Things happen

Sunday, Mar 1 (Here, March did not come in like a lion.)

For Feb 28 CPAP. Reported figures. 6 hrs 4 min with AHI = 0.49
Events: 3 H, CSR-1m42s, 1 PP No major mask leaks (max=9 L/min)
Then after SpO2 entered: 9 hrs 36 min with AHI = 0.31

Another day (last night) of problems with Word Press to get the blog out, so John could get up at 5:00 a.m. to head for a WTA work crew day across the pass at Tiger Mt. near Issaquah, again at Poo Poo Point. (See story about the name below near the end of this blog.) He was supposed to take along a friend but she woke up feeling awful with a sore throat, called at 5:18 and cancelled. John continued getting ready to leave, but somehow walked off without his backpack. I didn’t find it until I re-awoke. It had his lunch and camera and other stuff I’m sorry he won’t have with him. He will not return until 5:45 p.m., having to go through EBRG for gasoline to be ready to take the trip to White Heron for pruning in the morning. I returned his lunch to the fridge and gave Woody her morning food on her pallet perch. I went out and called, and then watched from the house. She first went to the bed backboard in the 3-walled shed where she hangs out, sleeps, and in bad weather, eats–and got up to look inside. When she didn’t find it there, she came on across the driveway to the special pallet dining place (a.m. only). Evenings 3 ferals eat in the hay mow next to the cat house. Woody is the only one who gets morning treats.
1-WoodyOnPalletTable

John called about 10:00 a.m. to tell me what I already knew, and asked me to put his lunch away. I beat him to it, having done that as soon as I found it. His battery ran out while he was talking to me. So much for having a cell phone for emergencies. The car charger does not fit his phone. I continued with chores and projects.. After noon, I went to take pictures of John’s tree-felling work yesterday. I got 3 taken from the between the barns looking in the direction I took before shots, and then walked forward to take on-the-ground pix, only to have my camera retract its lens and say Battery Exhausted. So, back to the house for charging. When it’s done (I think it takes awhile), I’ll try again.

Eventually, I got the photo; below are before and after shots.
1-Before&AfterJohnAnnieTreesOnAccessToBarns

More work done on dishes and yea, I put in my meds for the week (time-consuming). I decided not to eat anything for lunch because John is not able to eat his. I also had my breakfast a lot later than he did.

Much happened this afternoon–finished my volunteer paperwork to send in the first of the month, to R.S.V.P. group, two more batteries died (the camera one said, Battery Exhausted and the cell phone had red bars). Then received an unexpected call for help from a friend in a nursing home. Took me >1 hour to sort that problem out, and luckily I did not have to drive to town. AOK now. John got home 11.5 hrs after leaving. He had to get gas at a very high price, sadly, because he didn’t stop on the way out of town. He paid $2.99 / gal in North Bend. Yikes, it was higher than recently here in Ellensburg, but the price here was cheaper, $2.19, but now at the end of this week, is $2.39.

This was an interesting occurrence today for a Captcha Code, I received for a verification I needed to add someone to the jobs list serve I moderate. Normally it is boring, undecipherable numbers.
2-VerificationCharactersATLANTA
We were both very hungry and so had a breakfast for dinner: two eggs over easy, ham, and an English muffin. Dessert blueberry pie and ice cream.

I noticed bruises on the smallest knuckles of my hands ????? they were gone by morning, and I have no clue (nor do my doctors and nurses and pharmacist) what might have happened.

Monday, Mar 2

for Mar 1, CPAP report. Reported figures. 10 hrs 14 min with AHI = 0.00 Events: no H No major mask leaks (max=6 L/min)

John left at 7:40 for wine grapevine pruning at White Heron today.
Mario came and unloaded another large trailer full of hay. I don’t know how much hay we now have, but more is coming.
I wrote an email to my cardiologist, Dr. Kim’s nurse, and I called my family physician’s nurse. I searched on line last night and didn’t find much helpful information. One suggested cause is stress. Well I’m under stress a lot, but never have had this in my life. I should have taken a photo, but didn’t.
I wrote an email to my cardiologist (via his nurse), which is the way they prefer such conversations. Last night I had bruises on my lower knuckles (near the finger nail). No pain, and no memory of doing anything to cause it, especially on both hands. I can think of one thing, but it’s only with my right hand; or, another, (wearing and changing the oximeter), but that is only on the left hand.
My dosage doubled to 20mg of Telmisartan (Micardis), a couple weeks ago, and I was supposed to be on the lookout for dizziness or feeling tired. I wondered if bruising was a side effect of that drug, so I got the literature from my pharmacist. Indeed, it does suggest to watch for increased bruising. However, by morning it was almost all gone — I could make myself see lighter bruises if I tried. Sadly, I did not photograph them.
I’m scheduled next week to see Dr. Pham (Mar 10) about my ICD upgrade. Perhaps I will ask him.
I called my Pharmacist to see if she had any ideas. She only thought that Coumadin might be involved, but I have been on that for many years, and I do not bruise easily or for no reason. My INR will be checked Monday, 3/9, but it has been in the right range for the past 3 times. If you have any thoughts or ideas, please share.
Nancy
P.S., I did a little research on line — and didn’t learn what I thought applied to me, so with all yours and the doctor’s knowledge about my situation, I thought I would contact you.

Called our family physician, Dr. Schmitt’s office for his nurse. Karen called me back late afternoon and was very attentive and would pass along to my family physician (never heard anything).

A day later, I received this from the cardiologist’s nurse:
Hi Nancy,
We have no idea what would cause the bruising. Certainly, as you know, warfarin (coumadin) patients bleed and bruise more easily. As your INR is now therapeutic, and the bruising did not worsen or persist, I would chalk it up to happenstance. Some things we really do not know the answer to.
Sorry it took so long to get back to you.
Colleen

Managed to finish the summary of volunteer hours for February for both us and a guitar-playing friend who does not have a computer, but goes to the same gigs I do.

John got gas on way home. I think he got it for $2.19 at the “lower Circle K” on Canyon Road.

He spent more time on disassembling the rock crib by our entrance.
Here’s a before and after comparison.
2-RockCribFrontEntranceBefore&After

Have to show dinner. John made a neat concoction for our vegetable with brown sugar, butter, and cubed honeycrisp apple cooked in the half of an Acorn squash. With it we had a super-baked chicken in an iron skillet, and a whole wheat croissant buttered and toasted.

3-Dinner-3-2-15

Tuesday, Mar 3

For Mar 2 CPAP report. Reported figures. 7 hrs 17 min with AHI = 0.27 Events: 2 H No major mask leaks (max=8 L/min)

John left for pruning at White Heron, in the Mariposa Vineyard.

I called Super 1 Pharmacy about receiving Telmisartan warnings for the drug’s side effects to see if it might have been related to my bruised knuckles. They will have them ready for me to drive by and pick up.

Picked up my neighbor at 1:25 and took him to the car repair shop, but they were not ready for him, so I took him along to Jazzercize and he visited with two people he knew there, while I went through the class. That was exciting, and even fun, but quite tiring. I got my pulse up, that’s for sure. Below is the pulse rate as recorded by my oximeter, and it went to a high of 150 for a few moments during this segment.

4-JazzercisePulseDuringWorkout

I’m not sure of the dip (about 25 minutes in) after the stair-stepping move upward, to above 150 bpm. It might be related to movement on my finger, but I don’t recall switching fingers as I do overnight, when I awake. My pulse was above 70 for the entire time, and over 100 for 12.5 minutes.

Stopped by Louaine’s on way home. She had a surprise for us. She gave us her pineapple that took 4 years to grow. Boy, what a special gift! And, she also has a couple/three lemon trees, with huge lemons, and she shared one of them. She grows these delicacies in the corner of her living room. You saw her Amaryllis and pineapples in last week’s blog, but also hidden behind the Amaryllis were a couple of her lemons. See below for more on the size of these beauties.

3-Louaine'sGiftStages

Worked on music, and got two copies ready to go. John has put in some more time trying to get the scanner to listen to the signals, but apparently, this is a problem many others have had for some time. I surely miss having my scanner for the music packet production and sharing.

John worked this afternoon on moving trees he had cut down and on removing barbed wired from the old fence that has to come down so that the bulldozer can grade a road link off the driveway, to get to the barns in a straighter line. You can view in the picture below, the old wire woven on the fence. Our male Black Butte’s Chocolate Dandy is sitting in the driveway in front of the to-be-new gate posts for our newly planned wooden dowel fencing. The 2012-built Pole Barn is in the center, and the new drive access will go through that fence (John’s been disassembling all week), through the trees (now cut down) to the right of the V-shaped one on the edge of the large brush pile. Old barn is to the back right of the picture a little out-of-sight.

4-Dan-beforeAndAfterFence&TreesCleared

Then John came in and made a chocolate cake in two pie pans. After dinner, I turned one upside down (should have sliced off the convex top), frosted the bottom (now the top), to be the layer, put the other bottom on top of the layer (frosting was coconut/pecan), frosted the top, and then the sides of the whole, strangely-shaped cake. It may look funny, but it is quite yummy. The center layer of frosting doesn’t show very well in the photo. Perhaps I should have spread it thicker between the cakes.

5-YummyLayeredChocCakePecanCoconutFrosting

Wednesday, Mar 4

For Mar 3 CPAP report. Reported figures. 7 hrs 1 min with AHI = 0.00
Events: 0 H No major mask leaks (max 7/min)

Worked on several things and left at 11:10 for town; to food bank soup kitchen, where we played, sang, ate (Shepherd’s pie, with green beans, and a fruit salad with blueberries and apples in a creamy sweet sauce). Dessert was a rich chocolate cake I only had a little of (2 bites). On to SAIL where I took my oximeter for readings to compare to Jazzercise yesterday. It was much milder, indeed, as expected.

6-NickZentnerShowsCheckWildcatHandImage

Nick Zentner describing a map, but look at the shadow of his hands — I see a CWU wildcat! I describe my videos below, but I captured this as an image from the video (hence low resolution).

We went to Nick Zentner’s talk tonight, “The Dalles to Portland: Interstate-84 Geology” and took my old Exilim 7.2 megapixels camera, because it does not make such huge video files as my 18.1 megapixels Nikon. I charged both batteries I have for it, but I didn’t realize the card was full. Actually, I looked, and thought it said I had 1 hr 59 min left, so I did not change to my card from my other camera. While there at the talk, I recorded the first introductions, but was taking too long to delete the other stuff individually, so, I deleted all the stuff from it so I could get most of the information from the evening’s presentation. I have the first blackboard/green board lecture parts separated from the other visuals. Got about 28 min of the latter. It took forever to upload to You tube, but that will be the only way I can share the file. It’s hundreds of megabytes large. We grabbed some ice cream on the way home and came home to a late dinner of turkey/cheese sandwiches, cake and ice cream.

Apologies in advance for not taking my tripod, but not sure I could follow Nick around while he lectures.

Nick_Z: Part 1

Here is the You Tube link to the visuals, Part II, of Nick’s lecture, described above.

Nick_Z: Part 2

Working more on music for tomorrow and continuing to have WIFI issues with printing and scanning. HOWEVER — good news. John awoke in the middle of the night, and thought for an hour, coming up with the idea we might scan to a USB card, rather than to either of our computers as we had been doing for a couple of years. IT WORKED!! so I’m back in business for scanning my SongWriter 2010 .mus files that cannot be read by any other software, and also it will not send out to another format, such as a .pdf or .jpg. This is my work-around for sharing with other members of our music group (with computers) and with friends around the US.

Thursday, Mar 5

For Mar 4 CPAP report. Reported figures. 7 hrs 34 min with AHI = 0.26 Events: 2 H No major mask leaks (max=13 L/min)

I called SiriusXM satellite radio, to get a better price for the next 6 months. If they had not allowed me the option, I was going to cancel. However, I got coverage for 6 months, at $27.68. I’m to call back on 9/1/15 to ask for another promotion to save the automatic renewal of $91.86 for 6 months. I talked to “Dale” in Nova Scotia! They have had too much snow, and were having a heat wave to minus 3 after minus 34 (That’s centigrade I’m sure, but is still very cold). Oops, showing my age, make that Celsius! (-34 Celsius = -29.2 Fahrenheit) — but as I was talking with her it was -3 (-3 Celsius = 26.6 Fahrenheit). I laughed and said, “You’re having a heat wave~!” She agreed.

I managed to complete a letter of recommendation for a Ph.D. program for a student from my past. I’m happy I’m still around to be able to help. Current procedure is to do everything on line; no getting it printed on letterhead, signed, and mailed, anymore. Interesting, but still requires effort and time.

Speaking of students, I also got a request today from Megan Walsh, my successor as Geography faculty member in charge of the scholarship committee. She wrote early morning to check on how many scholarships we wanted to fund this year. I called the CWU Foundation and asked my friend to give me the balance in our account for the scholarship. We will likely give two $500 awards but this is still to be decided.

Today, we had 10 people at Royal Vista, providing music to the residents. Afterwards, the activities director gave us cherry juice and chocolate chip cookies. After the last song in their books, ‘Til We Meet Again, we did some encores, T for Texas, Mountain Dew, and then to resident requests for Golden Slippers & Red River Valley. Very cool indeed; we don’t do that very often. The group very much enjoyed it, and so did we.

Friday, Mar 6

For Mar 5 CPAP report. Reported figures. 7 hrs 13 min with AHI = 0.28 Events: 2 H, 2 CSR,2.5m No major mask leaks (max=9 L/min),after the SpO2 was added, it was 8 hrs 16 min with AHI= 0.24

I made one of my needed contacts with our local telephone company actually owned by a firm back east in Maine and New York, Fairpoint. My bill had jumped $9 in Oct, 2014, and I just realized it while collecting my paperwork for taxes. I haven’t paid attention because it is automatically deducted from our bank account. I requested another promotion to lower it to what it had been for 2 years. Nothing is available right now, except for raising my DSL speed at $9.00/ month, which I don’t need to do. So, will wait till that promotion is done, and another comes out in May to lower my “advantage rate.”

I left for the AAC (Senior Center) before 11:00, and stayed until 2:45. We had “thick as fog” pea soup for lunch for Dr. Seuss day, with exercise class following at 1:30 to 2:40. No, I did not take green eggs. They added ham to the green pea soup, but it was quite thick, and more brown than green. At first I thought they used lentils. I was planning for liquid soup, and had some bagels with jalapeno pepper cheese on top. I cut them in half and toasted them, buttered, and then cut into large size croutons for the soup. The center staff makes the main dish, and all the people coming to the party bring something. My croutons went over well, even though the soup was not soupy. They had sour cream to add as well. Someone brought a plate of deviled eggs, but by the time I went through the line, none were left. I wish people would have just taken one half. I had some apple/celery salad (left the cranberries), and a couple of potato chips, an apple-something for dessert, and a couple of cups of lemonade.

We played a Dr. Seuss game of hangman (Wheel of Fortune), for names of the Dr. Seuss book. They had copies on all the tables (checked out from the City Library). Our table was designated as team one; there were two other teams. Our team won the most games, but we had a former day care owner who knew her titles. It was fun. I knew only a couple, but I’m good at hangman. Each team got to choose a letter, and if the letter was in the title, then they could guess the title.

5-Tina-Dr.SeussHat-Nancy-HangmanGame

I stayed for exercise class. We had 20 there today; good crowd for a Friday.

If you like animals this 1 minute collection of antics will cheer you. It came to me from a high school friend, Bernie.

Funny animals

John made us a great dinner from the middle third of salmon caught (not by us) in the Columbia River. We’ve had it in the freezer since “cherry time” last year. We were picking cherries when the neighbor brought it by – so he got some cherries – but his nephew did the fishing. We had it with lemon sauce, fried potatoes and onions, and honeycrisp apple pieces.

I must hit the hay, very tired from another long day.

Saturday, Mar 7

For Mar 6 CPAP report. Reported figures. 8 hrs 8 min with AHI = 0.86 Events: 7 H No major mask leaks (max=7 L/min), after the SpO2 was added, it was 8 hrs 13 min, with AHI= 0.85

Managed a nice brunch today before our hay arrived. My partial pancake had strawberries and the last of our plum preserves, cheese omelet, and nice crisp bacon.

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Mario brought another load of hay today. It was a day of a lot of outside work for John, including disassembling another rock crib and moving the rocks away to another place on the property. After finding our youngest horse out of where he was supposed to be John put him back and had to repair the loose fence where he apparently pushed under. That old line had not been an issue because it was not part of an enclosure. So when it became part of an enclosure a few days ago (connected to panels), it became the weak link. Now fixed. He also spent time moving implements (riding lawnmower and chipper), out of the old barn where some hay can be placed – just in case. In case what? Don’t have an answer for that. Work was mostly inside for me, with a trip out for some photo follow-ups in the afternoon, where I learned of some neighborhood activity. Some neighbors’ kids let a fire get away from them, into dry grass. Our other neighbor put it out with his tractor, driving through it quickly, scraping with a harrow, before it reached a house on the property, but the fire dept showed up and finished watering down smoldering parts.

One of the several county fire district trucks parked at the south end of the family property. That’s ½ mile from the fire. We are not sure why or what they did there – and we may never know. They brought a big (4,000 gallons?) water tanker, too; red – not yellow.
8-YellowTruck-Swedberg's

The other thing we did today was take photos of the pineapple, lemon, with something for scale.
We needed to disassemble the pineapple to eat tonight, and so I can return the top to Louaine to plant for another pineapple 4 years down the road. She offered it to us, but we do not have the a spot such as she has made in her house — humid and in the sun – we barely keep our ‘Christmas’ cactus alive. We don’t do exotic.

In the photo below — the apple on the left is a honeycrisp and is larger than many apples. This one weighs 3/4 lb. Next the pineapple, and the large lemon! On the right is a 15.25 oz can of peaches, for scale.

9-ScaleForHoneycrispPineappleLemonCanPeaches

Then we have pictures of 4 pieces (the whole pineapple) that we had with dinner. It consisted of leftover salmon, peaches, toasted cheese bread, and fresh pineapple from our neighbor.
Thank you, Louaine.
6-CombinedPineapplePix

Sunday, Mar 8

For Mar 7 CPAP report. Reported figures. 4 hrs 40 min with AHI = 0.00 Events: 0 H, No major mask leaks (max=6 L/min), after the SpO2 was added, it was 9 hrs 8 min, with AHI= 0.00

Did a load of dishes and of clothes. Put my meds in for the week, and realize I need to print my list to take with me to my doctor’s appointment on Tuesday in Yakima. I delivered the pineapple plant-top to Louaine, stopping to take a picture of the emptied rock crib (over the last week) for comparison above.

Knowing John had taken two pieces of thawed previously frozen pizza, I decided to eat healthy for lunch. I fixed a bowl of oatmeal with our own strawberries and pecans. I left off the brown sugar because the strawberries were sugared when frozen, and the juice acted as the needed liquid.

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John’s off to Poo Poo Point, again today, and he is taking a friend (my former student) along with him. She has wanted to volunteer with WTA for some time. She was to go last week, got sick, but was able to go today. He picked her up a little after 6:00 a.m. We’ve previously discussed the Daylight Saving Time change. John set all our clocks ahead today, but I have yet to find the instructions to do my new watch.

Poo Poo Point history:

The collection at the Issaquah Train Depot includes a steam donkey.
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The poo poo referenced in Poo Poo Point is not destined for the bathroom. Instead, the designation for a ridge on Tiger Mountain nods to logging. Loggers used a winch called a steam donkey to haul logs through Tiger Mountain forests to a loading point. “There was a steam whistle set up that they would blow before they started pulling these logs through the forest at high speed, which was dangerous,” Issaquah History Museums Executive Director Erica Maniez said.
The high-pitched whistle on the steam donkey emitted a “poo poo” sound. (The history museums’ collection includes a steam donkey parked outside the restored Issaquah Train Depot.)
Maniez said Poo Poo Point is a contemporary designation. The late William Longwell Jr., a longtime Issaquah Alps Trails Club member, described the tale behind Poo Poo Point in a guide to Tiger Mountain trails. Still, uttering “Poo Poo Point” prompts giggles from outsiders and recent transplants.

Read about the name.
Written by Warren Kagarise, July 2, 2011, The Issaquah Press.

John came home and made brownies. He had the box on the pull-out board and I ignored it all day. We have a tub of chocolate frosting with a ‘best by’ date of Aug-2014 that prompted this culinary action. I’m giving him this file to work on and now I’ll frost the brownies.

Hope your week was fine.

Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan