says their house is too dry in the Winter," he told me. "You're the first person who wants it even drier." I think when you've got an entire house constructed of porous brick, it's kind of like having a moisture sponge. The bricks absorb moisture and then radiate it back into the house. Having tons of single pane glass probably doesn't help either. When I went to Home Depot to look for portable dehumidifiers, they didn't even stock any. "We mostly sell those up North," said a guy in an orange apron. "People put them in their basements." Yup. That explains it. The house has always felt like we were living in a basement.

I must be sleeping better now, because I didn't even hear all the wind and rain last night. There must have been high winds, because there was a big branch in the back yard when I woke up. Maybe if these dead branches keep falling off our Oak trees in windstorms, I won't have to hire the tree trimmers this year. I hauled the big limb out to the curb and added it to my pile of stuff that is still waiting for bulky trash pickup. Later in the day, I saw on Facebook that a tornado had passed through the area last night. You could have fooled me.

Now that my plumbing problems have been largely resolved, I'm starting to get caught up on work.  Today I updated a few websites and did some routine bookkeeping. It seemed like I spent a lot of time cleaning mud off the dogs paws, but that's just what we do in the Winter. Other than my strange new obsession with the humidity, it was a completely normal day.

I wish I didn't have to waste so much time dealing with water problems. I spent about fifteen minutes clearing a slow shower drain before I took my shower this morning. This afternoon, I spent another forty-five minutes getting the water from last night's rain off the roof. These things have become so normal that I don't even think about them anymore.

I'll probably continue my search for a good portable dehumidifier tomorrow. If the weather remains clear, Dash will finally get the long walk he's been waiting for. I need to confirm our reservations for Thanksgiving dinner too. Thanksgiving will be here before you know it.

Puppies are today's Dalmatians of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2162

NASA approved my application to attend the Orbital ATK OA-4 resupply flight to the International Space Station in early December. I've been looking forward to attending another launch ever since I was invited to Vandenberg Air Force Base last January. Unfortunately, quite a bit has changed since January. Even though it was quite an honor to get press credentials to view a second NASA launch, I had to decline their invitation. Life has simply become too chaotic for me to fly to Florida for three or four days.

Taking care of Dot has become a full time job. It really takes two people to ensure that she gets her therapy and daily walks. We can't forget about Dash either. Even on a good day, coordinating everything can get complex. Our recent plumbing disaster hasn't made things any easier. When NASA gives you press credentials, they don't actually pay for anything. Airfare, hotels, rental cars, and meals are all at your own expense. Even if Dot were well, I don't think I could afford the trip after paying the huge plumbing and restoration bills caused by our broken pipe. That's life. Maybe I'll get invited to cover another launch after my life has returned to normal.

Life certainly wasn't very normal today. The environmental remediation company came to clean the HVAC ducts and remove their one remaining dehumidifier. Dot wasn't happy with the visit. The duct cleaning machine was noisy and it didn't take Dot long to start barking. Since there are heating vents in every room, I had to keep moving Dot to different rooms as the work progressed. It didn't take all that long for her to start pooping in the house again. I'm going to miss the big blue dehumidifier that's been humming away in our living room for the past week. Within an hour after the cleaning crew packed up their equipment and left, I was already starting to see the the humidity rise. I'd hate to go back to dealing with condensation on all the windows again, so we'd better go out and get our own dehumidifier soon.

One of the reasons the humidity was higher inside today was that it was 100% outside. Yes, it was a very rainy day.  I wish I'd told the tunneling crew to take all the extra dirt they couldn't fit back in the hole with them. Now, instead of wood mulch around the perimeter of the yard, there is a strip of sticky mud. Since this used to be one of Dash's favorite areas to pee, he's getting even muddier than usual.

It was amazing that I got any work at all done today. In addition to the disruptions caused by the duct cleaning crew, there was also quite a bit of thunder and lightning. Dash is even worse about storms than Dot now. Every time there was a thunder clap, I'd find him shivering under my desk. Eventually, the only solution was to take a nap with the dogs until they both calmed down. Naps are good, but they are only a temporary solution. There's a whole new day to look forward to tomorrow.

Alvin is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2161

The other day, I was listening to an old radio interview with Allen Toussaint on NPR. It occurred to me that Allen's song Working in The Coal Mine, was the perfect sound track for my weekends. The tune was certainly appropriate today. I outdid myself with backbreaking activity. Yesterday, I noticed that my neighbors were piling up trash in front of their houses, so I was determined not to let another big trash day pass me by. I hauled a huge pile of nondescript rusty stuff that had been accumulating in the green house out to the curb and made my own pile as well.

Once I started my pile, it became obvious that this would be a good time to cut down the three dead Photinia Bushes near the back fence. I didn't have an extension cord that would reach that far, so I finally found a good use for my generator. The generator provided plenty of power for my trusty reciprocating saw and the unsightly trees I'd been meaning to cut down for at least two years were finally gone.

It was time to put the screen porch back together too. If I waited to find time to locate new extra wide screen wire and purchase new hardwood trim, there would have been a big gap in the screen until sometime next Spring. I carefully reused the old materials and although I can't say the porch is as good as new, at least it's as good as it was before. When the environmental cleanup people come to clean the vents and retrieve their big dehumidifier tomorrow, the house will finally be back to pre-leak condition.

When I was hauling trash to the curb, I noticed that there was a lot of nice fresh white gravel back by the garbage cans. I shoveled up a big pile of this gravel and traded it for the muddy gravel on the gravel walkway the tunneling crew had messed up. It was probably this activity that reminded me of  Working in The Coal Mine. I was tired at the end of the day, but felt like I'd accomplished quite a bit.

On my way to the pharmacy to pick up some prescriptions, I stopped by my storage warehouse to look for backdrops for our upcoming Santa Paws photo shoots. I found quite a few muslin backdrops, but couldn't tell which was which without unfolding them all. I dropped off the plastic fencing that had been keeping Dash out of the atrium while the tunneling crew was working and returned home for dinner. I'll save getting ready for the December photo shoots for another day.

The dogs were lucky to get both their walks today. It looked like it was on the verge of raining for the entire day, but the rain didn't actually start until after dinner. There is still lots to do. I need to find how water is still getting out of the shower stall after all the expert grouting work I did last week. I need to finish a website that should have been complete three days ago. All in good time. What I need to do most is post this and go to sleep.

Honey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2160

We went to a rescue event today. Dash was an ambassador for Dalmatian Rescue at Pet Fair. We told him he need to be on his best behavior. This meant no excessive loud barking, no knocking over other vendors booths, and no pooping in front of a crowd of little children. Generally, Dash was pretty good. He was a little too eager to sample the treats at the Hills Science Diet booth, but he let everyone pet him and was very friendly with all the other dogs.

Dot used to go to rescue events like this all the time. Sadly, she had to stay home today. These type of public events are simply too tiring for her. I drove home midway through the event to check on her and she was sleeping peacefully. I took her out to pee and she immediately thought it was dinner time. It was actually only 2:30 in the afternoon, but how was Dot to know? When she wakes up from a nap, she usually eats.

It was good to give Dash an opportunity to do something social today. It has become so difficult and time consuming to care for Dot, that we don't get out much anymore. He was still a little timid, but he seemed to have fun, making friends with other dogs and begging for treats from anyone who would feed him. When the days start to get longer again, we should probably start taking him back to our Wednesday training class. He was never that wild about the training exercises themselves, but he loved seeing the other dogs.

Now that I've had a chance to look around, I realize that we've got quite a mess to clean up in the back yard. Although the tunneling crew did a good job of backfilling their tunnel, there is still leftover dirt and mud all over the yard. I naively thought that the cleanup would be so good that there wouldn't be a trace that anything had happened. They did lay a bunch of 4x8 plywood sheets on the ground to protect the grass, but a lot of the excavated dirt seemed to land elsewhere. I'm probably going to spend the rest of the Winter cleaning mud off my shoes. When I take Dot outside to pee at night, I inevitably step in mud now. I guess stepping in mud is better than stepping in poop.

If I have time tomorrow, I'm going to reassemble the screened in porch that I had taken apart to give the tunneling crew access to the leak. I had thought about replacing the aluminum screen panels and buying some new wood for the finishing trim. In theory this would have been a simple task, but nothing is simple with this house. The extra wide screen material is not generally available in hardware stores anymore and standard dimensions for lumber have changed over the years. To exactly match the existing trim, I would have to buy lumber and have it milled to the proper size. It's not an ideal solution, but I think I'll just reuse the old aluminum screen wire and try my best to replace the old wood trim without cracking or splintering the wood.

I looked at the dehumidifiers they had on display in the store at Lowes and most of them were crap. You could never use one of these smaller machines to dehumidify an entire house and since they were all made of plastic, they probably wouldn't last a year anyway. Commercial dehumidifiers cost well over $1000 and are generally made in the USA. The machines at Lowes cost around $200 and were all made in China. Like everything in life, you get what you pay for.

I doubt that I'll make it to the gym tomorrow. I've still got lots of website work to catch up on and the house is filthy. My shower stall repairs didn't really work either. I'd prefer to take a long nap, but it looks like wall-to-wall chores tomorrow.

Puppies are today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2159

Life is returning to normal. Water is flowing. The large tunnel under the house has been filled in. The dogs have quit barking. The only reminder of our plumbing problems is a big blue dehumidifier humming away in our living room. Since I knew the tunneling crew would be arriving early this morning, I masked off the windows again so Dot wouldn't see strangers in her yard and picked up some take-out breakfast tacos instead of going out for breakfast like I normally do on Fridays. Apparently, it is much easier to fill in a hole than to dig one. The tunnel took about fourteen hours to dig, but only about four hours to backfill. By mid-afternoon, the crew had packed up their tools and left.

I turned the furnace on this morning for the first time since the leak started and the humidity in the house didn't rise appreciably. I no longer have to huddle around the little ceramic heater while I work. It seems decadently luxurious to have a warm, moisture free house with working toilets and a washing machine that can handle as many blankets as Dot is able to soil. I think we're back in business.

Dash got a bath today in preparation for a big animal rescue event tomorrow that he will be attending. I took a bath today to give the shower stall I've been attempting to repair one more day to cure and dry. That was a mistake. I'm definitely not a tub person. I'm going back to the shower tomorrow whether my grout work is ready or not. How can you wash your hair in the tub? I think it's impossible.

It is so sad to watch what is happening in Paris tonight. I'm glad that Janet and I had an opportunity to spend time in that wonderful city when life was sane and the city was peaceful. I've spent a lot of time in Europe and used to work there frequently. I don't know if I'd ever feel comfortable traveling there again. Every time I see wave after wave of refugees descending on European countries from the Middle East, I think that this isn't going to end well. I'm convinced that hidden in the midst of these refugees are many more of the same terrorists that are currently laying seige to Paris. Western nations need to start getting serious about closing their borders, or this is only going to get worse. I don't understand what our military planners are thinking. Bombing these people just makes them mad. What we really need to do is totally isolate them. If they want to continue living in the middle ages, let them do it in their own countries.

I got my November invoices out today. Hmm. This isn't going to pay the plumbing bill. I've got to come up with a new source of income, or I'm going to be fretting about money for the rest of my life. I've gotten good enough at designing responsive websites that I could probably get hired by one of the big interactive design shops. Then I would have to go to work though. That's not going to happen. I don't think I'm even capable of leaving the dogs anymore. We have bonded. I'm not a team player anymore either. Actually, I was never a team play, but I was pretty good at faking it. When you get older, faking it loses its appeal. Poor, uncompromising, and a little frustrated. Maybe that's my destiny.

Puppies are today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2158

Sometimes, you've got to be the squeaky wheel. When Dot pooped in her bed again last night and we still couldn't use the washing machine because of our ongoing plumbing problems, I'd had about as much as I could take. I called the president of the plumbing company and told him as politely as I could that waiting until Tuesday for a plumber simply wasn't acceptable. "Your ads say you guys are on call 24/7," I said. "So, what's with making us wait a week and a half to get this fixed?" When I started going on and on about living in a house full of dog poop without running water, the guy told me he would see what he could do. An hour later the plumbing company said they could have a plumber out early Friday morning. Friday was much better than next Tuesday, so I was happy that my little tirade had achieved its purpose. Another hour passed, and the plumbing company called again and said they'd have someone out this afternoon.

When the plumber arrived he asked me to turn on all the water in the kitchen and utility room to help him find the drain leak under the house. Simply turning on the faucet wasn't producing the desired results, so I filled the kitchen sink with water and then let it go down the drain all at once. Not a good idea! The sink wasn't draining. At that point, the dishwasher, which was also on, began to empty and the water had no place to go. A line broke under the sink and the kitchen was flooded with water. Luckily, there were two plumbers several feet away watching this new disaster unfold.

Eventually the leaking cast iron pipe under the house was replaced, the leak under the sink was repaired, and the entire drain line was snaked out. I ran a load of poopy dog blankets to test the system and nothing leaked.  I think we're back in business! The two plumbers were at the house the entire afternoon. Mercifully, Dot slept for the first three hours. When she eventually woke up, she made up for lost time and barked for the rest of the day. Despite all the barking, she didn't poop in the house again. I think this was because she had already pooped in the vet's lobby, right before she got in the underwater treadmill.

There is still a huge hole under the house and one of the loud dehumidifiers is still running in the living room, but I think we're making progress. The tunneling crew will come back tomorrow to backfill the tunnel, unless another leak appears while I'm taking a shower tonight. I think the old house is trying to tell me something. If houses had "use by" dates like milk, this house would have expired and gone sour by now. Don't let me ever buy a house with a flat roof and a slab foundation again.

Since fixing things was the theme for the day, I tried to fix some ad copy that my client wasn't too happy with yesterday. I also tried to fix the layout in my new mobile friendly website so the iPhone view didn't look so wonky. I tried to explain to the client that making the mobile friendly site look perfect on every available device just wasn't that easy. I told them that the site was a work in progress and it would gradually become more refined with each passing day. I think the plumber tried to explain to me that my house was a work in progress too. There was no way he could fix all my plumbing problems in a single day. Fair enough. There was no way I could pay for everything I need right now anyway. The important thing was that the two major leaks had been repaired. The toilets are working again and I can do the laundry. That's enough for one day.

Hopefully, there will be no surprises when the tunneling crew returns tomorrow. I've had enough surprises for an entire year.

Jade is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2157

Three steps forward, two steps back. I woke up this morning thinking our plumbing ordeal was over, but when the tunneling crew returned to fill in the large hole they'd created, it didn't take ten minutes before one of them knocked on my door and told me that I still had a leak. It was lucky that I just happened to be doing a load of wash at the same time the tunneling crew decided it was time to fill in the hole. The new leak was located in the cast iron drain pipes. Unless the washing machine or dishwasher were running at the time, you would never notice it. I was lucky. If the tunneling crew has arrived two hours earlier or two hours later, they would have seen nothing wrong and proceeded to fill the hole while the pipe was still leaking. Since the cast iron drain line and the copper supply line are so close together, I suspect that the two leaks are related. One pipe leaked first and over time cause the other pipe to fail.

Now, instead of moving on to other things, I have to reschedule everything. The plumbers have to come out and fix the drain pipe. The environmental cleanup people, who just removed the big dehumidifiers this morning, may have to bring them back. The people who were going to clean the vents on Monday now have to wait until everything else is finished. I have to go over all these new developments with the insurance folks as well. It is all very frustrating. The plumber said we could use the shower and toilets, but not to use the washing machine or dishwasher until the leak is fixed. Ironically, the drain leak would have never been discovered in the first place if I hadn't been using the washing machine to clean blankets that Dot had pooped on while barking at the environmental cleanup crew while they removed the dehumidifiers. Like I said, three steps forward, two steps back.

With all the problems I was having today, it would have been nice if my work projects had gone smoothly. They didn't. I have to edit a writing project to make it seem more general and vague. Hmm. I always thought specifics and details where what made writing interesting. One of my website clients is already making layout changes before the layout is even finished. These things take time folks. Give it a rest.

I went to the post office and bank today completely forgetting that it is Veterans Day and everything was closed. I guess I was confused because there was mail waiting for me in the mailbox this morning. I have a feeling that I must have forgotten to look in the mailbox yesterday. It wouldn't be surprising. I can hardly remember what day it is anymore. Everything has just merged into an endless awful mess. I wish we still had our hotel room, but we had to check out this morning. I decided to re-grout the shower stall while the water was off and the grout still isn't completely dry yet. Maybe it will be dry in the morning. I'm going to need a shower.

Dot has seemed a little shaky all week. It's probably just the added stress of dealing with all these strange new people in the house. Dash is handling things better than Dot. I'm probably doing the worst of all. I've had enough. Did I mention the Internet is down too. Sometimes I think U-Verse is worthless. I'm having to use my T-Mobile hotspot again. It's nice to have a backup. Too bad I don't have a backup plumbing system.

Dolly is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2156

We've got water! The broken pipe was exactly where the plumber said it would be, which kind of amazed me. The leak was located right on schedule too, which amazed me even more. I was afraid it might take weeks to resolve this problem. If you're wondering what actually caused the leak, it turns out that a section of the copper pipe that supplies water to the house was located right next to a larger cast iron pipe that carries waste water away. There were places where the two pipes touched and over the years, the rusting cast iron caused the copper to corrode and fail. That's what the plumber said anyway. He showed me a small hole in the damaged pipe about half the diameter of a pencil. It's still hard to believe that such a small hole could have caused so much damage.

I asked the plumber if there might be other places under the house where the copper supply lines could be touching the cast iron drainage lines. "Sure," said the plumber. "There could be lots of places like this." "Is there anything you can do to prevent this from happening again," I asked. "Nope," said the plumber, "You could have another leak like this tomorrow, or it might never happen again." That wasn't the kind of reassurance I was looking for, but I guess I'll have to live with it. Even though there's a huge hole under the house, it only exposed a tiny fraction of what the builders had put there over sixty years ago. Lord knows what still lurks under the dirt.

In the grand scheme of things, the problems we've experienced this week are tiny compared to the disasters some people have to deal with. The house wasn't hit by a tornado. It didn't catch on fire. A tree didn't crash through the roof. Life was a little inconvenient, but it could have been so much worse. You always see these stories on TV about people rebuilding their lives from scratch after a major disaster has destroyed their home. I don't know how they find the strength to put the pieces back together. Just having no toilets or running water for a week just about drove me over the edge.

There is still a lot of cleanup to do, but life is already starting to return to normal. I ran the dishwasher today and will do a big load of laundry tomorrow. The tunneling company is supposed to come out in the morning and fill in the big hole they created. It's too bad they can't just add concrete walls to the sides and put a door on top. It would be the tornado shelter I've always wanted. They could just keep digging and we could put in a full basement, but it would be much cheaper to just buy a new house.

The environmental cleanup company is supposed to clean our vents before they haul away their big dehumidification machines and leave. When the water was off, I used the opportunity to re-grout the shower stall, so maybe we'll see some improvements there as well. We'll have a lot of bottled water left over when this is all finished with. I was anticipating a long siege and bought too much.

If there's a silver lining to all this, it would be that being trapped here at the house forced me to buckle down and finish the complicated mobile ready website I've been working on. I'm actually caught up with all my work now. Tomorrow I get to see whether the tunneling crew can make the huge mountain of dirt in our back yard disappear. I bet they can't. They'll probably leave us with a smaller pile of dirt and tell us to plant a garden. I'm going to miss taking showers at the hotel. Their shower was so much nicer than ours.

Puppies are today's Dalmatians of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2155

Maybe this is what hell is like. Being trapped in a house with no working toilets while caring for a sick dog who poops all over the place whenever she's barking at the crew of strangers digging a giant hole under your house certainly isn't my idea of heaven. I knew today was going to be a mess, but I was still surprised at how chaotic it actually turned out to be.

I thought the environmental cleanup people were coming back to remove the big dehumidifiers today. I never heard from them. The noisy machines are still running. The foreman on the tunneling crew doesn't like dogs. Apparently, even crippled dogs that can barely walk make him nervous.  I had to wait until the crew left for lunch before I could even take the dogs out in the back yard to pee. Even then, I had to keep Dash on a leash, because he immediately wanted to dig his own hole in the enormous pile of dirt that had been excavated from under the house. I don't know how long the tunnel is by now, but it appears that they're digging to China.

Dot and Dash were actually pretty good, especially considering all the commotion that was going on a few feet away.  I taped butcher paper over the windows in the areas where the dogs usually sleep so they couldn't watch all the activity outside. This seemed to work. The plan worked great with Dot, since she is almost deaf and is a little senile. As soon as she lost sight of the tunnelers, she quickly forgot about them. Dash was curious for most of the day, but he didn't bark much. The problem with Dash was that he always wanted to go outside. This wasn't going to happen because I knew he would either start digging in the excavated dirt and get filthy, run away through an inadvertently open gate, or fall into the huge hole under the house and break a leg. I couldn't even take Dash on a walk to burn off some of his extra energy because I didn't want to leave Dot alone with the unpredictable tunnel crew. She can't hear well, but she can still feel vibration. She wasn't happy about the jackhammer at all.

Breakfast today was just a couple of Jimmy Dean microwave sausage biscuits and three toaster waffles. It wasn't great, but there were no dishes to do. Paper plates and plastic cups are the order of the day. The only concession I made to real dishes was my favorite coffee cup. I've got to have my morning coffee in my regular cup, no matter how much bottled water it takes to clean it.

There was plenty of work to do today, which was probably a good thing since I was trapped in the house anyway. I finally made some real progress on the new mobile friendly website I'm currently working on. I haven't done enough of these responsive sites yet for the procedures to permanently embed themselves in my brain. I still find myself re-learning tricks I'd used on a previous mobile site. Eventually, all the new things I've learned will stick, but apparently not quite yet. Today I had to re-learn how to get background images to resize properly when viewed on a tablet or phone. It took about five tries, but eventually I got it right.

Tomorrow the tunnel grows longer and deeper. Hopefully they will find the broken pipe soon. Today I was a little worried that they would end up tunneling completely through the house and my car, which is located on the other side, would fall in the growing hole. I hate to even think how expensive this is going to be. I have a whole new appreciation for water now.

Dot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2154

This was the last day before they start digging a tunnel under our house, so there was lots to do. The day started normally enough. We got up early, cleaned up a small mess Dot had made and then took both dogs on their morning walk. It was surprisingly cold this morning. The temperature was in the low forties. For the first time in ages the outside humidity was in the low forties too, so we could finally open up the doors and windows and air out the house without worrying about raising the humidity again. We didn't even attempt to cook breakfast at home this morning and went to a nearby restaurant instead. This was a restaurant I'd been meaning to try, so I was curious about the food. The Eggs Benedict I ordered was good, but I still like my regular restaurant better.

I'm wondering if we'll have to go to the laundromat every day. Janet did a big load of dog blankets yesterday and there are more soiled blankets today. We had to go buy more water too. We forgot and used the wrong toilet in the middle of the night and had to refill it with 6 gallons of water instead of the 1.5 gallons that the more modern toilet uses. It's a learning process. Janet wants to buy one of those big dehumidifier machines now. The house really feels better now that it isn't humid anymore. The machines not only sucked out the moisture related to the plumbing leak, they continued to suck trapped moisture out of the brick walls, the rugs and even the clothes in our closets.

The big job today was providing an entrance for the tunnel diggers. They are planning to access the broken underground pipe through an interior atrium garden that is enclosed on three sides by the house, with a screened porch as a fourth wall facing the back yard. There are several panels to the large screened-in wall, so I decided to remove one of the screens. The 60 year old nails holding the trim in place seemed fused to the partially rotted wood. The nails had all rusted and were hard to remove without breaking the trim in several pieces. I was eventually able to remove the screen wire and might even be able to re-use it later. I cracked one of the wooden trim pieces than hid the exposed edges of the screen wire. All in all, the job was a success. I didn't totally destroy anything.

After I had created a passageway so the tunnel diggers could remove the dirt they were excavating, it occurred to me that Dash will want to investigate this new opening in the atrium and would probably jump in the hole and wind up getting stuck under the house. I went back to the storage warehouse and got some plastic fencing that we used as temporary kennels at rescue events. I turned this dog pen into a makeshift gate that will keep Dash out of the atrium while the tunnel crew is digging the hole.

It's nice having the hotel as a place where we can take refuge when necessary. When I finished taking apart the atrium this afternoon, I drove over to the hotel to clean up and take a shower. This is a nice hotel and I always look like hell when I arrive. I usually look much more presentable when I leave a few hours later. The shower in the hotel is really nice. The tile grout is sparkling white. The water is nice and hot. There's even a clever, invisible anti-slip surface so you won't fall and bust your butt. I guess we could have a shower like this too if we just ripped out the old one and put in something new.

When I was working outside this morning, it occurred to me that the weather was absolutely perfect. The sky was clear, the temperature was 68 degrees with very low humidity. There wasn't even any pollen in the air today. I was enjoying the clean, fresh air and then I began to smell wood smoke. Yup. That time of year again. When the temperature dips below 80 degrees, Texans start lighting fires in their fireplaces. I attribute this odd behavior to non-stop Christmas movies on the Hallmark channel, but it could be anything.

My last job for the day is to cover up a large picture window in the hallway with brown wrapping paper. I have this theory that if Dot can't see the workers tomorrow, she won't bark at them. We'll see how that goes.

Spot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day