The storm mentioned in the “Placeholder” posting yesterday apparently damaged our DSL provider’s equipment. There was service early this morning (Sun., 30th ), then it went away all over the area. Some time after Noon they seem to have gotten it back to robust.
Saturday, Jun 22
A large bowl of strawberries having just been washed, trimmed, de-stemmed (capped), and ready for the next step – I’m doing some music changes in a program called SongWriter. I can’t seem to find a way of fixing berries that is as comfortable as being in the big padded recliner. I had entered God Bless America last year. Now I can just print out copies. Thought I had to add I’m A Yankee Doodle Dandy, but found it was also there from last year–under a different starting name: Yankee Doodle Boy. Mostly, I worked on music tonight. I forgot to say in the blog last week just put out today, that John ordered us a new printer [Epson WF-3540] to replace our old, now-scannerless, one. The advantage of the new one is that it is wireless so I can print a page without sending it via e-mail to the back room computer or carrying it back there on a USB drive or disk.
Sunday, Jun 23
Lots of stuff accomplished today. Worst thing was waking up from a nightmare about people coming to our MESSY and dirty house. Guess that inspired me to do more cleaning today. Peggy, John’s sister, called to say it was 89 in Cleveland. She told me I needed to clean up a box a day. I’ll strive for that (didn’t make it every day). John said we were only making a box a week, recently. Very recently, it’s been better than that. After my nightmare, I was motivated today, but his comment was I am not capable of working 8 hours / day on the mess. Very true. I’m sitting now resting as I write this, after being on my feet for a couple hours. Did a lot, found a lot, but didn’t get John’s hair cut.
Monday, Jun 24
This morning John picked about 4 quarts of strawberries. I cleaned them but he finished cutting the last 2 dozen, added sugar, and froze 2.5 pounds. We saved some for dessert. I spent most of the morning on emails for colleagues and students. I left at 1:00 (in the rain) for SAIL class, with a stack of magazines to donate to the Adult Activity Center (ones such as Audubon, Smithsonian, Natural History). Then on to my new best friend the podiatrist right afterwards, while it was still raining. John realized he wouldn’t want to work in the rain, so he worked in the big shed on some of the junk there. I was on time to my foot doctor, but he was running behind. Ended up waiting an hour! but then he spent about 15-20 minutes with me, going over what ails me and what we can do about it. Turns out the Pathology Report (from Alpharetta, GA of all places, near my hometown), reported I have a fungal element with features most characteristic of dermatophytes (Trichophyton rubrum). (Only on one foot; where the heck could I have acquired that) ?
There are 3 potential cures he explained: (1) topical treatment daily for 6 months, (2) internal medications for 3 months, but there is some concern with metabolism within the liver and potential damage, plus it is not 100% effective. I don’t want to mess with that with all the meds I’m already on for my heart, several messing with my liver. (3) Laser technology, done once, checked again in 6 months, a therapy that has been approved by the FDA, but is not likely covered by my medical insurance. Probable cost, $400. It only can be done in the Yakima office. I have decided that will be my choice. It likely cannot happen for at least 5 weeks. I have to talk tomorrow to the Yakima office to make an appointment and find out the issues with my insurance. I’m between phone calls with Drs and insurance companies with ignorant and unresponsive people about my foot problem and the laser surgery. They want $400 at the time of surgery, and won’t submit the bill because they say they have in the past and it wasn’t approved. So, I’m writing the Dr. to explain my side of it, and let him know he can request an urgent consideration for an authorization by my insurance company (has to be done before my treatment). John thinks the USA’s health system ought to get rid of all the bs and just treat people. There are more folks moving paper, talking on phones, and punching keyboards than there are fixing what’s wrong. Our farrier had a referral for a sore shoulder but by the time he could get an appointment the shoulder was much better. He told them his wrist and thumb hurt and would the doctor look at those. No, sorry – you need a referral for those, I can only examine your shoulder. Service with a smile – but useless. Phone has been ringing off the hook with other stuff, so I haven’t yet done all the things planned. Still have to cut John’s hair.
Tuesday, Jun 25
Crazy morning home. Intended to get a lot of stuff done, but am now waiting for a phone call from my Cardiologist’s nurse. I walked up to the road to put a letter in the mail to a friend in Atlanta, only to have the nurse call. I don’t know when she will get back to me. They almost never will speak to John about my medical condition. It’s about an early morning request call to make an appt. with Dr. Pham, a Nuclear Cardiologist, to evaluate my need for another wire on my Implanted Cardiovascular Device (just at the end of the week I scheduled an appointment, near the end of July). Finally, ate a late lunch and just finished, when another phone call I was waiting for arrived from our electric utility district office. Next I just got the receptionist in Yakima to give me her email so that she could forward my email to the podiatrist doctor. Phone has been ringing off the hook with other crap, so I haven’t yet done all the things planned. I’m frustrated with access to this podiatrist, because I’m spoiled on my interactions (email) with my family physician and my cardiologist and their respective nurses. Never did get to cut John’s hair. The high swivel-chair made it to the kitchen and I cleaned up the sinks, counters and dishes, and he made incredible progress on old cardboard, collecting trash, crushing cans, plastic bottles, and tin cans. Made several bags of garbage to take out front to be packed off to the “transfer station” (the new name for a garbage dump)!
{ John says: Most folks never see this aspect of their trash but we toss it out of the back of a pickup truck onto a concrete floor. Then a large front-end loader pushes it onto a conveyer belt and it trundles off to fall into a large compacter. That makes bales of trash about the size of an old Nash and these are loaded onto a flat-bed trailer truck. Far beyond the sight and smell of the average urban resident, the truck deposits the bales in a shallow depression in God’s not-so-green Earth. It is rumored that much of the glass dropped in recycling bins is crushed and poured like sand over the bales of trash. With minor adjustments in this process our major cities could build massive pyramids or Towers of Babel-like structures for future folks to wonder about. We liked the old dumps better where night spot-lighting of scavengers (rats and black bears) providing occasional summer entertainment. My father’s generation became excellent marksmen using 22s at such places but that was frowned on by the time I was a teen – spotlights were okay, though.}
Wednesday, Jun 26
John’s picking strawberries. He also took some photos on my old Canon digital camera that had lost its proper white balance (Canon calls this ‘tone’.) Everything taken with it had a blue tinge throughout and much of what I took with it had to be adjusted on the computer. He found the on-line page for the camera and took the promised photo of the Owl in the Strawberry patch.
He doesn’t like the small cameras and has an older Nikon (D40X) he prefers to use. The Owl photo is with the “fixed” white balance on the Canon. We had a photo of the “Dude in the Garden” (aka a scarecrow) previously. He trades the Dude and the Owl in and out to keep birds from damaging berries. Using the Nikon, he took a photo of one of the new dwarf plum trees near ground level showing shoots coming from the dwarfing-root stock. Click on the photo for a large version.
Because these shoots come from the original root stock and not the type of fruit desired (Bubblegum Plum; late August; reddish bronze) – they get removed.
He had a noon dental teeth cleaning, dropped me off at the Food Bank, returned & then took me to SAIL class. He went shopping while I was exercising. Came home to a lot of work. Had a late dinner of a hamburger on a “gourmet” roll. John has hit the hay, and I’m on the way. Needed to send out a few job announcements to the jobs list before quitting for the night. I worked a lot on music this afternoon, getting ready for tomorrow and next week’s patriotic playing. Today at the food bank we did a few, such as America, America the Beautiful, and I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy (although I’m not). We never cleaned and cut the strawberries, so skipped dessert tonight. I had brought home some nice yellow cake pieces (sort of a Bundt cake with a glazed frosting) to have with them today. The activity center puts out sweet things to go with coffee, and encourages us to take them. It will hold in the frig till tomorrow. Oh, our new printer came today, but we’ve not yet set it up. We did remove the outside box to be sure the printer box was not-damaged. The outside container was beat to hell, with punches and holes in it. Had me worried but it was just a shell for the original packaging.
Thursday, Jun 27
Worked this morning on printing music for our group. Then left for town, only to come upon a blockage of Naneum Road on a curve several miles down from our home. I only had 1,000 feet to go to the turn I needed to make, but had to turn around and head back up the road over a mile, to go around a long block. It was in a 30 mph curve, not unlike the ones up by our house, but the road is well marked with curve and speed limit warnings, where ours is not. A tractor trailer truck pulling a heavy duty flatbed trailer with a large earthmover ma-chinery piece on the back had jackknifed and was covering the whole curve on both sides. I never got close enough to know if the driver was trying to go in or out a driveway or field or whether something else was happening. Regardless of who, what, or how – Naneum Road was devastatingly blocked dinging me about 3 miles and 10 minutes. Went directly to Hearthstone without time to have a blood draw for my INR test. Once there I parked away from everyone where no one could hit my car with their door. Helped set up chairs and ta-bles, and gave out some of the music. Met a new member of the group, a trumpet player. I hope he will not be too noisy for the group to handle. He teamed up with the clarinet player, because they play in the same key, which you have heard is two sharps higher than what the rest of the group play in (I have been transposing music for our clarinet player for a couple of years. For example, when we are playing in G with one #, they have to play in A with three #s.) After playing, I went to the hospital to the lab for an INR test on my blood (it was within range, just fine, at 2.7. Then I went to the grocery with the cooler John put in my car, and bought some chicken hind quarters on sale for 98 ¢/pound. While there I picked up a few other things we use that were on sale this week. I had sadly skipped lunch, because of time, but it was 4:00 p.m. by the time I finished at the grocery, too late to have any lunch. I looked at the coupons in my possession, and found I could drop by Jack in the Box on the way to the University, and get two spicy chicken sandwiches and two free tacos from a previ-ously received coupon. From there I called and left John a message I still had to drop by the university to leave several things for my colleagues. NO one was around, and I hadn’t taken my keys, but I found the computer systems analyst working in one of the offices. He has a key and kindly walked to the other end of the building’s 3rd floor to let me in the main office where the postal boxes are. NICE – otherwise, I would have had to go back tomorrow, and I am not planning a trip to town at all tomorrow. I came home to strawberry-cleaning chores. I just finally sat down from an hour’s work cleaning and cutting 2.5 pounds of strawberries John picked yesterday. He helped me finish the process of the cutting and packaging (for freezing), and we had plenty for our dessert tonight. These are called Cavendish and our earliest ones although they are considered a mid-season type.
Friday, Jun 28
Stressed out this morning with a call from my physician’s nurse that my INR was higher on the test than was indicated to me by a reading of a drop of my blood at the time (2.7). Frustrating, as I have not been doing anything (i.e. drinking alcohol) that ought to cause it to go up. This morning, the lab report on the vial of blood, run last evening, claimed 3.6 or something way high. Weather heated up today to 93. In anticipation of the coming end of the World heat wave and a planned Saturday away, John worked into the afternoon on watering both gardens, trees and flowers around the front “yard”. Then at 10:30, our farrier came that caused him be tied up for over an hour, holding horses. After that he picked strawberries. I just put them from a box into something for the refrigerator until he awakes from his hour + nap and we can work on them together. We are short 4 berries of having 4 dozen. [John says: who counts Strawberries?] {Nancy says, when you are taking from a dirty large bucket and putting into a smaller dish for the frig.}
I’m working on a number of chores of organization, for the celebration of life this weekend, for other record things, for kitchen sinks, for doctor and insurance requests, & calendar planning. I spent a lot of time looking for a local bagpiper, and for singers and material for the Sunday program. Well, shoot. I just missed the hours on Friday till when my Podiatrist is open (only until 3:00). Now things wait until Monday. Been continuing work on the song lyrics for next week, but didn’t quit finish. I’ll get them out before they come to work on Monday. I have them all done but one, and I want to check all of the 9 pages before sending. I hope they can run back to back to save paper. I doubled up a couple of songs on one pages. Tried making it larger print for older people. Next, I have to make arrangements for the following weekend for a potluck for our music group. Our 12-string guitar player and his wife are hosting a young gal from Belarus for 5 weeks this summer in town for the program called the Children of Chernobyl. They drive to Seattle Wednesday to pick her up and take her to visit their family near Tiger Lake. After holiday celebrations, they take a ferry to Seattle, from nearby Bremerton, to show her the big city. On home and on Sunday afternoon there will be a potluck, for which John is fixing a huge pork loin roast. I’m in charge of making arrangements to get people informed and to their place to eat at 5:00 p.m. We take our instruments along and play music after we eat. Well, another day and more strawberries to clean and put away. But, we left it for tomorrow. Good news of the evening, a young female bagpiper was found to play music at Lois Robinson’s celebration of life. I just heard they cinched it tonight, after my helping find the contact information late this afternoon.
Saturday, Jun 29
This morning, awoke to a message that the music to the song, I Love Life, was found in the piano bench.
John did a lot of early morning watering, including the raspberries behind the house (that are already producing). We left for the Wests, about 11:15 to stop off at Costco for gas for the new car (“only” $3.57/gal), and by the time we subtract the 4% using the Amer. Express card, it will only be $3.43. While there, John picked up some cat and dog food, some bread, & some grapes. We got through and arrived at our destination just after 1:00. The trip down was fine, but hot. Was 91 in Yakima, in the shade. Had a nice visit and afternoon with great food for 6 people. We provided the steaks, and the hosts the rest. Rice, two salads, nuts, and drinks, and a fine dessert, Pistachio Pudding Dessert on a cake base. Scrumptious.
While there, we experienced the storm John mentioned in the Place marker last night.
More on the storm:
Follow-up on the June 29 storm in our region–once home, I started reviewing the sends on the Internet from my friends and acquaintances. I have put them together (some links and photos) for your enlightenment. All these are from EBRG because I did not have my camera along in Yakima, which John already has written about. Here is a video taken by Alex Eyre
For you geographers reading this, you may remember his father, J. Douglas Eyre who was at Chapel Hill in the Geography Department for 44 years. Before that, Doug was in Michigan for 3 degrees, and even at UW teaching for 6 years. I went to school in Atlanta, GA for my undergraduate degree, and returned in 1967-69 to teach geography at Georgia State University. I knew all the geographers, some better than others, in the Southeast AAG. Doug retired in 2001. About the same time, maybe a year or so later, I met his son in Ellensburg while playing fiddle at the fairgrounds for some event. We met, and had our picture taken together (need to find that), after we realized I knew his dad. I think I saw his name on his nametag, and asked if he was kin to someone from NC. Small world, eh?
Here is a second video link from a former geographer colleague, Allen Sullivan, in town, from Manastash Road, a little southwest of EBRG, just down the road from the next reporter.
Message from Ken Hammond, farther out Manastash, on Cove Road, at the base of the hill trail everyone hikes for conditioning.
Sat, Jun 29, 2013 at 3:16 PM, Kenneth Hammond
About an hour ago, I had just finished loading out another 135 bales of hay, when the sky opened up with drenching rain mixed with large hail. It washed the road, no doubt scarred the apples and pears, and though I have yet to go down to see, probably punched holes in a lot of garden plant leaves. I got totally soaked each of the several times I went up to the pump to see if lightning had shut it down. Oh well, I don’t melt, fade, or shrink. The rain has now stopped, and I just checked the pump again. It ran right through it all, but I now hear more thunder. That means more lightning. It is all very interesting. I am glad I have serious surge protection on the computer.
I don’t know how widespread that intense storm was, but wherever it hit, people with hay down must feel a bit snake-bit.
The storm is moving over us again. Gotta go check on that blankety blank pump.
And today, Sun., June 30 at 11 30 AM , in reply to mine back to him last night.
It was an interesting storm. There was more than a half inch of rain in less than an hour. The wind was blowing so hard, hail was landing in on the hay in the barn. The man who got the hay we were loading is bald. He was hurting when he got hit. Some of my corn is about 3 feet tall and it is now really leaned over in the wind. I will straighten it back up when it dries a little. The garden is sort of a mud hole right now.
Every year has peculiar and interesting qualities.
Storm related photos:
Zoe Rushton took the first 2 photos.
The hail in hand photo is by Avia Beach.
Sunday morning — started off interestingly. I was fixing my coffee and toast and found a little green frog on the counter. How the heck he got into the house is beyond us, especially into the kitchen. Night before last, John opened the door to the garage, off the front porch, to let out some of the built-up hot air. Perhaps froggie got to the kitchen from there. ?? I think there is a hole in the wall. Mice used to come into our house somehow from the garage, but with all the cats around, we haven’t been bothered recently. John got him to hop into a shoebox, and relocated him in short grass out back by the creek. Hope he survives all right. Small little cutie, a little over an inch long, with legs folded.
John picked a large bucket of beautiful strawberries, mostly Cavendish. He only intended to pick several for brunch, but there were more available and ready, plus they were wet from yesterday’s rain, so he picked all. We just finished fixing them, and he figured it was ~3 pounds of finished berries plus the touch of sugar.
Heard from a friend in Alabama she had a red sunflower blooming. She and I had never heard of one, but when I mentioned to John, he said, yes, they come in all sorts of colors. He had bought a seed pack this year with various yellow, gold, and red combinations of petals, but never got them planted. Here is her picture (click for large view):
I finished putting all the music lyrics together for the July 5 performance for Independence Day to send when we have Internet service return. I called central control and found out the storm yesterday wiped out all coverage in the Ellensburg area. They figure the storm damaged some equipment, and “the technicians are working on it.” We just regained service after at least 3 hours down. Some people in the area were out since 11:00 p.m. last night. Three hours was bad enough for our progress.
Hope your week was great.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan