Day 141

It was a sad day. Henry, one of the special needs Dalmatians we have been trying to rehabilitate, needed to be put down this morning. When Henry entered the Dalmatian Rescue program, we didn't know if he was going to make it. He couldn't walk at all because three slipped discs were pinching his spinal cord. Before we could schedule him for surgery, he caught pneumonia and almost died. Henry wouldn't give up though. He was friendly and patient as we took him from specialist to specialist, trying to find the best way to treat his injuries. We even had a full body MRI done to pinpoint the damage to his spine. An excellent orthopedic surgeon was able to successfully repair two of the damaged discs, and in less than a month after his surgery, Henry was walking on his own again. Everyone thought he was making remarkable progress and we were all hopeful that he would be adopted soon.

Yesterday, when the K-9 University trainers were feeding the dogs breakfast, they noticed that Henry wasn't able to get up and wouldn't touch his food. We immediately took him to the vet, but his condition continued to deteriorate. The vet thought Henry had suffered a stroke. There was nothing anyone could do. It was heartbreaking. For almost nine months Henry had beat the odds. He survived pneumonia. His surgical team had done everything possible to help him walk again. I was convinced that he was going to find a great home and get the second change he deserved. It didn't work out that way though. Henry never even got a chance to leave the kennel.

There was a dog fight at obedience class tonight. The dog's owners were able to quickly get their dogs back under control and nobody got hurt, but still it made me nervous. I was glad to see that both Dot and Dash ran away and tried to avoid the fight rather than try to join in like some of the other dogs. Dot and Dash are gentle, well behaved dogs, as long as there are no squirrels nearby. I hope I am always able to keep them out of harms way.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 140

When we found out recently that Dash had a heart murmur, I had some additional tests done. After looking at the test results, the cardiologist says that Dash has an enlarged heart as well. I asked what could have caused this and the best answer seems to be that the special low protein food he's been eating for the past three years to prevent crystals from forming in his urine wasn't providing enough protein to the heart muscles. As a consequence, the heart muscles were starting to atrophy. This made sense to me. What didn't make sense was why there wasn't a big label on the food itself that said "not for long-term use."

It's frustrating how often this sort of thing happens in medicine. A specialist prescribes something to treat one condition and the side effects of the treatment end up causing an entirely different sort of problem somewhere else. I think Dash's condition is correctable with a change in diet, but he probably shouldn't have been eating Science Diet u/d for three years in the first place. Some vets think Allopurinol is better for preventing bladder stones in Dalmatians than a restricted diet anyway. I guess we'll try that.

I wish that doctors and veterinarians would take a more holistic approach to treatment. We live in a specialized world though. Everybody is an expert at something and almost nobody seems to see the big picture. When I try to look at the big picture, I find that I'm less inclined to find the solution in technology than I used to be. There was a time when I thought technology was the answer to everything, but technology has let me down a lot lately. As many of you already know, I continually have problems with standing water on my flat roof. After I burned out three expensive sump pumps with special moisture detector on/off switches, I went out and bought an old fashioned janitor's push broom and began sweeping the water off the roof after a rain. Much to my surprise, I discovered that I could sweep the water off the roof three times faster than the pumps could pump it away.

I used to have one of those clickers that would automatically unlock my car doors when I approached. The door lock mechanism in the car kept having to be repaired though. The dealer said it hadn't been engineered properly in the first place and wasn't strong enough to unlock the doors. After the warranty ran out, I went back to just locking my car with the key. It's simple and it works every time.

Life has become too complicated. I think we just have to accept the fact that doctors and veterinarians won't always have the answer we need. We have to accept that technology isn't always going to improve the way we live. I guess I've already accepted the dirty little secret that investing is just a crap shoot. Jeez! Was there any real reason the market went up so much yesterday and down so much today. I can't really see that anything substantial has changed in the world overnight.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 139

When I was trying to set up an appointment with one of my client's marketing people this morning, I was told that "she no longer works here." "What about all the changes she wanted to make," I asked. "Oh, you don't need to worry about those anymore," I was told. I wasn't expecting this. Especially on a Monday. I guess every once in a while, we just get lucky.

Dash got lucky too. His dental appointment for tomorrow got postponed for a week or two because the vet had a family emergency. He still needs to have his teeth cleaned though. I probably need to visit the dentist myself. It's been way too long since I've had a checkup. I don't know why I hate going to the dentist so much. When I do go, it's usually pretty uneventful. Nevertheless, I'll use just about any excuse to postpone a dental visit. I'll tell myself that I already take good care of my teeth. I've used a lack of dental insurance as an excuse over and over again, even though dentists aren't nearly as expensive as most doctors. It's probably time to bite the bullet and go sit in the dentist chair again. I certainly don't want my teeth to start looking as bad as Dash's.

After almost a week of clear blue skies, the rains have returned. This meant that Dot spent most of the afternoon hiding under my desk and barking at thunderclaps. I tried to cheer her up by telling her how well the market did today, but the biggest one-day gain since February meant nothing to her.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 138

It was a picture postcard day with blue skies dotted with small white clouds that looked like cotton balls. This is the time of year when people like to be outside in Texas and the park was filled with a cacophony of sounds during our walk. An ice cream truck circulated through the park playing exactly the same music I remember hearing coming from ice cream truck loudspeakers as a child. There was the distinctive sound of Harley Davidson exhausts as people paraded their bikes up and down the access roads at five miles an hour. From one corner of the park came the sounds of tribal drumming and from another corner was a local rock band playing old Eagles tunes. I imagine there were birds chirping as well, but I couldn't hear them over the din of human noises.

We took the dogs over to the annual British and European car show that was also taking place in the park today. This wasn't one of those fancy car show where people truck in their priceless vehicles with special transport vans. It was more of a neighborhood show where people just drove their own cars to the show, parked them on the grass, ate a little barbecue and then drove them home again.  Robert and Cindy, who take their German Shepherds to the same obedience class that Dot and Dash attend every Wednesday are always at this show with one of their project cars. They also own Shade Tree Enginetrics and are probably the only people in Texas who can still repair my aging Citroën Maserati. I love old sports cars and it was fun to walk the dogs through fields filled with Morgans, Alfa Romeos and the ocassional Jensen Interceptor. If I had Dr. Who's magic blue box, I would take it straight back to a time where everything was mechanical. I understand mechanical things and even though I make my living from the computers that suround me, the digital world remains somewhat of a mystery to me.

When I took Dash to get his weekly bath at Vheas Laundromutt, I overheard someone saying "is that the dog that makes bird noises?" "Yes it is," I said, "and you'll get to hear them very shortly." Someday I need to make a video of Dash taking his bath. It would be a hit on YouTube. I've never heard noises coming out of a dog like that before. He's fine when I shampoo him, but he definitely doesn't like being rinsed off.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 137

I'm amazed that I'm online at all this evening. Yesterday's computer problems seemed to get worse this morning. I was hoping it was just a software problem, but it seems that the power outage did manage to fry my logic board. Faced with a choice of going to the Apple store and paying $2500 for a new G-5, or going to the storage warehouse and seeing what I could cobble together from the computer graveyard I keep there, I naturally paid a visit to my storage space. Computers seldom wear out. They just become useless doorstops as technology continues to change. I could start a small museum with all the slow and obsolete computers I have gathering dust in the storeroom. Occasionally, this junk comes in handy though. With a few parts cannibalized from an old Apple cube and some other stuff I took out of a G-4 that I was using back in 2001, I managed to get everything working again.

It's embarrassing how old my office equipment is. I hate to go out and buy new computers though, because when I do, I will have to buy all new software as well. None of the software I currently use will run on one of those screaming fast new 8-core Intel Macs. I like my old software. I don't want to pay through the nose all over again for new versions of the exactly same thing. Anyway, the day I decide to buy a new G-5, Apple will release an even newer G-6 and immediately make my purchase obsolete.  It's happened before. That's why I have so many old computers in the storeroom.

I've got to figure out a way to keep Dot and Dash out of the poison ivy. It's everywhere this year. You can't see it either, since the city has designated large sections of the park as "native prairie" and doesn't mow anymore. I thought this first case would be mild and I wouldn't have to do anything, but the rash keeps getting worse. Looks like I'll have to take the prednisone short course again.

Yesterday, I thought I spent way too much money on the ceramic Dalmatians. Today, I wish I'd just bought them all. Too late now though. Janet stopped by the estate sale this afternoon and said that there was virtually nothing left.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 136

I don't think I was cut out to be an antique dealer. I got up extra early so I could walk the dogs, take a shower and get the trash containers put out by the curb before I went to the estate sale with all the ceramic Dalmatians. I thought I was early, because I arrived 15 minutes before the sale started, but there were already 50 people in line ahead of me. Annette, who told me about the sale, had warned me that I needed to arrive by 8 AM, but this was really the best I could do. Hey, I'm not a morning person. Most of the people ahead of me in line were antique dealers. They probably get up early every day so they can snap up all the good stuff before people like me even finish breakfast.

Luckily, the dealers today weren't very interested in Dalmatians. The owners of the home has been art collectors and there were tons of original paintings and small bronze sculptures to divert the dealer's attention. By the time I was allowed to enter the house, the two Dalmatian end tables in the living room and an amazing life size terra cotta Dalmatian had already been purchased. The bulk of the collection was still available though and I managed to find several wonderful porcelain Dalmatians that will probably wind up in my own estate sale some day.

I don't go to estate sales very often, but when I do I am always fascinated. I find myself wondering about the people who accumulated these objects during their lives. What did they do and why did their family leave these things behind? The couple who had lived in this house for 55 years had obviously led an interesting life. You could tell that a lot of the art had been purchased in Europe during the 1950's. In the husband's bedroom closet were three well tailored tuxedos and two long tailcoats. Jeez! Who owns their own tailcoat these days? I thought the man might have been an orchestra conductor. He certainly seemed well educated and had impeccable taste. I was so curious when I got home that Janet looked up the man's obituary. It turns out that he sold life insurance and lived to be 96 years old. He must have sold a lot of life insurance because the obituary said that he also gave over 31 million dollars to the UT Southwestern Medical School. Amazing!

After I carefully placed my new porcelain Dalmatian figurines on the coffee table, I returned to the more mundane world of work and computer problems. Our power went out last night and I think a power surge fried something on my mother board. The firewire bus won't work anymore. Ordinarily, this wouldn't be a huge problem, but the Apple monitor I use has a firewire connection. My screen has been freezing up all day. I bet the guy with all the ceramic Dalmatians didn't worry much about computers. I did see one very ancient Dell in the man's garage. It was sitting between an equally old toaster and a pipe wrench.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 135

I took Dash over to the vet this morning for his sonogram and he sailed through the procedure with flying colors. I thought he would squirm around and struggle when the technician moved the probe containing the transducer over his belly. He was a perfect gentleman though. Maybe he knew all along that there was nothing to be alarmed about. The test results showed that everything looked completely normal.

When I had my ultrasound exam recently, the machine they used was as big as a refrigerator. The sonographic scanner they used for Dash was as small as a laptop computer and produced much more detailed color images than the scanner they used on me. Once again the veterinarians are way ahead of the human doctors. Vets were using state-of-the-art digital x-ray machines several years before physicians started to use them. My own vet is already doing sophisticated stem cell therapy that probably won't be available to me for another ten years. It's frustrating to think that even though I'm spending a fortune on health insurance, my dogs are probably getting much better care than I am.

I'm glad it's Friday tomorrow. It's been a very busy week. For the first time in over a month I'm almost caught up on everything. All the client websites are up-to-date, the printer is working again, and even a few long-term projects have been completed. Maybe I'll have time to read a book again. Somehow I doubt it. If the weather stays as nice as it's been lately, I'll probably be spending the weekend mowing the grass, washing the car and planting shrubs. I need to clean the office too. It looks like a tornado hit it.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 134

I wonder why people are so eager to new launch products and services before they're ready for prime time? I called my pharmacy to re-order a prescription this morning and the phone message said their service had been improved. With the old service you could call in a prescription and pick it up an hour later. With the new "improved" service, you have to wait until the next day to pick up your prescription. I noticed something similar on Blogger yesterday. They had improved the interface to make it easier to upload pictures and video. There was only one problem. The new improved interface didn't work and you couldn't upload pictures at all. It took me a while to figure out how to get yesterday's Dalmatian on the blog. I finally just put the picture on my own server and linked back to it. I notice that Blogger has gone back to the old interface today. Good for them! At least they can admit they made a mistake. My pharmacy stubbornly still insists that their new slower service is actually better.

Dash won a ribbon again tonight at obedience class. Other people in the class always seem surprised when Dash wins a ribbon. They shouldn't be. Dash knows all the commands. He just isn't very obedient. He was playing his best game tonight though. I was impressed. Dash probably wasn't very impressed with me. The pollen count was high today and my allergies were terrible. I must have gone through a whole pack of Kleenex sneezing and blowing my nose as we were doing the training exercises.

As soon as I got the printer working again and started printing the Mother's Day posters for our upcoming pet photo event, I ran out of roll paper. I'm getting to be a regular up at Imaging Spectrum where I get my printing supplies. I'm convinced that Epson could just give these large format printers away and still make a profit. Every year I spend more for paper and ink than the printer cost in the first place.

I have to take Dash to the vet tomorrow for a sonogram. It's weird. I had a sonogram myself just a few weeks ago. The two of us seem to have similar medical problems. I had to give up Martinis to give my liver a rest. I wonder what Dash will have to give up.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 133

I saw something on television this morning about how eating chocolate can make you depressed. Not very likely. I'll tell you what can make you depressed. Days where the market closes down over two hundred points can make you depressed. Days where your printer remains stubbornly clogged after three separate attempts to clean the print heads can make you depressed. Days when one of your clients says they prefer a cheesy free template website to the custom site you took weeks to develop for them are a little depressing as well. On days like today, chocolate actually helps. Especially the chocolate covered coffee beans I've recently become addicted to.

When I went to the bank today I saw one of those giant mobile shredding trucks parked out front. Maybe this explains why they never seem to be able to find my account records. I've never really understood the fascination with shredding things. Janet shreds everything as soon as she's read it. I never shred anything. I pack everything up in manila file folders and take it down to the storage room. Of course, I can never find any of this stuff later, but at least I know it's there somewhere.

I just got an e-mail from a friend telling me about an estate sale in the Park Cities this weekend that includes a large collection of ceramic Dalmatians. Some of them are life size. The house is in a pretty pricey neighborhood, so I probably can't afford anything anyway, but I think I'm going to go to the sale. Estate sales aren't really my cup of tea, but I do understand the mentality of those who become obsessed by them. It's not that different from collecting watches. Wanting things that you don't actually need is a bit like getting too near a black hole. It's sucks you right in.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 132

Be careful what you ask for. When I was an ad agency copywriter, I always wanted to do the art direction and photography as well. Now, I can do all these things, but jumping back and forth from one discipline to another often leaves my brain feeling like scrambled eggs. I spent the morning doing research for an article I'm writing for a Brazilian petrochemical company about how front-end engineering design saves money and improves efficiency. This afternoon I worked on a Mother's Day poster featuring Dot wearing glasses and reading a cookbook. In between, I finally managed to finish a Flash presentation I'd been promising one of my veterinarian clients for months now. Each of these things was very different and I don't multi-task well, so it's been a confusing day to say the least.

It would be nice if I could spend my days taking amusing pictures of Dot and Dash, but I'm not quite in the same league with William Wegman and his Weimaraners. Until then, I still need pay the bills by writing very technical ads and marketing materials for large multi-national corporations. Hopefully, this new project doesn't involve any foreign languages. Occasionally, I have to translate my input material from German into English before I can even begin. Since I don't know a single word of Portuguese, I hope the folks I need to interview in Brazil speak good English.

When I was taking the dogs on their evening walk, I noticed that the Texas wildflowers are already more abundant than they've been for many years. It must be all the rain we had this Winter. In two or three weeks the flowers ought to be in full bloom. Now that the stock photo agency is finally accepting my pictures, I really need to set aside some time to photograph the wildflowers at their peak. Everyone says they are going to be quite beautiful this year.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 131

I need to start getting more sleep at night. I fell asleep staring at the monitor while I was working on the computer this afternoon. I don't know how long I'd been sleeping, but Dash woke me up with the a high pitched, frantic bark that usually means "take me outside right away before I pee on the floor." I leashed him up and took him on a walk, even though we'd just gotten back from the Unleashed dog park where he'd gotten plenty of exercise. Better safe than sorry I've learned. Dot was at a rescue event in Grapevine, Texas with a bunch of other Dalmatians, so Dash was alone with me today. Dash never likes being left behind, but he doesn't ride well in the car either, so this is often the only solution. I was actually amazed that he made the journey down to the dog park without Dot in the car with him. With this small breakthrough under our belts, maybe we can try something more ambitious in the future.

Occasionally I daydream about living on the seventeenth floor of a luxurious downtown high rise and spending Sunday afternoons drinking cappuccino and reading the paper instead of walking dogs. I'm not really an outdoorsy kind of guy. I'd rather wander through an art gallery than a field full of poison ivy. The dogs have other ideas though and they usually win. I can't imagine taking Dash to an art gallery. He would immediately lift his leg and pee on something I could never afford. There's a silver lining to everything though. These marathon dog weekends definitely keep me in shape. If all I was doing was gallery hopping and drinking cappuccino, I would probably be twenty pounds heavier.

I actually did get to see Dr. Who last night, since the BBC channel repeats everything they air at least three times an evening. I'm still not sure I like Matt Smith as the new doctor. Something is different about the show this season.  Maybe it has more to do with Steven Moffat replacing Russell T. Davis as head writer than anything else. Even without David Tennant however, Dr. Who is still the best thing to come along since Farscape.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 130

It was an absolutely beautiful day today. Did I take some time to relax and enjoy the exceptional weather? Of course not. It's Saturday! If the household chores don't get done on Saturdays, they seldom get done at all. Did the grass get mowed today? You betcha. Did all the water from last night's rain get swept off the roof? That too. I did the laundry, put clean sheets on the bed, went to the grocery store, made a valiant attempt to find the virus on my A-Drive and still found time to run down to the VCA Animal Hospital and take pictures of Smokey and Deuce, our two new Dalmatians in the rescue program.

As nice as today was, I don't think I'd have wanted to go on a picnic anyway. I'm hypersensitive to poison ivy and I've already caught my first case of the year from Dot and Dash. It never fails. I've caught poison ivy so many times that you'd think I'd develop an immunity to it. Unfortunately exactly the opposite has happened. If I'm anywhere within 40 feet of a poison ivy plant I'll catch it. The park is filled with poison ivy in the Spring and the dogs inevitably get the oily urushiol resin on their fur when they walk through a patch of the plants. They always curl up next to me after I fall asleep. The next morning I'm itching and scratching.

I hope I can find time to watch Dr. Who tonight. It's been such a busy day. Janet and I just got back from a casino party held by another charity group. These events are typically kind of a busman's holiday. We always check out the other roulette dealers and see if we can pick up a few new tricks. There was an old couple dealing tonight who kept dropping things on the floor and mixing up the chips. Sad. In a few years this will be us. I can't believe we're actually checking out other charity roulette dealers. We are better than these guys were though. We're definitely not good enough for Vegas, but if worse came to worse, we could probably get a job as roulette dealers in some dusty little Nevada town.  It's always good to have another skill.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 129

I wish I could find a store that carried authentic fixtures for Mid-Century Modern homes. Just some simple things like faucets, light fixtures and hinges would be nice. Every time I need to fix something around the house, it gets harder and harder to find the appropriate part. There all sorts of everyday items like lighting fixtures, floor tiles, cabinet hinges and door knobs that architects loved to use in the 1950's and 60's which are impossible to find today. I saw these items in hardware stores right up through the late 1980's, but they are gone now. These days it's easier to restore a 200 year old home than something an architect designed in 1955. I needed to fix a can light fixture that had burned out in the kitchen this morning. Ordinarily, you would just run down to the nearest Home Depot and buy a new can light. Today's can lights are all about an inch wider than the ones in my ceiling, so I need to disassemble everything and replace the component parts instead. I finally got the light working again, but it took most of the morning.

I spent the afternoon adding photos of newly available dogs and cats to one of the animal rescue websites I maintain. Even though I've been working with rescue groups for many years, it still amazes me that people can abandon an animal so casually. No matter how effective you are in finding homes for these animals, there is always a steady stream of new arrivals. Most of the dogs I see in adoption programs are friendly, well mannered and would make wonderful pets. You just wonder why someone dumped them in the first place.

I worked on the promotional poster for the upcoming Mother's Day pet photo event this evening with Dot. She's a great little model. You can dress her up, put glasses on her, do just about anything and she just sits there calmly. If only people were this easy to photograph.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 128

I thought I had a doctor's appointment yesterday. At least that's what it said on my calendar. I would have gone, except that I got a voicemail message yesterday afternoon reminding me that my appointment was for 2:45 PM on April 22. That's today. I tend to write things down on the the wrong day anyway, so I figured they were right. When I called this morning to confirm my appointment, they said the appointment was for yesterday. When I asked when they wanted to reschedule, they said there had been a cancellation and to come in at 2 PM this afternoon anyway. OK. I went in at 2 PM and ended up finally seeing the doctor at 4 PM. This pretty well sums up health-care in a nutshell.

One of my German clients wrote me today and asked if I'd like to meet him in Houston for dinner next week while he was in town for a conference. I couldn't tell if he thinks I jet around the country for meals or if he just thought Texas is a lot smaller than it actually is. It would be a piece of cake to meet him in Fort Worth for dinner, but Houston is pretty far away. I really ought to try my best to go anyway. We'll see. Four or five years ago this was a really good client of mine and I remember that their budgets were a lot bigger than the veterinarians I work with these days.

I enjoyed the Project Runway finale tonight. Emilio, Seth Aaron and Mila all had strong collections. On some of the previous seasons I could tell who would win in advance, but this time I didn't have a clue. Any of the final three could have won. Maybe Seth Aaron won because there was a bit more showmanship in his collection. The judges do seem to give a bit more weight to the wow factor in a collection than to whether it could sell in stores. Seth Aaron did deserve to win though. One reason I like this show so much is because it is completely real. This isn't something contrived like Survivor. The contestants on Project Runway truly want to become sucessful fashion designers and they put their heart and soul into it.

I know that most of the Entrecard folks out there probably don't even look at this part of the blog, but if any of you actually are reading this, I've got a question for you. How on earth do find the time to drop on enough widgets to get a consistently high ranking? For the past week or so I've been putting my heart and soul into dropping and I still find it almost impossible to visit more than 200 blogs a day. The whole process is becoming way too time consuming. Even "time savers" like Entredropper and Buckets seem to take almost as much time as manually hopping from blog to blog. Opening a ton of tabs in Firefox inevitably crashes my browser too, especially if you are unlucky enough to load three or four blogs in a row that all have YouTube videos running. Yeah, I know it's silly to be competitive about Entrecard, but it is kind of addictive. At least I'm not spending my days playing Farmville or Second Life.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 127

Today was one of those days where I knew from the start that I wasn't going to be able to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Absolutely nothing went as planned. For starters, I have big print job due tomorrow and the printer wasn't working. Apparently, the printer drivers had gotten corrupted. I couldn't find the install disk, so I hooked the printer up to a different computer. Unfortunately the files I needed to print weren't on this computer. The Epson 4000 won't connect to the office wireless network at all, so I had to burn a DVD to get the files I needed to print over to the computer that was connected to the Ethernet cable and the printer. In the process of doing all this tedious stuff, I discovered that the Epson printer drivers weren't the only things that had gotten corrupted. Damn! It looks like I've downloaded a virus again.

When I took a break from printer hell to let the dogs outside, Dash started digging holes and kept trying to eat something he'd found in the dirt. Eating bark off trees was bad enough, but now he seems to have acquired a taste for grubs as well. I wish that I could just leave the dogs in the yard to play for a while and go about my business. It doesn't work that way though. If I leave Dash alone in the yard for five minutes, he'll inevitably eat something that doesn't agree with him, start vomiting and off we go to the vet.

The client who wanted all the website changes yesterday called later in the day and said he'd found a site he really liked. That sounded encouraging. "Now we're getting somewhere." I thought. Then I took a look at the site he was talking about and thought it was horrible. I'm going to need to learn to love that site though, because it looks like we're headed in the same direction.

The day did have one bright note. I noticed that the the Apple stock I repurchased recently went up 15 points today. Now if only I had never sold it in the first place.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 126

We found out today that Dot won first place in the BaxterBoo pet fashion contest. It's nice to have a winner in the family again. It's been years since I've won an award for anything. When I was an ad agency copywriter, I used to win a ton of awards, but it was mostly because I would always volunteer to take care of submitting the entries for the agency and then make sure to enter a boatload of my own stuff. I didn't have Dot's instinct to go for the gold, so I would seldom win first place honors. I did get a fair share of second and third place trophies though. Dot has all the personality traits you usually associate with a winner. She is serious, determined and seems happiest when she has a task to complete. Dash, on the other hand, has the personality traits you would usually associate with me. He is curious, lazy and never likes to get out of bed in the morning.

I had a meeting with one of my website clients this afternoon. It kind of felt like I had entered the Twilight Zone, because everyone at the meeting seemed to want exactly the opposite of what they said they wanted during our last meeting. Nothing to get upset about though. This happens frequently in my line of work. On projects like this without a firm deadline, drastic changes are almost inevitable. This is why I love rush projects with drop-dead deadlines. If you only have time to do it once, clients are usually very appreciative that you managed to finish the job at all. When there is too much time, everyone and their uncle wants to fiddle with it.

On the way home from my meeting I stopped by a gallery where I used to show and picked up some artwork that Janet and I had purchased last month. The curator asked me if I would be interested in having another show. Sure!  I love having gallery shows. Then I asked whether we could just set a date for the show now, or whether I would have to submit a proposal again like I did the last time. Looks like I'll have to submit a proposal again. The art world is weird. I've asked other artists why they do the things they do. Their answer is usually very similar to mine: because it looks cool! Looking cool definitely won't work as a show proposal though. I'll have to make up some ridiculous story that goes on and on about my influences and motivation and somehow ties everything back to the importance of being green and saving the planet. This is what the art world has come to. Sad. I'll still do the show though.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 125

Mondays are usually pretty quiet around here. I seldom get panic calls from clients on Mondays because this day seems to be reserved for long internal status meetings where everyone tries to remember what they were doing the previous Friday. I don't even try to call people on Monday because they are always in a meeting. While the rest of the world is checking on the status of everything, I usually pay a few bills, do some laundry, answer the e-mail I never got around to reading on Friday, and fix myself a big stack of pancakes.

I'm always amazed how a few simple tasks can eat up an entire day. I wasted quite a bit of time this morning fixing a long extension cord with a short in it. If I thought my time was worth anything at all, it would have made a lot more sense to just go to Home Depot and buy a new one. I also tried out my new "Mister Steamy" dryer ball. I'm almost embarrassed to admit that something I saw on one of those cheesy TV infomercials managed to catch my attention, but when I heard that "Mister Steamy" would put an end to ironing forever, I had to have one. I'm terrible at ironing. By the time I've ironed one wrinkle out of a shirt, I've usually managed to create a brand new wrinkle somewhere else. Amazingly, the "Mister Steamy" dryer ball actually works. Admittedly, my standards are pretty low, but the laundry came out of the dryer looking good enough for me to just put on a shirt without bothering to iron it and wear it for the rest of the day. Now, why couldn't I have invented something like that.

I need to take Dash to the vet at 8:30 AM tomorrow for his annual exam. Normally, I never do anything that early, but Dash's veterinarian only works on Tuesdays and she seems to get booked up weeks in advance. 8:30 AM was the only appointment left. I certainly wouldn't mind just working on Tuesdays.  Maybe if I started having my own status meetings and became more efficient, I could cram all my work into a Tuesday. I doubt it though. There's too much work and I'm way too slow.

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Day 124

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Day 123

I've been waiting all week for the new season of Dr. Who to begin. Whenever a new doctor is introduced, I don't think I'm going to like the show anymore. It usually takes a few episodes for a new doctor to completely win me over. I really liked David Tennant as the tenth doctor, so I wasn't expecting all that much tonight. Matt Smith is really pretty good though and Karen Gillan is going to make a great companion. I still think the first series with Christopher Eccleston as the ninth doctor and Billie Piper as Rose was my all time favorite. I like how the doctor meets Amy Pond as a little girl in this initial episode, and when he sees her again a few minutes later, she's all grown up. That's the thing about time travel: just about anything becomes plausible in a script, once you accept the basic premise.

It would be great fun to write for a show like this, but I would have to go back in time myself to have a shot at something like that. It's certainly not impossible for advertising writers to make the transition to episodic television though. Come to think of it, Donald Bellisario, who was a creative director at the Bloom Agency in Dallas when I was a young writer there, went on to direct Magnum PI and Battlestar Galactica.

Although time travel and directing a hit TV show are nice fantasies, the realities of life are a little more down to earth. I went down to Unleashed this afternoon and finalized the details of our upcoming Mother's Day pet photography event. The holiday photo events are starting to become popular. Hopefully, by the time Christmas rolls around, they will become one of the Dalmatian Rescue group's best fundraisers.

My life as a pet photographer might not be as glamorous as that dashing new Dr. Who, but it certainly beats how I ended the day: temporarily plugging cracks in the shower tile grout with soap to keep the shower from leaking. You might think it would make more sense to just re-grout the entire shower stall.  Probably so.

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Day 122

I wasted an inordinate amount of time today trying to integrate amazon.com with the blog. I like to read, and since the Blogger platform now connects directly with Amazon Associates offerings, I thought it would be cool to add a list of my top 10 favorite books to the blog and link it to the amazon.com site. I forgot that Amazon Associates typically wants to embed a display ad instead of a simple text link and that Blogger doesn't really supported nested tables, which was the only way I could think of the get the Amazon display ads to line up properly. By the time I had gotten the first of the Amazon display ads lined up properly inside a two column table, I had run out of time. I really do have more than two favorite books though. Hey, it's a work in progress.

Early this afternoon, I noticed that Dash was racing around the house with the panicked look on his face that means he is about to throw up. I took him outside and waited patiently for twenty minutes while he did absolutely nothing. As soon as I gave up and brought him back inside again, he promptly threw up on the carpet next to my desk. This has happened several times before. Every time I take him to the vet, they take an X-ray, tell me they see nothing abnormal and give him some Metronidazole. I'll take him back to the vet again, because vomiting is never normal. My guess is that he just ate some horse poop in the park that didn't agree with him.

Lord knows why I chose to buy stocks yesterday when the market was up, instead of waiting until today's big sell-off when I could have bought the same stocks for a lot less. At least my record for making investment decisions at exactly the wrong time is still intact. Somehow this always happens. The market had been rising in a slow but predictable fashion for weeks. The minute I place my order, Goldman Sachs gets charged with fraud and everybody sells. Oh, well.

We've been getting mail today from people who think that Dot won the BaxterBoo fashion contest. I'm not sure how they know this, because the winner isn't officially announced for another four days. I hope she does win. There's going to be a lot of disappointed people if she doesn't.

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