Day 708

There was a beautiful ground fog that covered the entire park when I took the dogs on their morning walk. I could tell the fog was lifting rapidly, so I tried to grab a few pictures with my iPhone. You might know this already, but Dalmatians aren't very good as photo assistants. Every time I would frame a shot, one of the dogs would tug on the leash and cause the camera to move. I managed to get one or two good shots, but by the time we got home again where I could grab my good camera and leave the dogs behind, the fog had lifted.

I got a letter from one of my annuities today saying that they were no longer accepting new customers because bad economic conditions, low interest rates and other dark clouds on the horizon were making it impossible to provide a future return on investment. The letter concluded by saying the company was still strong and would continue to meet all obligations to existing customers. This wasn't all that reassuring however. You can definitely see the writing on the wall. The entire world economy has become a house of cards, and I still don't think many people realize how serious the situation has become.

One thing I've started to notice is that the bad economy is making just about everyone a little grumpier. More people are honking their horn at other drivers. More companies are asking employees to accept new responsibilities without an increase in pay. Loyalties are being tested everywhere. I think just about everyone I know would throw me under the bus in a New York minute if it meant they could hang in there a little longer.

There's still plenty to be thankful for though. I need to remember this on days when the market drops hundreds of points, like it did today. Hey, I still get to take a walk through the woods with my dogs every morning instead of fighting rush hour traffic. I'm not making nearly as much money anymore, but at least my house and car are paid for. There are literally dozens of things that could have a serious impact on my health, but so far none of them actually has. Things aren't all that great, but I count my blessings that they aren't really that bad either.

Tomorrow is a holiday and we get to sleep in a bit longer. I hope somebody remembers to tell the dogs.

Petey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 707

I don't really like to fast before going in for a blood test, so to reward myself, I usually go out for breakfast at a neighborhood restaurant as soon as the test is finished. Today, my breakfast was closer to lunch because there were two fat people ahead of me at the lab and the technicians were having trouble finding a vein. The nurse never has trouble finding my veins. They're right out there on the surface.

By the time I got to the Broken Egg Cafe, I was hungry. I ordered a hearty skillet breakfast filled with mushrooms, bacon, ham, eggs and cheese, and then went home and fed the dogs their rice cakes for lunch.

I'm sure that Dot and Dash would have preferred trading places with me for breakfast, but the vet says that I need to watch their weight as they get older. Nobody is telling me to watch my own weight. I just don't seem to gain weight.

I took Dash along when I went to take some new employee pictures for a veterinarian client this afternoon. Taking Dash with me saved a trip, since he needed his antigen shot today anyway. He seemed a bit miffed when he had to stay in a crate while I took the photos, but all-in-all, he was pretty well behaved.

When the photoshoot/vet visit was finished, I took Dash home again and went to the pharmacy to pick up the prescriptions that weren't ready yesterday. A trip to the shoe repair shop and the health food store on the way home completed the day's errands and it was soon time to take the dogs on their evening walk. It's amazing how a few little errands can eat up your entire day. I think I'm terribly slow until I venture outside the office. It's then that I realize that everyone else is even slower than I am.

I usually drive down to Dealey Plaza on November 22 to take pictures of all the conspiracy nuts who gather here on this day to talk about who really killed John Kennedy. I didn't have time to make the trip today and I wasn't even doing anything important. It's kind of sad that the trivial mechanics of day-to-day living have consumed just about all the time I have.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 706

I had my annual physical exam today, which meant I didn't get much else done. I don't know why doctor's visits always have to take so long. I've never been to a doctor yet where I didn't have to wait in the lobby for at least twenty minutes. The physical exam always seems to take longer than a normal visit too. You sit in the lobby for a while, and then you sit in a succession of small rooms while waiting for each individual test to be completed. By the time you actually see the doctor, you are usually in such a hurry to leave that you forget to ask the questions you've been puzzled about all year.

When the exam was completed and I finished picking up my new prescriptions at the pharmacy, the day was over. All I had time to do was take the dogs on their evening walk.

It's a good thing that I walked the dogs when I did too. It had been drizzling all day, but shortly after we got home, it started raining in earnest. If memory serves me correctly, this is about when the rainy season starts in Dallas. Sometimes it starts a little earlier, but November is never very nice.

Today was a waste, but I doubt that I'll get a whole lot done tomorrow either. I have to go for more blood tests at the doctor's office in the morning. In the afternoon, I need to take Dash to the vet for his antigen shot. I promised to take some more employee pictures tomorrow as well. It looks like the weekly writing assignments might have to wait until Wednesday.

Probably the only good thing about being at the doctor's office today is that I didn't have to sit and watch the stock market implode again on TV. I'm beginning to wonder if this will ever end. Even my doctor is starting to worry about the economy. When a doctor starts to worry about money, you know things are bad.

Ranger is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 705

I tried to figure out what was wrong with my car door today and eventually got it to close and lock again. That's not necessarily a good thing though. If I take the car to the dealer tomorrow and they can shut the door, they'll just tell me that nothing is wrong and won't bother to fix anything. How many times have intermittent problems failed to show up when you take your car to the dealer? It happens all the time to me. Land Rovers are notorious for intermittent problems too. Janet had a similar problem with the door on her car last Summer and even made a movie with her iPhone to demonstrate the problem. Of course, when she took the car to the dealer, they wouldn't accept the movie as proof. They said they had to be able to replicate the problem themselves before they could fix it and, as expected, the door was working fine on the day she took her car to the dealer.

Luckily, we made it up to the dog park today with no door mishaps. You could tell that Dot and Dash had cabin fever from being left alone most of the weekend. They both raced around like they'd never been off leash in their life. Dash was particularly playful and made several new friends today. He's still fearful when there are lots of large dogs in the park, but today there was a nice mix of mid-sized dogs that he seemed to approve of. He had a great time racing around chasing other dogs and being chased in return. He was even able to hold his own with some super fast Vizslas.

As the day progressed, it got darker and darker and eventually it started to rain. Fall is definitely here again. The ground is already a carpet of fallen leaves and the trees have all turned. It wasn't a very colorful Fall this year. I'm sure our hot Summer drought has something to do with it. A lot of leaves didn't turn red or yellow at all this Fall, because they'd already turned brown and died earlier this Summer.

I tried to catch up with some of my website updates this afternoon, mostly because I know I have a lot of watch articles to write next week. I'm really glad it's a short week, since most people get Thursday and Friday off for Thanksgiving. That probably won't stop them from dumping something on my desk just before they head off to their own turkey dinner though.

Puppies are our Dalmatians of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 704

It was another long day of pet photography. I think we photographed even more dogs today than we did yesterday. The two day photo shoot is over now and most of what we did has already blended together in my mind. I know we had pizza for lunch yesterday and sandwiches for lunch today, but I've already forgotten many of the dog's names. There were big dogs and little dogs, calm dogs and nervous dogs. Some dogs were scared of Santa, while others wanted to lick his face and chew on his beard. A few dogs were impossible to forget. There was the gentle blind sheep dog who seemed completely comfortable wandering around until he bumped into something. There were the two Great Danes today who where so large that it was difficult to get them in the same small room with me and Santa. Most of the dogs were surprisingly well behaved, but then there were always the Dalmatians to contend with.

I'll have to go do the grocery shopping tomorrow, since there hasn't been much time to take care of the weekend errands yet. I can't decide whether to take all the photo equipment back to the storage warehouse. Right now the stuff is cluttering up the hallway, but it seems pointless to take everything back again when there are still several more of these fundraisers to go. Probably, the house will remain cluttered with Santa Paws stuff until the end of the year.

It wasn't as much trouble to get in and out of the car through the passenger door as I thought it would be. I still need to get the door latch fixed on Monday though, or eventually this strange mode of entry will just become normal. I didn't have any problems with the door flying open again, but then I didn't even try to open the door today.

We'll take Dot and Dash to the dog park tomorrow. They deserve a nice outing after being left behind two days in a row.

Jasper is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 703

There's nothing remotely glamorous about pet photography. Big dogs knock over your strobe lights. Little dogs pee on Santa's lap. Pet owners almost universally think their dogs are better behaved than they actually are. Spend the day photographing dogs and I'll guarantee that you'll come home thinking that mowing the grass or cleaning the house is a piece of cake.

Today we embarked on the first in our annual holiday marathon of Santa Paws photo events. Santa is tired. I'm tired. All the volunteers are tired. We got some good photos though, and all our customers seemed happy. You'd think these events would get easier, since we've done so many. Unfortunately, they seem to get harder every year. We're all a year older. The equipment seems heavier and the dogs seem more unruly.

Luckily, I didn't have to take the set down tonight, since we're going back to the same location tomorrow. Nothing got broken today, but I did lose one of my SD memory cards. These expensive little cards are super easy to lose, because they're about the size of a postage stamp. It's amazing that you can store 32 GB of information on something the size of a stamp. I still remember when 5 GB hard drives were larger than a shoe box. These huge old drives were impossible to lose though. I've still got a few collecting dust in the storage warehouse.

On the way home this evening, the door latch broke on my Defender 90 and the front door sprang open while I was driving down a major freeway during rush hour. I had to continue driving another 35 miles holding the door shut with one hand while I tried to steer with the other. This isn't easy to do in a manual transmission car. Whenever I needed to change gears, I had to either let the door flap open again, or turn loose of the steering wheel for a moment. Mostly, I let go of the steering wheel, because I didn't want another car on the busy highway to rip my door off as it was passing me on the left. When I got home, I finally managed to get the door to shut again, but I don't trust it now. I'll probably just leave it locked and get in on the passenger side when I return for another day of pet photography tomorrow. Unfortunately, I won't have time to go to the Land Rover dealer until Monday.

This has really been a long day. I don't think I'll have any problems getting to sleep tonight.

Puppies are our Dalmatians of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 702

I went to a seminar today outlining the advantages of upgrading to the new Avid Media Composer 6.0 software. I probably should have stayed at the office and continued to work my way through the growing stack of website updates, but I needed to get away for a while. By going to the seminar, I could imagine for a little while that I was a real filmmaker again. I've made my own films before, but these days I mostly occupy myself doing what other people want. A lot of this stuff isn't important, or even necessary, but I get paid to do it. Every time I see one of those posters that says It's better to fail at something you love than succeed at something you hate, I think it's all a lot of BS. If I followed my heart, or followed my passion, or whatever you're supposed to do these days, I wouldn't make any money at all.

I'm so self absorbed as it is, that following my own drummer would probably just lead to early insanity. Truthfully, doing mildly disagreeable things is what keeps me connected to the world. I may not understand why these things are important, but learning how to do them on time and within budget does give me an understanding of what other people value.

When I walk the dogs everyday, I realize that they'd be a lot happier running free. They love their walks, but I'm sure they both think that things would be even better without the leash. Maybe so, at least in theory anyway. The reality is that a big city is no place for a dog to be off leash. In Dallas, dogs like Dot and Dash would be run over by a car within five minutes. Maybe I'm on a leash too. I'm certainty not running free, but then I'm not causing any harm or doing damage either. Life is a trade off, for dogs and for people.

On the way home I stopped by the storage warehouse and picked up the things I'll need for tomorrow's photo shoot. Somehow, everything seemed heavier than the last time I used it. Once upon a time, I photographed fashion models, but times have changed. As long as the dogs don't bite me, or pee on my set, I'll be fine.

Puppies are our Dalmatians of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 701

So far, the entire week has felt like Monday. Even though the week is already half over, today still had that muddled, unfinished quality that I usually associate with Mondays. Luckily, most of today's work involved doing repetitive tasks in Dreamweaver and Photoshop. My brain wasn't operating on all cylinders, but that didn't stop me from resizing photos and cloning web pages.

I don't know if my shoulder is ever going to heal. I thought I was making good progress with my exercises, but this morning Dash tugged real hard when he saw a rabbit and dislocated it again. I kind of dread all the pet pictures we've got scheduled for Friday and Saturday. With Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in my left wrist and a dislocated right shoulder, I don't look forward to holding a heavy camera all day.

I got an e-mail today saying that Avid Media Composer 6.0 is available now. Seems like I just got the 5.5 release a few weeks ago. I was almost certain that I'd get a free upgrade since I bought Media Composer so recently, but I was wrong. I should have waited one week longer to buy the software. As it stands now, I bought just a little early to qualify for a free upgrade. Damn! No wonder I got such a good deal on Media Composer. They already knew there was a new version ready to be released.

The dogs had to wear their sweaters to training class tonight. I had on a pretty warm coat as well. A cold front blew through around suppertime. By the time we got to class there was a fierce wind blowing and the temperature had dropped twenty five degrees. This is probably just a taste of what's to come. Some of these Winter classes feel more like a test of endurance than a test of our dog's abilities. I've turned up the furnace a bit, so at least it's still T-Shirt weather inside the house.

Alvin is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 700

Some days you're lucky, and other days you aren't. I certainly didn't stumble on a four leaf clover today. The big event of the day turned out to be fixing the toilet in Janet's bathroom. I thought this would be an easy job, but when I went to turn off the water at the shut off valve, I discovered that the valve had rusted and was frozen in the open position. I've learned from prior experience that it's not a good idea to go pounding rusty water valves with a hammer to see if you can get them to move. It's pretty easy to break the valve and end up with tons of water all over the place. I had two choices. I could call a plumber. Or I could try to fix the toilet without turning off the water. I opted for option number two, since I couldn't deal with the dogs barking at a plumber for several hours.

After a trip to Home Depot for supplies, I did manage to fix everything, but it was weird to be working with a wrench and a pair of pliers in a tank full of water to remove and replace the broken parts. Lord knows how long this repair will last, but I bet it will last as long as the repairs done by the last plumber I hired. Maybe I need to start using Angie's List or something. It's really getting hard to find good help.

The rest of the day was spent doing routine website updates. I guess this is the high tech version of fixing toilets. It would be nice to have something exciting to work on, but people don't seem to want to pay me to get excited. They pay me to do things they don't really want to do themselves. If I want to do something fun, I generally have to spend my own money.

Honey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 699

I went up to the Fry's store in Plano today to pick up one of the last available Panasonic SDXC Memory Cards in the area. I guess a lot of stores are discontinuing these cards because nobody wants to pay this much for the extra speed they offer. At any rate, when I went to look up the location of the store on the Internet, there were five comments below the location map that all essentially said "Don't even bother to go to this store because they have the worst service in the universe." I went anyway, because they were the store that still had the memory cards. Sure enough, the service was just as terrible as everybody said. I went at 2 PM when there were very few people in the store and it still took me over 45 minutes to purchase the memory card. Then, when I got home I discovered I had actually bought a used store demo, instead of a new card.

I got all the footage I shot yesterday logged and burned to several DVD's for the editor on the project. I offered to edit the video myself, but I'm kind of glad that nobody took me up on my offer. With all the Dalmatian Rescue Santa Paws photo shoots I've got scheduled for the rest of the year, I really don't need anything else on my plate.

My watch client is starting to sell watches on Shop NBC, which is a lot like QVC. They asked if I'd be interested in being a guest presenter on the show. Sure, I'd be interested, but I don't know if I'd be all that good for sales. I ought to recommend Janet as a presenter. She can sell anything.

The dogs are getting fairly relentless about their evening walk. I was trying to get a press release finished this afternoon when Dot and Dash decided that they'd rather take a walk instead. The both started barking and slapping me with their paws. It wasn't long before I abandoned the press release and got their leashes. I still got the job out on time though after we got back.

Puppies are our Dalmatians of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 698

I spent most of the day at Pet Fair. The volunteers did a fabulous job of organizing the event this year. There was a little bit of everything. There were tons of games for the kids, including a large bounce house, teddy bear surgery, and something that involved throwing water balloons. One of the most popular areas was the reptile exhibit, where kids who dared, got to touch and even hold large pythons and other snakes. I never dreamed that there would be so many kids who wanted to walk around with a large snake around their neck, but there were lines waiting to get near the reptiles. The girls were just as interested in holding a snake as the boys, and one little girl was so fond of her snake that she sat with the snake in her lap for most of the afternoon. The reptile exhibit was well supervised by two herpetologists, and although I wouldn't want a snake as a pet myself, I'll have to admit that they are interesting animals. While I was filming the reptiles, I noticed that parents were much more skittish around snakes than their children. For the most part, the children were fearless. I guess fear of snakes must be learned behavior.

There was a great neighborhood Doo-Wop band, playing hits from the fifties and sixties. Unlike some garage bands, their harmonies were on key and their musicianship was quite good. Sometimes I think that half the men over forty play in one of these garage bands. They're everywhere, and no charity event would be complete without one. As the afternoon was drawing to a close, a young man in his late twenties came to complain about the noise and said he'd call the cops if the band didn't stop playing immediately. Actually, the cops had been at the event all afternoon, and none of them seemed to have any problems with the band. The ironic thing was that the old men in the band were the rockers and the young guy complaining was the old fuddy-duddy. Nobody seems to want to accept their role in life these days. It gets confusing sometimes.

The new Panasonic camera is fabulous. One of the first things I noticed about shooting with a memory chip camera is that you can actually use the on-board mics. Since there are no moving parts in the camera, it operates completely silently. The next thing I noticed was how light the camera was. After years of carrying a Beta-SP camera around on my shoulder, this thing seemed almost weightless. The picture quality was amazing, especially considering that I didn't bring any lights and there were hard shadows everywhere. I think I'm going to like shooting with this camera!

Dot and Dash were a bit miffed that they didn't get their usual trip to the dog park today. Hey, you can't do everything. To make up for this faux-pas, I did take them on a longer than usual evening walk. By the time they finished dinner, I think they'd forgotten all about the dog park. Tomorrow, it's back to our usual schedule.

Puppies are our Dalmatians of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 697

I shop at Sam's Club frequently. It's definitely not my favorite store, but prices are low. The irritating thing about Sam's it that once you get used to buying something, they package it in a larger container and make you buy even more. Instead of buying two bottles on Windex, you have to buy three. Almost every week, something gets less convenient to buy. Today, I needed to get butter, and instead of the normal boxes with four sticks of butter to a pound, they just packaged the butter in giant one pound slabs. You had to buy four of these slabs at a time. The huge mounds of butter wouldn't even begin to fit on a butter dish. Who needs this much butter? I passed on this item and went on to the next thing on my list: glucosamine chondroitin pills. I had to buy two large jars. Much to my chagrin, I found that I already had glucosamine when I got home.

When the shopping and laundry was done, I experimented with my editing software to see if it was going to be easier to edit files from my new video camera in Final Cut Pro or Avid Media Composer. Final Cut seemed the clear winner. This may be because I know Final Cut backwards and forwards, while I'm still learning to use Media Composer. On the other hand, Final Cut Pro may be easier to edit with, because it transcodes the AVCHD files to ProRes, while Avid tries to edit them directly. I don't think my computer is fast enough to edit AVCHD files directly.

We're still having spectacular sunsets. Tonight, the dogs and I got quite a show on our evening walk. The sky seemed like it was on fire. It was almost like that scene in The Poison Sky episode of Dr. Who where the earth's atmosphere burns. If the dogs would actually stay put while I told them to stay, I could have gotten a few more pictures. With squirrels to chase and strong smells everywhere, I'm lucky to get any clear images at all. The iPhone doesn't help matters either, since there is no control over shutter speed. At dusk, most iPhone pictures are blurry anyway.

Tomorrow is Pet Fair. I'll be taking video footage of the event from noon through 4 PM. This is an event for kids, so I'll probably have plenty of pictures of bounce houses, face painting, and children holding puppies. Hopefully, it won't rain.

Jada is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 696 - Veteran's Day

Both of my parents served in the Navy. They were so proud of their service that they both requested military funerals, long after they returned to civilian life. One of my favorite art director partners, back in my ad agency days, was in the Marine Corps before he discovered the ad biz. Several of my high school and college buddies went to either West Point or the Air Force Academy, and just about everyone on my Mom's side of the family was career military. All these connections to the military life have disappeared. I don't know anyone personally who is serving in the military these days. All I know is what I see on TV. I remember my parents and my friends though and the dedication with which they served. I think all our veterans, past, present and future, deserve a tremendous amount of respect.

Watching a parade on TV this morning was as close as I got to a Veteran's Day celebration. It was a just another normal Friday for me, full of projects that really should have been finished on Wednesday. Weekends are more enjoyable for both my clients and myself if there aren't any unfinished projects lingering on my desk, so I usually stay busy on Fridays. By the end of the day, I had everything finished and I'm ready to face to weekend.

The photo above was part of an ad campaign I did several years ago for a client who insisted on basing their entire marketing efforts around their logo, which just happened to be a flag. I must have taken pictures of every flag in Dallas, looking for the perfect pictures to illustrate the campaign. For a while, I thought all these flag images would be great for stock photography, but all the stock photo houses told me that they had plenty of flags already. I still find a use for these pictures occasionally, but not very often. Hey, if you need a good flag picture, I'm your guy.

There's basically only one day to get all the weekend errands done this week. On Sunday, I'm supposed to take video footage of the Pet Fair animal rescue event. With all this going on, I'm not sure how we'll get our own dogs to the dog park on Sunday, but I'm sure where there's a will, there's a way.

Dolly is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 695

I was watching one of those Lynda.com training CD's today to brush up on software I use in my work. Even though I tried to stay focused, I kept falling asleep. The training CD was well produced and very professional. The problem was that the subject matter was totally boring. This is stuff I do all the time. Let's face it. A lot of what I do is boring. I just needed to watch the CD, so I could learn how to do the boring stuff faster and hopefully, a lot more productively. The instructions that came with the CD said it would only take me half a day to watch all the course material. Wrong! I think it's going to take me about three weeks. My head is so filled with useless technical information already, that I'm going to have to take this new information in small chunks so it won't explode.

There's the new camera I've got to master as well. This little learning exercise is a bit easier, since the new camera is just a better version of equipment I'm already familiar with. I practice taking little movies of the dogs in the back yard after lunch. I not quite ready for prime time yet, but it shouldn't take that long. Sometimes this continual learning process gets tiring. It's absolutely essential though. If I didn't try to stay ahead of the curve and discover new and better ways of doing things, I wouldn't even have a business today.

One of the rescue groups I work with is having a big fund-raising event this Sunday. We had our final run through meeting tonight and the whole thing seemed quite complicated. I was glad that my task on Sunday was taking video of the event and not setting up tents or running the silent auction.

We're still having beautiful sunsets just about every evening. I hope you're enjoying them as much as I am.

Puppies are our Dalmatians of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 694

I think the French Toast I made myself for breakfast might have been the high point of the day. I didn't have any writing deadlines, so I thought I'd try to finish the rest of the videos I've been editing for my medical client's website. I made pretty good progress, but I've still got one more video to go. The odd thing is that even though my computer is much faster than the ones I used to edit with ten years ago, it still takes me just as long to render things. Back then I was editing standard definition 4x3 video and now I'm editing 16x9 high definition video. There's so much more information to crunch that my speedy new computer doesn't save me any time at all.

One of these days pretty soon, I'm going to have to walk the dogs real early and then go back and retrace my steps with a camera. I've been encountering beautiful sunsets and evening skies just about every day this week. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to take any photos that I could sent to the stock photo agency, since all I have with me when I walk the dogs is my iPhone.

Today's market sell-off was discouraging. It's getting to seem like market fundamentals don't mean anything. The market just bounces around wildly on rumors and fears. There isn't much difference between investing and gambling anymore. People who bet on sporting events can produce just as many charts and statistics as market technicians. Unfortunately, neither bookies or brokers can predict the future. The best either can do is look at past results and establish probabilities. Actually, I think sports fan might have the upper hand these days. If you know your teams and players, you probably have a better chance of winning your bet than folks who play the market like me. Will Europe implode and create a financial black hole that sucks us all in? That's what the smart money thought today, but in truth, nobody really knows.

The dogs definitely knew there was training class tonight. By 7 PM, they were circling around the front door, waiting for us to put their leashes on. They're not always obedient in obedience class, but they do seem to enjoy going.

Dot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 693 - Election Day

I went and voted today. I'm still not sure what I voted on however. It was a strange election. There were no actual candidates running. There were no TV ads. There weren't even a bunch of signs on sticks, telling you what to vote for in front of the polling place. It was kind of a stealth election. The only things on the ballot were some obscurely worded referendums that all seemed to be designed to give the state additional authority to sell bonds and collect taxes. I hate these kind of referendums. The wording is so convoluted that it's quite possible to end up voting exactly the opposite of the way you intended. No wonder there was no advertising. I don't think the politicians really wanted anyone to understand these referendums.

The weather report said there would be rain today. Sure enough, it did rain. It rained for about thirty minutes while I walked the dogs this morning. As soon as we got home, the rain quit and it was nice the rest of the day. By the time I got the dogs clean and dry again, I had enough wet towels to do another load of laundry.

It took forever to get my November invoices out this afternoon, mostly because my envelope printer wasn't working properly. It either chewed up the envelopes, or spit them out unprinted. Eventually I got everything printed and mailed, but it would have been easier if I had a printer with a foolproof paper path. Paper handling seems to be the weakest link in just about every printer I've owned. Paper jams are common in the big production printer and even more common in the general purpose printers. I don't know why someone can't design a really precise paper path that never gets out of alignment. Who knows? Maybe it's the paper itself that is causing the problems.

I think I'm going to have to start walking the dogs earlier in the evenings. Not only was it completely dark when I got home this evening, I also heard coyotes barking nearby when a firetruck went by in the distance.

Spot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 692

I'm glad I stayed on schedule today. About five minutes after we returned from our evening walk, it started pouring rain. The rain was a surprise, since it was quite nice outside during our walk. I even managed to get some decent sunset shots with my iPhone. Since we often take our walks around sunset at this time of year, I wish I could take a better camera with me. That would be a recipe for disaster though. The dogs can still knock me off my feet if they both see something they want to chase at the same time. The iPhone would probably survive being dropped on the ground. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for the other cameras. Heavy, expensive cameras and Dalmatians just don't mix.

One of my clients called this morning and asked if I had time for a rush project that he needed by the end of the day. Sure. No problem. Monday's are always dead. I think everyone must be in status meetings or something. I rarely get new jobs on Monday. Things pick up a bit on Tuesdays, and by the time Friday rolls around, people can't seem to wait to get their hot potato projects off their own desk and on to mine.

After I got my regular work done today, I continued working my way through the AG-AF-100 instruction manual. The more I read, the more impressed I've become. This little camera will definitely meet my needs for the next few years. Eventually, it will become obsolete, just like my Beta-SP equipment, but for the time being, I'm good to go.

Tomorrow, Dash gets his antigen shot again. It's also election day. I guess I'll go vote, but I'm still not sure what I'm voting on. I don't think anyone is running for office in our district. I'm pretty sure it's just a bunch of state referendums this time. Referendums are tricky. They are usually worded in such confusing language that it's easy to end up voting just the opposite of the way you intended. I also need to try to get my monthly invoices out tomorrow. Invoices aren't confusing at all. They're just frustrating, since people pay so slow.

Chase is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day