Saturday, Mar 28
For Mar 27, CPAP. Reported figures. 8 hrs 32 min with AHI=0.12
Events: 1 H No major mask leaks (max=17 L/min), with SpO2 added, 8 hrs 57 min AHI = 0.10
A “Lucky 13” people of our group attended and provided dinner music for the local square dance association mentioned in last week’s blog, and then we shared their meal. We played over an hour because the food preparation took longer than anticipated. The food was awesome, and we all pigged out: pulled pork in sauce, beef brisket, BBQ beef ribs, with many different kinds of salads. We ate while they held a fundraising auction of desserts. Their dance (round and square) followed.
We had taken care of most of the animals before leaving at 4:30 p.m., all except the 3 dogs, so they were anxious to eat when we arrived. Once home from the fun, I spent the rest of the evening working on emails, on sending out jobs list announcements, and I spent time on CPAP data reports that I had not previously completed.
Sunday, Mar 29
For Mar 28 CPAP. Reported figures. 5 hrs 57 min with AHI = 0.34
Events: 2 H No major mask leaks (max=14 L/min), with SpO2 added, 9 hrs 49 min AHI = 0.20
We don’t know what frightened Rascal this morning. While John was in the kitchen fixing his breakfast and lunch for being gone all day working trail, the cat baled off his perch, knocking John’s computer back-up drive onto the kitchen counter, sending a bowl of hard cat food onto the floor, spilling on its way onto the counter and “feeding” stand. It was a mess and caused a lot of noise. Mid afternoon, I finally finished cleaning up the mess on the counters. The dogs love cat kibbles and they cleaned up the floors all around in the kitchen and “dining” room that we use as a den.
John left at 6:00 a.m. for his last day (4 this month) working on the Poo Poo Point trail at Tiger Mountain. They will not be back at that trail until the fall. Here is the thank you from the Crew Leader, Zach. This will give you an idea of their accomplishments today:
You all worked super hard to get those berms out, drains cleaned, switchbacks swoopy, and culverts verted. I was impressed by the sheer productivity of all groups out there. The work you put into those trails Sunday will go a long way. Especially with all the traffic that Tiger gets! Every footstep takes a bit of the trail with it, and it is our job to get that trail as durable as possible so as many feet as possible can fall upon it. With the water removed, drains cleared, duff and backslope just so, we can ensure that it can stay tenable for many more years. PooPoo (named after the whistle sound of steam donkey loggers, not the other thing) is a great example of how people of the Puget Sound love to get out there and huff and puff up hills covered with beautiful trees. Your work out there Sunday has helped those people get up the hill safely. And who knows, maybe inspired a few people.
I love seeing you all out there expressing your love for the trails and giving back to a community that you already love and enjoy. Please keep coming out; I would have any of you out again to work on my crew any day.
Wow, our temperature went to 65° today. I will be interested in hearing what John worked in on the trail. All I heard was they got muddy, and in giving part of the crew a ride back down to the parking lot, people got his white seat covers very dirty. He had removed the towels and shirts protecting the upholstery from the week before. Oops!
I accomplished a bunch of things today including setting up stuff for a few people to search for transfers of timeshares to travel. I worked on a letter of recommendation for a student I had in 2007. I worked a bit on filing receipts. We are also considering getting a new Blaze King Chinook woodstove. The current stove (1980s model of Earth Stove) hasn’t been used in 15 years and has to be uncovered (things & dust) so John can measure the size of the alcove.
I worked a lot on data reports from my CPAP using two different software packages. I’m favoring the old tried and true one from Australia, Sleepyhead. It took way too much time to upload my data from my oximeter. First, I recharged the battery in the unit after it ran out 1/2 hr before I awoke the second time. This reaction is not new. The USB port will not recognize the unit after being plugged into a wall outlet for charging. I have found that letting my laptop do the charging is more successful. Interspersed that chore with others, managed to wash a load of clothes, with more needing done, with dishes still needing to be cleaned.
I did find some bills to check on Monday morning regarding payments needed for doctor’s visits, because I expect we have not reached our insurance deductibles. I hate paying so much monthly for insurance to have so little covered; the dental is twice as bad.
Monday, Mar 30
For Mar 29 CPAP. Reported figures. 9 hrs 3 min with AHI=0.00 Events: none. No major mask leaks (max=9 L/min).
Received a message from sales clerk Ivan about the stove; he needs some more measurement information from John. Ivan claims to be working on getting the price down a bit.
I submitted a recommendation letter for my former student Michael J and contacted some friends whom I know he could meet there in San Diego.
Talked to Group Health about the deductible and all my medical expenses the first of the year. As of 2/9/15, I met MY deductible ($250) [John’s is separate]. I found out the deductible for Medicare is $147 for everyone. I imagine if I met the $250 already for Group Health, that I am okay for the rest of the year on Medicare. There are still other costs that continue.
I spent time on line with a person from the Association of American Geographers. At the next annual meeting in Chicago, I would get a certificate/award for 50 years of membership. A reward is free membership dues for the rest of my life. I won’t go so there is a need for the AAG or someone to pick it up and mail. The AAG plans to send the information by mail, so all I miss is the free lunch (which it wouldn’t be to get to Chicago).
Next I talked to an AMEX rep in Arizona about our credit card through Costco. Will likely start a new card (Simply Cash is the name), for no annual fee to obtain the 3% gasoline purchase AMEX advantage. We can use the current card (for 4% discount on gasoline) that we have on our premium membership with Costco through next March 2016, when Costco changes from using them to using VISA. I already have a visa acct through Chase, but I believe this will be another VISA through Citigroup. I dislike having so many different credit cards, but it beats carrying around large sums of cash.
Now back to other busy-work. Almost finished my volunteer hours to send into RSVP. That will be changed a lot after this month too. Someone thinks volunteers don’t do the ‘right’ things and want us to get with their pc-program.
I spent time reminiscing with a 9th grade classmate that I haven’t seen since my wedding (1969), and we only recently found each other on Facebook. Today was her birthday, and I was notified by FB. This is one of the few advantages to the system, which otherwise is a waste of time.
Tuesday, Mar 31
For Mar 30, CPAP. Reported figures. 7 hrs 29 min with AHI=0.00 Events: none. No major mask leaks (max=7 L/min), after the SpO2 was added, it was 9 hrs 32 min, with AHI=0.00
Wow! Windy all night and morning, up to 37 mph over 3 different hours, then to a high of 39 mph and continues. It has been gusting > 30mph since 4:00 a.m. There is even a Wind Advisory in effect from 9 AM to 9 PM. Central Washington can get dust storms and road accidents follow.
Massive cleaning in our den today. Guess the wind blew the jobs inside, and John is on full throttle. I am trying to keep up. Now he went on the roof to make measurements of the flue, and happily, for me, he came back down safely. So he would have a way down, he tied the ladder to the house. I was worried with the 39 mph winds. He took photos inside and outside and measured all the things needed for the stove purchase.
I managed to submit our volunteer hours for March to RSVP (for John, me, and one of our guitar players, who does not have a computer).
Wednesday, Apr 1
For Mar 31, CPAP. Reported figures. 6 hrs 49 min with AHI = 0.44
Events: 3 H No major mask leaks (max=7 L/min), with SpO2 added, 9 hrs 36 min AHI = 0.31
Crazy dreams awoke me too early this morning. I was back teaching, late to a final exam on campus at a place I didn’t recognize, and without my final prepared. Guess that was the result of yesterday’s massive clean up of CWU course materials, among the boxes sorted and moved.
My friend bought me a new copy of SongWriter 2012 so we can share music creation, and it was delivered as I was leaving for playing music at the food bank. We had a bunch of players today — a viola, 2 fiddlers, banjo, plus a couple of singers. We have quite a following and are much appreciated by many at the Food Bank. The food was pretty good. Large fruit salad, turkey sandwiches, very generously endowed, such that I brought home a half of my sandwich. We had that with our leftover beef Crockpot stew, along with toasted Italian (filone asiago) cheese bread with grated cheddar melted on top. [The town, Asiago, 50 miles NE of Venice, is the source of a cow’s milk cheese of that name put on a long skinny (filone) loaf of bread. In Italy it is often called the “poor man’s bread” but with an American wrapper decorated with the word Artisan it sells here for $1.59 for a 6 ounce loaf. Now you have a rich man’s bread!] After that, I drove to my SAIL class to add some exercise, there obtaining two granola bars to bring home. They often put goodies on the counter next to the coffee pot.
While there, I was asked to invite and arrange for our music group to play at the July 4 celebration on July 3rd, at the Adult Activity Center. I have done that, and we will have a few players participating at two places that day, with a nice picnic lunch provided by the Adult Activity Center, before we take off for playing music at a nursing home. This is probably our 14th year of providing music for the community event. We do patriotic songs and U.S. ones they know (This Land is Your Land), and we sing the National Anthem at the end, acapella, with everyone in the room standing and saluting the flag. It is always moving. We do that for Veteran’s Day too.
I sent out many jobs to the jobs list. I received a request from a Ph.D. student in the Midwest to fill in an on-line survey on GIS internships in Education and their importance to students. It was supposed to take only 10 minutes, but it took me 17. I knew the adviser of the Ph.D. student, so it made it a little more personal to help out, and I wrote him some extra useful information I had gleaned over the years. I got a few photos of our landscaping-in-progress — pulling out the tree stumps and root systems of the trees John fell a couple weeks ago. More on this in the Friday section, below.
Thankfully, I managed to fix the Overview feature in SleepyHead to get my data on four items displayed for the past 3 months of 2015. Somehow, I accidently shut off the graph display (no clue how), but I fiddled around until I found a reset feature in the software.
Thursday, Apr 2
For Apr 1, CPAP. Reported figures. 8 hrs 3 min with AHI = 0.12 Events: 1 H No major mask leaks (max=15 L/min), with SpO2 added, no change, same time both.
We took a morning walk to see Yellow Bells (Fritillaria pudica) on our property, to take photos, and then we came back and researched them on the web. Let me explain this photo collage below. First, these are the first found on our place and we have lived here 26 years. There are only two clusters, close to each other. The one on the top-left was redder (a significance of being older blossoms). The one on the right is more yellow. The middle bottom is a close up superimposed between the photo of the two plants to show a single Yellow Bell.
A map of their distribution shows eastern Kittitas County, where we are, is a populous area for the wildflower. All sighting are east of the Cascade Crest. This is the source, with a lot of other useful information from the Burke Museum.
Note the large number of sightings (bright green circles) in eastern Kittitas County.
I found July/Aug playlist and a carrier with the ~ 50 copies of large typed lyrics for the July 4 celebration at the AAC, which we will do July 3, 11:30, eat, and then go to Royal Vista.
Today at 1:10, I have to leave for Royal Vista for April’s play date. Lorene (neighbor) comes home today, so I missed seeing her in the room, but am happy she’s able to return home. John dropped me off, and drove the truck completely filled with boxes of office paper, magazines, and newspaper, to take to the recycling center. Also, he was able to fill the large gasoline can to carry in the open truck bed. As well, he went to the grocery for foodstuffs and the pharmacy for my meds.
We got ready and left at 6:00 p.m. for the Mt Baker volcanic lecture on CWU’s campus. It was a fascinating presentation. Mt. Baker is 133 miles NW of us and 50 mi. NE of Seattle. If you are interested, go to the web site
by clicking here.
Explore it by submitting your email address and following the directions.
The photo above is of the annual research team going into the fumarole field of Sherman Crater on the mountain, to sample temperatures and chemistry of the different holes venting the gasses.
Also, here are a couple of short You tube videos to watch. The first is:
Fumarole gas sampling, Sherman Crater, Mount Baker
and the second is:
Tour of Sherman Crater, Mount Baker
Friday, Apr 3
For Apr 2, CPAP. Reported figures. 5 hrs 43 min with AHI = 0.70 Events: 4 H, 2CSR. No major mask leaks (max=9 L/min), with SpO2 added, 8 hrs 12 min, AHI = 0.49
Early morning picture of our plum tree blossoming, a Methley plum tree John recently planted.
The center photo is from the web of what to expect as fruit plums, surrounded by this year’s blossoms on a young tree in our backyard.
Potluck first of the month at AAC, also a goodbye for Brianna who is at the end of her internship, but will be continuing helping with the SAIL exercise classes. Today I took dried fruit and flaky rolls. The center fixed two large green salads: one with chicken cubes, the other without, and one of the nicest fruit salads I have had in awhile. It had strawberries, cantaloupe, pineapple, blueberries, peaches, and probably something else. People brought deviled eggs, potato salad, cookies, cakes, pies, and cheesecake. There was not a lack of food. We played putt-putt golf games (4 different holes), and then after the tables were moved, five of us played hovering soccer that took a lot of energy, and then I took photos of people there and of the staff all together at the end with their new pretty AAC tee shirts, a fundraiser for $15/shirt. Brianna has one on below.
Nancy and Brianna on her last day there. She’s been leading one of our SAIL classes, and helping with all sorts of events at the center during the last quarter at CWU on an Internship.
John worked on landscaping projects, from digging out posts, to moving temporary fences and gates awaiting the backhoe man to show, which he did about 2:00 and stayed until after 5:00. He pulled out more trees and root systems and deposited these where the pasture drops into our “swamp” area. While down that end of the pasture, he moved four concrete culverts to make a buried connection of the irrigation ditch we have to drive over on the newly fixed road access to the two barns. We originally obtained those from John LaBar (thanks, John). Now they all have been put to use. These are a larger diameter (& much heavier) than the ones used a few years ago when we leveled the track/road into the new hay shed.
The following collage gives you a little idea of the work accomplished and still in progress.
The top two pictures are on the access road being constructed. In previous blogs, I have shown the preparation of tree cutting and marking that John has accomplished. I thought the action shot of the backhoe suspended in air was interesting, as the backhoe struggled to remove one of the stumps. A video would have been more exciting. To the top right is one of the several (five?) tree stumps and root systems that were removed. The trees crowded the ditch and so taking them out made a mess, but will be filled in as the culverts are part of a re-routing shown in the bottom 2 photos. Bottom left photo: Current water flow is toward the camera; yellow arrow. The new path is to the right (north) and the end of the culvert is within the yellow circle, with the close image – note rock on top holding down a metal sheet. On Monday the down-flow end will be dug, then a cut will be made to re-route the water, and then the old ditch will be filled. Stay tuned.
Change of subject. Have you ever heard of, or seen a white deer? I have not. John said there were some near where he lived in PA when he was growing up, but he never saw any – except for a photo in the paper. These lovely shots come from my friend Elise, in New Jersey. She has been photographing them since they were small fawns, and now there is only one left, but apparently she is healthy and people are feeding her.
Top photo & left bottom were taken when they were younger. Mom is on the far left in the top. The current doe discussed below is seen 4/3/15 in the bottom right. These are in New Jersey.
Here is Elise’s description to go with the photos:
She’s not albino, but she is pied (or piebald) by definition. Albino would be all white, with red eyes. They were born spring 2013. The white one is a female (doe) and the sibling, a buck (the true pied one) is nicknamed 1/2 & 1/2 in the neighborhood.
I think the mom was hit by a car last year, late summer? I have not seen the pied since around Oct. height of the deer season. People a couple blocks away have been feeding them all winter, so I have heard. But it’s been way too long with the pied, not to see him. He was a button buck last year.
I think the white one is pregnant. I have not seen her standing since Jan/Feb, but I could see a little distention in her abdomen then. I think gestation is about 7 month. She will birth in May / June.
I am always happy when I see her!
Here is a short description of the coloration, from the web:
Abnormal coloring in a deer is usually because of the presence of a defective gene. Consequently, some of these abnormally colored deer exhibit other abnormal characteristics as well. Piebald deer, together with some of the other odd color combinations are generally not as healthy as the whitetail deer having normal coloration.
Piebald Deer. Most, if not all piebald deer have white legs and a white underbelly, while the rest of the body may be either completely or partially covered with patches or spots, usually reddish brown or gray on white. A few piebald deer are mostly, though usually not completely white, and may be mistaken at times for albino deer.
White Deer and Albino Deer. There are all-white deer as well. These deer have no spots, just white hair. White deer also have a recessive gene and are generally not as healthy or strong as a normally colored whitetail. White deer are naturally easily mistaken for albinos, which they are not. The true albino, besides having all white hair, also has pink eyes and pink hooves, something the white deer do not have. Both the white deer and the albino deer, and perhaps, to a lesser extent the piebald deer, are at a disadvantage in the wild as they are easily spotted except in conditions of heavy snow. This lack of visual protection, combined with somewhat poorer health, no doubt serves to keep the population of these abnormally colored deer low.
Saturday, Apr 4
For Apr 3, CPAP. Reported figures. 7 hrs 34 min with AHI = 0.00 Events: 0 H No major mask leaks (max=8 L/min).
My day started as usual with uploading data from both units, checking email, washing the first load of dishes, thinking about adding some pix to this blog, feeding the outside cat, Woody, and looking at the temperatures to see our blossoms did not freeze. John thought it was safe for him not to cover the small plum trees.
I did backup my entire 2010 SongWriter music folder in two places just to be on the safe side before installing my 2012 version. It’s 101 megabytes, and has some files that need to be deleted, but I do not have time to do that now. I need to spend the rest of the day on tax prep, finishing the blog, and get outside to take photos of all the work that happened yesterday that’s undocumented. You can see I made the photo shoot that is described above, but as a review, the buried concrete culverts were done 2 days ago. They were buried and covered with dirt and rocks, after John placed used metal roofing over them. There are 12 feet of culverts that will permit the new road access to the barn/shed area.
John just returned from the neighbors delivering (for their cow), old hay taken from the shed. Our horses do not like it. They returned the favor with a dozen colorful eggs from their free range chickens. He has returned to their property and the three lots north of ours, with a borrowed metal detector, searching for property boundary iron posts. We are hoping to save the $1,900 registration fee for our NE corner, and the $800+ surveying costs before installing our new fence. We don’t want the county to decide in the future to widen the road and take out our fence (unlikely, considering the layout). He found yellow-capped posts north of us that are 18″ inside the current fence, and thus that fence is on the county property. With a bit more effort he will get “a fix” on the previously unsurveyed corner where there was an old rock-crib (all the wood burned), leaving a pile of rocks. It appears the SW corner of that is where the builder of the rock-crib thought the corner was. Here is a picture of an old one:
Now burn the wood out and there’s a pile of rocks. So, the saga continues.
Our Brittany in California, Daisy, won her Bred-by-Exhibitor class today at the Apple Valley KC show in Victorville. Below is co-owner, Jeri Conklin, showing her.
Sunday, Apr 5 HAPPY EASTER!
For Apr 4, CPAP. Reported figures. 7 hrs 22 min with AHI = 0.41
Events: 3H, 1CSR No major mask leaks (max=7 L/min).
John started at 9:00 a.m. on outside chores at 39° (on our front porch); supposedly is 35° at the airport 5 miles south and went to 24° at 5:50 a.m. John says it was 28.6 about 5:30 AM here. That’s not good for plum blossoms. We may get rain or snow tonight. Just a dozen miles north of us the ridge is above 5,000 feet, so snow is expected.
Hope your week was fine.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan