Got up in time to check in with the WW net. I didn’t hear him but Paul also checked in on the Net this morning. 2 eggs and breakfast sausage with coffee was my morning meal. We had ham with veggies for Lunch and our normal afternoon nap.
We checked in with Village Podiatry for tomorrow’s appointment. We have glasses to pick up and groceries to buy by tomorrow.
We got these two cups for Christmas. I was a little skeptical that I would like them since we have genuine Yeti cups. They are similar to the Stanley cups that were so popular at Christmas of 2023. However, after playing with them all day and the ice still lingering in the bottom, I like them. Their design has the option to augment other cups with additional insulation. I’ve had these old, insulated plastic cups for many years. But set these cups into the Frost Buddy with a little ice in the bottom and they’re good all day.
I got an E-Mail from Kenya with FIVE letters, four of which I hadn’t seen before.
Back to putting medicine on the side of my head for the precancerous cells.
Watched Hallmark movies while she cooled and elevated her ankle.
It’s been rather cold, but we’re comfy.
Tuesday
Got up in time to check in on the WW net with the HAM radio guys. We have a little time before the trip to the foot doctor. Made some fried eggs and breakfast sausages, had way too many of them though. (They fell out of the package.)
Her foot has Plantar fasciitis which is the tendons that connect the ball of the foot to the heel. She was using the balls of her foot to defend the heel which only made it worse. We got some steroids to help with the swelling.
My 7 Day average is 116, hers has been above 140 with her hurt foot.
Trip to the doctor went very quickly, we were about 30 minutes early. We stopped by Longhorn on the way home for lunch.
We picked up her new glasses and then home for a good nap.
We stopped by the stylist and got a new “Dew” as well.
I went to Burger King for a Whopper and the drink DOES fit into the FrostBuddy, I didn’t use the fitting ring. (It was a bit tight on the paper cup.)
I’ve had a bit of trouble with my two small wireless routers. They connect to NORD VPN and I use that connection to hide my DNS queries from my ISP. The Mango lasted for years and failed about a month ago. I replaced it with the faster Shadow after failing to reload the firmware and bricking the Mango router. The Shadow lasted a couple of weeks and then started faltering until I changed my network DNS off of them. Last night I put the Opal online with Nord, I am still wondering if there is something strange going on… (Hopefully that will be a more permanent solution.)
Wednesday
Spent the early morning working on my network. It’s working again, but I still want to reload the two wireless routers and try and figure out what happened to them. My HAM radio software was faltering yesterday because of the problems with the routers. Checked in with the guys on the HAM WW Net, I didn’t hear Paul this morning. She has a package of pills to take for the next week to help reduce the swelling and promote healing.
Not much for breakfast today, several cups of coffee and a couple mini baby ruth bars.
Her Glucose was 170 and the recheck was 171.
Now that she’s back on her feet, I can let her take over with more of the house chores. We made the bed this morning which was just flipping the comforter we sleep ON.
We had Salmon and mixed vegetables for lunch today. We warmed the plates in the oven and served the vegetables in an insulated bowl.
Took a good long nap then we worked on the grocery list. I had tuna sandwich for supper and we watched Hallmark until church services at 7:30. Put medicine on my face and covered it with a bandage for tonight.
Thursday
I didn’t get to sleep right away, but I did sleep pretty soundly. Woke in time to get onto the WW Net, I didn’t hear Uncle Paul. She’s going to continue to wear her boots until bedtime. Lunch with the guys today in Marietta at the Johnnie MacCracken’s Celtic Pub. It took 40 hard minutes to get home, and I was ready for a nap.
No new letters on CF website. The PO box payment went through on the 15th. They lowered my credit score a few points last month, they need to get a real job.
We went to Kroger for some groceries, we were out of meals. We used a large, insulated bag instead of two tubs and that worked out fine. We stopped by WH on the way home and gave the server a $50 gift. I cannot imagine trying to make ends meet with a WH paycheck. Our thermostat has two remote sensors and one of them stopped sending. I put rechargeable batteries in it and the air conditioner faults cleared up. It’s going to get cold, then wet over the weekend, then even colder next week.
This kid decided to destroy what remained of the large ball of snow today just after 5PM.
The new VPN router is holding up, I don’t need any network troubles occupying my time. Ran a bath and made a batch of cold coffee in the French Press for the Mrs,
I ordered more coffee beans for the Coffee Mill.
Friday
We got a letter from our sponsored child JL, it’s terribly late and a typed letter glued to a standard response form. (Strange.) Checked in on the WW Net and headed into the shower.
Yep, it’s Jan 6th four years later! No letters from our sponsored children, which is surprising actually. It’s hard to believe a gift sent electronically in August doesn’t get acknowledged until December. Checked in with the HAM guys on the WW net this morning while sipping on my coffee. I turned down the shower with the Wife as I was busy cleaning the kitchen today.
Kitchen gets a little messy in the mornings.
Did the dishes for the MRs this morning
The Winix D480 air purifier stays blue most of the day.
Beef stew with carrots and potatoes for lunch. We served it with rye bread and a jar of brown gravy to thicken the stew.
The new CO alarms come with a remote mounting kit!
Covered our water meter since it’s going to be well below freezing.
Tuesday (No Amazon Prime)
Woke up late, didn’t check in on the HF radio. Paul called, we talked a bit about dentists which we have an appointment today.
One thing I’ve had to embrace is making a list of daily routines. I’ve learned the hard way that when you have to look after your spouse it’s impossible to maintain situational awareness of what we both have to do, and what we’ve done. I started with making lists for her routines so that she had an organized day. Then it became apparent that I needed a list to incorporate a list to check on her and do my routine. (Sheesh, this is a lot more work than I had imagined.)
Just got home from Braces Now…. She has “Trays” for the next 5 weeks. The tray for 14 Feb has not been given to us, we will wear the 29 Jan tray for the following 8 weeks. *That will be the longest time we’ll ever wear a single tray. If we break or damage the 29 Jan tray we’ll re-use the Jan 15th Tray. 18 Feb they will remove the current attachments, and the doctor will prescribe a new round of trays to Invisalign. On or about the 2nd week of March when the new trays arrive the new attachments will be placed on her teeth. We’ll start the next round of treatment with the new trays.
We were thinking of something to do to get out of the house so she looked up Chocolate Shakes at WH. We packed up for a run to Wally World and stopped by WH on our way. The server let us know that WH did not serve shakes! We thought about a glass of Chocolate milk until we saw the number of calories. We ended up ordering waffles (I know) and had a really good time. We gave a generous tip to the server and headed to Wally World. They were not very crowded and had plenty of battery powered carts to get around in. It took a bit for her to get the hang of driving and it was good fun while we picked up a few things. (We did fill the basket LOL)
Back home we watched Hallmark and measured our glucose before going to bed. Mine was 105 which suprised me since we just ate a waffle not two hours ago. Started the dishwasher after cleaning up the counters in the kitchen.
Wednesday (Brrr it’s cold)
24 Degrees, checked in with the WW Net this morning with 40W. I used to use 100W but they copied me 59 with 30W several days ago.
My Glucose was 121 this morning after a cup of Coffee. Previous four are 108, 112, 106, 136 with a long AVG of 118.
Forgot to run the dishwasher, so I started that this morning after we took our morning meds. The Flounder we were going to eat for lunch had air in the packages. We bought the flounder at Wally World and do not know if it thawed and then was refrozen. Not taking any chances we went to Outback for lunch. We picked up the P.O. box mail on the way home and stopped by to get our new glasses we ordered last year.
Thin frames, I’ll have to be more careful with them.
Thursday
Up at 7AM, got breakfast for this morning for me and the MRS. Checked in on the WW Net with the HAM guys.
We might get 1″ of snow tomorrow, freezing rain is more likely with the cold ground.
I have a fault in the ceiling fan that’s tripping the GFCI breaker. I had to replace the breaker because it failed to reset when I pushed the test button. The new breaker is a combination GFCI/AFCI breaker, and it would trip immediately. It took a while disconnecting receptacles isolating the fault down to the ceiling fan. It turns out that the dual power ceiling fan tied the neutral on the fan to the neutral on the light, tripping the breaker. My only choice is to run a separate neutral from the light. I also found out that my front porch light is run off this bedroom circuit. (Why they didn’t use the living room circuit I don’t know.)
I have still not been able to clear the living room floor.
We had eggs for breakfast and I had a few breakfast sausages warmed up in a coffee cup. Coffee was terrific as always. We opted NOT to go to the store today since everyone is preparing for the snow tomorrow.
I dropped the ceiling fan down to where I could work on the wires.
Pulled a string through the fan using the lights blue wire. (That took several tries, there was not much room left.) Then used the string to bring the light’s common through the fan. Brown wasn’t my first choice, but that’s the color they use in UK. (I’ll flag the brown wire with white tape.)
Attached the lights and shortened the support string so that I could attach the wires to the fixture.
Connected all the wires and tested the fixture with the combination GFCI/AFCI breaker before mounting it. (Just in case I messed up the wiring.) The light circuit is protected by the GFCI, but not the motor circuit.
All back together again.
Took a good long nap after having bowl of cereal. No mail, I don’t know if she’s come by today. It’s a mish mash on the time that the mail truck comes by.
Friday (Snow Day)
Our first snow of the season.
Driveway provided good clean snow on a hard surface for good packing.
Bottom ball is done,
putting the middle ball in place
Don’t forget to look both ways when crossing the street.
I could only find one slipper, so he’s only got one foot.
Ham and veggies for dinner today, keeping it simple. Spent most of the day talking about the snow LOL.
In home humidity was below 35, so I was helping the humidifier with this portable cooler. It puts out a pretty good amount of water as a mist in front of the unit.
Supper was a ham sandwich and a rice cake with strawberry creme cheese on it.
We watched Hallmark channel before retiring to the bedroom.
Saturday (Still Snow on the ground)
Her glucose has been high, 162, 142, 149, 119, 150, 154.
What we found out was that the test strips were OLD. I hadn’t thought of the 100 times we’d have to open the vial to get the strips out of the container. Each time we open the vial a little more air gets to the strips. Sunday when she tested it was 89!, which is excellent.
Checked into the WW Net on my HF radio, I could not hear the Net Control this morning. Had two eggs and breakfast sausages. Checked my Glucose and it was 129, not terrible but I did have coffee with Hot Chocolate in it.
My network is having issues with DNS for a couple days. Our private network uses a Pi-Hole to protect is from bad websites and it uses a VPN for all DNS queries preventing AT&T from snooping on what we are looking at. All of my streaming services won’t load with the Pi-Hole sifting my DNS queries?
Salmon for lunch, it was quite terrific.
Spent the afternoon preparing for the 15 Degree overnight weather. I considered connecting the duct in the kitchen to help the heater, but there’s some risk that I would change the distribution and make it worse. Currently, the ducts are heating the small rooms, and the return air is heating/cooling the living room/kitchen.
Sunday
Huge signal reports for just 3 Watts, but the propagation is very short.
Checked in with the WW Net while I sipped on a cup of coffee. We checked our Glucose levels and she had 2 eggs for breakfast. Mine was a normal semi high 125 after drinking my coffee. (Hers was 89!) Emptied the dishwasher and cleared the sinks of dishes from last night. We’re making a list of chores that “We” can sort through as each of us is able.
Bright sun, most of the snow is still here except for where the sun hit the lawn yesterday evening.
They did NOT pick up the garbage last week, nor did the mail truck come by and pick up the mail for Diane in Elgin. The snowman I made on Friday is holding up pretty well, the coin buttons did melt into the snowballs a little yesterday.
The new camera burns through 30 GB of storage in 24 hours. I really need 5 days of storage, say 128 GB SD card? Even then they won’t last very long writing that much data every day.
Heater has been running for 7 minutes every 15 minutes, which is a lot actually.
The return air from the rooms is about 68 Degrees, so I don’t know why it’s running so much. I moved the remote thermostat sensor to the bedroom, it should reduce the run time. (The living room will get a little cooler as shown above.)
Attic temperature is about 5 degrees warmer than the outside temperature, it does get some heat from the chimney pipe.
Well, the heater is running MUCH less, but the dining room is at 67 degrees.
The good thing is that the duct temps are NOT lower than the return air temp.
The heater is running MUCH less, yes, the living room is only 66 degrees. The rooms we occupy are still around 70 degrees.
Took a nap and checked CF for letters. Looked at the news and I got discouraged with the California drama. The Democratic government is not working out too well for them.
Ham for lunch, we tried some microwave veggies that were pretty good.
Picked up our prescription, it was a whopping $3 for three months. We took another nap after checking for the church service on their website. Watched Castle together, we didn’t like the show at first. Especially with the commercial breaks. I bought the entire run of the show and now it’s quite enjoyable. (Mom loved that show.)
Changed my DNS configuration, had to eliminate the NORD VPN DNS. It was getting very unreliable, and it would not let me stream content. I am using Fortinet DNS for now; AT&T will be able to copy all the queries which is undesirable.
I broke down and ordered a $180.00 pill dispenser/timer today. It’s been impossible to keep track of her medications. We have two one-week pill dispensers, and we have an alarm that goes off twice a day. We also have a journal to write down when she takes her meds. We still end up in the evening looking at the pill dispenser trying to figure out how both doses were missed, and nothing was written in the journal. ARG!
