Monday 43/42KWH
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.