[John: I thought the title was about the inside of our house!]
{Nancy: ha ha, glad I have a good sense of humor too!}
Saturday, Mar 22
Horrendous news today of a massive landslide in western WA 55 miles north of Seattle, near Oso, between Arlington and Darrington, that dammed the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River, and inundated a huge area taking out many homes, causing WA State’s most tragic loss of life. The toll of lost and most likely dead and buried alive may reach well over 100.
This is not the type of environment we would ever chose to live; planning and zoning codes everywhere should avert people from building in the active flood plain of a meandering river.
Click either of these for a larger image.
Photos here (from web) are of other areas just to show the idea.
The gravel and sandy area of the bottom photo is called a “point bar” and is covered with water when runoff is significant. There is very little vegetation because of repeated deposition of sediment scoured from upstream. The multiple actions of scouring and deposition result in the river remaking the landscape. Hills (as in the current WA case) slump and provide a source of material for the rushing waters to pick up and redistribute. Be sure to click to open the second image of the map of the river’s mouth in the above link (from Turkey) and note the light green (with purple lines) of the in-filled bay over time.
The WA – Oso slump and damage has been well covered. We are jumping ahead of today with these, but here are some links:
Sliders (red bar to move left or right with triangles in the first one) show how the area looks:
From the Seattle Times. Move this red slider to the right, then left.
From OZ – the land of kangaroos. Click on the 3 images of this link for the before/after views. The 3rd photo is of the flooding upstream from the blockage from the slide. That has gone down because the water overtopped the debris and re-established a channel.
From the Cable News Folks. The “slider” (vertical white line with triangles) in this link shows a satellite view of the debris and the damming of the river with flooding upstream. Move the slider to the left. I have an online retrieval of a Wall Street Journal article that I can send anyone interested, but only subscribers can get to it, so I’ll not give the link.
Finally, here was an early write up in a news report from the UK: click on the image to get larger views, and arrows for moving forward or backwards, with text below the photo.
From the UK’s Daily Mail.
After posting the blog, we continued our daily chores. I fixed a nice egg & chicken salad for lunch. Then off to do neighborhood things. I waited until after the mail delivery before taking over a birthday card to put in the mailbox of our 91-year old neighbor whose birthday is today. Yeah, I was saving the 50 cents postage. On the way back I stopped and got our mail and our neighbor’s mail and then I went to her front door, and used my key to let myself into her house. When she is gone, I make a weekly trip to feed and water the inside/outside cat. The cat seems to eat a lot, so I think she may have visitors. 🙂 Now John has gone out in the sunshine to do some brushing, and I am staying in to do dishes, clothes, and receipt filing for recording.
Sunday, Mar 23
Today at 2:00 to 4:00 at the Methodist church in Ellensburg is a Bluegrass Jam that I’m attending. We had 11 musicians, and twice as many in the audience. It was a lot of fun. Yummy desserts included apple cake, carrot cake, gingerbread, and some cake with chocolate on it. I brought some home to share with John, having our berries on top. He heated egg rolls for dinner, served with pears. I have been working on music, plans for tomorrow and on tax receipts. I succeeded in giving John a long awaited haircut but it needs some detail work (later).
Monday, Mar 24
Up early to work and send John off. COLD ~ 29° still early and an hour later only up to freezing. I must go to town to pick up and deliver some Buy Nothing Ellensburg items at 1:00 p.m., given freely on the facebook page of that name. At the first person’s I picked up 3 blouses to share with another member (I get one of them) and a body pillow for someone else. I drove about a block, and delivered the pillow to a gal also on the list who had toe surgery and needed it for propping her leg and foot, and to pick up from her some yarn for another person. While there I shared a Med size wool vest with her. Then I went to SAIL exercise class, and assisted with a couple of people less stable using their walkers. Back home to work on things. Too much going on. I spent hours on projects and now am falling in bed early for an early rise.
Tuesday, Mar 25
Today we made an early morning trip to Yakima. After eating breakfast, we left at 7:45 a.m. to get there by 8:45 check-in for an appointment for a MUGA test (see below), followed by an echocardiogram at 11:00. MUGA was first. They start by taking a vial of blood, and then put a radioactive substance (Technetium-99) in to attach to the red blood cells; 15 minutes later, I’m poked again (with a huge needle) for injection of the mixture into my bloodstream. This is followed by over an hour of multiple still (for the patient) moving scanned photographs at a high resolution to see more about the way the heart parts are working. The first machine was like a dentist chair, but without any support for my arms, which were supposed to be over my head, yet I can only get my right arm up that high, and no support for my neck was provided. I was a wreck after that. While this is happening, one cannot talk or move–just lie still in pain (back, neck, chest muscles, and arms). Then I was done (I thought) and given peanut butter, crackers and juice. But, after eating, I was invited back for more photographs. This time I was taken to a different machine in the Nuclear Imaging section.
[Photos at this link cycle and the fellow in the white shirt and dark tie is my cardiologist, Anatole Kim. He always refers to me as Professor.]
I recognized the machine as the one used on me 4 years ago, when I last had this test. It is much bigger and I believe more efficient, and certainly more comfortable. When I have to have this test again, I shall request ONLY that machine be utilized. At the end of my experience, I asked if I could make such a request in advance, and the technician said yes. Why I was started on the “inferior” (IMHO) one, is beyond me. This larger one had a shelf for my left arm, and I was able to reach back with my right one, even though the extension was painful. I believe next time I will request both arms stay down. I was happy they folded a pillow under my neck for support, and put a pillow under my legs. This setup was incredibly better. The photography also took less time. I was wobbly and unstable when finished and had to walk down the hall to my echocardiogram planned for 11:00 am. That examination takes almost an hour. That was a much better experience, and with a caring, concerned, and cheerful technician. The coolest thing was being able to see my porcine (aka, pig) heart value and its opening and closing. I was able to view the incoming and outgoing blood on the radiograph and could see there was no leakage. Nice. The results for the echocardiogram are enhanced by the MUGA test that preceded it, for the doctor’s interpretation of several things, including my “ejection fraction.” The MUGA provides a better “read” of the 3-D shape of the heart chambers. That’s desired because each person’s heart damage is different and the equations established using normal hearts provide an approximation that will not be quite right for others. The MUGA (MUltiple Gated Acquisition) scan is useful for assessing the heart’s primary function. It provides a moving image (much like a movie) of the heart’s beating and provides information about the heart’s major pumping chambers.
Wednesday, Mar 26
What a morning. John left for pruning, and I tried working on things. Didn’t get very far, although I did complete some future appointments with various medical personnel. With an hour left before I had to leave for playing music at the Food Bank, I heated a croissant sweet roll to have with coffee. I took one bite (not even a sticky pastry) and out came my gold tooth in the back of my mouth (top). I know that tooth’s number by heart (#15). Very fast was on the phone with the office hoping I could get an afternoon appointment after my music/lunch date. They only work M-W. They only had a slight opening at 11:00 and I was not dressed yet. So, fast a phone call to my banjo buddy that I had to get the tooth fixed and might be late arriving for music, but I would be there. They managed to cement the gold tooth crown back in. I sincerely hope it stays. It’s a little fragile. If it doesn’t it will require a whole new crown. Those are not cheap, even with insurance. There are always home chores and when I got home I decided to do dishes. John had the dishwasher cleaned of dishes and re-shelved. I looked in before loading and thought I saw a can lid caught in the back of the bottom wall drain. I asked John to come look and he agreed it shouldn’t be there and was going to be a difficult extraction. He worked awhile and eventually had to remove a plastic cover (white) with a fine screen, which accounts for the apparent color of the metal lid. To do that required a tiny socket (for a ratchet type wrench) that he does not frequently use, and requires a size adapter. Time seems to fly by while looking for infrequently used tools. He claims there are more comfortable positions than crouching and stretching from the kitchen floor into the back of a dishwasher. Four screws came out, then the filter, then the metal lid, and then the accumulated crud. He finished the reinstallation, but I didn’t get around to loading the washer until the next morning. (Will report back on the success).
Thursday, Mar 27 1964 Alaska Earthquake, 50th anniversary
Up and stayed up when John left. Feeling better. At 9:00 the dogs barked; I had a visitor from the PUD. I met him out front, and he was the one that fixed our meter. He said he had a work order to turn off our electricity for lack of payment of our bill. I wonder if we had not been here (as Tuesday), if he would have done it. He said he thought something was wrong when he realized he had just seen me recently. So, I asked whose account is listed. He gave me a telephone number — not even close! When I said no, he handed me the work order. I didn’t see if it had a name on it, but it had an address 1000 meters south from ours. We are at 11041, not 10041. I happily sent him back toward town. [John: That’s the second time this year that a service-type person failed to read the large white-on-blue numbers the county installed at the street for location purposes. Go figure.] After all the excitement, I did normal morning chores and started the dishwasher with its newly cleaned drain. Worked like a charm and at the end there was NOTHING at all of even a speck of water in the bottom.
Got a lot of time put in on printing music for 4 people in our group, and delivered some today. Others are for me and for someone who will be at the Sunday potluck but wasn’t back in town yet. We had a good happy bunch in the audience and they all participated and sang along. We had 4 guitars, a banjo, fiddle, and clarinet. Went by my neighbor’s on the way home to deliver her mail and check on her cat’s food and water, because I didn’t want to be bothered tomorrow.
Friday, Mar 28
Seems all of WA is supposed to get rain today, so John did not go to the vineyard. It rained ALL day and still is, at 5:00 p.m. I think John keeps hoping it will stop before he has to go feed. One of our cattle-owning neighbors was kind enough to give us and deliver 5 pounds of ground beef (2nd installment ‘cause we didn’t have room earlier). Just been working on different projects all day. Did get a great message from Jeri Conklin tonight about our co-owned puppy, Tre’, out of her female and a dog belonging to Sonja Willitts, Kip, who was brother to our now deceased dog, Cork. Tre’ (or Daisy, as Jeri calls her), won her puppy points (2) today in a California Field Trial. In the Open events she is being handled by pro handler Paul Doiron and will be coming north on the circuit. With her win, she can now be moved to Derby stakes. She will be handled by Jeri tomorrow in the Amateur Walking Puppy. Am I excited or what? Yepper!! Picture to follow next week. Her official AKC name is: Cedaridge Kip’s Camelot Shay Tre’ . A pointing dog may receive a maximum of 2 points for a win in Open Puppy. The stake had 8 starters. Puppies can only run until 15 months of age. The next stake is called Derby, and the dog has to establish a point on a bird. Derby age goes through two years.
Saturday, Mar 29
Awoke to a Rascal’s loud announcement at 6:00 a.m. that he was back in the house, from his night out gallivanting. Later, we found the reason for all the vocalizing. He had deposited a large mouse for us in the den. It was completely whole. He seldom eats on them, but I guess the chase and catch is his idea of fun. Was foggy early morning, but now the sun has come out, and we might have a nice day.
Hope your week was fine.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan