After dinner, I took Dakota for a short walk. His foot is looking much better today, though not completely healed—maybe another week or so. It was chilly during our walk, which was surprising for early August. It feels like fall already, but I think the heat will return soon. The weather has been so unusual these past few years, changing rapidly and extremely. People still say global warming doesn’t exist, but I remember doing tornado drills in elementary school. They made us kneel and cover our heads, which never seemed very helpful. Back then, I had zero fears of tornadoes because our area never got them. But in the last two years, we’ve had several pop up within miles of my house. Now, I’m much more cautious about the weather.

Well, that was my weather rant for the day.

Till tomorrow.

Weekends always seem too short, while work weeks feel endlessly long. This weekend was pretty good, mostly spent at home. On Saturday morning, I took the drone out for some photos. I’m getting better at flying and haven’t crashed in a while. Today was a bit scary, though. I was flying over a pond when the remote lost connection and wouldn’t reconnect. I imagined the drone dropping out of the sky, but after what felt like a lifetime, it announced it was returning home. I still couldn’t see or control it, so I waited and hoped. Finally, I heard it approaching, and the remote reconnected. Whew!

I also had some server success this weekend. My main server, Wilson, which I moved off-site a while ago, was having connection issues, but I finally got it sorted. Wilson still needs some work, though. After I left, I lost some connection to it. I miss having a NAS/server at home, so I built a new Pi NAS, Franklin. Franklin is kind of working too. The new NAS has a weird issue where it doesn’t seem to want to boot without a monitor. I started troubleshooting yesterday but haven’t gotten anywhere yet.

Dakota has a weird sore between his toes. He seems fine, but he keeps licking it and making it worse. I tried putting and taping a sock over it twice, but he keeps chewing it off. Rrrrrr. He frustrates me sometimes. He seemed much better, so I took him on a hike. He started limping about halfway, so we turned around and have been taking it easy until his toe really heals.

The garden is going crazy this year. The last couple of years have been horrible for the garden, but this year I have more tomatoes and cucumbers than I know what to do with. I keep freezing a bunch when they get ripe. I loved having frozen diced tomatoes on hand last year. Sometimes I just want a couple for a recipe, and it feels like a waste to open a whole can. Plus, homegrown is always better. I tried a new pasta recipe: sun-dried tomato pesto pasta. It wasn’t great. It was pretty bad, actually. I can’t seem to figure out what I didn’t like about it, just overall bad.

I always love trying new things that aren’t part of my usual cooking routine, but sometimes I hit flunkers. Oh well.

Writing this blog is very difficult. Not tough in the normal sense. Just writing and posting isn’t hard; it’s the discipline of making it a habit that’s tough. I would like to work on forming some new, better habits. This is one of those I would like to work on. Some days, everything just feels like a chore. I shouldn’t look at things that way and should try to change my perspective. Always a work in progress.

Today was a pretty lazy day. I did a bunch of household work and played video games. I’m getting rather bored with video games and can’t seem to find any to hold my interest. I guess my personality or habits are changing. The problem is, I don’t have anything to fill that gap or hole in my daily life yet.

I’ve recently started thinking about what my passion in life is, or really, anything. I have so many interests but no real hobby or love. It saddens me to think I may never find my purpose or passion. But who knows, I could stumble upon it tomorrow.

Oh, as I’m writing this, Dakota is laying next to me. I ordered him a doggy pool for summer, so I filled it up this weekend. He absolutely hates it. It’s actually funny how much he hates it. I pick him up and place him in the pool, and he just stands there. Dakota will only stay if you keep petting or scratching him. He is the biggest brat, Weiner dog in the world.

On a sadder note, Marley died a couple of weeks ago. I had to put him down at the vet’s. The whole time, I was totally fine with it, even the same day. But about a week later, it really hit me, and I was pretty sad for a week or so. I miss Marley so much. I still kind of look for him around the house out of habit. Life goes on.

This has turned into a pretty sad post. Anyway, rockets have been interesting me lately. I’ve been doing some research and found that I have two rocket clubs near me. I’m looking at maybe buying a kit and building one or trying to print one on the 3D printer. I’m undecided at the moment, but I’m leaning towards building. For other rockets, I would need to design parts, so I need to get way better at CAD. Though simple rockets might be a good start. I don’t know, still thinking this one out.