Week of 10 June 2024

Monday

Slept horribly and a thunderstorm at 2AM didn’t help any. I took a bath at 4 and that seemed to help, I finally nodded off shortly after. Good signals on the radios this morning, I didn’t join in cuz I am just tuckered out. The garage DHT that measures temp+humidity went offline during the storm this morning. Not exactly sure why that happened, the router IS on a UPS. It’s 82 degrees and 63% humidity after I reset it, that’s a tad warm and moist.

I turn off the attic fans to keep the attic as dry as possible at dusk every night.

Had hard boiled eggs and breakfast sausages for breakfast. Need to organize my day a little better, first thing is putting medicine on my toes.

Geez, it takes a LONG time to get this under control. It looks like I need to increase the amount of medicine I put on my right toe.

Lawn is mowed 🙂

Dinner was a pork tenderloin and mixed vegetables. We managed not to over cook it this time! We drove to Public Storage to empty the van not realizing that we only had one furniture dolly. We delivered what we could and headed home.

While I cooled off in front of a fan, I Read ACTS 24-28 to prepare for our midweek service on Wednesday. Wrote a letter to Josephine with larger stories, she’s 19. Ate a bowl of soup and watched Hallmark Mystery 101 movies until bedtime. Soaked my feet tonight before bed in the hopes of relieving my feet pain symptoms.

Tuesday

Put an electric throw under the blanket and I slept pretty good last night. Apparently when I lay down and my BP is low my feet are lacking in circulation. That’s like the #1 symptom of diabetes too, more aggressive control of my diet is needed.

I did check into WW this morning and I made a few contacts on my radio in the wee hours of the morning.

We got groceries this morning and went to Longhorn on Web Gin Road for lunch after we figured out there wasn’t enough time to make Lunch. We took a good long nap after we got home and watched Hallmark while we ate dinner. We spent a good while discussing our communication this evening. I really didn’t get much on my To Do list accomplished today.

Wednesday

There was another shooting on Burns Road just west of us at 1:04 this morning. I walked the street and didn’t see any shell casings on the street. That makes two shootings this year that happened outside of my camera’s sight. I have a central Digital Video Recorder which is just NOT a good way of running high resolution cameras. I’ve ordered a new 4K camera, that will record to its internal memory card to relieve the network congestion of all the UDP traffic. My network is fairly well segmented, but with four cameras it seems to struggle with all the traffic on that one segment. But there’s not much I can do with these shootings happening late at night. There is so little light that the camera captures a really fuzzy picture. Like last time, the car drove over the hill from the west and fired about 10 shots prior to reaching my cameras.

Pork Tenderloin for lunch with sweet potatoes and previously frozen mixed vegetables. Updated the two Raspi’s that are not Home assistant.

Changing my power supplies for my Raspi’s.

This setup supplies 4Amps and uses a 18AWG USB-C power cable to lower the losses. (Stole the USB-C connector off of a Raspi 4 power supply.) I can feed it with 24 volts which is all over the homestead. 12V is also in a lot of places, but 15W would be just under 2 amps and the Insulation Displacement Connectors get warm at 2Amps. I placed them on both of my Home Assistant installs, I also ordered a couple more DC converters. We washed several of the Wife’s masks taking pictures of the steps.

We took a 2nd nap and washed four of the Wife’s masks.

We had Chick Fillet Salads for dinner before Wednesday’s Zoom church service. We got home around 9PM and watched Hallmark for a little bit before heading to bed.

Thursday

I’m struggling with three villians that are keeping me from a good night’s sleep. My eyes are a key since they are providing the “Sticky” mucus to my throat. The position of my head while I am sleeping is also key to a good night’s sleep. My feet have become a distraction in the early hours of getting into bed as well.

According to “My Air” my events per hour are looking pretty good, but that’s not the whole story.

My O2 levels fall like a rock at night when I am reading the news?

Still on my morning routine, I downloaded the data from my O2 sensor after checking in with the guys on my HAM radio.

No boiled eggs in fridge, so cereal with some added raisins for flavor. The $5 (24 Oz family size) box from Wally World holds about 8 bowls of cereal. The same box is $6 at Kroger if you can find it. Kroger typically had the 16 Oz box on their shelf for about $2.50 today. I think that’s cheaper than the family box. There are three sized boxes, regular, Family and Giant!

“Brands are obfuscating price hikes by changing the amount you get for your dollar – improving profit margins and confusing consumers. Big food manufacturers are downsizing products without downsizing prices in a practice known as “shrinkflation” that irritates shoppers and makes pricing comparisons in a cost-of-living crisis all the more difficult. The cost of bran flakes has gone up 82% since 2019.

After the chief executive of Kellogg’s suggested that financially-strained families could cope by eating “cereal for dinner”, researchers at Deakin University investigated whether the US food giant had also been shrinking its products in Australia, reducing value for money. Researchers at the university’s Institute for Health Transformation found that seven Kellogg’s cereal boxes had shrunk since 2019.” Nick Evershed , Jonathan Barrett and Andy Ball, Mon 25 Mar 2024
https://www.theguardian.com/  how-shrinkflation-is-impacting-your-cereal

We started getting a notification from Coast Dental that says “A payment is due. You have an outstanding balance with Coast Dental Lilburn. Please send your $18.60 payment now. If you recently made a payment, please disregard, as payments take a few days to process.” We drove there and the person at the counter said we didn’t owe anything, the balance needed to be “Written Off”. There was another change on our billing and the payment was changed to $37.60 and I didn’t notice. They don’t send any kind of documentation on what the payment is for…

I drove to the Lilburn police station to ask them about all the shootings that are becoming more frequent. 6Months, 6 weeks between the last three where they emptied a semi-automatic pistol into the big blue house on the hill. (>10 rounds) In the end they told me I had to call dispatch and have an officer come to the house. (There was no one at the Lilburn Police station.)

We watched Hallmark until bedtime. I had a little bit of an issue with reflux, I totally burped a melted popsicle into my mouth tonight. I grabbed a real coke and ate some Ritz crackers to settle my stomach. Diet coke can throw off my digestive system sometimes. I do need to drink more water.

Thursday 13 June

I’m struggling with three villians that are keeping me from a good night’s sleep. My eyes are a key since they are providing the “Sticky” mucus to my throat. The position of my head while I am sleeping is also key to a good night’s sleep. My feet have also become a distraction in the early hours of getting into bed as well.

According to “My Air” my events per hour are looking pretty good, but that’s not the whole story.

We’ve still not cleared the clutter from our living room from our Vegas trips and we’ve been home two years.

Uncle Paul fell off of a ladder this week and severely hurt his arm.

My uncle has to have surgery on his arm to repair about 7 breaks, that’s planned for Saturday. Our finances are we’re about 2k under water with CC debt which can be paid off by July unless we have a major payment to the IRS for Nevada Estate. (Which is why we’re carrying any CC debt at all.) We were avoiding traveling until we’re above water.

We had beef stroganoff for dinner and as usual there’s drama about the vegetables not being planned in advance. We’ll need to make a trip to Coast Dental and to Braces now to clear up some billing issues. (Coast Dental has starting billing us for amounts we’re not responsible to pay.) The van is still full of equipment from the outside service, and I need to get all of it out of the heat. The van needs emissions done, I’ll try and get that accomplished after emptying it.

I drove to the Lilburn police station to ask them about all the shootings that are becoming more frequent. 6Months, 6 weeks between the last three where they emptied a semi-automatic pistol into the big blue house on the hill. (>10 rounds) In the end they told me I had to call dispatch and have an officer come to the house. (There was no one at the Lilburn Police station.)

We watched Hallmark until bedtime. I had a little bit of an issue with reflux, I totally burped a melted popsicle into my mouth tonight. I grabbed a real coke and ate some Ritz crackers to settle my stomach. Diet coke can throw off my digestive system sometimes. I do need to drink more water.

Friday 14 June

I woke up last night with a stark with and vomit in my throat. I cleared my throat and went into the shower for a little bit to help my lungs clear any debris that may have gotten in there. I ended up with dry heaves for about 10 minutes. For some reason an orange popsicle I ate while we were watching Hallmark didn’t sit well with my stomach. I sipped on a regular coke and slept in our lounge chairs until this morning. I woke up a little after 8AM feeling a lot better, my torso is still a little distended like I’m constipated.

Mom had accomplished most of her routine before I got up.

She packed up and left for the gym on time at 9AM this morning, I had to help with the dashcam. (We take it off the windshield on these hot sunny days.)

I grabbed a cup of coffee while I checked in with the guys on my HAM radio. The weather here is going to be in the 90’s today. My solar panels and attic vents are going to get a good workout today. Nancy in Florida is going to get a significant amount of rain this morning, the oceans are VERY warm. I keep an eye on her weather since I am closer than Marie is. Our power bill jumped up a little to $166, I am not sure if it is because the rates changed or we’re using more electricity. We have been pulling the house down to 72 degrees for most of last month. The overnight thermostat is now set to 73, we’ll have to wait a bit and see what change that makes.

I’ve not heard from Uncle Paul yet this morning, we are keeping next week open for him.

Mom and I are not really on Facebook, we keep getting those fake “You Have a Virus” pages from the FB suggested conversations.

Talked to my uncle, he’s got next week covered with his friends to help Angelica drive to Chicago and provide some assistance in his home. Surgery is still set for tomorrow.

We’re rewatching the Hallmark Teagarden mysteries, we’ve seen the first two tonight.

Saturday 15 June

I managed to get a pretty good night’s sleep even though I woke up several times.

I think I’ll work on clearing the kitchen table first and just work on my list today. I have a lot of things I should have done last week.

I did put medicine on my toes today.

Scratch my task list for today, we went to Longhorn since Dinner involved pork that was two days past its date. We came home and I slept for more than an hour, I was VERY tired. It’s also very hot outside to be running around in this heat if I don’t have to.

I received my new HIGH Resolution camera for all these shootings.

We cranked up Hallmark and are going to forgo eating our evening meal since lunch was huge. I put a timer on the dump load for the solar panels so that the power supplies are not running a 5W light bulb all night long. The light bulb is to simulate a battery being charged.

Paul sent a text, he’s home from the hospital. *(I don’t know his status)

Sunday, Father’s Day

A really old John Wayne movie the Hell Fighters is on Amazon Prime.

I am pretty sure that my body is losing control of my sugar levels. Now I need to find a way to actually monitor it and to reduce it when needed. Google Foo recommends exercise to reduce the levels if they are high.

I am going to take a walk in the evening tonight, drink only water, eat meals with no snacks and see how the above list changes tonight. We see our doctor in two weeks.

08:00, Talked to the guys on my HAM radio. (It was hard to hear them this morning.)

I got my new camera on my network and upgraded the firmware on it.

I ordered a 2nd camera from Ebay that was $10 cheaper than the camera I bought on Amazon. These cameras are reasonably priced and have plenty of features. The current though is to put the camera on my Chimney facing west.

Wife made eggs for me this morning, I also have breakfast sausages to go with it.

I cook the sausages in a coffee cup to keep the mess down.

Church service went well, I gave away a roll of my dad’s dollar coins to the fathers I met. The church gave away pens to them too. It’s HOT outside.

You can see the change when I stop pushing air into the attic from the hot roof.

We took a nap and then had small pork chops called ribs for some reason. Mom browned them yesterday because they were cook or freeze by Friday. I found out later that she used a surface thermometer (Temp Gun) instead of a meat thermometer that you stick into the meat.

It took some time before we arrived at what steaming actually was. I went on Amazon and ordered steamer trays that sit inside pans. Our steamer tray is missing its three feet that is shown below.

Apparently, the legs fell off long ago and no one noticed.

If you want to watch the service today it’s at COCG Live | Sunday Service | JUNE 16, 2024 – YouTube I handed out dollar coins to the fathers at church today.

Drinking water after dinner, the soles of my feet are still puffy. I should get out and walk up the block to burn off some of the calories I ate at lunch. The only other two symptoms are I am a little tired and thirsty.

The equipment from the Sunday service is still in the van and today is exceptionally hot. I measured the amplifiers and they are about 122 degrees. (Need to get them outta there.) Our dashcams are also getting awfully warm. I put them in the cup holders only to find out that the sun reached them through the window. Best idea I have at the moment is to put them under the seat. The batteries in the garage are 93 degrees and even the floor is 81.

Mom is running through her tasks in her procedure book and starting a grocery list for Tuesday.