Month: January 2025

Up very early this morning trying to figure out the inflation for our gifts. It actually looks better than I had anticipated for all that’s happened since 2015 when we started our 2nd round of sponsorships. The conversion rate is better, but the cost of living has gone up some. I was surprised that the cost of rice hasn’t changed significantly. The 2nd surprise was that 80% of households have a smart phone which provides them Internet and emergency communications.

Took a shower and checked in on the WW Net using my HAM radio. We have a doc appointment today and it’s raining.

Doc appointment was very quick and traffic both ways was not really bad either. We’ve setup the stove to bake chicken breasts with mixed vegetables at 12:00.

I setup an Access Point on one of my laptops and used it to collect the traffic from the pill dispenser. It reaches out to a few places, none of them are in China. Amazon Web Services appear to host the server side of its network. It reaches out to a college in UT for the time server. The traffic is TLS encrypted so there’s nothing to be gained there.

Baked chicken breasts (From Aldi) with fried mixed vegetables was delicious lunch. We heated the plates in the oven and kept the chicken warm on the serving tray we got for Christmas.

I think that I’m doing ok, it still could use some improvement.

This is why we went to the doctor the other day. Picked up a prescription after I took a good long nap. My body has gotten flipped around and I stay awake at night and sleep soundly during the day.

Ham sandwich for supper with potato chips with catchup dip. Met up with the 2M Net on my gifted radio from Uncle Paul.

Tuesday

Woke about 7:30, but the WW Net was too crowded for me to get onto it this morning. I heard uncle Paul though. He called me afterwards and asked if I had ever heard of COVID toes?

We drove to the skin doctor, and he gave me a lesson on using the skin treatment he gave me last year. We didn’t get outta there until 11:30 so we didn’t have time to make dinner. Longhorn provided a delicious strawberry salad. We took a good long nap after that and then wrote Mariel a letter. We needed a few things at Wally World and her foot was still bothering her. I stopped by our friends house and picked up a book that she left there on Sunday. Wally World on Rockbridge Road did not have any Diet Coke or Normandy frozen vegetables. Boo!

Back home with a ham sandwich for supper and a few potato chips while we watched Castle. I guess I had too many of them or it was dipping them in Catchup because my Glucose was high…

Took my Glucose and it was 159 so I took a walk to lower it to 106. When I checked it 2 hours later it was back up to 150. Took a nice warm bath and it was down to 117. ADA recommends that we take our readings TWO hours after a meal or just before a meal (Fasting). The readings above are AFTER eating potato chips dipped in catchup, so I am not terribly concerned about them. Also, I found out today that the warning reading after a meal is 180 mg/dL. She eats little meals all day long so getting a fasting reading will have to be taken before breakfast.

Wednesday

Woke at 07:30 and easily checked in on the WW Net this morning. Had my cup of coffee with two hard boiled eggs and breakfast sausages. Wrote a letter to Josephine in PH to let her know we’ve changed our support. Took my morning pills and checked in with my sweetie on our plans for lunch.

Very Low voltage (24V@6W) wires to power our electric blankets. If the power goes out, we can run them on battery. (The house is wired for 24VDC.)

She purged and organized our pantry this morning.

Both of our Glucose were 117 right before lunch which was left over Chicken breasts and mixed vegetables. We’ve set an additional alarm for 3:30PM to capture an “After Eating” Glucose reading.

My glucose was 107 before supper, which was ham sandwich on rye bread. Silver needs two front tires, and blue has four good ones and a spare.

1. The 16 lug nuts on Silver need to be moved to Blue.
2. The four tires on Blue need to be moved to Silver.

Thursday

Up at 7AM and made her eggs for breakfast. She had already eaten cereal. When I mentioned eggs to her this morning, she brightened up and wanted some. It’s going to rain today which will hamper moving the tires between the cars. I guess I can move the lugs first without moving the tires since there are five lugs on the rim. It will cost $700 to fix the radiator on Blue. another 1,400 for the antilock brakes and the door seals are all gone.

The rain is to the west of us, and I should have good weather to move the tires around today. Went to Aldi for plus up groceries and meat. They really are just tossing things in the cart without looking at it. (Cept the eggs, they did separate those.)

Firestone wanted $400 for a pair of tires and a front-end alignment. I knew that I had at least 4 good tires on Blue to replace some of them.

The wear on Silver’s front tire looks perfect, especially considering I hadn’t rotated them. I honestly do not agree with Firestone that Silver needs a front-end alignment! (He just wanted to run up a billing?) It is just barely at the wear bars. The sides are worn because it’s a front tire or maybe that the pressure was a little low. The wear on the left side is possibly caused from tight turns where the vehicle weight has shifted off the tire during a turn. It does have a very small turning radius!

Lugs, sometime in Silver’s past she lost all of her lug nuts. (I assume that they took the tires from the vehicle while it was in California.) The lug nuts on Silver were 21mm and the 19mm lug wrench in the vehicle spare tire didn’t fit them. Today’s plan was to change out the 21mm lugs on Silver and use those to secure tires to the Blue Focus. Take the 19mm lugs from Blue and secure the good tires from Blue onto Silver. Starting with the repaired tire from Silver I kept walking lugs and tires until all the lug nuts from Blue were on Silver and all the lug nuts on Silver were on Blue.

Battery changeout, almost worked as planned LOL.

The first thing I did was put battery boxes on both cars to keep the stored computer data while the battery was out. Then I pulled both batteries and swapped them. The battery in Blue is less than a year old and the battery in Silver is 2007 version. When I turned on the ignition on Blue the radio had been reset. (Boo!) The 4A fuse to the battery box, blew meaning that I shorted the positive terminal of the battery during the installation of the battery in Blue. Silver did retain the settings, the stations in the radio were still there and the dashcam was still running. I even read the diagnostics from the computer and all the closed loops were “Ready”.

Watched Castle while we ate a ham sandwich on Rye bread. We had rice cakes with creme cheese for dessert.

Friday

Woke up around 7AM and checked for Paul on 10M using Reception report website. I lowered my power to 10W, and no one came back. I tried 20W and got a good signal report this morning.

This couch has not been cleared for at least 4 years.

Other than a box of recycling and tools, you can see the floor.

Had a salmon sandwich on rye and a few potato chips for lunch. She went out with a friend and had a great time. She loved all the work on the living room.

Her tooth started hurting so we were trying to figure out what’s going on when we looked at the clock. It’s 5:30 on a Friday, our options are rapidly diminishing. The decision was to go to a Doc in the Box and get some antibiotics for her tooth. When I tapped on the tooth with a pick she said that hurt… They gave us some Amoxicillin and sent us home. We had some stuff the dentist made me buy to reduce the infection and she took the first antibiotic. It was a simple task to add the antibiotics to the dispensers, the prescription was 2x a day.

Saturday

My feet were both bothering me at 1AM so I looked up diabetes and tingling feet. It talked about Glucose levels far higher than either of us, so I am not sure that’s a factor. I did put on some padded socks “Muck Lucks” and sprayed them with antifungal spray. It seems walking around in bare feet is undesirable for a good night’s sleep.

I didn’t hear Net Control and most of the relays this morning. I assume that the skip is long making communication with nearby stations difficult. I did hear Paul though, he sounded pretty good. I checked in using full power 90W with the difficulty reaching each other.

My Glucose is pretty consistent, unlike hers. Her tooth/braces were tolerable this morning after taking 2x 500mg Tylenol. She’s taken her 2nd antibiotic pill with her other pills this morning. We MUST follow the Invisalign procedures to make sure we get this infection under control, or she could lose her molar. (That means follow her procedure book, and not just what she can remember.)

Lunch was salmon, veggies and sweet potatoes excellent! 30 minutes to clean up the kitchen… Time to brush, floss and rinse before putting her trays back in. I surely get tired after eating a large meal!

She has an abscessed molar that we’ll have to get looked at. Best guess is that the Invisalign braces trapped some food against her gums over the last year.

It is going to be a very long wait, people have kids so sick they are hurling chunks. We left soon after that with a prescription for Hydro Codon’s that we can’t fill until tomorrow.

Sunday

She is still miserable this morning, the pharmacy doesn’t open until 11 AM. I checked in with WW Net and I heard Paul this morning. He called me a little later and I let him know about her situation. I plan on going there about 10:40 this morning. I cooked 5 eggs, sausage and a piece of rye toast for breakfast.

Beautiful clear day today, it’s been nice for several days this week.

Dropped off her prescription and they said it would take an hour, AKA 12 Noon. As luck would have it, it was actually ready. I stopped by BK for lunch on the way home. She took the first round of meds, and we headed down for a nap.

We spent the entire evening trying to find anything that would lessen the pain to no avail. Her 2nd pill was taken a bit early at 5 so that the third pill would be at 11PM instead of Midnight. 11PM went very well, she took 400mg of Ibuprofen and soundly took a nap until 11PM alarm. She may wake up and need another 2x 200mg before 5 tomorrow morning.

Up at 7:30 and helped her with zipping up her boots. I also peeled the aluminum foil from her medicine pack for her foot.

The pill tray is working out great, I turned off the audio alarm since Alexa goes off at 9:15 anyways.

Turning on the fan increased the run time of the heater at 17 degrees outside. It didn’t change the target temperature of the supply air, but the differential dropped by about 7 degrees. The thermostat cycles at 15 minutes and run time is determined by heat requested.

With all the doors closed, the small bedrooms stay pretty warm. There’s only one supply vent to the living room. (That’s why it is so cold.) It is mostly heated/cooled by the return air of the other rooms.

With 17 degree temperatures the interesting tidbit is that the Master bedroom is by far the longest duct in our home. The temp is mitigated using four small heaters to keep the room above 72 degrees. The Master bedroom supply is significantly different compared to the small bedroom next to the air handler.

Chicken breasts for lunch after the Trump Inauguration with veggies. I tried cooking them in the microwave and they were comparable to the steamed ones. We went to the doctor to talk about our Glucose levels, and he was not concerned about an A1C of 6.3. So, we’ll keep checking and he’ll get back with us about the bloodwork.

We had a sandwich and watched the news for a little while. Then one show of Castle and we were done for the day.

Tuesday

It’s about 20 degrees outside and the heater has been running about 45% of the time. It never got above 31 degrees outside today. We didn’t get much accomplished before going to the Doctor at 3 PM. Dinner was Salmon with veggies served on warmed plates out of the oven. Doctor prescribed a medication to help her with her A1C which was 6.6. We have to cut the pills in half and that left two sharp edges on them.

But we put them in the carousel for tomorrow morning.

I had ordered another dispenser for me, but cancelled the $180 order once I saw one for $25 on EBAY. They also make a Bluetooth model, I was wondering if that would be more secure than attaching it to my network???

Wednesday

Baby it’s COLD outside this morning.

She ran a load of clothes, but I reminded her that the temp is only 15 degrees outside. Running the dryer at these temps puts a large load on the grid.

We laid them out on the bed to dry for an hour or so. We finished them off in the dryer, took maybe 5 minutes.

We took our Glucose at 9AM, hers was 126 and mine was 116. She took her first pill this morning so I am curious what the readings will be tomorrow.

Our street is covered in ice this morning, we’re staying put.

It’s amazing how quickly the heater responds to the outside temperature.

Took a GOOD LONG nap and I am trying to get organized. I ordered another pill dispenser, but I am thinking I should order two. That way we always have 14 days of pills in those trays!

Got to get ready for church services tonight and a doctor appointment tomorrow.

Thursday

Doc appointment first thing in the morning, we sipped on a cup of coffee while the car warmed up and melted the ice on the windows. Traffic was lighter than expected and the office visit went well. We purchased McDonalds for breakfast on the way home. We gathered our insulated bags and headed off to Wally World for staples we were seriously low on. (The ice storm disrupted our Tuesday trip.) Wally World was a little busier than expected, but it didn’t take very long. We put the frigerated food away and laid down for a quick nap before heading out to lunch at Longhorn’s #2. Back home we unloaded the staples out of the car and did some house chores like washing our CPAP masks and other parts. (I still need to wash our hoses and that’s a chore!)

Friday

Up at 7AM because we forgot to turn off the alarms we used yesterday. The pill dispenser batteries died last night, and it didn’t rotate to the morning slot this morning.

I apparently didn’t read the directions where it says to keep it plugged in in a USB-C power source. We don’t use standard USB wall chargers and cables for charging here in our homestead. Instead, we use DC-DC converters that can use a single 18V wall charger for the Echo Show to power five or six devices. They also allow the power source to be a very large distance from the pill dispenser. (The voltage drop is no longer a factor.)

My glucose was 126 and hers was over 200 even with the medicine this morning.

My firewalls (Both of them) were upgrading their firmware today, that took down the cascaded firewall I was using temporarily until I moved the network devices from it. Both the FortiGate 60D’s I was using are now powered but retired and the third is in a box. If I need more networks (Unlikely) I’ll setup V-LANs on a network switch. I caused a bit of trouble by setting up a VLAN on a switch port and ended up disabling the switchport itself while deleting the VLAN. I have one switchport and the DMZ ports left on the FortiGate 60F on Comcast.

I spent an hour or so adding the additional checks and tasks to my daily routine in my personal Daytimer. (Her procedure book has a similar page.)

There was too much to remember every day between both of us.

We had fish and veggies for lunch. Went to ALDI’s for a few things including meat for suppers. You just cannot purchase a lot of items at a time there. The checkout counters are maybe 4 feet. Bring your own bags and have a quarter to get the cart with. A very pregnant woman let us in line in front of her. It was one of those strange moments where she clearly had the need to get out of the store. But she chose to follow us through the checkout line instead. I don’t know if we followed her whether we’d had the opportunity to pay her bill. But her pregnancy gave her the power to place herself in the line wherever she chose to be. We rewarded her with $20 gift as we left the store. When I offered to take her cart back to the store we found out that it made her day because she had lost her job.

Ham sandwich for supper with some potato chips with Catchup to munch on while we watched TV.

My 7 Day average is 115, 14 day is 115, 30 day is 118

Her 7 Day average is 165, 14 day is 162, 30 day is 144

We received more supplies today. EBAY has them for about half the price of Amazon.

The three pill dispensers I ordered from EBAY are delayed until tomorrow.

Her left thumb was bothering her tonight. It’s something that was mentioned at our last doctor visit, but that visit was generally BOTH hands. Tonight, it was only the knuckle of the LEFT thumb that was bothering her. It also seemed to me to be damage to the knuckle as it significantly hurt her to bend it sideways. It didn’t hurt the other thumb or my two thumbs. We ARE getting beyond/past having the tingling fingers bother her.

Saturday

Up about 7:30 and checked into the WW net with the HAM radio guys. Drank a couple of cups of coffee while I shopped around for another humidifier from Amazon. We lost one of our gold filters for the coffee maker, so I had to buy a couple more of them.

The pill dispensers that I should have received on Friday arrived today. I also found out why they were so cheap on EBAY. (They are OLD) Kathy’s spare is at least four years old, both of mine are at least two years old. Kathy’s is current because we spent $180.00 on it. The dispensers have the ability to upgrade the firmware, but all of them displays that no upgrade is available. Norton AV refused my attempt to open their website. Next step is to use a Raspberry Pi to open the website and determine what support they provide for these devices. $180 is a hefty price tag for a product that the company is an LLC held by a holding company so that they would have a USA footprint.

It is a vulnerability to have devices on your network that do not have their security updates. I eventually put them on their own wireless using a VPN off our network, that way I do not have to worry about them.

All set, for the month.

We didn’t have our usual meal for lunch, so we snacked a little more than usual today.

My glucose was 127 and hers was 142

I am almost believing that her memory has gotten better over the last couple of weeks. Her tingling fingers is also gone. She still cannot answer how many nickels are in a dollar. 10?

Sunday

Up very early this morning, updating a laptop for use at today’s service. Researching how to protect my network devices from these pill dispensers. The latest idea is to attach these pill dispensers to the “Guest” network on my routers. (Which they don’t seem to have anymore.) My glucose is 134, so maybe I’ll go light on breakfast. Shower time….

Church services and lunch went very well, I had a good time. Dinner amounted to ham sandwiches and other items that would be served at a business lunch. I slept for HOURS after getting home from church services. We brought home a whole tray of vegetables and dip, which ended up getting eaten for our Supper meal.

My Glucose was 107 hers was 96 tonight after eating veggies with dip.

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 Josephine. The letter it’s terribly late and a typed letter glued to a standard response form. (Strange.) She writes letters in English as far back as I can remember, like 15 years ago. But, she’s 20 years old has a child of her own so her days with CF are numbered.

Checked in on the WW Net and headed into the shower. We took our Glucose, and it was closer to normal than it was yesterday. She did a bang-up job cleaning the house today.

Chicken legs for dinner with veggies.

We tried cooking the frozen vegetables in a frying pan, they actually tasted better than when we steam them. (Which is also better than boiling them.)

We checked in with the doctor they’ve adopted Phreesia for their patient in processing. Phreesia questions are NOT optional and intrusive to say the least. It felt more like a survey whose answers are going to be sold, than it did as a questionnaire related to the doctor’s practice. Why does a foot doctor need to know when the first time she had her period and she’s 70!

We went to dinner with friends at B&W burgers and had a good time. We took our Glucose and then watched TV until we went to bed.

Saturday

Did NOT sleep very well last night, I got up often and in body aches. I did check in with the HAM radio guys on the WW Net this morning.

Her Glucose was 155 this morning. It has been rising for the last week or so. The average for the last 7 days is 169, 147 for the last 14, 140 for 30 days. We have an appointment with the Doc to discuss this on Monday next week.

I had one hardboiled egg for breakfast and my glucose was 127 today. My 7 Day is 115 and 30-day is 118 mg/dL, which means it’s not changing like Her’s is. That also means that what “we” are eating is not the cause of her high readings.

My skin yeast infection came back last night. (Air drying didn’t help.) I ended up doing a complete heaving soap sudzing, then letting it stand for a few minutes. A thorough rinse and then finished up by applying medication on it. I checked my Glucose last night and it was less than 100, so that was not the contributing factor. (We did eat a large late meal last night?)

She mentioned her heart rate was high on her Fit-Bit this morning. I recommended she put the O2 sensor on her arm. That gives us a much more accurate chart of what’s happening. If that is unusual, we take an EKG recording using the Kardia and send that to the heart doctor.

The two alarms on the Echo Show have become very necessary. It goes off at 9:30 in the morning and 7:15 in the evening. I double check that her pills have been taken and it’s becoming more frequent that they haven’t.

The $180 pill carrousel arrived today. It’s easier to load than the pill trays we’ve been using, and it talks to an app on her phone. When the alarm goes off the tray rotates to the next slot and lifting the dispenser shuts off the alarm. It records when the pills were actually taken, and the times appear on the app. The only real downside is that they have this stupid very unique key that is required to load the tray.

When we had to manage pain medications I got lost trying to keep up on paper.
I bought two more of them for a total of SIX and used them every other dispense.

They have the ability to do NINE dispenses per day

Took a nap and warmed up the oven for our dinner. Put the pork tenderloin in the oven and set the veggies on the stove to steam them. We’ll put the plates in the oven to warm them up while the pork tenderloin is resting. I need to set a timer, they do get a bit warm if I forget them.

Pork Tenderloin was perfectly cooked to perfection.

Tenderloin and veggies makes a great lunch.

Cleanup is easy too, leave the platter with a bit of water in it to soak.

Went to Whole Foods and picked up some breakfast food. We also made a trip to Aldi and picked up a few things like eggs. (They had a 2-carton limit for some reason, although it is going to snow in two days. It’s not much of a store, but we’ll probably go back.) We have five dozen eggs and enough food to last till next weekend.

The neighbors brought over some dinner and these HUGE servings of cake!

Sunday

Up at 8AM and checked into the WW Net this morning. Took my medications and she took her meds early using the app for her pill dispenser.

We just clicked “Take in advance” and it allowed us to take them.

We forgot to empty the washing machine last night, so the wet laundry went into the dryer this morning.

Downloaded the data to the above chart, my Glucose is 122 this morning.

Her Glucose was not taken yet today, but here’s the averages. I am assuming that the high reading in the morning is from the coffee creamers. Also we take two readings if the reading is really high just to make sure it wasn’t a bad reading.

We had the large meal the neighbors brought over for dinner and left over pork tenderloin from yesterday for supper after a good long nap. I washed the CPAP tanks in the tabletop roaster, there might have been just a bit of oil on the plastic from the roaster. But the tanks were spotless.

Pill timer can be set NOT to have an audio alarm and rotate to the next dose an hour before hand. That way we’re not waiting on a specific time, just because it was set that way. It has a flashing blue ring that indicates the next does is available but has not been taken. The door does not reset the timer, the tray has to be lifted and tilted before the timer moves on to the next dose. So far, I am very impressed, and yes so far it was worth the $180 bucks. The trouble with these things is if you go cheap and don’t get the features you need, your screwed.

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!

1. Put cart IN van
2. Homestead Exemption * homestead@gwinnettcounty.com, 770-822-8100
3. Glenn Wilk
4. Colonoscopy
5. Tennis Balls
6. Estate Taxes
7. Weekend book page CPAP cleaning
8. Apply for VA benefits