Dogs and the heat

I love my dog but she can be aggravating. Here is what I faced this morning when I walked into the bathroom. She got nosy when I came back with the camera, but originally she was completely stretched out and her head blocked the front of the toilet. Sometimes in the middle of the night she is there, and sometimes by my bed where I can trip over her, but I have learned to be careful and look for a large dark spot on the floor.


A word about comments, sometimes I get comments I'd like to respond to by email, but I can't obtain the person's email address. If I've ever corresponded privately with readers, then the comment can be responded to privately. I get a notification via email of all comments to my blog, but in most cases the email is from
"Commenter's name noreply-comment@blogger.com" I think if I just reply in the normal way, it won't get back to you. Often I will try to go to your blog, if you have one, and look for an email address there, but in most cases there is none. I even went to my own blog to see if my address was posted and I can't find any evidence that it is. For anyone who wants to write me personally, my email is:
gypsy97 at gmail com. Hopefully you know how to edit this address to send me an email.

Speaking of comments, I've had several recently urging me to use my A/C. Living in Cincinnati, Ohio for many years, I know about high temperatures together with humidity. When we had our first central a/c installed, the tech told us to let it run 24/7 because it could take 24 hours to remove the excess humidity from a home, but if you turned it off at night and opened the windows you were letting humidity right back in. Your a/c had to work harder and you had to pay more.

In California the humidity is very low in summertime. Sacramento is usually blessed with what they call the Delta breeze, which is very cool air coming up the Sacramento Delta from San Francisco Bay. If I have my geography a little wrong, I will stand corrected if you'd like to comment. All I know is that it is very cool and dry overnight. The temps may reach 100 during the day, to drop to 60 at night.

Because of the layout of my small apartment it usually stays fairly cool, even during the hot part of the day, and I've never experienced it going above 80 degrees. Yes, I could turn the A/C on and set it to 70 or 75 when it is 100 outside, but I'd be afraid of my health going out to walk the dog, with the heat hitting me like a ton of hot bricks. It's much easier and just as comfortable for me to stay relatively still in an apartment that is 20 degrees cooler than the outside temp. Now if I did much housework or other physical activity to speak of, that would be another story, but I don't work up much of a sweat looking at or typing on the computer.

Now this is just my experience and opinion - we all have to keep ourselves comfortable to the best of our ability. If it ever gets too much for me, I will crank up the old A/C.

I'd like to grumble just a bit before I hit "Publish Post", and that is about magazines. Take your pick as they are all the same. Why do the publishers waste money on slick paper that is difficult to separate and turn pages. In my forwarded mail today was an AARP bulletin and a Trailer Life Magazine. I wish I could quit receiving both of them, but I noticed from the label that AARP will continue to haunt me with their magazines until Oct. 2013. I honestly don't know how that could be possible, because I never renew a subscription for more than 2 years at a time. I'm not going to tempt fate and pay for something I might not live long enough to use!

I have been receiving trailer life for about a year beyond my "last issue" paid for. They could save their money because I leaf through it once in a while and then throw it away. It sure leaves a lot to be desired, and I think it's a waste of whatever materials they use in the publishing of this piece of junk.

As far as AARP goes, I am definitely not interested in how celebrities deal with turning 50! I used to have my auto insurance with them and they assured me in response to several phone calls that if I sold my vehicle I would not be assessed a penalty. I sold my Jeep in late 2008 and darned if they didn't charge me $150 for cancelling in the middle of the term. They told me it was just tough that I got bad info from folks in their organization, but there was nothing they would do about it. So now I'm stuck with a reminder of my intense dislike for them every time I get one of their slick, dumb magazines!

End of rant.