Nancy’s title was: “Never a dull moment in our lives”, but that doesn’t fit on the WordPress title line – so I shortened it.
Monday, Oct 29
I am not sure why people don’t follow my mom’s suggestion of never calling someone before 9:00 a.m. or after 9:00 p.m. We were rudely called at 7:28 a.m. It always scares me receiving a call so early from someone I know well, but upsets me, especially when it is not necessary at all and later this evening would have been okay. On that upset note, I’m up for the day.
We need to sort apples to take to town today for the upcoming Veterans’ Day celebration at the Senior Center (AAC). While sorting, we boxed two small boxes of apples for another friend in town, and John packed a small box of English walnuts for another friend, which we delivered along with some other items for her daughter and friends with young children. When John and I delivered the apples to the AAC, we stayed for my SAIL exercise class.
I called for either of the triage nurses, Cody or Lacey, at my PCP’s office, about having my chest x-rays from Feb 2018 available for review regarding a Pneumonia diagnosis, but a PA’s noting I had a hiatal hernia (HH). He pegged the Pneumonia, but I’m concerned about the HH seen (that I couldn’t see), and happy I’m not having any symptoms; yet, I am requesting a re-evaluation of the X-rays by my regular physician at our upcoming annual physical wellness tests (Nov 20 & 27). Lacey returned my call and assured me she would approach it with my MD and get back to me with the verdict. She did a couple days later. It will be possible. I’m grateful for her help outside of her normal calls to me to report my INR results, from monthly blood draws checking my Coumadin dosage.
I have my lab records in order to request a follow-up on my Thyroid annual blood test as requested by Dr. Lisa Stone, the Endocrinologist in Wenatchee whom I saw originally the end of 2017. In April this year, I had a follow-up set of blood tests, which she reviewed, and suggested having another done the end of this year. I also have to set up my annual PFT (Pulmonary Function Test) to check my lungs to be sure they are not being scarred by the Amiodarone medication (taken successfully, for atrial fibrillation, since 2010.).
Finished assembling all my meds for the week.
Tuesday, Oct 30
Staying home today to tend to details for this week, the past, future.
It is cool, with sunshine and a slight wind that calmed down as the day proceeded.
I did take some photos of the fall colors of our Mountain Ash tree out front, with many of the yellow leaves having been blown away.
Top photos were taken today, Oct 30, but the bottom photo was on 10-24-18 without blue skies.
→ [John says: If I cut the berry bunches off and throw them over the fence, the deer will eat them. At this time of year birds ignore them. They know (How?) the pretty fruit is sour (has an acid, Sorbic, I think). The fruit will hang on the tree during the winter and becomes more to their liking. I am trying to find out what happens. During spring, birds will find the fruit and over about 4 days, it will all be eaten.]
Nancy, again: Wonderful brunch John made with an omelet creation loaded with protein and veggies. Here is a shot of the pan minus today’s portions. With my smaller piece, I had toast with Apricot jam.
Day-before-Halloween omelet: chocked full with cubed smoked turkey, colorful peppers, tomatoes, purple onion, cheese, 6 eggs.
John and Annie left for yard and barn and fence work, and I stayed behind to sort the plates, cups, and other things left over from Friday’s luncheon, and to wash another load of dishes. I’m working on various other chores. I need to combine some photos to send to Audubon folks, and create a Google Photos link to send, from last meeting Oct 18, with the video you have already seen in blog, with another short clip of the speaker’s humor.
Here are the “set-up” photos of the Kittitas Audubon talk of Ken Bevis, Oct 18, which was in last week’s blog (see there for the video of his presentation); meanwhile, check the link below.
Photos during setup, talk by Ken Bevis, Kittitas Audubon
I needed to cut John’s hair, eat dinner, and finish the link sending to the Ice Age Floods (IAF) group. John came in at dark and took a nap. We ate a late dinner, and put off his haircut until later. We had chicken, cauliflower, seasoned fries, and shared a baked Honeycrisp apple.
Used some of our new honey from Kauai, HI that was brought back by a friend.
Wednesday, Oct 31
HAPPY HALLOWEEN !
Halloween Card from the Naneum Fan (non-animated)
(See link below to the Jacquie Lawson real thing (with animation) I sent to a few people and then captured the one I sent to John, but I wanted to share the link to a neat card and story from Jacquie Lawson, to our blog readers who might not have been on the original list delivered Oct 30th.
The link is below, please follow: but, PLEASE BE SURE to IDENTIFY yourself on the reply, because it will only come as if from us to us at our joint account, where we are notified a person saw it and replied. Thanks! It is culturally and artistically very interesting. Yes, I realize this is now LATE in coming.
Spooky Halloween Card – 2018
I fixed my lunch salad and sent off the note of planning for tomorrow’s retirement/rehab music.
The Food Bank was special today on Halloween when many dressed up in “costumes”. We had pumpkins (me, sorta), a witch, a cute little hat (Evelyn) the banjo player, and other things on different people serving the Senior Nutrition program folks.
The tables and centerpieces were decorated, and one can be seen below in the second set of photos.
Here I am in my Pumpkins in Love sweatshirt. Note my hat (actually John’s rain hat I gave him), and Evelyn’s cute little hat atop her head. My necklace has a few lights that turn on. I removed the blinking option (gotten on the first 2 switch clicks).
We had a special request from the Senior Nutrition Lunch table for I’ll Fly Away, and then at the end for Amazing Grace. In between we did all sorts of different songs in our normal weekly folder.
I took my salad and added to it a cup of fruit cocktail mixed with yogurt, given to the Sr. Nutrition table. I also brought home a big pumpkin cookie to share with John for our dessert tonight. They had tables all decorated and we had great fun with the folks there.
Afterwards, I went to the Activity Center (Senior Center) for our SAIL exercise class. 
These were on my camera, the others above were taken on a “client’s” Smartphone and emailed to me. Left is at Food Bank, taken with a flash (behind the table centerpiece), and right is at the AAC (Sr. Center) after my SAIL exercise class. The pumpkin weighed 127#. Members could guess the weight to win it.
I came home to cut John’s hair. It didn’t take me as long this time because we didn’t wait as long between haircuts; I think I did it in 24 minutes, and without leaving cowlicks.
I’ll end the day with my friend’s Halloween costumes, which truly supersede mine.
First, the 5-yr olds, Ladybug Haley with her butterfly friend, Carly, and then a night costume for downtown, Ghost Haley. Their kindergarten allowed no masks, (hence the left photo costumes).
Following are two other friends – Sonja Willitts (known since 1977 in Idaho) now in S. Lake Tahoe, CA and the Ghoulish hand art on Amy Davison’s face (the mom of our friendly ghost, Haley). Amy is our band’s flute player, fiddler, penny whistle, and miniature washboard contributor. Quite the talented gal and also an artist, & baker, who does weddings, parties, and other special events.
Sonja Willitts and Amy Davison in Halloween dress.
Thursday, Nov 1
John was up early in the rain to feed the animals, open the gate, and drive to White Heron for bottling (Red Blend: Cabernet Sauvignon & Merlot). He carried along some Jarlsberg cheese to share with at the tasting after the bottling crew finished their work for the morning. Others brought apple-chunk infused sausage for the grill, salad, soft cheese, and crackers. They drink a bit of the wine they worked with, and John brought 3 bottles home. He and I got home about the same time ~ 4:00 p.m.
I worked on cleaning dishes we keep dirtying, and shooing away the Collared Doves and Magpies. Once in the kitchen I slammed the window (I often do) to scare them, and ended up starting John’s “sleeping” computer. On my way to the front door to slam it to get rid of them, I “slept” his computer again.
I’m getting ready to leave in an hour to go in to the Rehab to play music with 9 others. Ended up being only 8, because one had a migraine and didn’t make it. My early morning call-in for the chair count was met with a strange response. I finally called again after leaving a message on voicemail for the Activity Director, to ask for the Assistant Activity Director I have known since I was a patient there. She told me the Activity Director was not there today; why the original operator put me through to voice mail is unknown. Carol took care of setting us up and having the dining tables removed and enough chairs available. I arrived early to help.
I rushed home to turn around and go back to town with John for a 6:00 p.m. meeting at the Kittitas County Historical Museum, and a presentation from our neighbor, Allen Aronica, about his Native American family background in our valley. Here is the flyer for tonight.
I videotaped his presentation. I videoed it but my first battery ran out of power at the end of a little over an hour. I replaced it and lost a couple minutes of interesting follow-up on one of the family cemetery stories.
Allen Aronica, November 1, 2018 The Kittitas People (main talk)
Allen Aronica, when battery was dying, just 2 mins
Allen Aronica, Comments and Questions after his Presentation
Here is a link to the Schedule and home page of the Kittitas County Historical Museum, so you can check for next year’s 10 planned lectures.
Kittitas County Historical Museum Description
I am currently working on an email list to send to Kittitas County Historical Museum folks that I know were there that night, or might be interested in seeing Allen’s presentation. I have not yet sent anything.
After his talk, we picked up two crispy chicken sandwiches at Burger King, not getting home to eat until after 8:00. Actually, I didn’t look at the time.
John went to bed at 10:35 and I’m not far behind.
Friday, Nov 2
We plan to sort apples in the morning to take to the Kittitas Neighborhood Pantry at by 1:00 p.m. We did and went. We did not weigh them in, but we figured it was > 50 pounds.
They had us go through for a few things – some mushrooms, a yellow pepper, a couple of pears, two desserts (brownies frosted with cream cheese frosting & 4 eclairs), two little packages of cat treats, and two cans of peaches. From there we went around to the clothing bank to deliver some Honeycrisp apples to the volunteer workers. While there, I picked out a pair of white corduroy slacks for me I’m wearing tomorrow night with my black WTA emblem shirt, and a pair of brown corduroy slacks size 8 for my banjo playing friend (see her photo above on Wednesday).
Saturday, Nov 3
We need to make an early trip to town to Super 1 for a special sale {8 am to 8 pm} of baking items. Because of limits, we’ll take two carts. We made quite a haul. Four dozen eggs at 88₵/carton; 4 cake mixes and 4 Fudge brownie mixes at 68₵ each, 4 brown sugar (light & dark) packages at 88₵ each, 3 White Bleached Floor at $2.38 each, 4 Butter package @ $2.48 each, and 3 Boneless Bottom Round Roasts for $2.98/lb.
Early afternoon we will take off for the annual WA Trails Assoc. (WTA) Volunteer appreciation event & awards for various trail maintenance workers. It is being held in a different location, north of the city, at the Mountaineers Program Center. We still had to deal with Seattle traffic, a bit more than most Saturday afternoons because of a university football game.
We had an unpleasant rainy trip over the pass (better than snow, however, which would have kept us home). We left just before 3:00 p.m. and arrived about 5:30 p.m. John drove my Subaru to North Bend, WA, where we paused and changed drivers. I drove the rest of the way with John as my navigator co-pilot. We make a good driving team, from 53 years together, beginning with driving my ’35 Ford that I drove to Cincinnati, OH, where we met in graduate school.
On the trip home, I drove the entire way, in about 2 hours, 10 minutes. It was tough driving and wore my arms out holding the steering wheel tightly because of standing water on I-90. I was very tired and sore before getting home, but we made it safely about 10:30 p.m. We were able to enjoy some butter pecan ice cream on a cream cheese frosted brownie. We did not stay for a piece of cake at the WTA dinner.
I spent a lot of time backing up on an external disk drive all the movies I have taken over the last year on my little Exilim camera, and charged both batteries, so John can put it on his belt to hike on the field trip tomorrow.
At the WTA party, I had my Nikon camera along and videotaped many of the award presentations and a few other tidbits. The disadvantage to using it, is the bandwidth increases dramatically to upload the video to YouTube. So, 4 minutes of movie costs 2.5 hours of upload time. Such is life.
Even though I was very tired, I still stayed up until after 1:00 a.m. (non-daylight saving time).
Sunday, I will work on uploading the videos, but will cover some of them here, because they occurred tonight. I still haven’t downloaded all I took from my camera because I need to free up some space on my computer. It’s reaching its capacity.
WTA Preliminary Statistics for 2018 Trail Volunteer work, presented by Jen Gradisher.
Title slide (only estimates through October, more figures arriving) showed ~150,000 volunteer hours of work on 254 trails, by ~4,500 Volunteers.
Trail Programs Director, Jen Gradisher
WTA Trail Volunteer Statistics
I’m using John as my model for when all of the ACLs were asked to stand. We were on the front row, so John is turning to face his many “Orange Hat” colleagues.
Hats off to ACLs 2018
presented by Zach McBride, Puget Sound Field Manager
Crosscut Saw Award, presented by Tim Van Beek, Volunteer Vacation manager (‘week longs’) to the only one present tonight, Jim Langdon. This is WTA’s best award [a 2″ slab of Ponderosa Pine with an engraved segment of a crosscut saw], for reaching >500 days working with WTA trail crews. John will likely never reach that, but he did make it to >300 this year and will get a label to put on his orange hard hat. He has completed all the previous milestones receiving nice award gifts, in addition to making good friends along the way.
Top WTA Volunteer Award – Crosscut Saw Award
Sunday, Nov 4
John left for Nick Zentner’s Field Trip to the Mattawa Ash Fall Tuff, to be there soon after 10:00 a.m. to get a seat in the lead CWU Van with Nick and Karl. He succeeded. The trip visited 3 sites where volcanic ash fell about 11.8 Million years ago. The source was southwestern now-Idaho, where the Yellowstone hot spot was then located.
Left was taken on the field trip; John in brown jacket walking up the one mile trek with others; Right was taken on Nick’s spring reconnaissance trip, better than with the blowing dust of Sunday.
I stayed home because of the 30-minute plus uphill hike I am not able to do. We both realize that. I cleaned off my camera memory for John to make videos of Nick’s talks, and he took his own camera for still photos along the trip.
It’s getting dark at 4:33 p.m. John had called from Mattawa, at 4:14 that they’re on their way home. I imagine it will be very dark before he arrives. He was standing in an orchard waiting for the leaders to return to the van. He got home about 5:30 p.m.
I don’t have enough space left on my C drive to transcribe the videos I took last night, let alone what John took today, so all those will have to wait.
We first have to leave in the morning for me to get an Echocardiogram. And, John will go to Costco, fill my car with gasoline, and buy a few groceries and anything else that looks interesting.
This won’t be published until late on Monday. I’ll save Monday to start week 2 with for November.
Hope your week was fine.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan