Woke up about 7:30 and checked in with the HAM guys while looking at the current Milton hurricane warnings. She made coffee and it doesn’t look good for Florida. We had baked chicken legs and veggies for lunch, it was excellent.
Milton is now Category 5 hurricane in 24 Hrs.
They are evacuating the people in Mobile homes and near the coast.
Our taxes need an estimate of the value of the Pahrump home when we acquired it. I don’t have that since my brother had the estate for the first five months. We did get an CMA estimate in July, but if I remember correctly, I could not download it. I checked my NAS, no documents from Oct 2022 that I can find.
I’ve sent what I could to mom, the last of it arrives tomorrow. If they get into big trouble, they have 1000W of solar panels and a Solar Generator that will help. It likely will not totally power a refrigerator 75Wx24=1800WH/Day. If they get 5 hours of sun, like I do here in Atlanta they’ll have 2KWH/Day which is just enough for the fridge. Clouds often greatly reduce the total power generated. If they manage to connect the solar trailer they might have enough and that’s a maybe…
Checked in with the GARS 2M Net on their repeater. Soup for dinner and then we watched some Faith & Family until bedtime.
Tuesday
Looks like mom is not listed, but I expect it’ll be around midnight.
Talked to Paul this morning and called mom but she was sleeping.
New bed rails arrived from Wally World today, box was pretty beaten up.
Old bedrails got bent trying to move the bed with the mattress on it.
The original 30Yr Old frame with a single 3″ foot wasn’t enough to hold us since we’ve gotten to be 400Lbs. I bought a new frame with TWO feet and then realized all the weight is at one end. I decided to distribute the weight with a 2x4x12 after I reassembled the bed. I had to use a floor jack to raise the mattress and add the 2×4 under the foot, it seems to be enough support. The black thing is a Bed Bug trap to prevent them from traveling. Apparently, I forgot the wrench and my wife’s shoes.
Wednesday (Hurricane Milton)
Got up at 8AM and checked-in on the HAM radio with the Waterway Net, which was unusually busy I might add.
Mom is in a good spot, she’s north of the path and in the middle of the state.
I ordered a cart to carry the UPS and the batteries to the Sunday Service this weekend. I still have to assemble all the wires. I had two boiled eggs for breakfast and have spent a good part of the day trying to figure out the power for Sunday.
The Hurricane should arrive in Tampa at 9PM tonight and 20MPH winds for mom.
Chicken legs for dinner, although I had to toss one of them cuz it was a little too red inside. I could have cooked it, but having warm uncooked meat might be a little scary.
Mom still should have power, that’s the 5 in the middle. In theory its one block south of her.
Thursday
Checked on Mom, she has power and is in good shape.
There are 36,000 people near her that do not have power.
We went to Wally World to get our paper stuff. We also went to the park to test the power in the Pavillion for the Sunday service. We had a light dinner at Longhorn and then returned home to do our taxes. All done at 7PM so we watched a little well deserved TV.
Friday
Did not get onto the HF radio today, we had a Dentist appointment at 9AM which went well. I had lunch with Jon at JOHNNIE MACCRACKEN’S CELTIC FIREHOUSE PUB. I drank a little too much and had to walk it off before driving home. I was terribly sleepy by the time I got home and really needed to take a nap. The lawn service came by and I had not put out his payment, they caught me off guard. (I didn’t think the grass was long enough to mow.) I woke up having missed a couple calls and she made me a bowl of soup while we watched some TV. We got into those unproductive conversations last night about her believing she has a cavity. The reality is that the edges of her braces cut into her gums or her cheeks making her uncomfortable. I went to bed thinking that it was resolved, but it wasn’t.
Saturday
Woke up early and took my medicine, I’ve not taken it on time for the last couple of days. Emotional drama prevails. I did check in with the guys on my HF radio while checking on the news and sipping on a cup of coffee.
Went to Longhorn for Lunch after we had a rather long discussion about the unresolved issues from last night. We still have to cook the pork chops since they needed to be eaten/frozen by yesterday.
Spent a good part of the day on the phone working out how to put 1000W of audio inside a 64 Foot circle at church tomorrow. It turned out that the volumes were kept low because of the speaker placement and electronic drum set.
Sunday
Headed out to the park after loading up the batteries and solar generator. I was completely out of fuel so a gas run was necessary. The odometer was also warning me with a text message, LOW FUEL! Got to the park at the correct time and met up with Larry. Lisa and Tommy were both quite late. Tommy had all the mic stands and Lisa had all the wires. My back did not like hauling the equipment back-n forth today.
Church service went quite well, and the T-Mobile hot spot carried the service.
We went to Outback for lunch and the food was fantastic. I was exhausted by the time I got home, and the van is full of equipment that has to go to storage. My back hurt too much to put the equipment back in storage.
Got up around 7 and clicked on the coffee while I chatted with the folks on 2M. I switched over to 40M and checked into the Waterway Net. I didn’t hear my uncle Paul on the net.
I powered up the orange Fender amplifier and I changed the colors of the 2nd Red amplifier to green. I had to use the parking lot service speaker wires since all the Fender speaker wires were not in the amplifier’s compartment. Lisa said that she has them at her home. Both amplifiers are working, and their fans appear to be normal. If I remember right the speaker that dies has no identification tape on it. Trouble is that two of the amplifiers didn’t make it back to storage, so I didn’t have access to them.
We had grandma’s chili for lunch and we built a grocery list for tomorrow.
Checked in with the guys on my HF radio and we went to Wally World to get groceries already. Took a good long nap and had Ham & Pea for dinner.
Tuesday
Paul’s home is without power for at least several more days. He does have a camper with propane powered refrigerator. He’s in Portland Washington until tomorrow. His friend that’s watching over the house won’t have power for a very long time. Power and Gasoline are a difficult thing after a storm, they are both in short supply. Conservation and solar are good choices.
Checked the eight batteries on the refrigerator backup by running the refrigerator for an hour on battery, two were bad. Replacements were on hand and were installed restoring the full run time of about 8 hours.
Paid the AZ land taxes, I need to work this once I have my house in order.
Wednesday
I had an awful night, apparently the salad dressing was a little old or got left out a little too long. I’ve been burping that awful taste all night long. I did manage to get onto the Waterway Net this morning, the propagation is mixed, but I heard madam secretary just fine.
Gwinnett county taxes finally paid. I need to submit the form for that. 3400 is TOOO Much! Charging my EcoFlow power station for Paul, it was down to 60%. Pulled the bed apart and bent the frame so that it would hold the mattress until we got the frame from Wally World.
We didn’t end up going to church tonight, we Zoomed it. My shingles is still at my side, it doesn’t hurt very much this time around.
Thursday
Up about 7AM this morning and listened to the guys on the HAM radio. I checked in with them on the Waterway Net before starting to work on my failing cameras. Two of the cameras on my DVR have just stopped working and they act like they’ve been reset to factory. The interesting thing is the back yard camera that’s always given me trouble is working perfectly!
It’s been solid for days, and that’s unusual.
I’ve not been able to revive the Reolink camera, so I replaced it.
The Amcrest 8M Pixel camera has a good view, but no sound.
Only one Reolink camera with audio on the front side of the home.
After about six hours I finally got all of the cameras working. There are two Reolink DVR cameras that are losing their passwords. I’m wondering if the lithium batteries in them are depleted and need to be replaced. I’ll leave the porch camera unplugged overnight and see if it forgets the programming. Then I can disassemble the camera and find out what kind of battery is used.
The other oddity is the back yard camera is fickle only when all four cameras are working. If there’s just one camera, the back yard camera doesn’t seem to struggle at all. (And the A/C camera is the only other camera on the DVR competing with the back yard camera bandwidth.
Dinner was leftover round steak from the Wednesday crock pot dinner was delicious today. We’ll have to cook one more round steak tomorrow. The trick is to talk about what dinner is tomorrow tonight so that all the details are discussed beforehand. I often walk into the kitchen and realize that she put the leftovers on the stove before she put the frozen veggies on steamer. Even then she didn’t peel the potatoes before pouring the veggies into the steamer. Potatoes, then veggies, then leftovers which only takes about 5 minutes to warm up.
After a long bit of turmoil, I’ve decided that any requirement I make will be on myself to fulfill. Asking her to do anything a certain way is resulting in severe emotional consequences. Her bipolar has come back and rears its ugly head when even a small discourse arises after she’s had a wonderful day. So, I am left with the version of a marriage where hubby and wife are just “Nice” to each other. We stay in our own corner and if any preventable crisis happens, then we just pick up the pieces without discussing prevention measures for next time. (She’ll either forget them or resent them.)
Friday
Day 1 of being nice.
I have not figured out what that bright spot is above the windshield.
Our shooting friend is back, he noticed the additional lights and sped off.
I got onto my HAM radio this morning and checked in with the guys. I’ve not heard from Paul since yesterday, he’s in good shape cept for a leaking shower drain on the 2nd floor.
I had two eggs and breakfast sausages for breakfast. I didn’t get much accomplished this morning other than looking at the Toyota Camry that drove by last night. Lunch was a miss since the round steak would be done about 15:30. We went to Longhorn’s for lunch just because I was hungry for more than a bowl of soup.
We had a good nap after getting back and I did do some organizing while waiting for Lisa to call me. (Which she didn’t do, what a waste of time.) Supper was ham and a couple eggs.
Saturday
Up at 8AM and listening to my HAM radio this morning. She brought my coffee to my cave, but I think I’ll move to the kitchen table this morning. Dinner plans were not laid out in the Daytimer, so we worked on the timeline. The round steak was cooked yesterday and so were the mashed red potatoes. All we had to was warm up a pot of frozen veggies and the two leftovers in the fridge.
Now that dinner was planned, I grabbed a shower. I looked for the washcloth on the soap tray but could not find one. I found a washcloth across the tub so I used that one. After I was done, she told me that she had brought a clean one and that the one on the tub was dirty. I mentioned that we’ve discussed this in the past that if she takes a washcloth out of the bathroom it should be replaced? It’s not a huge deal to step out of the shower and get one from under the sink, but the floor gets wet and I’m uncomfortable in the cold air. We got into one of those uncomfortable discussions where she is trying to please me when I said that I’ll just get one out of the cabinet every day. Simple solution, I add it to my procedure page in my personal Daytimer and it’s done. She was offended that I would take such a stance and away we went.
We recovered from this morning and the rest of the day was calm. We had canned soup for dinner with whole foods crackers. I bought a care package for my mother in Florida, there’s a hurricane headed directly over her.
Mom’s home in Citra is marked with a red circle. I could not find out how to secure a lithium solar generator if you are evacuated. They have five dogs and Ricky is Nancy’s caretaker. It will be an interesting conversation if they are asked to evacuate with Ricky owning FIVE dogs.
Sunday
Tropical Storm Milton will arrive as an H3 late Wednesday
I’ve sent several care packages to my mom in Florida ahead of the next hurricane headed for Florida. I am hesitant to send too much because she’s on Medicaid.
Checked in with the HF guys on my HAM radio this morning. There’s a little bit of static with the lightning in the gulf. I had two cups of coffee, and I’ll probably jump back into bed until we get close to church services this morning.
Church services went well cept for the lead microphone died. Ricky is not preparing for another power outage. She is waiting until I come down there to rewire the solar trailer. I cannot go to Florida 2 days before a hurricane arrives. She apparently knows that they’ll be fine, and she gets to sit and watch TV. (Even though she’s getting paid to take care of her.) I am waiting until Marion County says to move into hurricane shelters with her five dogs.
Lunch was leftover round steak and fixens.
Worked on my taxes most of the evening, we owe another 3K in capital gains taxes from the sale of my parents’ home. We have the money since we’ve stashed money for the Estate Taxes.
We’ve both woken up several times during the night. I forgot to take my evening pills last night, took them about eight hours later. Checked in with the guys on the HF radio and had three eggs and sausage for breakfast. I’ve been kind of laying low to hear from Lisa, but crickets would be louder. I’d really like a status of our Estate taxes from Nevada, but nothing from them either.
I got sunburnt Saturday with three hours in the bright sun, and I am really feeling it today. We got into an argument about groceries, she was writing the inventory on the grocery list. The trouble with that is you don’t know how many to buy. (And that’s the whole purpose of a grocery list.) We also found out that she had not done her daily inventory, and a package of ham had to be tossed. It was more than a week past the eat/freeze date. She is supposed to put post-it notes on the cupboard to make it easy to pick out the oldest meat in the fridge.
We ended up having salmon, it had to be eaten today. We had left over veggies and sweet potatoes with the salmon. It ended up being a good lunch.
I put a weatherproof solar charger on both the van and the blue Ford Focus (that we’re not driving). I split the output of the charger to both of the cigarette lighter plugs with small three-amp fuses to protect the cars. (The wires actually connect the two car batteries together) The four solar panels are on the fence in the back yard. It would have been easier to use a panel on the van, but the fence panels were already mounted for another project. Yellow/black is solar… Pink/Blue is batteries.
Dinner was organic chicken noodle soup from Whole Foods. They have an interesting package that unfolds to open. 🙂
Watched a little TV before turning in.
Tuesday (Groceries)
Showered, got onto the HF radio with the guys then got dressed. Wally World wasn’t bad, no round steak and the 1/2 Gallon Borden milks were expired. (Again, that’s two weeks in a row.) I made this mistake of licking my fingers to open the plastic bag After I handled the chicken. (BAD Idea) I put a timer on the front yard light so that I could power the IR illuminators without having the yard light create shadows. It worked pretty well according to the cameras. The timer is off by a couple minutes, but that’s no consequence.
Her heart rate was a little high on her FitBit so she put the O2 sensor on. (There’s no reason her heart rate was almost 100 while sitting in a chair watching TV.)
Her heart rate dropped some, but a resting heart rate should be around 60.
My heart rate is much lower than hers.
I took some Tylenol and my evening meds and we turned in for the evening.
Wednesday (Midweek Church service)
Woke at 7:30 I have moderate pain and slight itchy across my back and arms this morning. My ears are ringing which usually means I was low O2 at some point.
Hasn’t changed much, should be here in force on Friday.
I checked in with the guys on my HF radio while I downloaded the data from our O2 sensors. She’s changing the bedding and I’m getting my day organized. Her heart rate while cleaning our home is 81 this morning. The car batteries were 12.6V this morning, they were 13.8 when the sun came up and charging them. I put a plastic bag over the timer that turns off the hanging light on the corner of our home. I used to turn off the power, but I use that power for the IR illuminators until I can run another cable. She did not do an inventory of our refrigerators yesterday. It takes a LOT of time walking behind her and checking things?
Burritos was lunch today, we added Taco seasoning, cheese and Salsa to the tortilla. No veggies or starch for dinner today.
Slept in until almost 9AM and I again have moderate pain and slight itchy across my back and arms this morning. My ears are ringing which usually means I was low O2 at some point. I didn’t get onto the HAM radio because I got up so late. All my stored passwords have been erased by Norton Password manager. (I didn’t know getting rid of their storage deleted all the storage.) Uggg
I am trying to get some momentum, but not having much luck. My HF antenna in the back yard had fallen over, with all this rain the stake came up out of the ground. I originally had two stakes, but I never needed the second one until today. The stake that came out tried to poke my eye out as I pulled the rope back down, luckily, I had my eye lid closed when I saw it swung around. The ropes were all loose since some of they are Nylon. (I need to change them out for poly for the winter.)
Burritos for lunch, actually it tasted better on chips than rolled up in a tortilla. Nap time. Checked on the hurricane, it’s going to be 7 hours later to Georgia which pushes weather ever closer to Women’s Retreat.
The tropical force wind probability has been moving north all day.
Updated my two of the three Raspi’s so that I can use them again.
Mom called, they won’t get power back until Sunday Night and the solar power generator battery is down to 20%. They tried to run the TV and the Dish Network Hopper, but that really ran the battery down.
Friday
No damage, just a tremendous amount of rain.
Up at 8:30, so too late to meet up with our HAM guys. She poured me a cup of coffee and I took the garbage can out to the curb. I need to take the recycling out too, but that truck comes later in the day and it is still raining.
Two of the four camera on my DVR stopped working this week.
Camera 2 is now sitting on a car tire facing west to take over the area.
I had to change the configuration of my bed and remove the wedge.
I have an issue with Gurd if I lay flat, so I’ve been using a wedge to keep my upper body elevated. The problem with that is my head falls over and I choke myself several times during the night. (And it can be a couple minutes until my body circulation pools my blood away from my skin.) I am hoping that with the pillow LOWER than my body that my head won’t wonder down to my chest at night! (Her pillow has been in this configuration for months for the same reason. We put an exercise mat under the mattress pad to elevate us slightly long ago.
I sent a message to Nevada asking about our estate taxes. I paid our County Taxes today, $3400.00 YUK She didn’t follow the directions on the frozen fish and put the fillets themselves in cold water (Instead of the sealed pouch). It took three attempts at reading the instructions before she would agree that she did it wrong. I don’t know if my place is to stand alongside her on these simple instructions. I am sure they are trying to prevent bacteria from getting into the fish while it is thawing.
Saturday
Lowering my pillow seems to have helped my breathing at night.
I didn’t sleep very well last night because how involved I’ve gotten with the Women’s Retreat today. I got up early and gathered a tub of cables for the projector. (We hadn’t discussed this, but it was on the program given to the attendees.)
Washing our tubs for the two CPAPs, Vinegar and warm soapy water.
I’ve been trying to get their return check from 2019 for 5 years.
Women’s Retreat happened today. I only got one phone call, and the morning session is about over. The assumption is that it went well, and they didn’t need any help.
Lunch was chicken thighs, veggies and sweet potatoes. I didn’t eat the potatoes because my skin has too much sugar on it from yesterday’s meal at Longhorn.
We went to CVS that was closed yesterday for the Tropical Storm and now they are closed because a tree fell on the building. We’re trying to pick up a narcotic and that cannot be transferred to another CVS.
Filled out a survey on Longhorn at Web Gin Road for JJ, she did a great job yesterday.
Sunday
I am up, took my morning meds and waiting my turn on the HF radio. The payment to the County hasn’t processed yet, which may be because it’s the weekend.
Went to home church and that went very well. We had left over chicken thighs for lunch and I took a HUGE nap for hours. I went and retrieved the sound board and two Fenders from storage. The sound board was damaged, apparently it fell off the cart and no one said anything. The wires for the speakers also were not in the amplifiers so I had to put off any testing.
She did not sleep well last night, and I didn’t do much better. I’m sipping my coffee and trying to get organized. I guess the best thing to do is make a bullet list.
We just are not communicating in a respectful way. We keep tripping over details that she cannot remember and have not been written down. (There’s a thawed turkey breast in the refrigerator that we do not know how long it’s been there.) We had to make some doctor appointments this morning. The difficulty was that I would be talking about the CPAP doctors, and she would respond as though I was talking about the company the provides our supplies.
Lunch was good, we had leftover tenderloin, sweet potatoes and veggies from yesterday. We both took a good long nap and we’re getting along again.
Tuesday
Slept ok, I am up in time to hear the guys on the HF radio. The band is uncooperative today and I cannot hear most of them, so I turned it off. Grocery shopping is the task of the day. We both got dressed and headed out to Wally World to go shopping.
On our way to Wally World.
We’re back, $220 poorer. They didn’t have Egland’s Best eggs and the Borden milk on the shelf had expired two days ago. The “Great Value” milk might be an adulterated product because it freezes in the refrigerator well above Borden milk. We stopped buying it and purchase Borden instead. The cool thing is that the ice can be removed and then the milk tastes better. We can store three cartons of 18 eggs and one carton of 12 eggs in our refrigerator. (We usually store 6 cartons of 12 eggs, but Wally World did not have cartons of 12 eggs for the last two weeks.)
I got my 2nd shipment of pill timers; I still received 1 of the 8 that’s intermittent. The first shipment was a disaster, I broke one of the LCD displays and made a huge mess. I need four and it looks like I’ll have 7 working timers.
The 2nd $800 sound board arrived today along with four mic holders & some cables.
I cut the child safety rings off the timers, there was a bit of lubricant under the ring.
Watched a bible project video on 2Cor and read a little in Acts before joining her in watching Hudson & Rex on Faith & Family until we retired.
Wednesday
Well, I am up at 01:00 waiting on the next shooting while I work on the church Power Point. Went back to bed until about 5:30 and then started watching Bible project videos while sipping on my coffee. I checked in with the HAM radio guys and continue to pursue getting this power point done. I am down to 6 hours.
We’ve had a difficult day mostly because she hears different things in what I am saying. We had a same thing happen a couple days ago. I was talking about the doctor, and she was hearing me talk about the contractor providing our supplies. Today she didn’t plan out today, and she has a Telehealth appointment at 1:30. We normally go down for a nap after lunch and I didn’t see any preparations for dinner. Two hours later we’re having leftovers that are insufficient for a “Dinner” meal. It’s useless to say anything about the size of the meal, I spent two hours trying to add a starch to the flounder this morning.
The telehealth session was scheduled for 10AM this morning, so she missed her appointment with Neil Jariwala at Virtual Consult for the 2nd time.
Thursday MRI Day
We got up at 5AM and had some breakfast before heading down to Emory at 6AM. We arrived about 06:20 and waited for the imaging department to open. Check-In and the Imaging went very well, and we were out of the hospital an hour later.
When we got home, we both laid down for a good nap and woke a little after 11. The frozen turkey had a significant hole in the bag when we thawed it out. There was also a significant amount of material stuck to the package around the hole. We decided to toss it and it’s the second one we’ve tossed for this reason. Wally World may not sell a lot of them and the customers are tossing it back into the freezer. Damaging the rather thick bag they are in.
We ended up eating pork chops for lunch. There was some drama again with steaming vegetables, she only put 5 oz of water in the bottom of the pan. (She burnt the pan last time she steamed vegetables because it went dry.) I googled it, there’s a YouTube video showing exactly what to do.
I worked on my power point for most of the afternoon, I wanted to finish it by the time Jeff got home at 5. We watched Johnny Carson and then went to bed. I’ve not kicked this round of shingles, it’s still here and I only have a days worth of pills left.
Friday
It’s midnight and I am awake drying out my undercarriage.
I cut up some of the carpet in her sewing room and tossed it in the trash because it was pretty dirty and might have a bit of mold on it. The cement floor and the backing of the carpet were both clean. Most of the carpet against the walls is a little dirty. The A/C guy said it was caused by “Stacking” where the air rises up the inside of the wall. Personally, I think we’re just not reaching it with the vacuum. We’re running a MERV11 filter in the air handler, that will capture mold spores.
We had a great lunch with the Berrys at Longhorn then we came home and took a good long nap.
Setup one site of equipment to test the theory of all the connections, I did find a bad cable.
Saturday
Woke up early and loaded the van with all the stuff for the Women’s Retreat. I had three eggs, and some breakfast sausages then drove to the school. There were tons of cars in the parking lot, so we ended up in the lower/lower one. There’s no power down there so we ran off of my solar generator. I was exhausted by the time I got back home and there’s still a bunch in the air. I used sunscreen but still managed to get a sunburn on my neck.
Sunday (Church)
We are up and I am listening to my HAM radio while checking the news. Trying to make a list of things Lisa needs to take from the school for the Women’s Day Retreat.
Need to work on the living room, it’s a disaster.
Removed Norton Password manager, it was more trouble than it was worth. Wells Fargo website didn’t load correctly on both workstations tonight.
I am up and she’s made coffee for me this morning. N4JQQ called twice on the HF radio this morning, and no one answered, that’s unusual! I checked into the net and listened out.
I am trying to adjust the cameras so that we get a better picture of these passing cars. The noise is pretty high on the camera sensor, it will take a little more adjusting. In the past I would limit the gain of the sensor, that cut the noise out of the video.
We’ve been struggling with her documenting things in the right place in the large shared Daytimer. She gets very confused as to what goes where. Schedule is for things that we have to do at a specific time and Diary & Work record is things we’ve done. She just stares at it in bewilderment and cannot figure out what to put her task.
Daytimer Schedule page, this is great place for appointments and tasks completed.
The bottom of the page is for tasks that don’t have a specific time to do them. We don’t use the expense list for anything.
I have a smaller version for my documentation.
Drumsticks, Sweet potatoes and Veggies for Lunch today. Mariel sent us a letter today. One egg and breakfast sausages for breakfast this morning along with Dominican Coffee. Melvin is headed to Kenya on Wednesday. My phone is at 27% charge, and I need a nap.
Received a new battery for one of the three Dell laptops, it fit so I bought another one. (Amazon didn’t have genuine DELL batteries anymore.)
We got our “Whole Foods” order, I didn’t like the auto $5 tip though
Dinner turned out pretty terrific. Steamed veggies, two sweet potatoes cooked in the microwave and 5 oven baked chicken legs that we served in the new Crock Pot.
Pacific Tax service called me today, we’re moving forward!
Tuesday
Got up early and adjusted the camera video settings to best capture a moving vehicle. (I had to turn off the Digital noise reduction as it created unwanted shadows.)
Color camera is much more difficult to capture a fast-moving car. (Two adjustments were needed, turn off DNR and reduce the “Sharpening” to 0.)
Back home from getting groceries at Wally World, it was pretty cheap today. They were out of Egland’s Best eggs, so we’ll get them next week. Took a good long nap and then I worked on the estate taxes for quite a while.
Checked the cameras tonight, they look terrific!
I tried to watch the debate, it was horrible to watch. Kamala wasn’t answering the questions, she was just provoking Trump into speeches and then laughing about it.
Time to watch Harry Potter! Ok, maybe bedtime?
Wednesday
It’s 3AM and we both had a bowl of cereal with a bit of coffee while reading up on the debate. I tried to go back to sleep and waiting on the estate taxes is bothering me. The amazing moment was when I learned that the final tax return was actually for all three heirs! I still do not know if we’re talking about any money owed.
We drove to storage to look for 2021 Estate taxes and they were not there. We also looked for Fender Conference amplifiers, which we found 3 more. There are no scripts on Express Scripts that can be filled. Sent an E-Mail to the heirs to have them call the tax service in Nevada. We have a reading for tonight’s service, I need to get on that.
Pill timer caps came in today, we now have eight of them.
This is the church’s storage; These huge tubs have got to go!
Watched the bible project videos with the wife until we needed a nap. Soup for dinner then zoom church services.
I have shingles outbreak AGAIN! (Stress triggered.)
All three heirs have put their names in the hat for the final tax return. Hopefully we’ll get that behind us without much fanfare.
Thursday
I did not document much about today. I did not get onto my HF radio with the guys this morning. I did call Gwinnett Clinic and there were no appointments available. They did write me in for 3PM and that turned out to be a godsend. I spent most of the day getting ready for the Air Conditioning repairman to arrive. There was a lot of stuff on the floors and tables that needed to be spruced up. He got here around 10AM and everything checked out ok. We spent a little time working on a locking mechanism for his truck and then we ate lunch. I spent the afternoon running shotgun for getting ready for the Women’s Retreat. We went to Gwinnett clinic about 3 and they confirmed that I had shingles. A prescription was sent to the drugstore, and we picked that up an hour later. I broke my pill bottle timer by trying to remove the safety ring and got Liquid Crystal on my bottles! It took another half hour to clean up the mess. (I am hoping that none of it got onto my pills.)
Watched Hudson & Rex on Faith & Family until we retired.
Friday
The bands were horrible this morning, so I didn’t check in with the HF guys today either. I put the garbage can out for pickup and then walked out when he came by.
I usually meet him and say good morning!
I worked on the Women’s retreat for a while. I also spent a little time working this Blog while eating a few breakfast sausages.
I dug up my old “Time Matrix” and modified it for myself. The hard part in this blog is that the time matrix is a “Picture” that is stored as “Media” and it keeps every copy.
Dinner was a sheet pan dinner with chicken legs, apples and brussels sprouts.
When I was a newbie Christian we were told that we are only caretakers of what we have because at the end of the day everything belongs to God. I believe that we have a modest home.
1Jn 3:17 If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?
Mat 6:19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.Luke 3:10-11 – “What should we do, then?” the crowd asked. John (the Baptist) answered, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.” Proverbs 11:24-25 – One person gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. A generous person will prosper; whoever refreshes others will be refreshed.
Matthew 6:2-4 – So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. If you’ve not done it, you could try paying for the meal/toll for the car behind you. You might find it very entertaining for the entire family. It’s pretty easy to give a card or to palm a gift to someone in silence that cannot be easily seen by others.
It’s a little more difficult to know how to meet the needs of the people holding their signs on the roadways. Jesus taught us in “Luke 6:30 – Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.” I’ve given cash gifts and had discussions with others about is that helping them or just enabling their self-destructive behavior. We’re also taught not to judge others in Mat 7:1 “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. Mat 7:2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. I’ve bought many things if the request was specific.
Saturday
It’s been a difficult morning. Our meals are up in the air and her knee is hurting. She is not following the meal schedule for her Invisalign braces.
We’re at Eastside Hospital Xray her knee, it has been getting painful to move after sitting for a while. Degenerative arthritis in her knee, they gave her crutches. That is one more chink in her driving ability.
I am getting very hungry, I’ve not eaten today. We went to Longhorn for dinner, it’s been three weeks since we went there. JJ did a good job, the steak was cooked correctly, and the chicken was tender. They didn’t have Modelo Especial beer though. I am seriously considering boycotting Longhorn and my shot of whisky until they bring it back.
Back home, we both needed a good long nap and to relax watching Hudson & Rex on Faith & Family until we retired.
Sunday
Woke up at 7:30 in time to check in with the guys on my HF radio. Spent a good part of the morning digging up details for the Women’s retreat. I made some drawings and purchased some equipment that will be needed for the training session on Saturday. I picked up one K10 floor monitor, I looked up the monitor on Guitar Center and they no longer sell them. Truth is that they are not very good speakers, but they work. Fidelity is something that has a diminishing return and we use them very infrequently. We do not know how many microphones we have for the Women’s retreat, and I’ve asked.
We drove to CVS and picked up her prescription this afternoon. I spent two hours talk to L about Women’s Retreat, I didn’t get very far. I didn’t much left after that so we watched Hudson & Rex on Faith & Family until we retired.
Shingles and body aches are really keeping me up this morning. Normally I can sit up in the recliner which takes the pressure off my torso and sleep soundly. Not so today with the added discomfort of the shingles. About 2AM I decided to take a hot bath to sooth my irritated skin. Sure enough, about a half hour later I managed to get to sleep. I woke about 5 and went back to bed.
Woke again at 9:30 which is 2Hrs later than I should have taken my Shingles pill.
But alas, I am a little uncomfortable but not in any real pain. I didn’t get onto the Waterway Net with the HAM guys this morning. I did eat a bowl of non-GMO bran flakes this morning about 3AM. It as just as good as the Kellogg’s Bran Flakes with Sun Maid raisins. I finished off the Blueberry Mini Wheats, we have one box of strawberry mini wheats left. *All three of these cereals are so expensive!
She made a good grocery list this morning without my help.
Salmon for din din, 14Oz, $18 each. (We only ate one of them.)
Veggies and quinoa round out our dinner today.
Went over the meals for tomorrow and Wednesday. She had burrito’s for tomorrow and spaghetti for Wednesday. We probably should eat the leftover salmon tomorrow instead. Our coffee basket in the coffee machine was falling apart and we had one spare. I ordered a replacement today from Amazon.
Watched Hudson & Rex on Faith & Family until we retired.
Tuesday
We’re up at 3AM having a bowl of cereal and coffee. Getting ready to go to Wally World and get our weekly groceries. It’s windy and overcast, but very nice temperatures. Shopping went quite well, and we got home in record time. I baked two sweet potatoes in the microwave for lunch and then our conversation got lost. There’s Salmon in refrigerator along with vegetables, the sweet potatoes are just the starch for our lunch. She hasn’t started making lunch even though she’s hungry and the sweet potatoes are getting cold.
It was a NICE day today to work on the garage door. The roller for the lift springs was worn out and needed to be replaced. I bought a new one a couple days ago and the weather was too warm to stand in the sun. Replacing it was just one bolt and I could use a step stool to get up there. What I found out later was that the bolt holding up the door at the front of the garage had fallen off. With the additional stress of the spring, it had bent the support brace until it almost fell off. (There was nothing holding up the garage door on that side!) An hour later I had straightened the brace and reattached the garage door. A small adjustment to the spring was necessary and I was done. If the door had gotten stuck closed, there was no access to the garage from the inside to repair the door.
Watched Hudson & Rex on Faith & Family until we retired.
Wednesday
Slept in until 8AM, checked in with the HAMs on Waterway Net and got ready to take her to the dentist for a cleaning. We went to Braces Now to pay our payment and found out that the braces contract only had a small amount left to be paid. That’s a $6K contract behind us, Yea!
Lunch was a spaghetti Mediterranean dish, tasty but it wasn’t very filling.
Took a LONG nap, it was so long that my CPAP ran out of water. Read the scriptures for tonight and I am headed for a shower. It warmed up more than I expected, and I left the dashcam in the car. Oops. No letters from our sponsored children.
Church services went well, and we got home in a reasonable amount of time.
The neighbor put a very bright porch light on the front door today.
Bedtime after putting on my breath right strip and filling my CPAP.
Thursday
Woke up this morning about 7AM and had to make another pot of coffee. She made one very early this morning and the coffee pot had turned itself off by 6AM. Talked to the HAM guys, I was the first one on their log this morning. Spent the next two hours taking care of my Perineum rash.
When things get crazy at my age pills are hard to keep track of. Especially when they are not at specific times. (Like Once a day.) Pills that are every 8 hours are just difficult to take on time.
My son sent me these pill timers long ago and they are perfect for the old people like me. They used to be available on Amazon, the only place I found them was on Patient Sleep Supplies. TimerCap for $6 each and $10 shipping. They come in their own bottles (Left/Red) and they also fit on a standard pill bottle (Right/Green). They start counting time when they are closed so you know the last time you took a pill. Amazon has a similar product for $50 that sounds an alarm to take the pill. (BUT $50!! for something that might cost $1`.00 to make)
Don’t tell anyone, but with all the increases on our bills I have to make a budget! (The house taxes went up $1300 this year alone.)
Our storage for the church’s equipment has doubled since I got it 2 years ago.
The $3,500 tax bill kinda threw a wrench in our budget, it’s due in Oct.
Dinner was difficult, the vegetable was peas and rice was the starch. She forgot to wipe down the kitchen table and the placemats before putting the flatware on it. The chicken was overcooked and cold since the thin slices were put on a large serving platter. The peas were a little warm, but they were in an uninsulated bowl. We have two insulated bowls that she always forgets to use. (Like every time) Dinner was with two disgruntled adults that cannot come to a mutual agreement. We eventually cooled down and took a good long nap.
She’s been super hungry ALL day today. She ate soup two hours early and drank several boost drinks today. *That probably goes along with her being irritable.
Time for supper, a warm bowl of soup and crackers while watching TV. We spent some time working on preparation of our dinner every day. (Trying to remember to use the insulated bowls for one thing.) I found out when asking about the meal for tomorrow that none of the meat made it to the refrigerator after getting groceries. I looked down at the floor and sure enough the grocery bag with all the meat had never been put away on Tuesday. I tossed the meat we bought on Tuesday in the trash can and washed the insulated grocery bag.
We watched TV for a little while and headed to bed.
Friday
Cereal and a cup of coffee at 2AM this morning.
Our neighbor that installed this A/C unit asked to do a service call. It’s not been seen since it was installed in 2020, we’ve been very happy with it.
Off to the gym this morning. I’m driving cuz she hurt her ankle last week and we need to replace all the meat we left on the floor on Tuesday. I went to THD and looked for filters, they had them on sale for 7 dollars each. But I had a washable filter that cost $80, why would I go out and buy four disposable filters. I abandoned that idea and decided to go to Publix to get the replacements for Tuesday’s debacle. I put all the meat in two insulated bags to keep them cold until we got home. Yes, we put these in the refrigerator this time!
I decided to put the reusable filter back into the air handler even though it is more restrictive. The idea is that the system is a closed loop, it will automatically compensate for the filter. I should not need the 10% cooling that I may lose with the new filter since it’s September.
Turkey chili for dinner, it was pretty good actually. Nap Time.
I woke up to an open sore on my hand and a rash.
I’ve been dealing with an infection of my perineum which has happened a couple of times in my past. (My dad could not wear underwear.) I nicked my hand on the garage door on Monday, it appears that it is infected by the large red area on my hand. We drove to a doc-in-a-box, and they gave me an antibiotic prescription for the hand. They also gave me Clotrimazole and Betamethasone cream that I can apply directly to the Perineum. The doctor thinks it is NOT a Yeast type of infection, which is what the previous medicine targeted. I forgot to take my pills last night, my first indication was my BP was 139/80. The second indication was the upset stomach without the Nexium relief yesterday. I’ll have to start reading my own writing! (I darted out the door this morning to take her to the gym and to replace the meat that was spoiled.)
We had a good day today even with the trips to the gym, groceries and doctor.
Watched Hudson & Rex on Faith & Family until we retired.
Saturday
Watched Starliner return safely to earth on NASA feeds. Had some sweet pickle chips and now headed back to bed, well almost! We had another shooting last night a little after 1AM.
These shootings are continuing on the hill three houses down from us.
I was up at 1AM when this shooting happened, it’s hard to sleep with these idiots shooting on our street. We looked all over for the brass after they arrived. It was actually just in back of the car on the right just outside this picture. (When I looked at the video this morning, the shooting happened just before our neighbor’s garbage cans.) I need to setup a VPN on a Tablet so that we can look at the videos on the DVR with a little bit larger screen.
Gwinnett’s finest arrived and his partner too.
It took two hours to pull the videos off the cameras and upload them to Gwinnett County evidence website. The officer was surprised at the large number of Gwinnett County police business cards from these shootings. I need to take a trip to Gwinnett County police station and get these police reports.
I was still exhausted at 7 this morning when she woke me up complaining about chest pain. That’s happened about three times over the last three weeks. I will chase her to make sure she writes down when these events are happening. (They used to be very infrequent.) A/C camera is down
Paul’s travels to Vancouver on Monday, boat leaves to HI on Tuesday, sails for 6 days, Stays in HI 5 days, sails back for 6 days. Flies to Portland, Chicago then home.
I moved the wires from the side of the home to reduce the number of wires the squirrel can grab to get onto the roof. He/She’s been jumping from the fence onto the roof which yielded a nest of eggs a while back. But there’s nothing to eat on the roof and I could not find an entry into the attic. I may end up putting a camera on that corner of the house so I can get to the bottom of this. The squirrel is damaging the camera wires and moving the IR illuminator.
Our serving pot arrived today, we’ll put the dinner into the pot to keep it warm.
Watched Hudson & Rex on Faith & Family until her back started hurting. She ended up being awake most of the night until she took a Benadryl. I did manage to get some rest in, but I forgot to put water in my CPAP machine. (I woke up with a rapid heartbeat and my ears were ringing like I was low oxygen.)
Sunday
We’re up after a restless night, our CPAP machines were a bit distracting. I let mine run out of water and her mask started to whistle at 4 in the morning. That almost worked out since I had a pill to take at 5AM. We cured the whistle by drawing a fingernail across the vent hole on her mask.
I did manage to check-in with the guys on my HF radio this morning and drink one cup of coffee. Church service was virtual today. Got a call from Steve today about someone needing a car. We’ve got three cars, and we cannot afford to keep all of them. Blue has a problem with the antilock brakes, and we’ve had them completely fail while driving it. But it has a brand-new battery and four good tires. Silver is our everyday vehicle. It gets great gas mileage and is economical to maintain. The van has none of the good things about the silver Focus but, it’s a great vehicle to take on trips. *We can (and have) pull over and take a nap on a mattress in the van. Giving the van away is easiest, but it’s the most expensive vehicle for someone to take over. (It’s also the newest vehicle we have if we decide to drop down to one vehicle.)
Current plan is to repair Blue and shed both Ford Focus vehicles before our insurance renews. Step one is to make sure she can drive the van!
Time wise, we have a LOT of issues that are coming to a head in 4 weeks and our house is in disarray.
The crock pot (Serving Pot) worked great today. It draws a measly 46W on “Keep Warm”, 105W on “Low” and 133W on “High”. The “Lunch Pot” draws about 50W. The temperature is a perfect 132 degrees on the “Low” setting,
Checked in with the HAM guys and took a shower. We’re working on our list of things to get at the farmer’s market this morning. She got hungry and was asking for something to eat, all I could think of was a “Boost” drink. We want to stop eating M+Ms when she’s hungry! We used to eat Baby Ruth bars, they’ve been sitting in our cupboard for weeks now that she’s got braces.
We made a short list and headed down to the Farmers Market. We brought home some salmon and vegetables among other things. They did have some unique cooking accessories. We bought a 3Qt saucepan to steam potatoes and a colander drain the water out of the noodles. It was interesting that the paper towel rolls were smaller at the Farmer’s Market than at Wally World?
We got a notification of a prescription was ready for pickup at CVS so we stopped by there after getting a gallon of milk at Kroger. It wasn’t the prescription we needed for the MRI so we headed down to our family doctor’s office. (They hadn’t returned our call.) When we got there, we found out that they had gone home early on Friday because someone ran into the building! We got a script for the medicine and picked it up a little later. Calling Emory, they scheduled an appointment for OCTOBER!
She got a notification from OPM that her SSN has appeared on a public website database along with information normally used to verify her identity. The funny part is that when I checked if MY data was also compromised on the public website it WAS! (OPM did not inform me because I listed my home address.)
Urgent: We found a match to your Social Security Number on the dark web. Breached Site: nationalpublicdata.com While this information doesn’t necessarily mean you are a victim of identity theft, you may beARE at risk of malicious use of this data.
Leftover Pork tenderloin was for our evening meal. My piece was a little pink so I gave it a couple minutes in the microwave. (We used a thermometer to verify the temperature when we cooked it on Saturday. We did overcook the thinner pieces by the time the thicker piece was up to temperature.)
Gwinnett Amateur Radio club has a Net on 2M at 19:30 that I’ll join, then it’s an evening with my lovely. We’ll have to figure out what’s for din-din tomorrow at some point. Wally World is first thing in the morning tho.
Pick up amplifier from the school!
Repair the brakes on Blue.
Repair radiator on Blue.
Put the Wife’s name on the home
Put the Wife’s name on the van.
Apply for Sr discount on garbage collection.
Apply for school discount on my taxes which have almost doubled.
Update my will and publish. Make a list of items on our Wills.
Chair power supply for mom.
Outside Service Power
Put water in UPS batteries.
Get with Paul about supplementing power.
Tell brain doctor about weight drug
Next Appt for Emory
Our Taxes due Oct 15th.
Nevada Taxes overdue.
Reply to IRS letter.
Page for changing hoses and tanks
County tax form
Southeastern Lung care
Recycle electronics
Offering Prayer
Change Oil in the van.
Rebuild Dual Heater Automation.
Buy a plot for the wife.
Find van keys.
Write will for the Wife.
Pull two power wires into the attic.
Advance Medical Directive
Health Care durable power of attorney.
Financial Durable power of attorney.
Buy an outside driveway light.
Buy spare tire for VAN
Relocate back yard camera
NERO license for K computer
Pay for Air Filters, talked to Jim on Thursday.
Pick up air filter at Lowes.
Put $75 out for the mowing service.
TurboTax 2024 due on Oct 15th.
Dispose of disassembled generator
Mount US Flag
repair the gate on the van, it’s the pulldown motor.
Dispose of garage shelves one at a time.
Wait for Pacific Tax Service to call me.
USB Microphone for Echolink.
Electronic recycling.
Move refrigerator batteries from hot garage.
Solid Waste discount
Make EYE Appointment
Find a cigarette lighter plug to use to charge the car batteries.
Social Security (Survivor plans)
Mark’s retirement (Survivor plans)
Baxter retirement (Survivor plans)
Research new smoke/fire/CO detectors. Draw fire detector wiring diagram.
Insurance rebate check
Solar attic fan box.
Termite inspection date.
Remove Heat2 Temp and Humidity.
Replace dryer vent with one that closes off the outside air
Add relay to refrigerator UPS to charge from Solar.
Fix Jacoby account
Buy more solar panels in case of NATO WAR.
Change owner of church Public Storage locker.
rebuild Attic fan power switchbox.
Wells Fargo Advisors
Good Will
Hand truck
Fertilize the lawn
Repair the eves on our home
Replace back door of garage
Repair window in garage
Two 8GB Raspberry Pi’s are ordered from Newark Electronics.
Put tape over door seals on Blue.
Research Lawyer for Arizona
Tuesday 27/33/41 KWH
Well, I’m up at 7AM got my shower in and eating scrambled eggs and ham. Wally World went fine cept she didn’t write down the berries that she wanted. (So, we didn’t get them.) The $13 slim fast power we bought at the Farmer’s Market did not have a seal. (I am certain you cannot just buy a powder like this without some kind of product seal.) Wally World doesn’t carry Strawberries and Creme, so we’ll have to go back to the Farmer’s Market OR order it on Amazon. We’re not going to Longhorn’s today for the first time in months. (We always go after we get groceries.) Our car insurance and our county taxes has gotten Ridiculously expensive. She still does not have a good eating routine with her braces. It’s pretty common for her to have a sour taste in her mouth and be irritatingly hungry by 10:30. She cannot chew with her braces in, so she’s been eating M+Ms for weeks. The problem is that I think she has Insulin rebound and low sugar again about two hours after eating lunch. (Because of the sugar)
She met with the girls for their prayer time and then we ate Chili for dinner. It wasn’t a lot of chili and we didn’t have any sides. I really didn’t want to just jump into the car and go to Longhorn’s either. We took a good long nap afterwards. My heartrate was a little high, I need to start wearing my O2 sensors for a while.
We managed to reschedule her MRI appointment in September which is three weeks sooner! They cannot do the scan at the Decatur Hospital Imaging Center because of the type of scan requested.
Finished our evening planning tomorrow and watching Hallmark movies.
Wednesday 24/42/42 KWH
Slept a hard 7 hours last night, we both slept in until 9:30 ish. Checked in with my fellow HAMS on my Radio. I had two hard boiled eggs for breakfast and breakfast sausages with Cran Grape juice. Coffee was good. We took some time and planned dinner, chicken breast with curry sauce over rice. The biggest change was to use corn starch to thicken the watery sauce. It was really good. We did need to steam some vegetables for a balanced meal. (The chicken breasts were HUGE, over three pounds in one package.) I got my retirement check, so I paid some on our CC bill. Paul should be on his way to the Hamfest tomorrow. Shelby Hamfest 2024 – 2024 Shelby Hamfest
Her daily routine with Invisalign braces.
Wake Up
Take Medicine
Wait 30 minutes
Remove Braces
~ 07:30 Eat Breakfast
Wait 30 minutes
Brush, Floss and put braces in
Drink 1/2 Boost
Make Dinner
Remove braces
~ 12:00 Eat Dinner
Wait 30 minutes
Brush, Floss and put braces in
Take a nap
Drink 1/2 Boost
Make a sandwich
Take braces out
~ 17:00 Eat Sandwich
Wait 30 minutes
Brush, Floss and put braces in
Take braces out
~21:00 Eat cheese or yogurt
Wait 30 minutes
Brush, Floss and put braces in
Go to bed
Take braces out
~ 03:00 Eat bowl of cereal
Wait 15 minutes
Brush, Floss and put braces in
It gets to be difficult with all these things to work around every day. Not to mention all the other things that seniors do like Doctor appointments and stuff.
Thursday 24/48/42 KWH
We both didn’t have a great night’s sleep, but it wasn’t terrible. We always struggle on church nights anyway. I made a new daily schedule page for my Daytimer.
I printed this sheet and put it into a pocket Daytimer this morning.
Waterway HAMs are saying the “Skip” is long, meaning we cannot talk between stations close to each other. I cannot hear N4JQQ and normally he’s booming in at 300W. If I am going to be productive today, I’ll have to take a nap first.
Up from my nap, she has drunk two bottles of boost and it’s 10 in the morning? The plan was to eat a large enough breakfast to coast until lunch and drink a boost about 10AM. Dinner was left over chicken and veggies; it was really good. We are needing to discuss these Boost drinks, they are kinda expensive to drink four of them a day.
I am working on a presentation for “generosity”, it’s going very slowly. I need to have a final draft by 7th of September. (8 Days) The good thing is that I am retired and I have time. I closed my Linked-In account today, I should not need that anymore!
I got some medicine for my yeast infection. We’ll have to wait three days to see if it’s working. She left a small glass of Margarita in the fridge that I am going to finish off this morning. Tried my radio and no one answered, it happens… I know that the skip is long, meaning that there is a minimum distance that they can hear me, and that distance is 2,000 miles tonight.
Friday 22/43/40 KWH
We got a recommendation from my monitoring agency. They recommend we take the following proactive steps because of the national public data breach. (The news said that they are an aggregate for data found on the internet that is resold for profit.) Place a fraud alert on your credit file as soon as possible at Experian.com/fraud or by calling 1-888-397-3742. Place a freeze on your credit file at all three credit bureaus–Experian®, TransUnion® & Equifax®. Review your credit report from all three bureaus and report any activity you don’t recognize. Request a copy of your latest credit reports by visiting AnnualCreditReport.com. Review resources available at the Social Security Administration online by visiting SSA.Gov/Fraud. Monitor your credit cards and bank accounts and notify your financial institution of any suspicious transactions. Be on the lookout for phishing texts and phone calls attempting to get sensitive information from you. Avoid clicking links from unknown senders and avoid giving our personal info to someone you do not know.
Up and sipp’n my coffee this morning while I listen to the HAM radio. The new medicine for my yeast infection is a bust, it was really uncomfortable this morning. I’ve gone back to what I had been using and keeping the skin dry as possible.
She planned to have beef stroganoff today, but there’s a Dutch oven with coconut chicken in the fridge that will spoil. It took an hour to decide on eating the coconut chicken today and the beef stroganoff tomorrow. A third meal involves burritos that we’ve been looking for burrito seasoning mix. The recipe she read out to me today says “TACO” seasoning! We waste so much time not having thought through these meals.
Insulated bowl for heating vegetables or leftovers
Lunch as it turns out is Coconut chicken with steamed broccoli and fresh Rice made in our rice maker.
It turns out that I have shingles AGAIN! I went to a “Doc in a box” today for a rash that showed up on the sides of my face. She looked at it and said it was shingles. I had my doubts, and she wasn’t sure. We both knew that this is a holiday weekend so she wrote a script for the shingles medication. CVS sent me a text before I got home that the medication was ready to be picked up. After we got home I realized that there was rash on the side of my back that was starting to bother me. That’s the same place the rash was on the last shingles outbreak. I’m not in any pain since I got the medication early (Just like last time…). My back is warm and my face itches a little, that’s about it. (At least for today.)
Our two cases of “Boost” arrived today. We’ve got over 48 bottles for her to drink when she gets that sour mouth with her braces in. It sure beats her eating M+M’s.
Saturday 26/41/39 KWH
My uncle was unable to drive to the Shelby HAM fest and sell his wares because of his shattered elbow.
Our toilet valve is leaking, they do not last any longer. Why make these valves that last 20 years and only have to purchase once. It makes more money for everyone cep the homeowner if we replace the valve every year. It turns out that I had bought an extra one and it was in the garage waiting for me. Took maybe 5 minutes to pop off the valve and replace it. The bolt holding the tank on was loosened and started leaking, that too was a 5-minute fix.
Day 2 of shingles
The rash is behind my bellybutton on the right side of my back. They are getting more disruptive than yesterday. I am tired, but I am also too uncomfortable to get a good night’s sleep. I have a general “itchiness” but very little pain as of yet. I do have the nerve pain medication from last time if it does start hurting.
I have a new plan to reduce the emotional turmoil of her handicap. The plan is not to question anything she did/does and let her deal with the natural consequences. Where it falls off the chalk board is when she comes asking for help dealing with the consequences. (Which is how I ended up being proactive when I started sniffing a problem was about to rear its ugly head.)
Flypaper still does a great job with the fruit flies/grain moths. Seems like we’re bringing them home every week from Wally World. We’ve not had an infestation since putting one strip in the dining room and another strip in the cupboard.
Neighbors brought dinner tonight, we ate about a third of it.
Watched Hudson & Rex on Faith & Family until we retired.
Sunday 36/41 KWH
We’ve both slightly crippled this morning, I had to take the pain medication last night to get to sleep. I checked in with the HAM radio guys this morning and we went back to bed for an hour. I had 4 eggs and breakfast sausage and then we joined the Zoom church service.
Some while back we noticed that the raisins that were in her oatmeal were MUCH tastier than the raisins in Frosted Raisin Bran boxes. We started just buying Frosted Bran flakes instead and adding Sun Maid raisins to our bowls. After the Kennedy speech, I looked online for an alternative and came up with a Whole Foods product.
We’re taking Senator Kennedy’s advice and trying to eat albeit a little healthier food. Whole Foods had products that are NOT manufactured to make us addicted to eating it. (Companies are using sugar and other ingredients to trigger hunger in our bodies so that they sell more product.) https://www.youtube.com/live/n15oCfLdmXI?feature=shared&t=2074
We had leftovers and steamed veggies for dinner. It started raining so I’m going back down for a nap. Stopped raining but it is still pretty cloudy. My head is also cloudy, I have to work on my Power Point today!
We’ve not heard from Emory about her MRI. We called last week, and the technicians did not have the order from the doctor yet.
It’s been a struggle today, we’re both up at 3AM and I’ve maybe gotten 2 hours sleep. Went back to bed and managed to get 5 hours sleep last night. Poured a cup of coffee and checked in with my HAM friends on the Waterway net. I need to give my uncle a call sometime today and drive to Lowes and pick up my filter after they find out where my filter is. Our sponsored child in Kenya sent us a letter today. It’s a bit cooler today, like 68 degrees this morning. (Attic was 65!)
Got her car ready for the trip to the gym this morning. We put a container of boost in an insulated glass with ice so that she has some calories on her way home. I also put the dashcam in the windshield so we can walk back her trip if we need to.
Started dinner (AKA Lunch for us), sweet potatoes and mixed vegetables.
A little frosty, I am guessing the defrost cycle pulled some moisture out.
I am not seeing the electric bill change very much from $180 last month. I thought that changing the garage dehumidifier would have helped, but it hasn’t thus far. The waiter at Longhorn yesterday said that she keeps her home at 68 degrees during the summer. Gee Wiz, that’s a bit cool! I can maybe see that at night, but that’s a huge burden on the air conditioner in the daytime. Hmmm, I wonder what our A/C would do if I locked it in at 72 today.
1:30PM, I added the temp sensor for the bedroom vent back on to Home Assistant. The air was arriving in the bedroom about 55 degrees. (Nice and cold.) It’s also the temp of the air arriving in the master bath though. Down for a nap, I need a brain boost.
Drove to Lowes and picked up the MERV11 washable air filter for the air conditioner. It’s the one that sits underneath my air handler, takes 3 minutes to exchange it. I may get one more so that it’s dry when installing it. (That’s the problem with the other two coarse filters that sit underneath the fine filter, they take a long time to dry.)
I’ll check the performance of the new filter against this baseline I recorded today to check for airflow. I was actually surprised that the temp didn’t fall very much after 12PM running @ 100% capacity. (2Ton, 1200SQ 85 Deg outside.) The worry is that the filter slows down the air and lowers the BTU available.
Tuesday 35/41KWH
Slept in until 8AM, cranked up the radio and did manage to check-in to my friends. Coffee finished brewing and I got the first cup out of the pot. My body pain was distracting enough that I took a hot bath about midnight. (A nice warm bath relieves my body pain better than any pain killer.) I may try to fast today after lunch and see how well I do at bedtime. My current weight is 215 which is 25 LBS over my weight in the Navy. It hasn’t changed more than a couple LBS in many years. I have four cups of coffee in the morning. (I think my dad drank coffee all day long, he had three large thermoses.) Too much caffeine can make me quite irritable. I used to have a problem with a racing heartbeat in my thirties and I had to cut caffeine out altogether.
My myriad of problems that only seem to show up at bedtime. The assumption at the moment is that I am pretty sedentary after about 5PM. My evening meal that I eat between 5PM and 8PM is typically a bowl of soup with crackers. In the short past I used to snack while watching evening TV until I started having pretty severe symptoms. My feet still occasionally have lymph fluid around my toes (like this morning) to where I feel like I have socks on, but I’m actually bare footed. I don’t know yet if that’s caused by the antifungal toe gel that I put on them twice a day.
Read the news for a bit, it was a waste of my time. None of this chaos is going to change by any effort from an elderly couple in Georgia. She is a news junkie. She can watch the news on TV 12 hours a day. It’s strange though, we used to listen to the news on the radio which allowed us to be somewhat productive? Hmmm.
Our little house is full of clutter, it’s been this way since we got back from Vegas.
11:30 We started discussing Lunch which was supposed to be frozen fish. She ate breakfast before 8AM and if she doesn’t eat every four hours or so, she’ll have to snack on something. Between her getting anxious about having something to eat right away and having her braces in for 22 hours a day is impossible. She had not read the recipe nor checked the cupboards to see if we had all the ingredients. The fish needs at least 30 minutes to thaw under cold running water and 15 minutes prep with another 30 minutes to cook. She spent most of the day yesterday watching the news with the DNC in Chicago. We went out to Longhorn for lunch and then slept until 4PM taking a nap. Paul called, there was something wrong with his phone.
We called Emory Imaging, and they did not have the order to be able to schedule an MRI. We were not given an order to hand to our primary care physician either.
Her new braces have a sharp edge on them, we called yesterday about 4 with no answer. We didn’t think to call them today until 4, so that’s something we’ll have to deal with tomorrow. I have a dental appt tomorrow at 9AM.
Wednesday 36/41 KWH
Woke up around 7 this morning and cranked up my radio. Coffee was waiting for me by the time I got back to the kitchen. I checked in with the guys on the Waterway Net before getting ready for the dentist appointment this morning at 9AM. Dental cleaning went well, and I decided I desperately needed a nap. Lunch was frozen flounder. She did a good job baking the flounder and steaming frozen vegetables in the Insta-Pot while I was napping. Went to the bank to get some small bills for the senior home Bingo night tomorrow. Went to get a haircut, but they’re closed on Wednesdays. The 50′ VGA cable for Sunday was waiting on the doorstep for me when I got back home.
Worked on my PowerPoint slides and took a couple naps before we joined the zoom meeting. We watched Leap Year until we got too sleepy to stay up.
Thursday 45/42 KWH
Got up around 7:45 and checked into the Waterway Net with Uncle Paul. She said that she didn’t feel very good emotionally. I recommended that she write in her journal, which she didn’t do. We decided on chicken legs with veggies and a potato for lunch. We’re not going grocery shopping since we’re good on supplies and she needs to nurse her knee. I’ve done three loads of laundry this morning, Whites and two loads of towels. Wrote a survey for Longhorn’s lunch on Tuesday using their website. I am going to try a dry spray in my shoes after I dry them on the boot dryer. That might keep my itchy feet at bay. It’s getting much cooler in the morning which enables work on the outside of the home.
Lunch is chicken legs, veggies and sweet potatoes. The chicken legs were frozen so I tried thawing them in the refrigerator overnight last night. (Still Froze this morning) I cut them out of the package and tossed them in the microwave on a defrost setting. They were still frozen when it finished. So, I set it in one more time and then they ended up just a little frosty. I tossed them onto a baking pan and into the oven.
Lunch was pretty good, we had one piece that needed to be cooked just a little more. The cauliflower was a little tough, the broccoli gets done first, then carrots and finally the Cauliflower.
Bingo with the senior home went well, Kathy stayed home. When we started discussing the dinner for today, I found leftovers from Saturday that will have to be tossed. It bothers me greatly that we just cannot keep track of our food.
Friday 37/42 KWH
Turned on my radio and sipping my coffee. I am beginning to understand how my dad’s estate ended up in such a mess. Pat had RA that gradually disrupted their life in Pahrump with all the trips to the doctors. Pat also had an issue with her back and she almost died. My dad drove to the hospital in Vegas every day. He ended up buying the van during that time with all that driving he was doing. Then he got sick and still made a trip out to see us in 2018. He was a ghost in 2019 when we shot out there because he didn’t sound well. I am guessing that he (Like myself) was spending loads of time taking care of his wife while his home was falling into disarray. The amount of time spent taking care of things gradually creeps up on you until your list is very long. (That’s where I am now.)
I may never be able to claim their federal tax refund for 2019 without reopening the estate. (Depends how the check is written.) The IRS sent us a letter saying the 1310 wasn’t filled out. (I sent them a question about the 1310 that they didn’t answer) Pat didn’t file for their joint return while she was still alive, and I am sure COVID had a lot to do with it.
We’re back from the gym, she is to put cold compresses on the knee as she has a bone bruse. The owner of the gym said that Kathy has a bone bruise where one of the tendons attach from the knee. He recommended we get a wrap brace to support her knee and to take walks. He told her NOT to use certain machines at the gym that would exacerbate the inflation of the bone.
We burnt the vegetables this morning, she didn’t put very much water under the steaming tray today and it went dry. *I actually thought the Insta-Pot would have sensed that the water was gone and stopped heating?
We cleaned the pot and started another batch of frozen vegetables then warmed up a ham steak for lunch. I wanted to have potatoes with it but there was yet another miscommunication about having the potatoes. (She never looked in the box.) After lunch we both took a nap, she was hungry so we warmed up a can of soup. We’re still removing the braces 6-8 times every day between all these meals/snacks. 7AM, 11AM, 2PM, 4PM, 6PM, 8-9PM. And she is still eating ice cream bars and M+M candies witch trigger insulin and probably shorten her spans between meals. I just realized that the issue with her brain is the part we need working to regulate these meals. ARG.
Speaking of which, time to call Emory Imaging and get an appointment. They came up with a requirement that she get a sedative medication BEFORE they would schedule and appointment. She does get anxious inside the closed frame in a MRI machine that’s used for head imaging.
Had soup while we watched some TV and then headed to bed.
Saturday 40/41 KWH
Got up around 8AM and cranked up my radio to meet the guys on the Amateur Radio Waterway net. She brought me a cup of coffee while I get organized. Took a shower and opened the garage door to cool off the garage a little bit. It didn’t really help. Dinner is pork tenderloin, I laid out a timeline for us to follow so we don’t have a disaster like we did yesterday.
Tenderloin tasted pretty good, it was a bit overcooked though.
I did a bit of cleaning around the kitchen table today. Our kitchen table is the center of our home, everything seems to arrive at or be taken from that table. Hence all of our tablets are charged on that wide flat surface. The kitchen counters are too valuable for cooking and all of the large furniture has plants on them.
I have never liked plugging five or six 5W chargers into a power strip. Some multi output chargers are not fast charge compatible or don’t have the power to charge fast charge devices. Some of the older devices charge very slowly on a fast charger. The method I chose is DC-DC converters that have considerably more power to charge the device and only one wall connected device. It provides power for all the converters which then provide the USB power. It also allows for fast charging devices that can be charged with a higher power. The USB cables are short, so very little power is lost between the charger and the device. They are not perfect; I have had several of them fail over the 10 years of using them. (They are super handy for hotel rooms where you really don’t want to plug your $800 cell phone into their charger.)
The problem is that the wires can get to be a mess, LOL.
Sunday 35/41 KWH
Got up a bit late, we have a crowded morning. Make chili, drive to house church and setup the equipment. Service was at 11AM. She said that she was going to make scrambled eggs, so I hadn’t eaten until after 1PM. We were asked to bring a dish, but the chili failed so we’re going there without food. The laptop case had a CPAP power supply in it, so I had to run back home to get one. The audio from the computer had a significant buzz that I just could not get rid of. (The host was too busy to test everything out before Sunday service and the service had a distracting hum.) He also moved the location of the computer to the other side of the room that wasn’t tested either. We also ended up using a 30-year-old power strip that had bad outlets in it, I went home early.
We slept for an hour and a half and found ourselves looking at 4 PM. It’s too hot outside to work on the house and I am really emotional about messing up the worship service today. I didn’t get much accomplished before going to bed. (I did test the audio on Wednesday, it’s not my equipment or cables.)
Propagation is a strange thing this morning on my HF radio. I can reach medium distant stations like Virgina on FT8 with almost no power. But, I cannot hear Steve N4JQQ and he’s usually booming in from central Georgia with 500 Watts.
Salmon is dinner today, I can make the rice and steam the veggies. But I need to wait until she leaves from the gym or they will be overcooked. Updated my two Home Assistant Raspberry Pi computers to the latest version.
Started steaming broccoli in the Insta-Pot and started the rice in our rice cooker for lunch about 11:10. She should be home in about 30 minutes, say 10:40. Both rice and broccoli were done about the time she got home, I put them in insulated bowls. Oven is set to 375 and the dish for the salmon is in the oven warming up.
The bottle of boost with a couple ice cubes is working out great! (She drinks it when she gets out of the gym and before driving home.)
Salmon, broccoli and rice turned out to be a delicious lunch. That and most of a 12oz bottle of coke and I’ve gotten very sleepy. She spent about 30 minutes cleaning up the kitchen and met me in the horizontal surface of our bed. She managed to hurt her knee on the equipment and later in the day it’s really bothering her.
Took a good long nap and we cleaned four of her CPAP masks that have to be changed out every other day. We discussed options for improving our cognitive ability and we have to plan tomorrow’s activities. She hurt her knee so we’re going to nurse that a little while we work on tomorrow’s plan. I need to NOT eat again today unless I am really hungry, and then NO sugar tonight! My toes have lymph fluid around them, it’s not around my instep so much or my ankle. I also don’t know if the medicine I am using for my toenail fungus is the cause either. (Which could account for the fluid only being around my toes.)
We made plans for tomorrow’s trip to EMORY Brain Health. The entire plan is about 4 hours. (Snack, Put braces in, Drive, Appt, Drive, Leftovers for din-din, and then a NAP.) We also pulled words out of one her crossword books to see how many each of us could remember. She got two words of five and I got maybe 5 words out of six. Google Foo says we should train our minds to remember to keep them sharp.
We also talked about our glucose levels and there are meters for cheap on Amazon, but we may get one for free from our doctor. She complains about a sour taste in her mouth more often than last year. But then again, she’s used to snacking all day long and now with the braces we’re on an eating schedule. The original plan was to eat starches at our meals so that her body can produce a more “Paced” energy that she needs. That has been much more difficult than I had anticipated. She is supposed to have the braces in her mouth 22 hours out of 24. With the additional 30 minutes required to flush her mouth after each meal we’re down to 21 hours. Add to that when she gets low sugar and has that sour taste in her mouth. We seem to be doubling the number of times we’re pulling her braces out for an hour. (Like 5-6 times a day.)
Our electric bill was 1291 for July, that’s 322KWH/Week. Raised our house temperature by one-degree last week. Our consumption dropped to 273KWH last 7 days, 324KWH 14 Days, 314KWH 21 Days, 293KWH 28 Days, 294KWH 35 Days. It seems to have knocked off 50KWH/Week off our bill which should be about $20 / month. This month’s bill was $179.00 which is about the same as last month. I’ve also taken aim at the garage Dehumidifier which has been running all night for some reason. It doesn’t seem to have run at all in the last three days since I raised the target humidity to 60%. The thought is that the garage was warm enough for the bucket water to evaporate and skew the humidity sensor in the unit causing it to run.
I may put a vent in the garage wall so I can pull cool air if conditions are good. (Dad’s garage had them along the wall, you couldn’t see them from the outside.)
Took my medications when her alarm went off to take her medications. I’ve missed mine at least three times in the last two weeks. Put lotion on my feet then small garbage bags to keep the lotion from being absorbed by my socks.
We had a good day today, we’ll get there…. Bed Time.
Tuesday 41/42KWH
We ended up watching The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson until we were sleepy enough to go to bed. The timer on the Dehumidifier in the garage is working properly, the humidity is below the set point, and it doesn’t run.
Slept horribly last night and all I had was 4 small pieces of raisin toast. I drank water, no coke or sugar either. *Ok I did have a 5 Oz glass of juice and some crackers.
I didn’t fight with my CPAP machine either, 0 events. (The low score is usage hours. My machine says 5.3 hours 1.2 Events Per Hour.)
The garage dehumidifier never ran, the new door seal and raising the set point worked. (It also appears that opening the door yesterday lowered the humidity too.)
I managed to check-in with the Waterway Net, the propagation seems worse today. (I didn’t hear anyone clearly.) She brought me a nice cup of coffee while I write in this blog. We both took showers and headed to the mattress for a quick nap. Her knee is still painful today, we’ll need to nurse that a little. (Emory is not a small walk.)
I don’t know if we’re going to Longhorn today or not, with her knee bothering her and we have a meal ready to go in the fridge we may just come home. (We’re not even getting groceries today.)
I found my passport!
I had it at the beginning of COVID to get our shots and I hadn’t seen it since. It was hiding in the back pouch of one of my man purses that I carried my “Puppies” in. I am needing a larger device than my phone and I was digging through all my bags when I found it.
So far, so good. We got here at Emory on time and arrived in the waiting room 15 minutes early. We’re waiting on the Doctor, I am pretty anxious and a little impatient.
The doctor was very thorough and had very good communication skills. The next diagnostic is getting a non-contrast MRI. We’ve been enrolled with a social worker to help with the difficulties facing us. The largest pothole we were discussing was driving, he is thinking we are at the edge of her NOT driving anymore. (He’s worried that she’ll be so distracted trying to figure out how to get home.) That’s HUGE news. He highly recommended we take a brisk walk EVERY DAY. (That will have to be in the mornings when it’s cool.) We are also discussing ending the weekly trips to Loganville for her Gym sessions. (Too far and therefore Too risky.)
The doctor will be communicating with us through Emory “My Chart” which is an online documentation system of medical procedures. I need to take a look and see if that correlates with our doctor’s charting system.
We’re getting close to her being “Dependent” on a caregiver, we need to think about what processes she’ll need help with. Who is going to help a day or two, a couple weeks or long term. The social worker will probably have a lot of suggestions for us.
We also have to take a serious look at her medications, they can affect her brain health. I was shocked that he was totally against her taking Benadryl if she can’t sleep. He also mentioned that we need to closely monitor her CPAP performance.
Mowed 1/3 of the back yard, it’s probably been a week since that section was mowed. Opened the garage door to cool the garage until the humidity level rises enough to close it again. The two small attic fans are running well past 9PM because the humidity is so low, they only draw 36 watts. (0.4 Cents/Hour) I run the 14V fans in the evening when the solar panels are not providing power at only 9Volts.
Wednesday 39/42KWH
We both got up around 2AM and had a bowl of cereal. Got back to bed around 3 and slept until 8. I checked-in with the guys on my HF radio and updated my home automation computer to the latest version. It broke the routine that is supposed to turn off the attic fans. They ran until almost midnight last night. We got three letters from one of our sponsored children. Heh, she’s 20… (Maybe she’s a sponsored adult-child, they cannot get married until they are 21 in Philippines.) We send CF about $455/Month for the four sponsored children. ($39 Sponsorship, $40 Child, ~$33 Family.) Had two hard boiled eggs and some breakfast sausages for breakfast.
We’re in good spirits even though we’ve got a long road laid out for us. Gee whiz it’s Sleeping, Diet, Exercise and medications. ResMed keeps track of our sleep for us.
An “Event” is an obstruction that lasts 10 seconds or longer. (~43 Events)
I am a little concerned about the 8 events / hour on the 2nd. (~64 events) I looked back over last year since she got her new CPAP machine, and her scores were a little better right after she got the new machine. One problem that’s been consistent for a while is her lips are blown apart by the high pressure. I think she puts lip gloss on her lips at night, we may adjust that. There may also be an opportunity to reduce the pressure if we change her sleeping position to require less pressure. Her mask type is not optimal for sleeping on her side as her cheek closes off the hoses.
I could not find why her mask was discontinued, or a replacement.
As far as Exercise, the doc had a bent ear about her driving to Loganville to the gym. He recommended walking (Albeit Brisk Walk) every day. At the moment we’re thinking of walking in the evenings after 6. She’s working cleaning the home this morning and the humidity is over 80%. It’s been low humidity about 6PM and under 80 degrees in the evenings. That was quite comfortable when I was mowing the lawn yesterday. It also allowed me to open the garage door and let that cool down a bit yesterday.
Hello 17Meter Band, my radio tuned up on it today!
Thursday 38/42KWH
I didn’t sleep too bad last night, ResMed only said that the mask leaked a little too much. That also means that the hotdog and Chili I ate last night wasn’t good for my therapy. Coffee arrived and we’re partaking in the brew. The garage dehumidifier hasn’t run in three days. It turns out that the garage was so warm the water was evaporating from the storage bucket under the unit. (I wondered why it was short cycling.) We’re now 4 weeks without a shooting, hopefully that’s behind us. (I think the high power IR lights changed their tune!) The last two shootings (4 weeks ago) were only 1`0 days apart. We’re both in good spirits today, need to get groceries and schedule an MRI today.
Grocery shopping went well, $230 at Wally World with no meat. Cereal boxes are a hoot, same height just a LOT thinner. (The Oz number keeps dropping.) We buy orange juice and didn’t recognize the container. It’s about 2/3 the size of the previous 52 Oz containers at 46 Oz, the price per Oz today was the same. (Any bets it won’t stay that way.) Off to lunch with a couple of friends.
Lunch was terrific, we had a good time and discussed some important things that are brewing. Need to buckle down and work on this power point, as he wrote on his slides it’s been 10 months since he got this assignment and asked me to help. I have been looking at this as something I have knowledge and putting a couple slides together didn’t seem that difficult.
We are having another great day together…
Friday 48/42KWH
Didn’t sleep much last night, I am in enough pain to keep me from falling asleep. I took two Tylenol when I took my medicine at 9PM and it hasn’t helped enough to get some rest. I’ve tried a small glass of alcohol, a bowl of cereal, a tall glass of water, a cup of coffee to no avail. It’s 4AM and I finally remembered that when I have an overall pain that is mostly just under my skin to take a nice hot bath. A shower has not been an effective remedy for this pain. I managed to get several hours of sleep after my quick soak. I still have some overall pain, but I’ll have to deal with it.
It is a little light on the usage hours, but the events per hour is great.
Checked-in with the Waterway Net, I heard of them clearly and others not so much. I took a quick nap and started making lunch. The beef stew meat had two morsels that was severely brown. But the rest didn’t smell or have any unusual properties. I made the stew, and it turned out pretty well EXCEPT, the meat didn’t taste normal. So, we both decided to toss the entire meal for safety. (Neither one is sick at 8PM.)
Took another good nap and thawed our battery powered refrigerator in the living room. Then I mowed 1/3 of the back yard and cleaned the undercarriage of the mower. I reached into a pile of grass to remove a stake that was holding my antenna. My arm didn’t like the grass touching it and show an allergic reaction.
We were given a charge to change our diet to a Mediterrian diet by Emory Brain Health. We are both a little rounder than we should be which lends us to Diabetes II. I am thinking Farmer’s Market?
We had another good day today.
Saturday 50/42KWH
It’s 7:30, I’ve turned on the coffee pot and my HF radio. I cannot hear the Net Control station, but I can hear both the North and South relay stations. I did manage to get checked in on the Waterway Net this morning. I need to stay focused and not let the news distract me today. (Although that’s going to be tough with the DNC next week.)
Cooling a batch of boiled eggs
Had two boiled eggs and sausage for breakfast this morning. We have a TON of things we should be doing, but what we’re attracted to is the drama with the election. Talked with Mom, she doesn’t have the UPS units I sent there being used at all. They’re going to put the UPS units on the TV and the Dish network Hopper. They are also putting power switching boxes between her UPS units and the wall for the solar converter.
Emotionally, I am angry about Amazon being able to sell all these fake/counterfeit products without any way to protect the seniors that are purchasing them. (We’ve enjoyed companies like Sears and their Sears Roebuck and catalog that had reliable products.)
Dinner is grandma’s chili with sweet potatoes, I’m going back down for another nap. Dinner was pretty good, we added brown sugar and cinnamon to the sweet potatoes. Worked on the church website for a bit after the administrator gave me a link to a training video. Looks easy, we’ll see when I actually link one of the sermons.
Storms are headed our way, maybe by 8PM, some of them look pretty heavy but when the sun goes down, they fizzle out pretty quickly.
Rained really hard for 15 minutes or so, then let up completely.
Turned on the air conditioner, it has some catching up to do.
Watched Good Witch on the Hallmark Mystery Channel, bedtime.
We had a good day today.
Sunday 39/42KWH (Day/Average Desire = 35)
We both got up around 3AM and had a bowl of cereal with a cup of coffee before going back to bed. Got back up around 7:30 and cranked up my HF radio. She provided my morning cup of coffee while I checked in with the guys on Waterway Net. N4JQQ wanted a south relay, but I just cannot hear 80% of the stations checking in on the net with all the electrical noise of our home. (My biggest noise maker is the Variable Speed Air Conditioner.) Then All of the home automation takes a toll on my receive. Eventually I’ll put some filters on the unit, I have other priorities for now.
Church service went well, we were a little late after having gone back to get her sweater. (It was awfully warm there, she didn’t end up needing it.) We went to Longhorn’s for lunch and skipped the big international dinner at church.
3 shots were fired from what appears to be somewhere behind the house at 6PM today. They were not really far away, but they didn’t sound like they were in our back yard either. I had turned off the camera recordings during the day since we’d never had a shooting during the day except in 2019. I turned the recording of audio back on for 24/7, I had just turned it off last week thinking this was all behind us. I checked all three of the high-resolution cameras, but without audio I couldn’t really associate a car with the sound. The DVR is also really good at keeping all the audio/video synched to the event. (There’s no getting rid of it now.) Walked the street, no brass on the ground.
9PM, done with the cameras, but I’ve been working it for three hours. Worked on the church website for an hour linking sermons to the WordPress.
My box on top “LIFETIME”, is missing. This is a picture from Lowes dock.
No letters from our sponsored children. She’s off to the gym stopping by Kroger and getting a bag of M+Ms for the sour taste in her mouth.
Hurricane Debby, made landfall in north Florida as CAT1.
I pulled the sensor on the blue attic fan out and wrapped the wires around the connector pins to give it a good solid connection. (That sensor has been erratic since I installed it weeks ago.) The purpose of the sensor was to log the air temperature either entering or leaving the attic.
It seems to be working all day today, but I’ll keep an eye on it..
Got a frantic call from the wife, she said that the keys are locked in the trunk. She was in the car so access to the trunk is pretty easy through the back seat. It took 20 minutes and two pictures for her to unlock the seat. The keys were not in the trunk or her purse that was in the trunk. I finally asked her to look on the top of the car and that’s where she had laid them. I totally forgot to put the clothes in the dryer because I got a phone call from a frantic wife just after the washer finished.
I did manage to pull a power wire from the garage into the attic. There are four possibilities for that wire, and I could really use one more. I also put the temp sensor back underneath the large vent that pulls outside air into the attic. That gives me the temperature of the air from the roof. I do have an issue where the air arriving is warmer and more humid because of the location of that vent.
I guess we’re back to Longhorn today. We desperately need to have meals that I can prepare on hand for these crazy days which are becoming more numerous. (And costly) I need a Margarita and we’ve been to Longhorn’s almost every other day since we got groceries last Tuesday.
Another almost disaster, we could not find my wallet anywhere. In desperation we called Longhorn to see if they had it. The manager said the cleaning crew found my wallet on the floor under the bar stools this morning. (18 hours after we left on Sunday.) The $100 was taken out of it, but everything else seems to be ok including my military ID. I checked the credit cards when I got home, and they didn’t have any extra charges on them. (I’ll keep an eye on it for a few days since the have all the key information on the card and my D License.)
Mowed the lawn, well at least part of it. I mow about a third of the back yard at a time. It is a comfortable amount of work, and the lawn mower doesn’t get clogged up to where it won’t cut the grass.
I checked in on the GARS 2M repeater net at 19:30 tonight, I often miss this net on Mondays. We watched our evening movie on the Hallmark Channel and went to bed.
Tuesday 40/313KWH
Busy day today, need to get a shower in and then lay down plans for the day.
Longhorn for lunch, we left at 12:15 and arrived Emory about 10 minutes early. Check-in was all done online so we’re in the waiting room already. After like 8 months of waiting for this appointment all they did was a 40-minute interview, no diagnostic testing was done today.
Back home, our home is a perfect temperature!
We might have found a solution tonight for Sundays. We either have to make the meal on Saturday OR have it in a Crock Pot waiting on us when we get home from Church. The crock pot idea is not perfect either since 8AM to 12:30 is only a little over four hours. But what we have done in the past is to bring the dinner up to temperature in a stove top Dutch oven and then transfer it to the Crock Pot before we leave for church. I also thought we might try the Insta-Pot, but that’s a little riskier for a fire at 800Watts. The stove top is all glass and is covered by a nonflammable hood if something failed.
Monday, Tuesday and Friday we are busy and there’s no time to have a difficult meal preparation on those three days. There’s a little more time but she doesn’t get home from the gym until 11:40. She needs to spend 15 minutes in the shower and getting dressed afterwards. (Noon is when we’re supposed to be eating every day driven by her Invisalign braces and her low sugar.) We tried pushing the gym earlier/later but there are significant issues traveling or at the gym during those times. We know she will be low sugar during her drive home, so she carries M+Ms to snack on.
Well, we’re headed to Wally World tomorrow morning to get groceries since we didn’t do it today. We have house church tonight at 6:15PM until 9PM.
Wednesday 38/312KWH
Off to UPS to drop off some returns then Longhorn for lunch and finally Wally World for Groceries. We had a good heart to heart conversation this morning about shuffling the responsibilities and setting a time (now 13:00) to have a daily meeting to fill out the daytime together. ❤ NAP after we put the perishables away after we get home. We have a reading assignment for tonight’s lesson that will take a bit of time. We have to leave for house church at 5:30PM so we’re a bit crowded this afternoon.
We got a call from Emory while we were at Longhorn which left a message about getting her test results and next steps. Now we’re playing phone tag… (We have call screening trying to defend against all these calls about buying our home.) The number that called and the number they gave us to call back are both entered into her phone. (So it should ring.) Not taking any chances we’ve temporarily turned off call screening. We’re both pretty tired, shower and a nap are the plan of the hour.
Emory called back on the house phone. She agreed to meet in person next Tuesday to discuss the test and next steps at Emory. We’ll have to rearrange our day since the time conflicts with our meal schedule. We’ll turn the call screening back on her cell phone.
We got a call from Zach with Georgia Home Buyers and her phone rang just once even with call screening off! Sounds like the phone companies are taking our complaints and stopping the thousands of Robo/Telemarketing calls in real time. Zach’s call was labeled as a home buying SCAM. There was an article on Google Foo that said one company has to pay $40M for their robo calls.
Services tonight went well, we had Zaxby’s salads for dinner and then came home about 9PM. My cell phone went completely dead taking notes. Boo.
Made a TON of FT8 contacts on my HF radio tonight, they were calling me for the QSO.
Thursday 40/296KWH
Checked-In on the Waterway net, my throat got stuck and I couldn’t say my suffix very fast. The NCC dramatized my error by repeating it LOL. We both got dressed and headed out to Wally World for Groceries.
We went to Longhorn for lunch for the fourth time this week and we’ve been in good spirits since. Went to get groceries at Wally World after we left Longhorn’s and then unloaded the car at home to put them away.
We took a good long nap and we need to get a plan together for tomorrow. We need to do a meat inventory so we can choose the one that expires first. She started removing items we still had in the refrigerator without confirming the removal with me. She then said that we didn’t have any ham steaks which we had two of them. I had to abandon doing the inventory with her.
I did the inventory and finished posting the inventory on the cupboard.
We had to spend about 30 minutes juggling these Post-It Notes to determine our meal schedule. The gym on Friday and the Sunday service means those meals have to be simple to make. (It was considerably easier to move these notes around than keep erasing the meal off a calendar.)
Her 2nd Doctor is insisting that she complete a “Swab” saliva test, or he will not prescribe any more drugs. We’ve sent a message back that we’d like to have it done by a professional lab. (We’ve had to submit to drug tests most of our lives using these labs.) It also prevents the doctor from using the swab for DNA sample. (All the tests will be identified on the order to the lab.)
The plan for tomorrow is to include a bottle of “Boost” after her workout and before her drive home.
To keep the Boost cool, the plan is to put it in an insulated mug with a little bit of ice. It only has to last a couple hours.
Friday 47/293KWH
Slept in this morning, checked-in on the WW net after the position report section of the net. (There’s not much time left after 8:30.) Had to move the neighbor’s garbage cans, they have two of them and they cannot be side by side. She thought that she needed gas today and when we checked that decision, she had 84 miles of gas to go 18 miles to the gym. Lunch today is Pork Chops with carrots, celery and potatoes. All three of them need a little preparation in advance.
I cut up the vegetables for the pork chop meal today.
We’re getting a letter from the IRS. I checked the PO box, and it wasn’t there yet. It almost has to be from the Estate. I’ve been trying to collect their refund check for several years. Patricia filed “Their” income tax properly the year my dad passed in 2018. I don’t know why she didn’t get/cash the refund. (It likely would have required Fred’s signature.) She did not put the check in the 2018 tax folder, which I’ve misplaced somewhere. We got letters in 2020 from the IRS to my brother, but I had no authority to represent Fred even after I was named. Michael did not request the refund so it’s a mystery how they got his name. The instruction from the IRS says to file two forms to get their refund. (If they’ve both been deceased, Fred’s form was ambiguous, and I had to ask the IRS for advice.)
I am sort of waiting until she gets home before taking any action today. I have quite a pile of Electonics that need to be recycled. I’ve copied three Hard Drives to a flash drive, and I need to recycle those too.
Upgraded my Two Raspberry Pi desktops now that I’ve moved all the files from the hard drives. (I used them to prevent getting a virus from these old hard drives.)
She’s home, shower then make dinner. The IRS letter was not in the PO box when she picked up the mail this morning. It is odd that the image did not have the address label on it.
Our electric bill was 1291 for July, that’s 322KWH/Week. Raised our house temperature by one-degree last week. 9 Aug our consumption dropped to 251KWH last 7 days, 324KWH 14 Days, 314KWH 21 Days, 293KWH 28 Days. It seems to have knocked off 50KWH/Week off our bill which is about $20 / month. I’ve also taken aim at the garage Dehumidifier.
The garage Dehumidifier was set to 55% from 10PM to 8AM and ran every 10 minutes without making a major impact on the garage humidity after an hour or so. The self-contained water evaporates from the bucket at 80 degrees and causes it to run more often than necessary. I changed the timer to be three one-hour segments 10-11PM, 2-3 AM, 7-8AM and see how that goes.
The dehumidifier does not appear to have run at all after the changes. That will save a significant amount of money.
In Vegas we learned to embellish the house’s mass to be comfortable and save energy. The red arrows are the thermostat raising the temperature by ONE degree reducing the load on the grid. The blue arrows are lowering the temperature by one degree pulling the heat back out of the home after the heat of the day. The air conditioner can coast for about an hour with each degree increase, and it takes about 40 minutes to pull the heat out of the home for every one-degree change.
The cold air in the evenings, cool the rooms we’re occupying significantly.
We wrote two letters to our sponsored children today, time to take a break and watch a little TV. After I got dressed I mowed 1/3 of the back yard that hadn’t been mowed in weeks. (Impossible to mow it with an electric mower when it is wet.)
Saturday 39/42KWH
Tuned into the Water Way Net and I can’t hear anyone. Grabbed some clothes and headed to the post office to get the IRS letter. All it said was that they need time to process the previous request. I put the letter with all the others in the estate travel folder when I got home.
Had two hard boiled eggs and breakfast sausage for breakfast. No letters on Child Fund International from our sponsored children. Checked our bank statements, there’s no malfeasance on either of our accounts from the loss of my wallet.
We’ve both picked up a cough since I changed the air filter to a lower grade. I guess that there’s enough evidence to purchase good air filters from now on. Lowes had a washable MERV 10 filter, but it had to be ordered. (It’ll be here next Friday.)
Bidenomics 101, restaurants are making ends meet by raising their drink prices to the ceiling. A fountain drink at Longhorns is $3.39 for a 12 Oz glass full of ice, that’s maybe ok since they keep refilling it. But charging $10 for a shot of Burbon and then charge another $3.39 for a coke to go with it is a bit over the top.
We took a good long nap and then worked on my presentation for our midweek service most of the afternoon.
Hopefully we’ve seen the last of the nighttime shootings on our street. The last shooting fired only one shot, and the thought is that they may have seen the high-powered IR security lights on the front of our home for the first time.
The IR lights show up pretty good on a live video.
Even better if you take a still picture.
The current thought is that they were making a video of these shootings thinking that no one would see them. They may have seen the security lights and stopped shooting video. The investigators noticed the lights and said that they looked like high power lights. I told them opened them up and cut their power in half. I don’t think they believed me. They are correct if you compare them to the self-contained lights in the cameras that have maybe half a dozen LEDs.
This picture clearly shows the whole front lawn lit up at night like its daytime. Pointing the lights was counter intuitive, the left light faces right of center and the right light faces left of center.
Sunday 41/42KWH
I forgot to take my medicine yesterday, my stomach is unhappy.
Our next appointment at Emory Brain Health is Tuesday, we will learn the results of the interview/testing that was done last week. She was asked to put numbers on a clock face and that request could not be completed by herself. She cannot drive on highways, nor can she drive at night with her cataracts. We always drive to where she needs to go beforehand, or I drive her to new places even if they are close by. We’ve started sharing somewhat complicated decision making like groceries/meals etc.
Planning meals is much easier with Post-It Notes
Got onto Waterway this morning, I messed up but Steve was generous. Our car policy paid out at over $2000 premium every 6 months. I may have to look at that since we’re not driving to work anymore, and they are “Lesure” vehicles. Fixed the timer in the garage dehumidifier, apparently, I pushed the “Random” button.
I’ve figured out a way to show the set temperature and the actual temp.
Air conditioner runs a lot more than I thought it would.
We went to church service and that went well. We pulled out dinner out of the Crock Pot when we got home, it turned out pretty good. We took a huge nap and then my stomach got really upset. When I looked at the timer on the pill bottle it said 40 hours, which means I didn’t take them yesterday. The one pill that reminds me is the Omeprazole for my Gerd, the acid in my stomach starts getting intolerable in the afternoon if I forgot it. Looks like juice and crackers are the snack of the day until my stomach settles down.
It’s HOT outside today!
Washed eight CPAP hoses today, that will get us through the month.
I found out the waterproof outdoor lights I bought are NOT waterproof! The seals are missing from the fixture.
