Woke to riots in California. (No caption was provided on the above picture.) I’ve read these stories on various news outlets and there are two opposing views. One is the rule of law and federal enforcement of immigration, the other is “Sanctuary Cities” defending the illegal immigrants (non) rights above American citizens. A big deal was made of bringing in the National Guard, but their only role is to protect three federal buildings. (That’s it!) But you have the (Drama) narrative that sells advertising saying all sorts of nonsense. (Look at the pictures, where are the guardsmen?)
Checked in with the HAM guys and then made breakfast for the wife.
We made a page in her Journal to keep track of our chores that we are having difficulty remembering when we last did them.
The dining room light is flickering, I checked the breaker and the wiring. It just about has to be the light switch itself. *These LED lights have a horrible power factor and high inrush currents.
Went to Longhorn’s for lunch after we messed up lunch by getting distracted doing housework. We’ve also researched her Glipizide prescription which calls for cutting a 2.5mg tablet in half. (Which destroys the mechanism for dosing along with creating a sharp-edged shell to be passed in her bowel.) She accidentally took a whole pill this morning and we watched her glucose very closely at two-hour intervals. We called the Doc and requested that the script be changed to whole 2.5mg pills. We’ve not heard back from him, nor have we gotten a message from the Pharmacy.
Supper was a deli sandwich on Rye bread with rice cakes and cream cheese. Pain on my back is on my right shoulder and my right torso both on the back side of me. I took Gabapentin as a last resort last night. I think I am going to take it first today!
Used a heating pad on my back tonight, I might have overdone it just a little.
Tuesday
We thought we had a dental appointment this morning. They told her that that appointment was in July not June. We picked up a few things at Kroger, breakfast at Burger King and came home. Talked to Paul for a little while, but it was hard to be on the phone while shopping…
Tooth #31 is a little bothered, I’ll need to pay more attention to it after I eat. I may go down and take a nap after we check her Glucose.
My experience is that LED light bulbs have not lasted the touted life on the box. But this $8 DC corn bulb I bought in 2011 has burned for 15 years so far. In my experience the major failure has been the power supply in the base of the bulb. The second largest failure is that manufacturers are overdriving the LEDs and they die.
Scrambled eggs for breakfast with my Augmentin pill, so far so good on my new medicine schedule. The timer on my wrist combined with the pill dispensers should keep me on schedule.
The HF radio 40Meter band is LONG, I could not hear most of the stations this morning. I FT8 to Australia last night on only 15W.
Michael Shellenberger was interviewed by a newspaper at the end of May, I found it very thought provoking. So much so, I will have to listen to it several times to capture all the information provided.
We had to make a run to the orthodontist, so we went to Longhorn’s for lunch today. We stopped by on the way home and dropped off the referral from Coast Dental. Our appointment will be this week, and it should be an eval and treat appointment. Having these Amox to take has added to complexity of traveling with our medication.
I have nine medication times to keep track of. I found out tonight that two of them, Norvasc and Alfuzosin are light sensitive.
I’ve put a ring of construction paper over the tray to keep the light off of them. The lid on the left side of the door is to stage medications to be taken within the next two hours. (Like taking Alfuzosin after dinner for example.)
Tuesday
I woke up very early this morning with body aches and the shingles on my back was also flaring up. I took a whole 500mg Acetaminophen and 200mg Ibuprofen about an hour later to get some relief. For me taking Ibuprofen contains some risk, there is a low threshold where I will break out in hives. If I am awake I “can” take a Benadryl to escape any serious complications. I took a Gabapentin at 7AM to relieve some of those symptoms in my back and arms.
We went to Whole Foods today to get cereal and crackers among other things. Lunch was at Longhorn’s of course, it bothered me that all the business is in the bar area and the servers are left with empty tables. (Hard to make any money that way.)
I made a battery powered flickering candle for people we’re praying for. The idea is that we give remembrance when we see this candle throughout the day. It runs on two AA batteries that should power it for more than a month. *I took a tee light candle from the dollar store and connected it to MUCH Larger batteries.
Retired early, have to get up at 6AM to be at the Orthodontist by 8AM.
Wednesday
Woke at 6AM and we had scrambled eggs after I took a shower. We left about 7:15 and made it before 7:50. The assessment didn’t go as planned.
There is significant decay under the crowns of all two teeth in question. The Orthodontist recommended removing Tooth #30 and returning to retreat #29 which originally was #28. I have eight Amoxicillin pills left at 2PPD that’s four days. Sunday at 9PM will be the first missed dose. I’ll wait for our dentist to call me, if that doesn’t happen, I’ll schedule an appointment with her on Friday. They are closed on Thursdays, I wish I had remembered that sooner!
Headed home and took a nap before returning to Longhorn for lunch. It got massively crowded with large groups of people. (They apparently knew about some of them because there were 5 servers. Funny thing was they didn’t come in until after 12 Noon, the crowds were there at 11:15.
Headed home, we were going to stop by Wally World, but it looked like rain was ahead of the 4PM prediction.
I mowed the back yard and barely got wet before putting the lawnmower up.
This what happens when you leave a camera POE (Ethernet) wire out in the rain.
I got a new keyboard last night. (Todd gave me one that the keys “Click”, but they don’t sell them on Amazon anymore.) These keys don’t click, but they are plenty noisy enough. Now both my computers in my cave have new keyboards.
The UPS units in my cave both switched to battery, rain is headed our way.
I made yet another prayer light for our friend.
Thursday
I still have a bad pumpernickel taste in my mouth from yesterday. I don’t quite know for sure why. The pumpernickel bread was 2 months old, and I didn’t find out until AFTER I ate it. I also took my 875 Augmentin on an almost empty stomach for the first time last night. (I had a few crackers, that may not have been enough.)
We checked our cupboards and headed off to Wally World for some supplies. It was pretty empty. In fact, there was ONLY ONE check-out line for a full cart of stuff. We dropped off the dairy and headed off to Longhorn for lunch. We took our pills from our kit and headed back home. We put the supplies in their cabinets, and I worked on refilling my pill dispenser trays. I have SIX Augmentin pills left, that gets me until 8PM Sunday.
I have an intermittent annoying pinch on my left side just under my ribs and a little above my belt line also on my left side. The pinch feels to be just under the skin in both places.
I opened the refrigerator and the light went out, the countertop light was also out so the problem was the UPS in the garage. I checked the voltage on the batteries and one bank of batteries were completely dead. The other three banks were ok except the 10A fuses were blown. I put 15A fuses on them and restarted the UPS while I replaced bank #4. I may install bank #5 if I can find the wires. After the batteries have settled down with a full charge, I’ll drop the fuses back to 10A each.
The refrigerator is acting weird too, the temperature went to -10 in the freezer when I plugged it into the house power. (Which is well below the -6 setpoint.) The refrigerator temp is correct at 36 degrees, and the freezer is -5 and that’s good so far. I checked the power monitor, 156W and it drew very close to a reasonable amount of power today. I put a power fail alarm on the refrigerator outlet so I’ll know right away if it happens again.
Checked our Glucose and BP, they were good today. Time to get ready for bed and take my last Augmentin pill for the day. The metallic taste has come back, I don’t know if the Isopropyl alcohol I accidently sprayed on my tongue has anything to do with this. I looked it up, 10mg is the starting point for affecting your health. The taste is not severe, and my health otherwise is mostly ok. I am a little more tired than normal, but I am not sleeping regularly either.
Friday
Dental appointment at 9:15 this morning, trying to get a referral for an oral surgeon and get advice on the Amoxicillin regiment that will end on Sunday. Funny thing is the E-Mail they sent me says the appointment is at 9AM (Not 9:15) The dentist had the referral ready for me when I got there so there was really no wait. I did not get an additional Augmentin prescription, and it will run out on Sunday.
We went to Longhorn for lunch and then to Interstate Batteries to drop off a pile of old batteries and we bought two new ones for the refrigerator. I am going to try putting the new ones on the floor of the garage to keep them cool.
Deli meat on rye bread for supper with rice cakes and creme cheese for dessert. My body aches were pretty severe tonight, took an entire Acetaminophen and a 200mg Ibuprofen too.
Saturday
One 24V bank of batteries died yesterday, and the refrigerator took out the remaining three bank’s 10A fuses to take down the UPS yesterday evening. Startup current is 700W and that’s 35A so three 10A fuses was insufficient to carry the 3x12A needed by the refrigerator. Now that I know I NEED four batteries I bought a fifth bank and connected it to the UPS. The startup current is just 7A per battery with five and just under 9A for four batteries. If a single battery shorts out, the 10A fuse connecting the two batteries will isolate it. With five banks fused at 10A that will provide 50A to the UPS.
Checked in on the WW Net and sipped on a cup of coffee while I worked on installing the new batteries on the refrigerator UPS. The posts on the new batteries were considerably smaller than normal. I could have used the hardware for the 18AH batteries had I looked.
The original wires were about a foot long, but I needed longer wires to reach the batteries on the floor. Knowing I have multiple batteries and multiple wires I can extend the wires quite a bit and keep the same impedance. 30A across one foot of 12AWG has a voltage drop of 0.0477 Volts and five parallel wires @ 5Ft long are the same resistance. (1.4W) The advantage of NOT connecting the batteries together at the batteries is it allows some variance in performance between manufacturers and the batteries age. (I didn’t buy $1,000.00 worth of batteries at one time.) Battery to battery is 20Ft of 12AWG wire which is .0318 Ohms and at just 10A allows 0.32 V difference between the batteries. (Preventing the strong batteries from taking more than their share of the load.)
Grandma’s beef chili for lunch today with cheese and crackers.
We took a good long nap, then I checked the battery temperatures in the garage. The floor is around 80 degrees, the batteries on the carpet are 84 and the batteries on the table are 88 degrees. The floor temperature under the cardboard is 4 degrees cooler at 76. (It might be possible to insulate the batteries from taking heat from the air, but if I did that I’d have to insulate in between the batteries.)
My pills are a mess this evening, I got behind the pill dispensers earlier today and I never got caught up. My shingles and my shoulders are bothering me enough that I took a full 500mg of Acetaminophen to relive the pain.
Sunday
Did some research on her Glipizide medicine, or Dr prescribed “ER” and that pill should never be cut. It can cause too much drug to be released and the plastic shell is not dissolvable leaving two sharp edges to pass through her bowel.
I put insulation around one of the batteries to see how well it runs with only the ground connection. The batteries on the table were 88 degrees already, that was surprising!
Her Glucose was high this morning so we decided to take it every hour to see how the Glipizide she took at 05:30 affected it. Had scrambled eggs for breakfast and we got ready for church services this morning.
I’m up with the wife and her 5:30 medications. My tooth #29 is much better, just like last night before I ate the salmon. I need to let the root of my tooth heal before I can eat anything. Then I need to lower the pressure of the water pick to prevent pushing food down into the roots of my teeth. Getting old is so much fun.
It’s raining outside, no lightning so I connected my antennas to meet up with the HAM radio guys. (But then I went to sleep and missed them.)
My tooth is behaving itself and there is a small clot in my cheek from the cavity in the bone. (Normal for me, I take aspirin to break up the clots.)
Today was our first day away from home with all our medicine in hand.
We left our home with our timers on our wrists and the emergency medicine kit in her purse. While we were at the dollar store her timer went off for Prilosec, which we took in the parking lot. My timer for 11:30 went off at Longhorn’s and I took them while I was in the restaurant. We both took our “after lunch” medication before we left the restaurant. The 12:30 timer went off while we were at Wally World’s, but we’d both had taken that medication. After we got home, we replenished the emergency box from the three pill trays that had medicine waiting on us. All in all, it all just worked out just fine!
I had chicken tenders for lunch since I wanted to keep my eating down to a minimum. (This should be the only meal of the day, no breakfast, not even coffee.) I brushed and water picked at very low pressure to remove the chicken from my gums.
More rain is on the way, lightning is with it. I had a plate of hard cooked eggs (Not Scrambled) because I am just a bit hungry. My weight has dropped from 215 to 210 during this ordeal. It’s 1:25 and I am turning on the A/C and headed back to bed.
Tuesday
Forgot to turn the Dehumidifier & A/C back on, humidity got to 63% with all the rain.
With the two of them working together the house environment will return to normal very quickly. Our home is so small that the humidity can creep up on us in the summer. I do need to add hoses to the bathroom vents to evacuate the humidity out of the attic.
We put our emergency medicine box in her purse and headed downtown to Emory for our appointment today. The appointment went well, but the Psychiatrist we’ve had access to at Emory is leaving Atlanta and we’ll have to ask our PCP to pick up the medications she prescribed. There’s no option to stay with Emory with Psychiatry doctor. We headed to Longhorn for lunch and took our medications before and after dinner according to our wrist timers.
It started raining after we got back home so we took a good long nap. I went to Lowes and dropped off the two bad bulbs over the laundry area. Batteries and Bulbs wanted 8 dollars for recycling the two bulbs. I thought to myself that if I am buying new bulbs at Lowes, they should accept the old ones? I purchased LED replacements and installed them over the laundry area, it’s MUCH brighter now.
I filled my pill trays a little early, but I was unable to sleep and needed something to do. I read the news for a while, but it was getting boring. I tried to watch TV for a little while but then got very sleepy.
Wednesday
It is raining again, no lightning but there is a good amount of rain out there. Checked in with the guys on the WW net.
Cleared some of the living room floor.
Washed hoses and tanks today. Washing hoses amounts to siphoning water between two storage tubs and drying them with air. The tanks are soaked in a large bowl of warm soapy water with a bit of white vinegar.
Well, I’ve solved one piece of my sore mouth. Tooth #31 on the outside is rather sensitive and has been for a couple days. The rest of the teeth have settled down now that I’ve turned the pressure in water pik way down after talking to the doc at Emory. Tonight, I flushed #31 with diluted H2O2 and it immediately felt better. I’ve known for about a day that what I eat has a direct relationship with my discomfort. Sauces are high on the list. I guess it is time to see the dentist, too late for an appointment today. I have changed to a non-alcoholic mouthwash, that should help it heal.
I also have the same problem that she has, I am a nibbler…. I am eating something all throughout the day and that may be preventing my gums from healing. Coffee with sugar and cereal with raisins and milk for breakfast. (Or eggs) When I emptied my trash can there was no less than 30 bite size baby ruth bars wrappers, that’s pure sugar with nuts to pack it in. I guess the thing to do is stop drinking diet coke as a refreshment, maybe at dinner only. Soft drinks encourage the body to overeat.
Warm salt water, that’s the current plan!
Thursday
Slept in until 7AM when my wrist alarm went off. I took my before breakfast meds and checked in with the guys on WW Net. I spent a good deal of time on my gums this morning. Best I can tell I have two issues. Tooth #28 has an abscess underneath it and tooth number #31 the gum line is in the crack between the crown and the tooth. The brush is not getting down in between the tooth and the gum because the crown is overlapping the top of the gum. We called the dentist and no one answered the phone. The answering service did make an appointment for 9AM tomorrow. We drove there and sure enough the office was closed even though the door says it’s open Monday through Saturday. We drove to a Doc in the box and picked up some Amoxicillin for me to take for the next 24 hours. I assume that the dentist will have prescribed Amoxicillin for the infection anyway. (It doesn’t start working for 36 hours.)
Friday
Took my Amoxicillin very early this morning and slept in until 8AM. Checked in with the WW Net and got ready for my appointment at 9AM. Dentist gave me a referral for the Endodontist, and I headed home. We headed out for Longhorn and stopped by the bank on the way out. We were there pretty early so we walked around the building several times waiting on them to open. Tiffany waited on us and after the manager let us in. No extras today, just two salads with Diet Coke.
One of the servers came to us thanking us for our generosity, she said that it has really helped her.
Bad day for the lawn service, their trimmer may have a hard time starting up again. (Another shower is headed our way. This may not drain before it gets here.)
Lots of muddy water from the neighbor’s yard.
I have quite a family of pill dispensers, and it grew yesterday. We have our normal three dispensers for our medications. One dispenser is dedicated to OTC Acetaminophen and Ibuprofen tablets every three hours to prevent us from taking too many.
The newbie is for Amoxicillin; I need it because it is terribly important to take these pills on schedule. I took the first pill at 4 in the afternoon. I’d like to rotate the times to early morning and late evening. Moving them takes planning and reminders. The first 24 I took as prescribed. The next three days I am moving them slowly. The afternoon pill was moved from 4PM to 5PM today, effectively changing 875mg to 805mg. As an elderly person there is a risk to my liver to take this medicine at such a large dose.
We had cold cuts on Rye for dinner with creme cheese on rice cakes.
Saturday
Checked in with the HAM guys on the WW Net, I could not hear more than half most of the conversations.
Major progress on the living room today.
Okay then, we got this in the mail today.
I set my above wrist alarm watch for 19:00. We got new bands today and she opted for the pink band instead of the red one. I think I’ll keep the black one.
Our favorite wagon family went by again today with the new one.
Our neighbor took the garbage can in for her today.
And I took their recycling can in for them.
The family waved back when they went home.
Now that I’ve stopped taking Gabapentin the nerve pain on my back is getting worse. What I didn’t know (And no one told me) is that it is recommended I get vaccinated against shingles. With two doses, Shingrix is more than 90% effective in preventing shingles and postherpetic neuralgia. Other shingles vaccines are offered outside of the United States. Talk to your provider for more information on how well they prevent postherpetic neuralgia. With the Gabapentin the rash was not really bothersome, but the side effects of stopping Gabapentin is worth getting the vaccine at this point.
Her glucose numbers are rising. We need to figure out why!
Sunday
We are getting close to the end of both of our lives, and the political climate is to selfishly pit one family member against the other. Since the eldest of our children has decided to stand against me, we’ll probably pull all the beneficiary names off all our accounts. If there is anything left after taking care of us and paying for the probate lawyer, we’ll probably give that to charity.
My body pain was pretty high a little after midnight, so I drew a nice hot bath. I also took a whole 500mg Acetaminophen and 200mg Ibuprofen
It’ been hard moving these doses one hour later at every dose. We’ll be on a firm schedule with the Amox after today which will be a LOT easier to manage.
I am using one of the battery powered pill dispensers for the Amoxicillin doses. Even though you cannot load overlapping times, it has been a life saver. I set the green flash 30Min before and it flashes red when I am supposed to take them.
I need to go onto the endodontist’s website today and register for an appointment to take care of my abscessed tooth #29. They gave her 800mg Amox and I am currently taking 875mg.
Registered with Kersh Endodontics, I missed an opportunity to schedule an appointment with them on their website after I registered. I’ll have to wait until they call me back on Monday to schedule an appointment.
CF Philippines sent me an E-Mail with two letters from Mariel that I hadn’t seen. One thing I did notice is that the “Chit” attached to the thank you letter now gives the child two whole months to write a letter back. The money leaves the US at the end of the month no matter what day it was given. It takes 2-3 weeks to change hands into the local partner and made available to the child’s family. That’s 5-6 weeks after I spent the money from my account. Now that the family has the money there’s another 8 weeks before the thank you letter has to be back with the in-country partner. They also give 8 weeks for the physical letter to make its way to the central office in New York where the letters are actually mailed individually. So now there’s 22 weeks between the gift to the family and any acknowledgement from that family what they did with it.
We had a simple plate of scrambled eggs and coffee for breakfast.
It’s sprinkling, albeit very lightly. (No lightning)
We discussed our options and decided to go to Longhorn for lunch to celebrate our anniversary because of a doctor’s appointment next door. We had a good lunch thanks in part to Tiffany.
Back home we took our medicine and took a nap. We forgot to bring our medications with us to the doctor’s appointment/lunch.
That’s been a reoccurring theme where we’re not home with our pill dispensers and we forget to take them.
We have a pill tray with all of our medications for 24 hours, but we need a reminder to (1) take the medications with us and (2) to take them at the proper time.
We bought two TabTime – Medication Management Products wrist timers to wear when we are going to miss our medications. That and the pill organizers we have should cover us for a short trip. If we’re going for more than a couple days, we’ll bring the battery powered 28 slot dispensers instead. (They’re not WiFi so the battery lasts much longer than 4 days.) We could power the WiFi dispensers we normally use with an external battery or the vehicle power, but I am thinking that’s a bit too much to travel with.
Tuesday
Got up around 7 and made some eggs sunny side up with breakfast sausage and rye toast. Checked in on the WW net and read some news before getting so tired I could not keep my eyes open. We have chicken and beef stew meat dated for the 19th to cook today since we went out to eat yesterday.
Chicken breasts are done, albeit a little overcooked. (They will be a little tough.) The beef stew is done too, but we have to wait until it cools before we can open the Insta-Pot. Dinner was really good, leftovers are in the fridge. Not sure what we are going to use all the chicken for since we have all the beef stew.
I cut up the chicken breast and added some salad dressing to make chicken salad for sandwiches. It was quite good and healthy since there’s no added salt or sugar.
Watched Sue Thomas FBEye for a couple of episodes. We did take our Glucose and blood pressure reading for tonight.
Wednesday
Woke up with a sensitive tooth this morning, on a scale of 1-10 it is a 2. It is like tooth #30 which is the same tooth that she almost had to have pulled. Well, I brushed, flossed, picked and rinsed with H2O2. I’ve been lucky so far with using Hydrogen Peroxide to ward off teeth infections. Well, no sugar until I get this resolved!
Line of thunderstorms rolled through last night about 2AM, slept right through it.
Lightning lit up the wet front yard at 2AM this morning.
We went to Longhorn’s after the doctor’s appointment;
Tiffany had it all setup for us! We had a delicious meal and cheesecake for dessert.
We messed up taking our medications on time, we’re hoping the timer bracelets will solve the problem for us. I also attached my phone to her pill dispensers today. (I honestly didn’t think that I’d have too.)
Upset tummy tonight, old faithful crackers and coke.
Thursday
Up at 8AM and checked in with the HAM guys on the WW net. Took a shower with the Mrs. and we’re trying to organize our day. We’ve taken our morning meds, the next alarm is at 10:30.
We went to Wally World and got some $200 worth of staples, sheesh it has gotten expensive. I need to look back and see how much we spend a year getting groceries at Wally World.
Had chicken breast with BBQ sauce, it was actually quite good.
Filled our pill trays today, we empty the last slot every Wednesday. We then swap out the entire tray after 5PM to be filled on Thursday.
Got four new trays today, battery powered (No WiFi.)
This is a much better solution when traveling, runs on batteries only.
Pulled all the pain medications from the other trays to put in the new dispenser.
It will rotate, flash green and dispense 2x 250mg Acetaminophen and 1x Ibuprofen tablets every three hours.
Reset her carousels to 2x and 3x per day after removing the pain meds. 3x per day is nine days for 28 slots, so we’ll just leave the eight extra slots empty to stay on a weekly schedule. 2x per day works out to 14 days, which means we fill it every other week which is ok too. Mine is still 4x and seven days since I only am using one dispenser.
Friday
Woke up with a rash down both arms and around my neck area. It doesn’t really itch, but I can feel the warmth. Checked in with the HAM radio guys on the WW Net. Made eggs and had breakfast with the Mrs. this morning.
It’s 11AM and the rash is still on my arms and hands.
The tops of my fingers itch up to the first joint.
The rash is just below the sleeve of my shirt down to my wedding ring. Google Foo says it is common to have this rash on the forearm when getting off the Gabapentin drug. I also have a bit of a rash around my neck, all of this feels very similar to a mild sunburn. (But I’ve not been outside for any length of time.) The muscles on my torso just under my left arm are sore for some reason.
Salmon for dinner, with sweet potatoes and frozen veggies.
Met up with our garbage hauler, he had a NICE pair of sunglasses!
I tried my best to show the rash on this website to no avail. (It looks much more prominent in person.)
This is a women’s belt that I use as a chin strap, I sleep on my left side away from the buckle. The normal chin straps are elastic and always apply pressure, the belt only applies significant pressure when I try to open my mouth. If I open my mouth while I am sleeping, it will dry my soft palate. The soft palate then becomes sticky and will not let air flow to my nasal passages. The belt is not tight enough to prevent mouth breathing. (An athletic mouthguard does prevent mouth breathing.)
The women’s belt (chin strap) fits nicely under my CPAP mask.
Mowed the back yard and then sat down for a bowl of sweet potatoes while watching Sue Thomas FBEye. Her Glucose was over 150 and she can’t remember what she ate for it to be that high. (Me Either, mine was 108)
Saturday
Our wrist timers should be here today. Hard time sleeping, had to take a whole 500mg of Acetaminophen and 500mg of ibuprofen before I got some sleep. Checked in with the HAM guys on the WW net this morning. We did a load of whites this morning. The four pill carousels have been doing well. The medicine was loaded correctly after changing the three of them from 4x per day.
Lunch was beef stew in the Insta-Pot, we were a little light on the veggies. We were thinking of going to Longhorn for some drinks until we remembered that this weekend is school graduations.
We gave away another wagon today.
We got our His & Hers timer bracelets today. We set them according to the pill dispenser times and they vibrate soundly when the alarm arrives. (It can store 10 alarms)
I did disable the 05:30 alarm for her since she’ll probably be sleeping. I disabled MY 07:00 alarm for the same reason. (I don’t want it to “Wake” us to take our pills that have an arbitrary time that will likely wake us.)
The timer part comes out to be charged with a regular uUSB cable. The manual says it only takes a couple hours to charge them.
Our neighbors brought over some Mexican food for us to eat. (I kinda stabbed her fingers with my nails trying to get under the plate.)
My lower jaw from #30 to 28 all are sensitive tonight. It started with #30 last night. I drank coffee after lunch because none of them were bothering me, and I had whole grain cereal for breakfast. It all started tonight when I flossed with dental tape. Maybe I pushed food down into the roots of my teeth? (No more dental floss!)
I used a water pick to flush my gums with a 50/50 mix H2O2 and water tonight. I also use a soft bristled electric toothbrush to clear my gums. They will be sore from all the scrubbing, but hopefully not divulge into a tooth infection/abscess. For now, without any pain meds the pain is not uncomfortable unless I am chewing with those teeth. My jaw below the teeth is sensitive and hurts when pressure is applied, which is not good! It got a LOT worse in about 4 hours tonight when I chose to take care of it later. Oopsies!
02:30, gums still sore, maybe just a bit more sensitive than when I went to bed several hours ago. Rinsed with H2O2 and then mouthwash to clear the bacteria from my mouth and gums. I know that there is a cavity in my bone in both sides of my jaw, if that cavity gets infected it could cause the removal of all the teeth on one side. Last time this happened I used a syringe to push H2O2 into my jaw to kill the infection.
17:00, gums not very sore. (I am hoping this is all behind me, boy I am hungry.) I broke down and had two rice cakes with creme cheese on them. Time to check the website for today’s service.
Slept in until 8:30, missed the guys on the HAM radio this morning. I have a bit of a caffeine headache this morning.
Made my coffee while I cut up some Tylenol tablets. A normal adult dose is 325ng/4-6HRS, BUT no more than 10 in 24. Divide 25 by 10 gives you 1 pill every 2.5 hours. Extra Strength is 1000MG/6 Hrs, BUT no more than 6 in 24. Devide 24 by 6 gives us ONE pill every four hours. The 500mg tablets are very easy to cut in half to 250mg. For us Seniors taking a HALF of a pill every two hours is much easier to manage. After splitting these pills in half for a year, we’ve also found out that half a pill (250mg) is usually enough. The only thing is that breaking the coating by cutting them in half will reduce the effective life of these pills. (I have to rotate them! The idea is that we switch all of them between the red ones [Pubix] and white ones [Wally World] every three months.)
Turkey chili left over from yesterday for lunch today. We’ve been cleaning today, the kitchen table was the first on our list then the Den where we spend most of our time together. (Cept for the bedroom of course.)
Turned out to be a beautiful partly sunny day today.
Finished off the turkey chili and checked in with the guys on the GARS 2M ham radio net tonight.
The + symbol is now on the opposite side of the connector from when I bought the first of these connectors in June 2021. (When we were locked in our home during COVID.) Most of the wall warts at that time used the same 18AWG twin lead wire. 75% of the wall warts used the marked side of the wire as POSITIVE which I copied for my connections. (I originally thought the marked side would be negative.) I never saw the + symbol on these connectors until today and some are 4 years old!
I used these examples on Amazon. I did a search today for images of these connectors and about 50% of them ARE wired like the above picture. Sometime in the past they changed the markings to the other side or just added them. (I don’t remember seeing them at first.) Seven hundred connectors in my home are wired like the above pictures and most don’t match the markings on the connectors. Once you start using them it’s very dangerous to change them and they are $0.30 each. Even 500 would cost me $150 to replace them.
And I thought they were all the same, oops! And the differences are all bad…
The only observed difference is that the green one varied its connection considerably between a disconnect/connect. Sometimes it wouldn’t click into place at all. So far, they seem to connect well between the two types, just the green ones can have issues connecting to each other. I’ve only had one case where the connection got warm, the load across that connection was several amps. Almost all the connections in my home are less than 1 Amp. As the power requirement went up, I raised the voltage to drop the current. I just recently raised the voltage to 24V on these new USB-C devices for that reason. I need to look at the hundreds of connectors I am using and see if there is a third type in the pile.
Tuesday
Got up around 7:45 and checked in with the Ham radio guys. Sent the monthly gifts to our sponsored children today. I have a subscription for Norton AntiTrack that’s on one of my laptops, it costs $50…
Zaxby’s for lunch today, Cobb Salad.
Put some bait down for the ants that have nested behind this wood. (I don’t know why this wood is here, the water pipes do enter the home behind it.)
We ran a bath and had a good soaking today after our nap.
My Sophos firewall lets me choose what countries to block any connections.
We filled her pill trays in preparation for changing them tomorrow. I put one day’s pills in a pill box to replenish tomorrow’s pills since we’re doing this ahead of time. We are out of one of her pills, I am going to call them tomorrow and get them early.
Had a ham sandwich on Rye for supper and strawberry creme cheese on a rice cake for dessert.
I changed up the power for our pill dispensers.
This is a really old USB car charger, but it’s perfect for these pill dispensers. (I have had this charger for a really long time.)
Wednesday
Up at 6, the pill dispensers are aligned properly, and she has taken her medications this morning. It’s raining and there is a significant amount of thunder in the distance. I checked in with the HAM guys on the WW Net this morning.
Spilled coffee all over my radio computer’s keyboard. Poured distilled water over it and took it apart to let it dry out. They glued one screw in place so there’s no way to disassemble the keyboard completely without drilling out the last screw.
Added a new book to our collection to keep track of events. Our shortfall is events that happen beyond every day where what was done needs to be recorded. Our CPAPS are a challenge in that her mask needs to be changed every two days. Our tanks and hoses need to be changed weekly. Our air filters on those units need to be changed monthly.
Took a nap while the oven warmed up for the salmon dinner.
Salmon tasted terrific, butter and sugar with cinnamon for the sweet potatoes.
We took a good long nap after dinner.
I managed to lose my lunch after drinking a cup of coffee late tonight. I ended up eating potato chips and coke to settle my stomach. Crackers and coke ended up in the commode. My eye is also bothering me more than normal. If using eye drops doesn’t help, I need to make a Dr appointment to have it checked.
Thursday
I tossed all the coffee from last night and there are no eggs made for breakfast. I spent an hour or so reading the news online and watching OAN on Roku. It sounds like that OAN will be returning to cable networks after the US Government had them censored for fake news.
Chicken thighs with sweet potatoes and Normandy frozen veggies for lunch. Then we took a good long nap. It’s 2PM and I am trying to get a plan together.
Pure decadence, two Ballpark franks, chips and a Coke.
Glucose looks good, my A1C was about 6.1on our last visit.
Another pretty day today, albeit a bit warmer than yesterday
Friday
Got up around 8AM and had a cup of coffee that I had put in the thermos last night. Made scrambled eggs for the Mrs. and checked in on the WW net with the HAM radio guys. It’s going to storm north of us so traveling is not in the picture at all.
I have some discolored skin that needs to be addressed.
This is what it looked like in December, 5 months ago.
Dinner was a pork tenderloin, sweet potatoes and Normandy frozen veggies.
Severe weather north of us headed East.
She made Dinner, Pork Tenderloin, Sweet potatoes and veggies.
It was a cloudy day, but no rain to speak of. I did get a package from Amazon today.
I received 200M (600Ft) of wire to play with today. It has turned out to be the orange wire that I used for everything in Las Vegas and the purple wire I used for everything in Elgin. (Until my sister used it as a barrel for her horse and it kicked the end of it off.)
Watched Sue Thomas FB Eye until we decided to retire for the evening.
Saturday
Storms are just west of us headed our way. I can hear the crashes on my HF radio from the lightning, but I cannot hear any thunder just yet.
Cleaned the dehumidifier sensor and changed the settings in the Home Assistant so the dehumidifier does not run all the time. I tried using the humidifier sensor, but it was at least 30% off.
Sunday
Had hard boiled eggs for breakfast, my eye is really bothering me today and it’s raining so we’re staying put. We had a frozen turkey breast with red potatoes and veggies for lunch. I posted the service to the church website and checked it.
Took a good long nap to close my eye for a while. My right eye bothers me more than the left, but I think they are both too dry. We watched Sue Thomas FB Eye until we started our evening routine.
Using DC-DC inverters has really worked out great for powering USB devices that are in the same area, but not really close together. I can use this twin lead wire to reach them instead of a long USB cable. (Long USB cables have a lot of loss at more than an amp.) These 20AWG wires have losses too, but they are on the input side of the voltage regulator.
The one problem that continued to crop up was powering Raspberry Pi’s, they have a rather dynamic load that seems to overwhelm the voltage regulator or the USB cable. I started out using 12V since it’s a very common voltage used on low voltage devices. (I could tap off of the 12V powering the switch to power the wireless router.) I ended up stacking so many USB DC-DC converters I overwhelmed the 12V power supplies.
When we got our first Echo Show, it came with a nice 18V power supply. I could tap off that 18V and power many 22V DC-DC converters. I had an entire table of devices in the hotel powered from the one 18V Echo Show power supply. (However, back home, the Raspi’s still were complaining about their 5V rail dropping out even at 18V. ) These devices were not able to handle 24V which is very common in our home.
I bought heavier DC-DC converters and still had issues with them at 18V source voltage even with larger 3Amp power supply.
I just found out this week that raising the supply voltage to the 24V USB-C family of DC-DC converters (That I already had) supplied enough current to keep them happy! They will still be waiting on the table for Rasberry Pi foundation to fix remote desktop for their operating system. RealVNC does not work with the newer Pi 4 devices and using Microsoft Remote Desktop doesn’t work very well either. The Raspberry Pi’s in our home are delegated to Home Assistant, Flight Aware or the shelf ! (Personally I think it was a waste of money purchasing these Pi 4’s.)
The newer power supplies use shielded wires and that’s not as easy as the IDC connectors I’ve been using. But, I can put three IDC capable wires into the 5.5mm adapter. Any more than three pairs of wires per connector just gets awfully messy.
I have cut off the 5.5mm barrel connector and fastened a Power Pole connector in its place. You still cannot put more than 4 pairs of these white wires in a PP45 connector. I have tried using large butt connectors and three wires per side in the hotel room setup. But it’s still awfully large and messy pile of wires at a single point. Another Idea I have is to use a 5.5mm “Y” cable to stretch between two sets of three wires. That way there’s only one larger wire stretched between two distribution points of three wires each on the hotel room desk.
Woke a little early and went to bed for a bit of a nap. I took my pills grabbed a cup of coffee and checked in with my fellow hams.
No Margarita’s today, just writing E-Mails about yesterday’s church service.
It took us eight hours to stand it up and tear it down, I was exhausted!
I spent a good part of this morning documenting the equipment that was being used. I had three boiled eggs and breakfast sausages for breakfast this morning.
We had left over turkey breast for lunch with sweet potatoes and frozen veggies, it was quite delicious. We took a good nap afterwards. It was also a beautiful day today, so we drove to the park to check out the pavilion’s tables.
A couple of them were moved, but mostly they are where they were yesterday.
We had sandwiches for dinner and watched a little TV before the 2M net at 7:30. I checked in with them and turned off the 2M radio again.
Measured my Glucose, it was a little high after drinking grape juice and crackers.
Off to bed.
Tuesday
Challenging day, I got up around 8AM and checked in with the HAM radio guys. I spent a little while researching Peter’s request for an inventory before our 9:30 meeting. We laid out a timeline to get a nap, groceries, dinner at Zaxby’s and arrive home. That plan went well until we got to Kroger. On the way out of Kroger we were behind three other people trying to get past the grocery carts that were piled up at the exit door. The poor guy in the front was on a handicap buggy and it wouldn’t fit in the space they left at the door. For whatever reason they totally filled the vestibule with carts all the way to the other wall. There was no room to pull a cart from the long rows of buggies. After they moved a couple carts out of the way we all piled out of Kroger. I went back in and asked for a manager, the cashier pointed to a women counting the cash at the safe. (I know better than to bother anyone at the safe.) I went back to the Kroger vestibule and started moving carts out of the exit lane. About three carts later I hear an employee yelling at me saying something on the order that Kroger will take care of the carts. I got the impression that she was the one that piled all of the carts in that area. I asked her why she was yelling at me and again she said something to the tune that Kroger will take care of the carts. A man walked up behind me and asked why I was yelling at that young employee instead of walking over to her and having a conversation. I started walking toward the female employee that was about 30 feet from me and then I just stopped. She could take my approach as threatening and then I would be in trouble. I asked her to come over and I would explain the situation with the carts. I maintained a safe distance and then told her that the exit doors cannot have anything blocking our exit from the store. It’s a fire code requirement. We then exited the store and went to get our zalads for lunch.
It was emotional to be yelled at for clearing the exit of a business. She should have helped me or gone to her supervisor before confronting me. Buggies are customers to use as we like, they are provided to facilitate our purchases through the store. It’s absurd to confront a customer about moving carts around the store entrance by yelling at him.
Wednesday
Checked in with the HAM radio guys and finished documenting the service last Sunday. It took me 3 days to pull all the information together. No breakfast today, we didn’t have any hard-boiled eggs ready.
Light Rain today, good day to work on organizing.
Lunch was beef stew for lunch with carrots, onions and potatoes. We refilled our medicine this afternoon before the normal time after 5PM since we’re not going to be home. The normal plan is to swap trays and fill the tray Thursday. I need to empty the van tomorrow. I’ve been busy with capturing the outdoor service data for the church.
We washed masks and hoses for our CPAP machines this afternoon instead of returning all the equipment to storage.
Church services tonight so I’m calling it a day.
Thursday
Checked in with the HAM radio guys and had two eggs with several sausage links.
I’ve spent an hour or so organizing the things I have to do, it’s quite a list! Took our BP and Glucose while I sipped on a cup of coffee. Talked to Paul for a few minutes, he is preparing to get his sister from Illinois this weekend. We planned our day to include a trip to the doctor this afternoon. I am putting all three laptops on the Internet for W10 updates.
Dinner was terrific, we added veggies to the beef stew from yesterday.
We headed to Public Storage to unload the van after we did dishes. We ran out of time before her doctor appointment, so we still have the monitors and a few tubs still in the van tonight. Doc appointment went well. They cleared out the wax in her ear with warm water.
Back home we found the front lawn had been mowed. I mowed 2/3rd of the back yard before I got too tired to finish. The grass was getting wet after the sun went down so I couldn’t go much further anyway. I measured my Glucose and to my utter surprise it was 110 without eating anything. (I thought it would be under 100.)
Back inside I had soup and a couple rice cakes for dinner. We watched a couple shows until 8:30 and went to bed.
I’m starting to have issues with powering my devices on DC. I’ve been using 18V for a while now and the power supply is good for 30W.
These were used to power the Echo Show 18V@ 1.67A 30W
I bought several of these 18VC KFD @ 2.7A and 50W
I have four of these CPAP power supplies 24V 90W@ 3.74A
The Beryl AX can draw 15W which means I can power 2 or three devices maximum.
Another problem I have is the connectors, they’re good for a couple amps MAX.
If I work this from the device that draws 15W @ 5V, I can power one device from the Echo power supply and it’s under an amp. Three devices from the 18V KFD power supply if I use Power Pole connector adapters and six devices from the 24V KFD power supply with an adapter.
I have 14 USB powered devices on my HAM desk, in the old days I could power them from six outlet bricks. (But then they drew less than 3W.) There are still six “Mango” routers that will work fine on a Micro USB cord. I have five USB-C travel routers and two Rasberry Pi computers.
Friday
Eggs and sausage for breakfast while I sip on a cup of coffee.
We went to dinner with a couple of friends and our neighbor brought in our garbage can again while we were gone!
I built Dongles by cutting my 3Amp 5V USB-C power supply wires in half.
These 4A power supplies will power the new routers and Raspberry Pi’s.
The 24V power supplies arrived today, so far, they are testing out perfectly!
The HF Noise from the 14KV upgrade is gone, whatever it was blew apart yesterday.
Finished mowing the back yard with the help of our neighbors. They are pretty awesome people, we routinely exchange doing things for each other.
Saturday, Rain
It’s supposed to be wet most of the day today.
Took her glucose, 122 which is a little high for her. But she did just eat breakfast. (I don’t have a chance to get her glucose before she eats at 7AM.)
Off to Longhorn’s for lunch, our friend was there today! We gave the server a generous tip to help them buy a home now that they are married. Lunch was terrific as usual with our extra toppings and our military discount. (Which gives us a code to leave a survey.) It was raining pretty hard on our way home.
We walked up the street and picked up a Mother’s Day gift for our neighbors after it stopped raining. She was selling Mary Kay cosmetic baskets. We bought two and delivered them to our neighbors next door.
Our neighbors brought over a piece of cake for Mother’s Day later in the evening.
It was very moist, like it had pudding in it.
The power supplies from Digi Key arrived today.
I wasn’t thrilled that the power supplies were not rated as VI. But they didn’t get warm idle or when loading them either. The one thing this power supply does have is a live circuit LED that flashes when overloaded.
Barrel connector and reciptical with terminals.
I’ve never been a fan of these terminal adapters, but I may rethink that. They often come with power supplies and I’ve either put them in a drawer or just tossed them. The one advantage that comes with my current project is the length of wire varies considerably with the application. Previous installations promoted wires that were much too long for the application to prevent waste of butt connectors when changing them.
I tried three wires in the adapter today, I don’t think I can get four into it. As long as the connection is reliable, I may shift to these connectors which solves another issue.
Modern power supplies come with round wires and a shielded crab connector. The typical open-faced barrel connector does not “Grip” the center pin for a good contact. The round wires are a pain to re-terminate cleanly, it’s much better to use the barrel connector if I can.
These can be powered from 5V USB bricks. 0 TP-Link 6 uSB Mango’s 2 uSB Raspi’s 1 uSB Creta left. They are EOL, I am retiring them. 0 uSB Slate Upgrade to 24V, these are 5V high current devices. NOT PD compatible. 2 USB-C Beryl 2 USB-C Opal left, they are EOL too. 4 USB-C Raspi’s
Sunday Mother’s Day
Did not sleep very well, my body and my mind seem to be in different places this morning. I got a call from church and had to make a run to storage to get a couple cables for them. It took an hour to get dressed, drive to PS get to the school. We participated in services using Zoom today. I posted the service on the website shortly after lunch.
2x Beryl, Home Assistant and the Pi-Hole are now on 24V where they have a bit more power to stay alive. There is one 18V adapter and two 24V adapters to power all 17 USB devices on my bench.
Watched a couple episodes of the Sue Thomas FBEye series before heading to bed. Took one Benadryl and I slept for 11 hours.
Had a rough night, weather and all this heavy equipment is taking a toll on me. I did manage to check-in with the Ham radio guys this morning.
I set them out to test them, all four are working.
The van has the fender speakers in it and the weather is going to be in the 80’s.
Covered the speakers with a comforter to keep them cool. I checked them at 4:30 in the afternoon and they were just as cool as they were when I covered them.
Salmon for dinner with sweet potatoes and veggies.
Power will be shut off at 1PM, we’ll have to see how fast that goes.
The lightning arrestor failed shortly after they turned the power back on with the higher voltage. It yanked the tale the wire from the distribution wires which allowed them to turn the power back on. Then they promptly turned it back off to replace both arrestors LOL. Power is back on, everything held up on battery for the duration of 3 hours. The computer room UPS didn’t even go to the caution battery is low.
4PM and the air conditioning is back on, now that they are done playing around with the power. (It’s probably been a long day for them.) The deep cycle batteries are all charging so I opened the garage for some fresh air. I have a couple batteries in my cave too that are charging back up so that small window is open. When the garage door is ajar the top part of the door is open to let the heat & gas escape.
Tuesday
Up a little late it’s almost 8AM, I did manage to check in on the WW Net this morning.
I worked on my network firewalls today. When I replaced the obsolete FortiGate 60D with a 60F the configuration did not pull IPV6 addresses from our Comcast ISP. I didn’t spend a lot of time on it last year since the FortiGate 60E on AT&T did have IPV6 working. Today I found out that Comcast stopped giving residential customers 16 subnets, which is why the configuration failed. They chose to do what AT&T did, offer just one subnet to residential customers. Now, granted that’s still over 65,000 IP addresses to a home that probably never have more than 100. The problem is that IF the entire home network on one subnet, the broadcast domain gets very congested. IPV6 doesn’t lend itself to subdividing networks like IPV4 did either. I don’t know if Comcast also 1:1 NAT the IPV6 like AT&T did at our gateway.
Longhorn for lunch and sandwiches for dinner today. My glucose was 130 after drinking some of her Margaretta this afternoon. It was 99 tonight after we took a walk up the street after dinner.
After about 4 hours work all my subnets have now have IPV6 addresses. I had to use Network Address Translation to subdivide my home networks. (But they all work and do pass the IPV6 test from the Internet.) YEA!
Wednesday
Up at 7:30 in time to tune into the WW Net.
I noticed a new noise on my HF radio after they raised the distribution voltage to 14KV, I might try taking my portable radio and walking the power lines around me.
I am moving my devices between the 10 networks and I had plans on color coding the network wires.
Right now, they are a bit of a mess behind my desk.
For the wireless in my network I use these GL.iNet travel routers.
One of the first things I do is attach a USB power supply to them.
Then I can power any number of them with a single power supply. The GL.iNet Beryl AX (above picture) locked in an IPV6 address without any hassles! The trouble with these new USB-C devices is that they can be 10W or more. Even with a 30W power supply it can only support three devices. At 18V 30W is maybe 2.0 Amps, the wires and connectors should be limited to 3 Amps. At 24V at 3 Amps is 70W which is double the 18V power supplies.
Thursday
Up at 7AM and I took my medication on time today. I checked-in with the HAM radio guys too. We took our morning shower, and I made a plate of scrambled eggs with breakfast sausages.
Lunch was at Longhorn’s, we gave the entire team $20 each today. (They call me “Santa”.) We planned on getting some meat at Publix, but that didn’t happen.
Back home we took our afternoon nap and dinner was soup, we’re out of Lunch Meat. Her BP was a little high, but we were watching a news show on North Korea’s new destroyer. Went to Public Storage and picked up a couple of tubs to sort through.
Took the garbage out and locked both cars that have church equipment in them.
Friday
Got up around 7 and had scrambled eggs with the wife this morning. The power lines are making so much noise that I cannot hear the guys on 40M this morning.
Moved the equipment out of the car into the van so that we can get groceries. We went to Longhorn again for lunch, the bill was $22 after the discount. We’re back home and it’s sprinkling. We took a nap and headed to Guiter Center for some items we need for the outside service.
Storms headed our way, I’ve disconnected my antennas.
Ordered some new power supplies for these 5V@3A devices like the GL.iNet routers. I can run TWO of these wireless routers on 18V @ 1.6A, but I can run four at 24V @ 2.3A. It’s convenient to have these power supplies with twin lead wire since the connectors attach directly to them. They are migrating all these “wall warts” to a round shielded wire which is more durable, but requires a different approach. I won’t know what I am getting until it arrives.
Our neighbors brought over a Mexican dinner to try out.
the meat was tough as nails, but the sauce and cheese had good flavor. (Spicy Though!) My bowels were noisy this morning LOL.
Saturday
Took a shower with the wife and checked in with the HAM radio guys. It took every watt of my HF radio to reach them this morning. Spent a good part of the morning drawing up plans for the service tomorrow.
Dinner was a frozen turkey breast cooked in the Insta Pot along with Sweat potatoes and frozen veggies. Turned out pretty good, served it in the Serving Crock Pot.
Spent the afternoon loading the van with the equipment for tomorrows service. (It took a lot longer than I expected!)
Spent a couple hours this evening making sure that the wireless router we’re using for Internet at the service tomorrow is all set. It will be used as an Ethernet bridge to my personal T-Mobile hot Spot. I have a spare router, USB cable and power supplies.
Sunday
I spent a couple hours in the middle of the night finishing packing the wires and hardware for today. We got up a little before the 6AM alarm, took a quick shower and got dressed. I loaded the van, and we left around 7AM for the park. We were the first ones there and Larry showed up right after. He had brought some egg McMuffins that really hit the spot. I found out about this gig 10 days ago and I have spent many hours transporting and sorting the equipment.
We moved the equipment out of our vehicles and proceeded to set the tables in their proper places. (We need an isle for the Live Stream Camera.)
I had to cascade two sound boards to handle the 13 channels of audio today, the second board had all the instruments. (Keys, Cajon, Conga’s and electric guitar.) My only complication was that I bought a condenser microphone for the Cajon. The phantom power ended up reaching the electric guitar amp and killing the Line Out. I ended up putting a microphone in front of the amp which worked well.
9 microphones and 4 music instruments is the largest service I’ve done in the park.
By the time we arrived home it was an 8-hour day and we were exhausted! We went to Longhorn’s and that experience was not up to par either. Our salads were less than acceptable with the dressing cups IN the salad and the chicken was overcooked.
Back home I linked the service to the church website and sat down in front of the TV to relax. This by far was a very difficult endeavor that was made so much worse because of poor planning.
Woke about 7:15 which was too late to be on the radio B 4 the boat check-ins. I put on a pot of coffee while they checked-in all the boats.
We did most of our routine and we had 7 scrambled eggs for breakfast. We were tossing things around for lunch and decided on Longhorn in Suwanee. We took a nap when we got home until the linemen rang our doorbell.
They removed the transformer providing the power to our home. The power company is raising the distribution voltage to 14,000V next week. The old transformer had a fixed winding of 7200V so it had to be changed first. There were two such transformers in the neighborhood fed from the substation. I think I’ll throw the main breaker until I’m convinced that our transformer was tapped correctly as the voltage has a good chance of being wrong.
They’re putting the new transformer on the pole after removing the old one. Personally, I would not be standing under something that weighs several hundred pounds.
Almost done, it took a little over an hour to change the transformer.
Moved the equipment out of the van into our living room, I need to inventory the equipment and test it Saturday.
We had leftovers for dinner from Sunday. Ham sweet potatoes and veggies. We didn’t watch much TV, we were pretty spent today.
Tuesday
Up at 6, rebuilt a Raspi 4 and it failed to update. The operating system is locked and my only choice was to cut the power. I tried another SD card and got the same error. I changed the DNS on the router, and it seems to be finally getting all the updates. (The DNS was local but the network traffic was through the VPN, strange you would have thought the VPN would have carried the DNS traffic too.)
Joined the guys in 2M repeater this morning and listening on 40M to see if they come back to me. Checked in on the WW Net after taking a shower.
Salmon, red potatoes and veggies for dinner.
Bought a pair of identification tags for her.
Wednesday
I am up at 7:30, a little groggy though. Spent a good while upgrading my wireless routers this morning. Checked in on the WW Net, talked to Paul and made eggs for breakfast for both of us.
Took a nap and then made dinner together. We steamed the vegetables and microwaved the ham steak.
We warmed the plates on the steamer before serving dinner.
How far can 10Watts reach…. Europe is not too far LOL
It rained pretty hard tonight, little bit of lightning.
Thursday
My average Glucose is 108 my A1C is 6.1, target is less than 100 / 6.0.
I didn’t sleep very well, and I am at fault for not taking my pills on time. If I take Norvasc in the evenings, I have an issue with my feet getting numb after laying down. I think I am going to stop taking Norvasc and closely monitor my BP and see if some of these weird symptoms subside.
Took a shower and I am trying to dissect how a decision was made to have an outside service on the 4th? What happens if it rains? We went to storage and inventoried the large items. It doesn’t look like we’re missing anything for the training session on Saturday. Weather also looks good, overcast skies will keep the direct sun off of us.
Friday
Checked in with the guys on the HAM radio and we ended up going to Longhorn for lunch again today. That’s three times this week! I sent an E-Mail to Larry letting him know that rain is predicted for Saturday and I called off the audio training.
I did put together a bridge router for the service on Sunday. I need to connect it to the cellular hot spot for testing. This is a GL.iNet Opal router, it was only $30 at Amazon today.
Saturday
Checked in with the HAM radio guys and got ready to go to Public Storage to pick up the equipment. That went well, we have everything we need to get Logan up to speed on the equipment in the van. (Picture Needed)
We settled in on eating chicken legs for lunch and Logan showed up while we were eating. We spent several hours hooking things up and seeing how they work.
I put the sound board in the trunk in case it rained, which it didn’t even come close.
We were done by 3PM and I was exhausted.
Our beach cart family came by and waved back at us today. They seem to be making a family event out of doing the laundry now that their burden has been lightened.
I went down for a much-needed nap for several hours. Made our sandwich for dinner and watched some TV.
Sunday
I was still really sore from yesterday and I was coughing up some awful looking sputum, so we decided not to join the family group at Russ’s house. We did go to Longhorn for lunch, but there was no one there to be bothered with a cough.
We stopped by Wally World on the way back and picked up some odds and ends.
Back home we went back to bed for another good nap. They are turning off the power tomorrow afternoon, so I need to get prepared for that. I don’t know how they are going to switch our lines to 14,000 volts a neighborhood at a time?
A new day, geez last week was a long one. Sent a picture of the moon to my daughter and she’s not answered? Checked in on the WW Net with the HAM radio guys while sipping on my coffee.
Time to refill our pill dispensers, a pair of long nose pliers are a must. With three dispensers we always have at least 14 days loaded in them which gives us time to get the next refill.
We cut up the potatoes for lunch and its Nap time! Lunch was ham, red potatoes and frozen veggies. (Normandy Blend) We made short work of cleanup while looking up dietary ways of satisfying hunger between meals.
3:30 We’re getting ready to make a run to Wally World for some odds & Ends after our nap.
I missed having a cart to bring in the groceries, it gets here Friday
Had a sandwich for dinner and checked in on the GARS Monday Net before watching Castle with the Mrs. We checked our Glucose and BP then got ready for bed.
Tuesday
Had a bit of coffee while I checked in on the WW net using my HAM radio.
I send our C.F. sponsored children their gifts for April.
Salmon, red potatoes and frozen veggies for lunch. Checked in for our Dr. Appt tomorrow, answered lots of questions. Changed our pill dispensers to sound an alarm today versus just flashing a blue light. (Boy, you don’t miss that alarm!)
We reworked our morning schedule pages on her NUC and printed two copies for our procedure books.
I found a new use for a folder divider. It worked really well holding the dispensers.
These folding pill cases were cheap, and they’ll work great for traveling. I bought six of them and they have 7 compartments which is two days for us. This is all we’d need for a week of travel, longer trips we can take the 28 compartment dispensers.
Wednesday
We got up around 7:30 and followed our regular routine. We have to leave by 10:30 to get there by 11AM. (It turns out that the “Arrival” time is 11:30 and the appointment time is 12 Noon.) We sat in the waiting room for an hour before being called in. (I dearly hate it when they call an arrival time the “Appointment” time.) The Dr. Appointment went well and we both felt refreshed that we’re finding ways to overcome our problems. They are not actually recognizing the depth of our difficulties, but I don’t really care at this point.
We went to Longhorn’s to celebrate and to refresh her determination to do the best we can. We even had cheesecake for dessert. We made the Hostess’ Day by giving her a gift. She just didn’t believe it when she gave her the final gift of $20 after I had given her two five-dollar bills.
Back home, we needed a nap to prepare for tonight’s service. We had to take our medicine before leaving. Service went well and I changed out the dispenser trays when I got home.
I put the spare in the dispenser and filled my spare tray#2.
Thursday
I got up around 7:30, she was up and had taken her medications already. I didn’t take my medications on time all day. I need to turn ON the audio alarms when things are not going smoothly as they were today. We did fill her two pill trays that we had emptied on Wednesday this morning. (I filled my tray last night.) We took a nap and started making COD for dinner. We didn’t make any mistakes and dinner turned out really well on warmed plates.
We did have some drama while she got a haircut today. I dropped her off at the hairdresser, but she had forgotten her phone. I came home and was waiting for about two hours for her to call. When it became apparent that something was wrong about two hours later, I drove there and met them as the hairdresser was driving her home. She had forgotten MY phone number AND assumed that I was not home. Since I wasn’t home she didn’t bother to call the house phone. She did call HER phone, but we both have call screening, so it didn’t ring. (And she only called once.) Had she called a second time it would have rung. I need to make sure that she has her phone with her. Two issues make that difficult. First she normally carries her phone in her purse (So it’s not visible upon leaving home) AND it is usually buried so deeply she normally cannot find it in a reasonable amount of time.
The decision is to carry our phones in the open so that we verify we both have them when we head out of the house. I am also going to make some kind of tag that we’ll attach to her purse with my phone number on it.
We went to the nursing home and played Bingo tonight. We were also invited to eat a bit of dinner afterwards. She took two pieces of pie even though she knows that will cause her sugar to spike. I took one too and a piece of fried chicken.
We took out the garbage can when we got home for the pickup tomorrow.
Friday
My Pi-Hole has died, I am assuming that the SD card is worn out. I temporarily pointed my private network at Google DNS until I can rebuild one. This has gotten more complicated since most of my Raspi’s are really outdated. I am thinking my best bet is to reload the operating systems, then update them.
Eggs and sausage for breakfast this morning, I need to look at my to-do list before getting too involved in these Raspi’s. Checked her blood O2 levels from last night and they were good.
We went to Wally World for a few groceries today, eggs, juice and frozen veggies.
Mowed the back lawn today and our mowing service mowed the front lawn as well.
Saturday
Checked in with the HAM guys on the WW Net this morning. Signed up with Aetna Dental account as well. I am kinda foggy this morning, I may lay down for a refresh nap. (I did sleep 8 hours last night.) The vacuum filters for the portable vac arrive today along with batteries for one of the temperature thermometers.
I guess I need to rebuild my Pi-Hole, I sent Western Journal this warning.
They’re off to do the laundry with two large bags of clothes this time. Seeing them trot by with the wagon full of clothes really makes us happy!
Yep, 2 hours later they’re done. Apparently, they decided to do a much larger load having the cart to carry it. Curious that the dad accompanied the family walking to the laundromat today, one wonders if they have a car and opted to walk instead.
We got a new one to replace the one we gave away today.
Replaced the battery in one of our thermometers, it actually works.
Easter Sunday
Had breakfast with the wife, eggs and breakfast sausages.
Rebuilt the Pi-Hole Domain Name Server Protection.
Went to Sunday church and picked up the equipment for the Sunday service on the 4th of May.
Back home we had ham, sweet potatoes and veggies for lunch. Took a nice nap and then we had a sandwich while watching Castle. We went to bed pretty early, we were pretty tired.
Up early, we have a dental appointment at 08:00 for her deep cleaning.
It ended up being a pouring rain when we got into the car. Even in the rain we managed to get to the dentist a bit early. We were in the chair before 8 (Our appt time) and had to wait on the dentist to arrive. I went shopping at Kroger while she was being worked on, we were back home around 9:30. I took blue to get the emissions done, I had a little help in this endeavor. I renewed our license plates and we took a nap before dinner.
We warmed up the round steak that we prepared on Sunday for lunch, it was pretty good I must say.
We decided to have some fun, so we drove to Longhorn in Swanee for dinner. She got steak and I got my usual Strawberry salad. I did indulge myself and had a shot of Royal Crown whisky. The entire crew of the restaurant sang Happy Birthday and brought her a cake alamode. We are still having issues with Express Scripts.
Tuesday
Beautiful bright sunny day and Turkey Chili for lunch. I did manage to get the Express Scripts website to load after two weeks of trying. I also purchased Microsoft Office 365 for all my computers. I bought one license for her computer and then Microsoft offered one for half what I paid on the computer in the den. I cancelled the license for her computer and will load mine when her trial period expires.
Our friends took us out to dinner at the 57th fighter group. That’s a very interesting building and good food as well.
When we got back to their house, they served us with cheesecake for her birthday.
We had a really good day.
Wednesday
We went to Longhorn’s for lunch, we gave the entire crew $20 each.
Everyone came out to wish her Happy birthday at the end of our meal with a piece of cake. We went over to the friend’s house for Church tonight.
Thursday
We got to Longhorn well before they opened for lunch after Dr. Appointment so we stopped by Payless Shoes.
She got some good look’n and fitting shoes for cheap! ($30)
We then went to Longhorn for lunch and gave the entire crew $50 each this time! We took a good long nap and I worked on my pill dispenser for a couple hours. I have an issue with my feet going numb and that can be because of blood pressure medicines. I separated all my meds into four different dispensing periods and subdivided that into a total of eight periods.
I have a couple of issues at night, so I adjusted my pill schedule. There are four “Alarm” times about 4 hours apart. Each dispensing time has two medications in that slot. The idea is to put the second medication in the medicine cap to be taken later.
We were supposed to get severe storms, it did rain but I would not call it anywhere near severe.
Friday
Up at midnight with a yeast infection that had to be dealt with, I am too tired to write very much. I did make a pot of coffee and sipped on that during the wee hours of the morning. I took a shower very early this morning and was able to lay back down. I managed to get about 6 hours of sleep last night. Took a shower with the wife and I am making a bit more coffee for this morning.
We drove to Whole Foods and picked up some frosted bran flakes and a few other things. We then drove to our favorite lunch spot where we had a healthy lunch. Back home we took a good long nap before watching a bit of TV and eating dinner.
Saturday
We had planned on eating chicken but ended heading out to Longhorn’s for lunch. up at Longhorn’s for lunch. (We took our pills with us but failed to take them.) On our way out of the driveway a friend called delaying our departure.
This mom and her two children walked by carrying a large bag of clothes. Both mom and daughter waved at us when they walked by. Normally women avoid eye contact with strangers in cars. She had set that bag on her shoulders down twice by the time she got to the top of the hill, so it was becoming increasing difficult to carry. I loaded our beach cart that I bought for just such an occasion into the van and headed down the street after them. (People are always walking by us with a heavy load and no wheels!) We caught up to them down the street a little way and gave them our beach cart to carry their heavy bag.
I managed to find them walking back from the laundry mat on our cameras about an hour later, they looked very happy! The daughter appeared to be looking for us to greet them as she walked by.
We went to Longhorn’s and the parking lot was empty, so we gave the entire crew $20 each.
Lunch was excellent cept for the salad had very little lettuce for an $18 salad. (Which is strange since that’s the cheap part of the salad.)
Longhorn’s on Hugh Howell has always served us with a balanced plate of lettuce and fixings!
Well, time to finish up this draft and eat my evening sandwich.
Sunday
I have got to figure out what our plan is for taking our 20 medications on a schedule while we are traveling. These pill trays are excellent when we are at home, way to big and clunky for traveling. (not to mention they have to be powered!) Problem one is the reminder to take the medication, problem two is to carry several days worth. If we were going to be gone a week, I would carry the current trays! One dispenser is the size of a cup and has seven slots (Good for one day.)
The more interesting one is a folded tray with seven slots on each side. That would cover us for two days for each tray. *She has five dispensing times, and I have seven. I went back to bed until 08:00 this morning when I got up and checked in with the HAM guys on the WW Net.
We went to Longhorn’s after church and had the worst experience we’ve ever had. I wrote them a review that basically said we were never coming back.
We got the first of the travel pill dispensers today, the major problem with them is that they don’t fit into a purse very well. It’s likely we’ll use the flat ones instead.
