Muchacho Polaco

Scout and Tila have been around forever. We got Scout around 2006 just after getting married. That was 16 years ago. We got Tila shortly after, maybe 15 and a half years ago (we don’t know how old they were when they came to us, but at least a year). They have been part of every day of our life ever since. They have traveled with us to many destinations, in and out of the US. They would wake us up every morning and we would get them to bed every night. For years we have been dreading their loss. They are getting old. But that had been progressing of late. They were pure enjoyment for us. But lately, they have been on a severe decline. It started with their inability to get up. I would come home from work and one of them would be stuck, unable to move, sitting in their own feces. It escalated to their not wanting to eat any more. I travel a lot for work, so I have been concerned about something happening in my absence. It was so bad last weekend that we had to make a choice. So on Sunday, we traveled down to Mexico and had them put down. This was the worst experience of my life. It’s hard to know what to do and having them both die in your arms at the same time was a bit too much. We will miss them greatly.

I took this photo of Tila a few hours before putting her down.

We had some friends over last night and I made London broil in the sous vide. They turned out as I hoped – perfectly medium rare throughout.

We had heard of pop in the neighborhood a few nights ago and discovered in the morning our lights and fan did not turn on the guest bathroom. Strange. Everything else seemed to work fine in the house. It turns out, our smart switches must have taken an electrical surge that killed them. So I figured I would try replacing them only discover our new electrical panel did not have the circuit in the bathroom properly identified. Grabbing a hold of a live wire gets your attention quick.

Fortunately, changing switches resolved the problem. Our entire house is connected to our network and so I can operate everything remotely. You never know when you might need to turn on that guest bathroom fan from 1000s of miles away.

Cara and Frances invited us over for dinner on Sunday, along with Carl and Shelly, Nick, and Collin.

We filled Matt’s trailer twice today with tree limbs. The olive tree in the front was a load in itself. But it looks real nice now. We hope to get a trailer like this in the next couple weeks so I can do weekly loads to the dump. It’s endless.

Some how Scout is still alive. He fell in the pool the other day and was not able to get out on his own. Fortunately Yun was near by, but it was taxing enough that he wasn’t able to stand up later. If it happens when we are not home, it’s over for him. We are hoping for a peaceful exit, but he’s deaf and mostly blind, so I guess we will see.

Palm tree roots destroy all – including water lines. We spent our day digging up the old line that brought water to the pool. It helps to have a jack hammer with shovel attachment. We spent all day on this project and finally prevailed in the end. I replaced the damaged lines.

Our pool is aroun 10k gallons, so this makes the process of filling much easier as evaporation is constant.

We spent the day with no particular itinerary, but ended up visiting sites we haven’t seen for many years. We started up A Mountain. This is a place we went when we first met each other. Then we toured the other homes we’ve lived over the past 20 years.

I don’t have opportunity or ability to nap much any more. However, today was a nice exception and I woke to a pretty perfect amount of sunlight coming through the windows.