Category: Weekly report by day

. . . World War One was underway and Christmas was coming. Newspapers and other media like this story. Here’s an example,
A World War I interlude.

Sunday, Dec 14

CPAP report. Reported figures: 5 hrs 47 min with AHI = 0.00
Up very early to finish my medical treatise to mail to my sleep doctor. I was told the P.O. was open today special hours from 10 to noon, and that my mail would get to Yakima tomorrow. NOT. The female clerk told me no mail was leaving Ellensburg until 3:30 p.m. Monday afternoon. That was not the way planned and told me on Friday by a male desk clerk in the EBRG office, so I am going to drive to Yakima with John tomorrow to deliver it in person, and we will go to Costco while there. Currently am revising it. I washed a load of dishes. I made corrections and additions to my paper. Sunny but cool day today.

Monday, Dec 15

CPAP report. Reported figures: 8 hrs 8 min with AHI = 0.00
Sunny and 28°, after coffee & 1/2 apple fritter, I called Joanie to tell her about music this week and that the Food Bank was no longer usable, and where to come to play Christmas music on Wednesday. When she and Ken left town it was still standing. Then we were off to Yakima to Drs. Kumar and Kim. John drove our blue Forester, and I made a few phone calls before we lost reception because of the deep road cuts through the Yakima Fold Belt. We delivered the summary medical report on my CPAP and Oximetry data observations and interpretation, including comments and questions.
On the way, I called Morris U. to wish him a happy birthday (yesterday), and then talked to another friend on the way out of town. Called two others whose birthdays were today. I made good use of my riding time, and enjoyed the views when I had no reception because of the distance from towers and the cliffs lining the road.
I have been pushing for donations to the Food Bank on the Ellensburg Buy Nothing site, by requesting ISO (In search of) for some items needed. It is a community Facebook page where people freely give items and request others they need. It is a great resource and shows a lot of generous support in giving/sharing within our community. Most recent was a request I posted for Coffee (bags of) and plastic ware for the Food Bank’s Soup Kitchen (where I play music on Wednesdays, see this week’s photo below). My request was answered for both and delivered by a woman today, much appreciated by the volunteer serving crew. Meals are served 4 times a week: lunches at noon on MWF and late afternoon dinner on Saturday. Another wonderful offer came from a woman whose first name is River. She actually lives in Cle Elum, but she posted on another site I saw, trying to get donations for a Food Processor for the Food Bank. I got into a conversation on email with her and found she was previously a caterer and had many large chafing dishes, utensils, tablecloths, and other things she was willing to give to the F.I.S.H. Food Bank. Contacts have already been made and things are happening. Makes me happy.

Tuesday, Dec 16

CPAP report. Reported figures: x hrs x min with AHI = x.xx (unavailable) because I did not have time to transfer from my SD card before leaving and they deleted it when they read off the last 70 days of information. Not sure why, when they had not done that the first 3 times. I will record tonight, and start from scratch with a missed day. I do have the oximetry data.
Visits to doctors today. We awoke to snow, left the house about 9:00 a.m., drove in it for the first 20 miles of our trip, then through some fog, and finally into rain. First appt (foot doctor) was at 10:15, but we were running early, and stopped off at Fred Meyer to use a coupon for $7 off the cost of a package of Almond Roca. While there we found some plastic “food & bread” bags John has been looking for (we use a lot of them), and they were 80 cents less per box than in EBRG, at our normal grocery store.
The 10:15 appointment was timed perfectly – in and out in a flash – and then on to Costco (5 minute trip) for gasoline, shopped for a few things we forgot yesterday, ate lunch, and went for a trip through the nearby Valley Mall (had not been in over 10 years), and found it rather interesting that we knew so few of the businesses. We cannot understand how people can make a living and profit in a business selling just pretzels, and several stores seem to be selling the same stuff. A nearby “Value Village” also had lots of stuff but we didn’t buy anything at either location. So, back west to the Sleep Center. Made it right at 1:00 p.m. for the other appt. with my sleep doctor, Madhukar Kumar, MD, who completed his residency at the University of Chicago and a fellowship at the Michael S. Aldrich Sleep Center at the University of Michigan.
John and I both went to the meeting with him, during which he reviewed my last 70 days of CPAP use from the SD card I brought with me to the appointment. The summary report has many of the same parameters reported as I have been capturing daily on the SleepyHead software. His first comment was that I was doing well on the machine. My AHI was only 0.2 (which I already knew from my observations of the data). He commented that I was a poster child for CPAP and doing well, it was helping me, and I needed to continue in the same way. I had a list of questions for him relating to my “summary report” I had taken him the day before. He had gone through it, and he answered all my questions and John’s as well. An interesting comment was that he wanted me not to freak out at the measured items by the CPAP that are revealed on the SD card. He says that machine cannot adequately measure all the things that are summarized even on his own version of Encore (the professional version). He did say I could contact Phillips Respironics to get access to an edition (I think he said available through the web), to approximate the information at his disposal. He also pointed out many of the summary parameters on his sheet (most of which are also on mine), and reiterated they are flawed (at least not precise), and are only ballpark figures.
The other advice he gave us was to interpret findings from my overnight sleep studies that are on his computer. Some of the figures had not previously been presented to us and certainly not explained as he did during this visit.
He acknowledged my main need for being on the machine is to raise my oxygen saturation percentage level in my blood, to make my organs operate better because my heart is not working efficiently pumping to all the body organ parts. It is obvious while I have a few low % events while on the machine, it displays much less activity than when I’m off the CPAP’s continuous air pressure. He recognizes I do not have the same sleep disorders and needs as many others on a CPAP machine.
I was happy I had taken the time to analyze my data to figure all my questions about the expectations and importance of the data gathered and reported in graphs, nightly, by minute. I am even happier that I bought the oximeter and have been able to include its results (pulse and SpO2%), in my report, synchronized with the CPAP data.
His parting comment was to keep up the good work and continue writing my blog, but not to take the readings too seriously.
Reminder: comments below about the AHI are from HERE.

AHI (Apnea Hypopnea Index) is the number of apneas and hypopneas per hour. Or, an index for sleep apnea [with a value of] 5-20 mild, 21-50 moderate, [and] above 50 severe.

APNEA (I do not have): The Greek word “apnea” means “without breath.” You stop breathing during sleep for ten seconds or longer.

HYPOPNEA (I occasionally have one to four hypopneas, but many nights none): During a hypopnea there is airflow through your throat but at a much reduced level, which leads to not getting enough oxygen. [THAT’S THE REASON I’M ON THE CPAP machine.] It’s abnormally shallow breathing lasting at least ten seconds.

Good AHI vs. Bad AHI (another source from same web site):
Less than 5 events (apnea or hypopnea) per hour is considered normal. 5 or more events per hour is considered Mild sleep apnea. 15+ considered Moderate. 30+ considered Severe. (From T. S. Johnson MD, Sleep Apnea – The Phantom of the Night, page 211). [Mine has only topped 1 on 4 occasions in 70 days, and my average for the 70 days since I started, is 0.2.]

We didn’t get home until almost dark. Long day, but worthwhile.

I had to be at Royal Vista, to start Christmas songs at 6:30 with The Connections. I got there a little early to visit with people I know there as residents, but the barbershop chorus was singing. I know at least 3 of them, and I knew all the songs, so I just stood behind them in the doorway and sang along. Most of the singers are men, except for the leader who is female.

Wednesday, Dec 17

CPAP report. Reported figures: 8 hrs 32 min w/ AHI = 0.35

Today started at Mercer Creek Church for the temporary Food Bank location. Food is provided M, W, and F at noon, and Saturdays at 5:00 p.m.

Bob Olsen (singer), Evelyn Heflen (banjo), Nancy Hultquist (fiddle) singing Christmas songs.
We set up at the end of the room and all the tables are in front of us, with the people spread out at 5 or 6 big circular tables, seating about 8 each. The servers did some “dancing” and hand movements as they sang along too. Everyone was seated and eating, so servers didn’t need to be serving. Today we had many folks joining in and having fun, especially on Jingle Bells, Silver Bells, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, White Christmas, and Blue Christmas, and even Silent Night. Those seemed to be the favorites
After we play music for 40 minutes, we eat. They thank us for playing by feeding us. The menu today was BBQ chicken and noodles with veggies, green salad, artichoke hearts, and a nice pear cake/strudel.

I left there for Mt. View Meadows for only 1/2 hour with Karen Eslinger (accordion), and me. We sang with a few residents who were happy to have us there. I go with her every Christmas, but today, I had to leave early to go to my exercise class. We got in 15 songs before I left. Happily, when I arrived I got to visit with Jay Gorman, who is a resident there and loves music.
I did not have any pictures from Christmas songs at The Meadows, but I do have something to share from our past–a You Tube taken the day before Halloween this year. It’s not the highest quality, but it is cool to see old folks (ages 71, 87, and 92) having fun with their music. I have a hard time playing the melody because I’m so used to playing the harmony, and singing the melody. Without another instrument playing melody or singing makes it sound weak, especially when I drop off the melody. I only picked up my flash drive Friday night on my way home from a party, and was able to put this and the others below on You Tube, on Saturday this week.

Honkytonk Piano Trio Mt View Meadows 10-30-14

SAIL exercise was fine, and from there I went to Super One for some Corn Syrup in case we decide to make Pecan Pie for any upcoming events. From there I drove to a parking lot to meet a friend to pick up some stuff she was carrying for me, and for me to exchange a bag of goodies for her for her grandchildren. The box she gave me was full of Bingo cards, which are going to the Adult Activity Center (freely given from the Ellensburg Buy Nothing (BN) site), and a pair of Khaki pants that fit John. John says they look like something to wear on a sailboat on a cold and windy day. From there I went to Royal Vista to meet Karen again, and we played and sang 25 songs there.

Thursday, Dec 18

CPAP report. Reported figures: 8 hrs 50 min with AHI = 0.14
I spent time last night and morning redoing Away in a Manger in a different key we all could sing. I took music in for our players, and was totally surprised to have the largest number we have had in quite awhile– maybe ever– thirteen!! Two were singers only, but we had a passel of guitars and a mandolin, bells, tambourine (with one of the guitarists), banjo, washtub bass, viola, violin, trumpet, and clarinet. We were at Dry Creek Assisted Living. Evelyn, our banjo player, brought bells for dispersal to all the residents, so they could join in many of the songs, where bells were appropriate. I wish I had one of those on video.
Partway through our performance, our mandolin player, Tim Henebry, got up to listen from the back of the room to see how we sounded. He decided to record two of our songs on his cell phone. Below are the Kittitas Valley Fiddlers and Friends video clips I put on You Tube:

Blue Christmas Dec-2014

Frosty the Snowman Dec 2014

Friday, Dec 19

CPAP report. Reported figures: 6 hrs 24 min with AHI = 0.16
I am going to try explaining last night’s analysis that is consistent with the Sleep Doctor Kumar’s discussion with us on Tuesday afternoon. Below is an image of the results with the oximetry synchronized to the CPAP events recorded. The oximeter measures my pulse and my blood’s oxygen saturation percentage. Last night my calculated AHI (Apnea Hypopnea Index) was low, with one hypopnea (shallow breathing) at 5:06 a.m. when my SpO2 was 91, and my pulse was 54, lasting only a few seconds. No apnea (paused breathing) events existed. I slept from about 6:45 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. without the CPAP on.

The very top section shows Event Flags. Note the H and the blue mark on its line. If you look to the left at the bars you’ll see where those colors originate and what they refer to.
The top right chart (green) is put in to see the time the CPAP was operating (from 11:36 p.m. to 6:45 a.m.). The middle chart (red) is my pulse that is mostly in the 50s, with some 60s. Check the bottom right chart (blue). SpO2 is the measured oxygen saturation level in my blood, providing oxygen to all my organs. It is supposed to be above 90%.

The breaks in the red and blue lines mark the time when I turned off the CPAP, got up, walked to the bathroom, went to the kitchen to feed Rascal, the cat, and went back to bed, putting the Oximeter back on my finger. The SpO2 is noticeably lower during the time off the machine, while sleeping.

Then, look at the table below (from the Oximeter’s recording):

Significance of that table is that my O2 is below 88% for 4 minutes. The minimum SpO2 is supposed to be 82, but on the magnified charts I have access to, I cannot find it being lower than 84; yet that was when the CPAP machine was not operating. While it was operating, it dropped to 89% but not below. However, look at the blue line above, and see the drop activity on the far right, after the machine was off.

Tonight is an open house party at Paul & Gloria Swanson, neat people, who are friends from my exercise class. There we met friends we have been introduced to at their place before, and another couple we have known through the Kittitas Valley Trail Riders club meetings and rides, which neither of us any longer attends. They had an “open house” from 4:00 -7:00 p.m., but it was more of a sit-down dinner around the dining room table for 8, and the rest of us (6 or 7) in the living room eating from our lap or from the coffee table. I sat on the piano bench. John and I arrived about 5:00. They served baked potatoes with chili and many different toppings (sour cream, cheddar cheese, salsa, green onions), crab cakes and cheese soufflés, cheese/meatballs, Oriental chicken coleslaw, my favorite–deviled eggs, blueberry pastry, and a table full of different cookies and chocolate candies.
After everyone ate, we sat around the living room and had several different conversations going on. Many people were there from their church in Kittitas, but we know a couple of them, and their daughter and hubby. We left about 7:40 and drove to another friend to pick up my flash drive with the 3 videos (you have seen above).
Next week, if I can locate it, I will take my tripod and camera to the gig on Christmas Eve at Hearthstone and attempt to take a video in a more stable environment than the ones Thursday. I am thrilled to have the “record” of us regardless of interruptions while the photographer moved around trying to get us all in the video. I know we will not have that many people next Wednesday, so it is great Tim was able to grab the memories.

Saturday, Dec 20

CPAP report. Reported figures: 6 hrs 41 min with AHI = 0.75
Tonight our trip for dinner and visiting with Tanya and her three children: Andrew, Jessica, and Michael was cancelled because Michael has a serious ear infection, walking pneumonia symptoms, and a nasty cough. Not good. He is 3 years old, so we decided to put it off until he’s well. The rest of our day was spent with normal outside and inside chores.
John cleaned the leftovers from the fridge and made a nice supper, including baked chicken thigh with slice of pineapple, little lima beans, deep fried onion rings John grew and made, and a few coconut battered shrimp (new for tonight).
It has been raining here with snow in the mountains. We may (or may not) have a white Christmas here on the Fan. Here is the current outlook:

Hope your week was fine.

Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan

Sunday, Dec 7

CPAP report. Reported figures: 7 hrs 4 min with AHI = 0.14

Worked on data gathering for too long and now I have to start writing my summary report to present to my sleep doctor of my collection of data synchronized between my CPAP machine and the newly acquired Oximeter.
I changed my CPAP filters.
I spent an hour figuring out Yakima Memorial Hospital’s new Physician Portal and what is a royal PITA is that the Yakima Heart Center is different from the Yakima Sleep Center and in the same building next door to the Yakima Memorial Hospital. After all that I wrote a note to my cardiologist’s nurse through normal email, and she said that was the way to communicate because the new system was not working.
I spent more time going through my medical records for my cardiologist after finding some discrepancies in his report transcribed Nov 14 when I was last in and many changes were made to my medications. His notes say my magnesium was low, and I should increase to 400 mg BID. I was taking 500 mg once a day. Therefore, I will ask his nurse for advice. He went over all the changes with her present and she sent in the meds, but Magnesium is OTC and he should have written on his little sheet of instructions to me. Now I have addressed all those and written emails with attachments. First, I will send to his nurse before I send directly to him. (Now I know I cannot do that)
Good dinner and going to bed.

Monday, Dec 8

CPAP report. Reported figures: 5 hrs 56 min with AHI = 0.34

Get up early and wash feet and leave by 9:25 for school, where I had a nice visit with the final presentations of Jen Lipton’s Air Photo Interpretation Class. I left for the foot doctor’s appt at 11:30, and was seen right away, so I was able to return for the last two presentations, missing only two. I will be missing SAIL today to work on my medical report.

Tuesday, Dec 9

CPAP report. Reported figures: 5 hrs 51 min with AHI = 0.00

Haircut at 2:00 at Celia’s went well. Next one in 8 weeks.
Tonight is Hearthstone (The Connections) for Christmas songs.
I worked more on the sleep doctor report. Happily, reached the technician for my sleep doctor and told her my plans to mail my summary document prior to my appointment. While sooner is better, she also said that being there the day before (Monday) would be sufficient. I’ll get it in the mail no later than Saturday, if all goes well, and as a last minute emergency need for more time, I can go to the EBRG office from 10-noon on Sunday. They are having those two special hours, first time ever.
Raining again. John fixed us a nice brunch: pancake with pecans and blueberries, bacon, & eggs. Excellent.
Sun came out a little after 3:00!
I drove to town in pea soup fog tonight from the end of my driveway almost all the way to town before it lifted. I could only see maybe 25′ in front of my car. Saw the center line and warning for stop signs approaching. It took me 10 minutes to drive a little under 3 miles.
Played music in town but stopped on the way for the reduced price on baked stuff at the grocery store. I grabbed a dozen donuts with about 5 apple fritters for the much lower price. We played and sang all Christmas music tonight.
I am still working on my report to the sleep doctor.

Wednesday, Dec 10

CPAP report. Reported figures: 7 hrs 35 min with AHI = 0.0

Did most of the preliminary, I think, but need to upload Oximetry and capture those after the SpO2-Review software is run on my night’s data. (SpO2 is the blood’s oxygen saturation percentage.)
Today is Mercer Creek Church for music at the relocated Food Bank Soup Kitchen. We played Christmas music and had people singing along on Jingle Bells, and several other songs.
Followed with SAIL class.
I fixed Frosty the Snowman music for about the 3rd time.
Need to correct Santa Claus is Coming to Town.
Nice surprise from Jeri Conklin in CA with a picture of our co-owned Brittany, Cedaridge Kip’s Camelot Shay Tre’ (Daisy), who will be going back to her field trial trainer to prepare for the Western Futurity. She is a pretty gal:

Jeri put this photo out on Facebook (hence the low resolution), and friends all over LIKED it, which sends a message to me directly to my email. (zoomed photos in this week’s blog both will pixelate; sorry)

Thursday, Dec 11

CPAP report. Reported figures: 0 hrs 34 min with AHI = 0.00

Slept without my CPAP last night to see how far my SPO2 went down through the night. Slept better than in many days. Awoke not tired and not yawning. Started my CPAP for 1/2 hour before turning off and only kept on oximeter recording for the night. I was able to merge that data into the SleepyHead software.
Today was our day playing at the Rehab assisted living center. We met two new people Laura and Dale, who came, participated, and joined our group. They sing and play. She plays the guitar, and he plays a washtub bass.
I took a shirt to my car for friend, Sara, to use in a quilt — delivered half way across town to the wrong house of another female graduate student I know. A senior moment?
Helped John make two pecan pies. We double-read and followed the directions because we left out white sugar last year (they were a bit thin but tasted fine).

Friday, Dec 12

CPAP report. Reported figures: 7 hrs 26 min with AHI = 0.00

I recorded a bunch more data from my two devices to have for my report to the sleep doctor. Now I need to summarize the entries into a table.
We took a break to go to the scholarship luncheon at CWU, and it turned out quite well. Based on a tortellini package soup mix with added ingredients, including sausage. [The term seems to mean ring-shaped but folks apparently find that a bit bland, so others call it ombelico (belly button).] Also served was much other food pot-luck style (my favorite was an appetizer made with mushrooms and shrimp) and our our pecan pies. A couple of people cannot eat such sweets and there was another dessert so we have pie left. I took one photo of Ruth Harrington by the food. She is the one who started this program of donations for CWU student scholarships, in 1973. Now the balance is over $900,000. Ruth left early (with a piece of pie; as usual) for another such gathering off campus. I asked her how many groups currently meet. This was a much higher number than I expected — 65, combined among lunches on campus, brunches, some lunches, and dinners out in the community. Not all groups meet monthly, but most do.

Tonight we went back to campus for another Christmas party, at the Dean’s Office of the College of the Sciences. Geography is a department in that college. It was a lot of fun, and I saw many people I have not seen in several years, and met some new ones. Lots of special food for dinner. Some had too much garlic, but I ate fruit, cheese, meatballs, some shrimp, and a little smoked salmon delicacy. Mostly we visited with people.

Saturday, Dec 13

CPAP report. Reported figures: 5 hrs 16 min with AHI = 0.38
I slept until 5:38 a.m. and turned off the machine, and slept another 3 hrs with the oximeter still in place. This morning was work on my summary medical report, good progress, but unfinished. Must get in the mail before noon tomorrow. John had to move a young buck and 8 does from our orchard before taking the dogs for their morning exercise, and feeding the horses. He has the brush cleared away from a few trees that he will now cut down, and cut up. A couple are nearly horizontal, others going up at 45 degree angles.
Today was our Christmas party at Briarwood Commons, retirement center. They went all out and had a lot of people there in our group, Kittitas Valley Fiddlers and Friends. We have two new additions as of last Thursday. We had Megan (Bass Fiddle), Benj (violin), Dale (Washtub bass), Nancy (fiddle), Roberta (guitar, bells, and tambourine, Tim (Mandolin), Charlie (12-string guitar), Gerald (guitar), and Laura (guitar, bells, & tambourine). We played 19 Christmas songs, and 3 others at the beginning, non-Christmas, but fun sing-alongs. Everyone (including us) enjoyed our afternoon.

A beautiful table of food, seen below with the main cook (Lee on the right, and another resident, Diedra, who helps with the potlucked food and preparation. Not showing on the table was a pot of beef/ vegetable soup made by the SOUPER cook, Lee, who honchos several dishes for all our play dates there. Lee is 82.
In the kitchen with the soup were fresh rolls to go with it and homemade seasoned oyster crackers donated by a 94 year old resident named Bernice.

Western Washington (also OR & CA) has experienced a significant wind and rain storm this week. As mentioned earlier we have had some rain and fog but not much wind. There is a place along WA’s coast that 150 years ago stuck out into the Pacific Ocean sufficiently far as to be called a cape, namely Cape Shoalwater. All sorts of things were built there during WA’s settlement period and after – WWII defense bunkers, for one. Sometime in the past something happened over that way and the coast began to move eastward. No one seems to know why but the “cape” is no more and the area is now called Washaway Beach. Over many years dozens of houses either were moved or fell into the Ocean. This week, as of Friday, 3 houses fell. Here is a photo taken from a Seattle TV station; thanks KOMO.
Below are a couple of links we found of interest. If the first gets updated you may have to work through some of the headings to find the previous week’s photos. From the index page, note on the right side ‘Recent Posts’ and then ‘Trust’. That is last week’s story – the one we found first. Also, there are ‘sequences’ of older photos worth looking at – follow the Gallery link – then to the bottom right side.

Washaway Beach – Stories and photos

Next link has a simple line-drawing animation showing how Cape Shoalwater became Washaway Beach.

Here is another house – zoom in on these coordinates
via Google Earth
46.740851, -124.087840

The north end has corrugated metal sheeting on the roof, the main roof part is sort of green and then there is a red rectangle overhang on the west side. The overhang is (was) over a doorway.
Here is a picture of that house a week ago Losing-the-Battle.
People question why folks would live in such a place. One person was quoted as saying he had married into it. Seems her folks had been there for a very long time. When it was settled first would be interesting. I doubt the places have much sale value and likely haven’t had for many years. This is mentioned by the woman that takes all the photos (1st link).

Hope your week was fine.

Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan

The repeal of Prohibition in the United States was accomplished with the passage of the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution on December 5, 1933.

Sunday, Nov 30

CPAP report. Reported figures: 6 hrs 15 min with AHI = 0.80
Might have figured something better with importing the oximetry directly to SleepyHead (SH), but the option I thought I had a few days ago to take it from the SPO2-Review file is not working.

As yesterday, today I also spent most of my time working on a thesis to help a student from 7 or 8 years ago (in our REM program here at CWU). I am not on her committee, and I got involved to try to find her someone who could help edit her thesis; the other two people could only do so much because of their own challenges with time. I’m not doing well either on time. The deadline for submission is tomorrow. I think this last minute effort should have begun a month ago (at least).

We found out that we had a couple of photos of the firefighter EMT who is related to our friends we have known since 1974 from the Brittany world. Stayed home today, and tried to get something done, but the weather is rather cold outside. We updated the blog about our friend, Sarah.

Monday, Dec 1

CPAP report. Reported figures: 8 hrs 31 min with AHI = 0.00
I experienced an alarming beginning to the day with my computer not starting Windows properly. It had a white frozen arrow and black screen. I tried everything, but finally turned it off, and figured I could bring it back up the usual slow way. However, once I finally got something, it said my System 32\config\sys profile\Desktop was moved to another location unavailable. Great–I tried with the basic one, but could not access anything I needed. I turned off again, left it for a few minutes, thought positive thoughts, probably said a little prayer, please let it work, and it came up. I started backing up some of my recent stuff that I need for visiting with two doctors in the next two weeks. I am trying to study my medical data and present it graphically and legibly to show my own parameters I have been measuring nightly, since Oct 4, but especially, more recently, with the added oximetry, starting Nov 24.
I started the day in town, in the afternoon, after lunch, at the senior center, meeting my friend from Montana, who now has moved to EBRG. The exercise group, SAIL, starts at 1:30 so I planned to meet her early to introduce her and get her signed up as an AAC member. She met many people and went through the class, doing very well, her first time. She plans to return Wednesday. Besides this class, there are many more activities through the year, and she can meet more people her age. As well, she has found a church in town she likes.

I took my new oximeter to class today, and recorded my vitals (pulse and oxygen saturation level) for the entire time. You can view the record below:

The beginning is a little bumpy while I was attempting to set it to record, and at the end, in turning it off record. The procedure is more than one click– (many at the start and several at the ending too). The top green line is the blood Oxygen Saturation level (%), which was fine for several times around the room before I set it to record (while it’s recording I cannot view it until I get home and download to my computer). During the class, the O2 level was in the high nineties, where it is supposed to be. The pulse is the blue line and it is fine too, except for my bumps on the setup and ending, it was averaging around 75 bpm.

I was late getting home from town (almost dark) because I stopped by the KVC hospital lab (a blood draw for an INR check)–my doctor’s nurse called at 6:21 p.m. to report my results. The INR was 3.0 with no need to change the dosage. On my way from the hospital, I stopped at BiMart where I needed to get a new watch to replace my Timex I have had for a very long time. Its alarms have not worked since the battery was replaced in July. John saw they were having a 20% sale through this Saturday on all watches. Amazing how long it took me, but I found one I think will work. I had help from the head of the department who spent an hour with me. I left with a new Casio, waterproof, with chronometer, timer, and alarms, for the sale price of $19.95. She took time to show me 3 or 4 different models, after showing me the Timex and I didn’t like the huge size.
Then, she was patient with me while I looked for the one I wanted. I decided on a small one with a name that started with an O, because the side control buttons for setting things were smoother, but I asked her to help me set the watch, date, time. She worked at it and never really did figure it out. We both decided that was not the watch for either of us. I had been fooling all along with the Casio (with harder, more piercing knobs), and without following the instructions, I had made good progress. I left with it on my wrist (without the timer and chronometer access figured out yet). She moved the band from my old watch onto this one. I brought all the pieces home, including the instructions, but I have not yet made time today to figure the rest of the settings.

Tuesday, Dec 2

CPAP report. Reported figures: 6 hrs 31 min with AHI = 0.46

I was able to get my Christmas music moved to flash drive but not printed out, and I moved my folder with Sleep Apnea (from CPAP machine & oximeter), as well. I need to back up more from my hard drive.
Played more with Oximetry input today after forgetting how I did it last week. Think I am on target now, and back to not having to upload twice from the oximeter.
Lunch — a gourmet delicacy treat by John, thanks to our friend Anne Engels, the one from MT who just moved to town. She cooked a Hutterite prepared turkey (brought from Montana), for hers and her son Glenn’s Thanksgiving dinner. Yesterday she brought us a generous serving of turkey to the SAIL exercise class she will be joining. John created brown, blue & yellow sandwiches for our lunch. The yellow was grated cheddar cheese, also used on last night’s chili. Chopped turkey and the cheese was held together with blue cheese salad dressing. We had plain brown bread and grilled them in the non-stick pan. It was super good.
I have spent most of the day working on Christmas music and on bills, and graphics of the combo graphs of my CPAP machine results with my oximeter ones. I entered the wrong image in last week’s blog to show the comparison and addition of the oximetry I’m so proud to have accomplished. I found another item in the process that I thought I did last week, and then couldn’t repeat until today. Now, I’m on a roll. Below is my addition of my Oximetry data synced to the CPAP data. I’m quite excited to have this additional option and display capabilities. There is one glitch in the Sp02 (blue) about 1:35am I cannot explain. If you look at the red line Pulse Rate at about 5:35am, you’ll see the place where I turned off the CPAP machine and left the Oximeter running, so the pulse goes up as I walk to the bathroom, feed the cat, and then lie back down for a few more hours sleep, without the CPAP blowing compressed air into my nostrils.

I didn’t have to do any more proofing of the master’s thesis, because the deadline was yesterday at 5:00. I hope she made it. My weekend was consumed with that.
I’m still putting in a lot of time today on music that we can check out tomorrow when Evelyn and I meet to play for the Food Bank Soup Kitchen lunch. We use the time to practice beforehand and fix any chord problems so I can come home and enter them in the computer software to make copies (pdf) files to send to those not coming tomorrow, and print copies for those who are coming and don’t have computers. She had found some problems over the weekend.

You will remember the fire reported in last week’s blog of the loss of our local F.I.S.H. Food Bank building. For this week, the noon meals are being served at the First Lutheran Church. Next week it will change to another church, the Mercer Creek Church. The latter has also been housing all the donations and providing warehouse space for storage and distribution to needy families in the community.

I never got to John’s haircut as planned. He prefers to wait now until after the two events we go to Friday and Sunday. I know not why. My haircuts are not butcher jobs. He now has cowlicks and we wonder where that terminology originated. They don’t bother him as much as they bother me. Okay, I found the description on Wikipedia:

The term “cowlick” originates from the domestic bovine’s habit of licking its young, which results in a swirling pattern in the hair. The most common site of a human cowlick is in the crown, but they can show up anywhere. They also sometimes appear in the front and back of the head.[”
The term cowlick dates from the late 16th century, when Richard Haydocke used it in his translation of Lomazzo: “The lockes or plaine feakes of haire called cow-lickes, are made turning upwards.”

It was cold here but John manage to start the inserting of 36 wood screws into his truck rack, but he’s having to do it with a manual screwdriver (negating the intended purpose of Phillips slotted heads, because the cheap Phillips head piece that fits in the power drill is of insufficient quality metal to do the job properly. He also got more brushing done down in the woods, afterward, making a dessert with apples and blackberries. It smells grand and is coming out of the oven in 5 minutes.
We had a good dinner of sliced turkey, baked potato, and pears. The dessert was scrumptious, except I detest the blackberry seeds. I suppose that’s why I prefer blueberries. Perhaps I would like blackberry jelly or use the juice in my desserts, but that takes more time we don’t have. I enjoy helping (John does most of the work) pick the thorn-less blackberries because they are so pretty, and I don’t mind cleaning them and putting them up in little bags for the freezer. However, for all the berries we raise, I like the blackberries and raspberries least of all (seeds), and prefer strawberries and blueberries.
I finally completed my volunteer hours for November. All the WTA trail work is now on the lowland of Puget Sound, so John doesn’t go now. Short month! Sent in the Excel spreadsheet for their records.

Wednesday, Dec 3

CPAP report. Reported figures: 9 hrs 30 min with AHI =0.51

This morning I got an email at 8:00 a.m. from a former student about her and 3 student researchers coming from Pullman, WA to the Yakima Canyon this Saturday. They are going to survey bighorn sheep for a disease, and they need housing for Saturday night. I sent out an email request to several people at the university (or who had been). I worded it to contact her directly because I knew I would be gone for 4 hrs. She received 3 offers, and they are set to go to a geographer friend’s house. He was here when I arrived, served as department head and so on, but retired a number of years ago.
I went to the Lutheran church for Food Bank music. They were thrilled to have us show up (as if we ever thought about not going?). It’s our normal Wednesday venue (Evelyn on banjo & me on fiddle), and we both sing. We did all Christmas music while sitting next to a decorated Christmas tree. After playing for a little over 1/2 hour, we were treated to lunch too. The main dish was fried chicken. They gave me a big serving of breast-meat (that I shared with Evelyn who had been served a smaller thigh), and included I had a few potato wedges, also know as Jojos in some regions. The salad was nice, but it had too many dark greens (too high in Vitamin K for my allowance), so I skipped it, and I had a nice chocolate-frosted muffin for dessert. Right after that was over and I made my way back around the block to my car, I went to the courthouse to deliver some nice boxed stationery for a friend to use with her granddaughters to encourage them to be pen pals.
On to SAIL exercise class I went, where, from the free table, I picked up a small sized calendar to carry in my purse to keep up with my busy schedule (:-)), a pretty colorful unused gift bag to hold a larger calendar for the grandmother, a little address book (for her granddaughters). I also picked up a Dreamcatcher someone put on the table. After class, I drove a few blocks north to a gal’s house who gave me a bag of long sleeved tee shirts for John to use as work shirts. I gave her the Dreamcatcher as a thank you. Turns out she was thrilled and has two larger ones in her house.

For many views search using Dreamcatcher and then click on the images tab. In some Native American cultures, a dreamcatcher includes the notion of a spider’s web and has the meaning of a “dream snare.” They are a handmade object based on a willow hoop, on which is woven a loose net or web. The item is then decorated with feathers, beads, or other special items. As I scrolled down on my “images” search, I was surprised to see all the tattoos. So, I added tattoos to my search and – well, I guess we don’t get out and about much. Who woulda thunk?
I stayed up way to late (almost 1:00 a.m.) working on music. I had to completely redo Frosty the Snowman because it wasn’t correct. I had entered the other chord corrections to two songs.

Thursday, Dec 4

CPAP report. Reported figures: 7 hrs 19 min with AHI = 0.00

My morning was filled with finishing the new song, printing copies of all the changes, and then running printouts for a couple of folks without computers, and finally, printing off some of the Bb clarinet music for our new addition (trumpeter) to use to play with us (now that he has a mute). It still is a little louder than I wish, but that wish is mainly for one of our players with tinnitus.
My afternoon was spent at Royal Vista, playing music, with a relatively large bunch of musicians…mandolin, several guitars, trumpet, fiddle, banjo, and 2 singers without instruments. Afterwards, I visited with some of the residents, and got home nearly at dark.

Friday, Dec 5 “Repeal Day”

CPAP report. Reported figures: 8 hrs 16 min with AHI = 0.12
One hypopnea (shallow breathing) before 1:00 a.m., then awake around 1 to 2, unable to get comfortable and back to sleep (unusual).
We partied this evening at Dean Hall for the annual Anthropology/ Geography party. It has occurred since before I came on campus, and I have attended every year since 1988, except for 2009 when I was in the ICU in Yakima Regional, awaiting my heart valve operation. Actually, this week marks the week I was on life support for 8 days, the Saturday following Thanksgiving.
We carried two platters of dried fruit (peaches and apples). They were tasty, but there was so much food, we brought much of ours home.
It was a potluck, and a long buffet table had so many offerings of meats, veggies, salads, and specialty items that I won’t even try to list them. Another separate table had an incredible array of desserts. For drinks, we were served lime sherbet / fruit punch either leaded or not. After and while eating, we had many conversations. It was a nice beginning of the season.

Saturday, Dec 6

CPAP report. Reported figures: 6 hrs 25 min with AHI = 0.00

A tiny bit of snow early morning changed to rain, and then stopped later in the afternoon. The forecast was for a sunny afternoon, but we think not (and it wasn’t).
John started his day by starting bread. Then he took the dogs for their morning exercise and came back to work inside. He made us a nice brunch of blueberry pancakes with strawberries (frozen from CA in April), bacon, and eggs from outdoor around the yard chickens from our former secretary, Marilyn. You can see the results below; notice the beautiful rich gold color of the yokes.

I first checked email, and found a few that needed immediate attention. The most important was a flyer I had picked up last night at the party for a final poster presentation I’m invited to on Monday. The date on the flyer was set using a Nov calendar and not December, so I alerted the Prof. and started the process to pick up the wrongly dated flyers from mailboxes. I was happy to be in the right place at the right time last night, and once home, reading the flyer to put the date on my calendar (when I realized the error). I knew we were told it was Monday, when I have an appointment at 11:45 so I will only get to view the first 4 projects. It continues until noon.

Finally, while John was fixing lunch, I managed to take off my data from the CPAP machine and create my graphs. I must upload it first to SleepyHead (SH) before I upload the oximetry data. Then I go back to SH to import the oximetry and synchronize it with the CPAP data for the night before. I then capture a few more graphs. At some point before my sleep doctor’s appointment, Dec 16, I plan to write a summary of the investigation I have been doing since Nov 24. In order to give the doctor time to review it before I arrive for my appt (assuming he will), I need to mail it down, probably the 10th. It should get there the 11th, and the next day (Friday), they only work until noon. I will check next week to see what days he is in the office and plan accordingly. John is afraid if I do not get it to him in advance, it might not be effective to try to do it in the office visit on the 16th, without his previously viewing it. This morning, I just found another bit of information on the SleepyHead details, so I will have to check into what I can use from there.
The bread is almost ready to come from the oven. What an awesome aroma! John claims he knows how to make better looking loaves – more time and more work. He also claims it doesn’t taste any better. (The large one is 26 ounces.)

Hope your week was fine.

Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan

The double meaning is probably triple or quadruple. CPAP machines have “events” measured (apnea, hypopnea, 7 others. Oximetry has only 2 events (pulse and oxygen saturation percent). Add the other events that happened this week and the subject line makes sense (at least to me).

Saturday, Nov 22

CPAP report. Reported figures: 7 hrs 35 min with AHI = 0.00.
The oximeter arrived, and I have removed it from the packaging, stuck it on my finger, and recorded my O2 and pulse. Now I need to read the instruction pamphlet to learn how to download the data and maybe run it tonight as I sleep. (No chance for tonight).
I spent awhile unpacking it and trying to read the small printed instructions but looked on line for some too. These are written in a font that’s too small to concentrate on until tomorrow after a good night’s sleep and more energy.

Sunday, Nov 23

CPAP report. Reported figures: x hrs xx min with AHI = x.xx.
I forgot to transfer my SD card from my computer back to the CPAP machine — so I wore the mask all night and don’t have any record of it. Sadly, I did not have my oximeter hooked up yet to record my O2 (without the CPAP recording properly; at least I would have had something). I waited until today and was able locate a more legible set of instructions in an on-line User Manual, which I downloaded and printed this morning. The small folded user manual that came with the unit from China, is a challenge to read. This better manual also has some typos in it and strange wording, as if it was written by someone for whom English is a Second Language. Yet, it has some very good information (much exactly the same as the minuscule version), but it has a large font I can read (and the diagrams are realistically in color that match the unit). I also found another on line write-up for the unit by the President of the CPAP-Supply place in Spokane (that several of my friends use for supplies). The write-up has some humor in it, which never hurts, when describing technical things. I have to share one, which is very meaningful to me, but probably won’t be to the rest of you:

Recording and Uploading Data Using the CMS 50E Pulse Oximeter
To record data, press the button until the settings menu appears. Then click the button until Record is highlighted. Press the button with Record highlighted, then set the current time by clicking to the appropriate hours/minutes field and pressing the button to adjust that field. Then click the button to underline the Y and press the button to exit the time setting menu. It’s much easier to do it than to write how to do it, so just figure it out on your own if this all sounds like nonsense.

Now that I have figured it out (by trial and error), I might be able to write the instructions better than he did, yet I do like his last sentence (above). This whole experience has been an example of learn by doing because thorough user manuals do not exist for the CPAP software I use (SleepyHead), but I have a computer guru friend in Moscow, ID who also has the same machine as I and who introduced me to the software to display the daily graphic evaluations. He has been able to convey to me what he learned by doing, and now I’m conveying my experiences with getting the oximeter to talk to the CPAP software (because the CPAP does NOT measure and report the blood saturation oxygen percentage or the pulse). Much of my day was spent messing with this new oximeter.
Change of subject (another event). A sub-plot to one of WA’s wildfires; north of us about 70 miles. The July, 2014 fire was the largest wildfire in the history of our state.

This is a shaggy bear story – a young female that survived the Carlton Complex Fire. They called her Cinder. She had burned paws such that she was walking on her elbows but made it to the backyard of a house and crawled under a horse trailer. About Cinder. In this morning’s email, came this report came from my friend Sonja on Cinder’s re-homing. Sonja is married to Kevin Willitts the main veterinarian for Cinder’s care since arriving in S. Lake Tahoe this summer.

Hi All,
    Good news for Cinder the bear! She’s heading for southern ID today to a new rehab center. The new center has an outdoor area where she can roam to help re-acclimate her feet (toughen them up) to dirt, etc. She was on concrete and wood here in Tahoe. Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care center doesn’t have any outdoor bear-secure areas.
    Next spring the plan is to then release her back into the wild. I’m not privy to where or when or if it’s even known at this time. I’m told this rehab center is very good in its own right and since the critical portion of Cinder’s  healing is complete, they are qualified to continue, since, essentially, she won’t be under a doctor’s care anymore. What needs to be done now is up to Cinder.
So wish her well!
Sonja

Whoopee — the sun just came out and the rain stopped. That will give John more time to work on the racks for our newer (Ford) truck. He worked and then the clouds came in for quite a contrast with the blue sky. He made a fast descent from the bed of the pickup working on the racks and went down to the far end of the pasture to feed the horses. He took Annie along but they didn’t get back before the rain started. It rained quite hard for awhile

The first photo below is the earlier work on the rack building project. The idea is to have easily removable panels that will carry a cord of firewood. The panels are being made with reconfigured pallets we bought from the CWU Surplus Department.

This one is of “angry clouds” contrasting with blue skies.

Monday, Nov 24

CPAP report. Reported figures: 8 hrs 37 min with AHI = 0.00.

I finished music, Over the River and Through the Woods, and sent to the group, along with We Gather Together. I sent as .pdfs and then Wednesday at our “event” Evelyn found two chord problems to change. I have since fixed and will resend to the others before next Thursday.
I charged the Oximeter’s battery last night, read the instructions for settings several times (13 pages), but have not yet attempted that chore.
I finally figured out Oximeter settings and loaded the software, SP-02 General, onto my computer to display my oximeter through graphs, daily. Now to record tonight with the CPAP on.

I just went outside to document John’s work on the pallet-racks. He’s making progress.
This LINK is to a YouTube video of John disassembling the rack.

Tuesday, Nov 25

CPAP report. Reported figures: 8 hrs 1 min with AHI = 0.00.

Managed to sleep on the CPAP with the Oximeter also recording. Have been checking details to try to upload the data from the device. Once I get it into SP02 I should be able to import into my SleepyHead CPAP analysis software.
First try did not work the way it was supposed to. Technical discussion — skip if you wish. This is for my records. I loaded the drivers for SPO2 and am proceeding to create the stats in a file,
Nancy Brannen Hultquist_201411251328 on SPO2 Review. I thought that would be saved in the data folder, under the software, but it was not. The folder is there, but empty. I can only view it through the software and print out a report. Data are accessible through the program but not to be imported into another.
If I cannot import it to SleepyHead I will not be able to synchronize it with my CPAP machine data. Again, rename the acronym, CRAP.
Okay — next chapter. I decided to link the oximeter with the USB cord and to use SleepyHead software to import directly the data.

John planned to move some wood to a friend’s house 1.5 mi away, but it has been raining all morning and still is at 1:00 PM so he will likely skip today. Yesterday would have been the day to do the work, however, then John wouldn’t have been able to finish the racks. This morning, in the rain, I captured a picture of the racks where he put them to drill holes in the corners (for pins).

Wednesday, Nov 26

CPAP report. Reported figures: 7 hrs 56 min with AHI =0.13.
one Hypopnea about 12:30 a.m.
The fog was extremely bad and had been for many hours in the valley, and we had a lot less with sun! Visibility at the airport (5 miles S) was 0.25 miles.
John left to deliver firewood in the old hardly-fit-for-the-road 1980 Chevy truck. As I left for the Food Bank and Hearthstone, I found the battery dead in my Subaru. I transferred all my stuff from my car to John’s Subaru, and in the process missed the stuff in the front seat (my pocketbook and a package I intended to deliver to a friend at the courthouse).
On my way in, I realized John’s car’s dash was showing a bright orange warning light in the lower right I had not before seen.

I called Subaru because John has the user manual in the house. The gal in service we know there said it was a tire pressure warning. I didn’t see any obvious lowness and had no gauge, so once done at the Food Bank, I drove it to Les Schwab and was quickly on my way with fully inflated tires. Must have been a temperature and time thing – all 4 were low.
Food bank for music .. excellent food today: steamed/roasted chicken pulled off bone, great gravy, baked potato with fixings, salad strawberries/walnuts/greens, butternut squash cooked as I like it, lemon Bundt with sauce of fresh pineapple and cooked apples.
Then on to Hearthstone, a day early because of Thanksgiving being on our normal Thursday play date. We had community guests in attendance besides a large group of residents: Gloria & Paul Swanson; Anne and Glenn Engels (gave them a box of apples), George Macinko, Gerald brought macadamia cookies & cat food for me. It was a great music day. Our sometimes trumpeter returned to sing with us.

FIGURED OUT MY SLEEPY HEAD IMPORT OF OXIMETER !!!!

Thursday, Nov 27 HAPPY THANKSGIVING

CPAP report. Reported figures: 5 hrs 28 min with AHI =0.00.

I had problems entering my data from last night after thinking I had solved the problem. Will work on it later.
We received 3 phone calls from friends around the PNW. John got in on one from friends in Eureka, CA. Missed the others from WA.
I succeeded in viewing the Oximetry data from the SPO2 software. The first five hours was with the CPAP and my finger pulse oximeter came off (where the flat line is), around 5:00. I awoke at 5:28 and realized it was off, so I replaced it, went down the hall to potty, and went back to bed OFF the CPAP, for 2 hours.

I guess the beauty of this graph is that it shows the CPAP is keeping my O2 saturation level above 90% (green line), the whole purpose of using the machine. I had no sleep apnea events during this period. Also, I now realize the scale of time at the bottom. This starts at midnight and the numbers to the right of +1 reflect the hour. You can see where the 5:28 time occurred on changing from the CPAP machine, and the short moment’s lowering to 85% for the low of the oxygen saturation level for the night.

Here is some interesting genealogy prompted by an email from our friend, Gene Bobeck, in Moscow, ID. Gene found a reference in one of his retirement holdings to a well-off business man and wondered if we were related. Below is John’s response that I am sure many of our friends and relatives will appreciate.

About G. L. Hultquist
The Swedes and others of north-European heritage had the peculiar custom of changing the last name of children to reflect the first name of the fathers. Also, depending on the group the ending could be -son, -sen, -sson, -zen, -zon/zoon, and -ssen. Using modern country designations, in Norway a name might be Johnsen, while in Sweden it would be Johnson. The ‘John’ is not common but Johansson, Jonsson and Jönsson all are.
This apparently worked well in small communities and when lives were nasty, brutish, and short.
Still if a man had several male children and they lived long and had male children then the community would have lots of folks with the same last name.
The female children were ‘daughters’ in some places and ‘datters’ in others.
Beginning a couple hundred years ago this naming convention (patronymic practice) became stressed as national organizations took folks out of their local community and agglomerated them in places not their home and not where they were known. A large group (say an army barracks or navy ship) might have a dozen or so Anderssons and another dozen Johansson, and none closely related to any of the others. It became somewhat common to sign people up in such groups with a newly selected name, no two having the same last name.
In 1901 in Sweden, the Names Adoption Act was passed, which abolished the patronymic practice. From 1901, everyone had to have a family name that was passed down to the next generation.
My relatives came to America before that time. I was told that in order for members of one family to keep track of their kin was to agree on a new last name and keep it. One of the name-selecting strategies was to pick a prefix that would mean something to them and then tack on the ‘quist’ part. This last indicating something like a twig or branches of a tree. In the case of ‘Hultquist’ (Holt– and Holz– have the same meaning) the reference is to a small grove of trees or a woods (Anglo-Saxon ‘wold’). References are often more specific, such as with ‘lind’ – from the Linden tree, so there are Lindquists, Lindstroms [ström (Swedish), -strøm (Danish, Norwegian) “stream”], and more. Streams have tributaries in the same geometric fashion as trees.
Now to the point. There are many but limited choices folks could make in the naming of their kin. Many families still ended up with names that do not distinguish them from others. The last name Johnson (having pitched the Swedish spellings) is one such.
Hultquists are few. In my family’s case several males came to western NY & Penna and had the name. Some returned to Sweden without leaving a trace in the USA. Others had only female offspring. Only my grandfather had male children that also had male children and on it goes – like the branches of a tree. This shortness of our tree means that we know everyone that we are closely related to – in contrast to the idea that we are related to all Swedes.
I have only ever talked with one other Hultquist and made contact with another – oddly a geographer type in Calif. The other fellow lived on the Gulf Coast and was displaced by Hurricane Katrina (2005) to a relative’s house. She had a computer and an internet connection. He searched. Found my name. And called. We chatted for 20 minutes and determined that we were not closely related. End of Story.
About that same time ( + or – a year), my sister found a brochure for a foundation.
Hultquist Foundation of Jamestown continues support for MSFO

http://www.lutheran-jamestown.org/assisted-living

They also support animal shelters and so on. Not a real big foundation but several million dollars big.

Seems someone went to Minnesota and made some money (forestry, I recall) and some kids and one of those went to Jamestown, NY and became middling wealthy. That is the part of NY State where my grandfather and siblings first went. Grandfather went south into PA and had a small rocky hillside to (not) make a living on. Thus, those that know of the Warren County – PA Hultquists and also know of the Jamestown, NY Hultquists can be excused for thinking we might be closely related. We are not. Some years ago I noticed an article about an ice skater from FL with my name.
The G. L. Hultquist that is helping to support your lifestyle in retirement is no kin to me.

Cheers,
John

This was Gene’s inquiry:
G.L. Hultquist is a member of the board of trustees of Kinder-Morgan Energy Partners, a master limited partnership, in the oil and gas transportation business.  The company is in the midst of a merger.  I own a few shares of the company, was reviewing a Standard & Poor’s report of the firm and noticed a familiar name.  Since there are but a dozen or so Hulta-kuh-vists in the world, surely G.L. is a close relation.

Dijoo know you (John) had a rich relative?  Cultivate him.

Lemme know how it works out. Gene
PS:  Having wild turkey for T-Day, the bird kind, not the booze?

Friday, Nov 28

CPAP report. Reported figures: 6 hrs 32 min with AHI = 0.15.

Morning brought memories from Alabama of a discussion John and I had last week and left out of this blog on Jack Frost at work. Now, we shall add it. Below is a“frost flower” growing out of the frostweed plant (White Crownbeard) in Alabama photography early (1:00 a.m.) this morning, followed by our story, and a wonderful link to a time-lapse video made by Dr. Roy Spencer.

Here is his video of Frost Growing near Huntsville. Here is an image from the web of frost on a window.

John writes:
Earlier this week a person wrote a comment on a web site, thusly

“piffle! Ah bet ya’ll neva scratched yo name in da frost on the INSIDE of yo bedroom winda!!! An dats a fact Jack!”

I (John) responded: “Of course I have. If you put this string ‘jack_frost window’ into a search engine, say Bing, using the images tab – it will bring back memories.”
Here is an example (follow the link to others)
http://www.scottshephard.com/2013/12/30/12-30-13-jack-frost/
[The photographer mentions that modern house windows no longer provide such entertainment.]
When I was young, our house was already about 40 years old and had a chute from the outside into a small dugout basement for the storage of coal. A coal stove provided the heat. Later on that stove was replaced by a natural gas stove. It was at the center of the house in a corner of the living room. The stove had the footprint of a modern refrigerator but was only about 4 feet high. It had a 2-quart water can on the back to help add humidity and windows on the lower front so the flames could be seen. The windows of such heaters are made from mica – called isinglass.
http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-isinglass.htm

On winter days, the bedrooms were cold and the windows became canvasses for Jack Frost. Scrapping ice was something to do. Or, putting a hand flat on the window would melt the ice and leave a print. With warmer temperature, the ice would all melt and water would collect on the lower frame and sill of the window. This process degraded the painted wood and so, occasionally, we would remove the old paint and add new.
Some folks, even then, missed out on Jack Frost visits, and few now ever experience it. Pity!

(Nancy, here). I was raised in a 5-room house built in the 1920s in Atlanta, GA. My bedroom was at the opposite diagonal from the living room where we had our only heat source. I recall carrying my clothes to the living room, putting them on top of the unit (that sat in front of our fireplace), and warming them as I put them on and took off my pjs. I remember all those things about ice on the windows and the moisture causing the wooden window stills to get messy. My room was on the corner of the house and had two sets of windows on each side of the room and I got to view many versions of Jack Frost’s handiwork.

Next is a MAJOR late week event.
Devastating news this morning about the 100% fire loss of the F.I.S.H. Food Bank to which I have been going weekly to make music. F.I.S.H. is for “Friends In Service to Humanity.” The first picture was taken around 8:00 a.m. when the fire personnel made it to the site.

The second photo was taken by a bystander at 9:00 a.m. People all over Ellensburg could hear the sirens and see the smoke.

Very sad because of all the good they provide the community–just yesterday providing a Thanksgiving dinner at 4:00. Throughout the year they provide perishable and non-perishable food stuffs (fresh, frozen, canned, boxed) and supplies (such things as Depends) and meals to anyone in need. I was just there Wednesday this week “serving” music. It’s hard to believe the destruction, yet John and I witnessed it from across the street after all the excitement was over. I do believe the community will help in the recovery efforts to be in another facility feeding meals and distributing food Monday. Plans are currently in the works from a 3:00 meeting of the FISH board on Friday.
John and I went to town for a 50% off coupon at Ace Hardware and bought a snow shovel of black heavy steel for $12.50 On over to Ranch & Home where we got 50% off horse meal for our oldest horse, Ebony. We looked at Carhartt jeans and other clothes but decided they were overpriced and we have enough clothes anyway. One could only use the discount on one item.
On the way home, we drove by and walked a block+ to see the activity of the burning building, take photos, and while there, it started raining.
Here are a few of our views, followed by one from the web of the warehouse on the bottom floor that was destroyed.

We have confirmed with grandmother-in-law Karen in Issaquah that Sarah, now one of EBRG’s fire department EMTs, is on ladder duty in this photo.

The fire crew had to cut into the side and roof to get to the fire on the second floor. Note the chainsaw near the front wheel of that firetruck.

Finally, the old photo from the web of the now gone warehouse on the first floor of the north side of the building, under where the ladder above is headed.

Now sun is shining. We are home, and I ended up eating breakfast for lunch. I skipped out without my morning toast. Was busy working on the oximeter stuff and the SH software to display the results between both machines.

I continued with the perplexing hidden file(s) in the SPO2 data folder (that’s where it is, but SPO2 will not let SleepyHead (SH) access it).–UPDATE another success.. I managed to make SH find it (so I only have to upload my Oximetry data once!).

Saturday, Nov 29

CPAP report. Reported figures: 5 hrs 3 min with AHI =0.40.

SNOW on the west side — link below to Seattle. North Bend had 3″, Sequim had 3″ (very unusual as it is in the rainshadow of the Olympics) — but the snow is coming from the north.
Puget Sound area gets snow.
The weather system that brought the snow to the Seattle area is going to bring cold to us tonight, possibly 9° F. Ouch!

Hope your week was fine.

Nancy and John

Others are buried in snow. We’ve had a trace. The Cascades are getting snow and we can see the hills above 3,000 feet just got some. Local lore says we will have ours in 2 weeks.

Saturday, Nov 15

CPAP report. Reported figures: 8 hrs 5 min with AHI = 0.25.
I, with 5 others, entertained a wonderful group of people at Briarwood, and they in turn entertained us with a great “lupper” (between lunch and supper). They prepared two great sandwiches of meatloaf and chicken salad, cut into halves, a Caesar salad, a nice cut up macaroni salad, tortilla chips, a fantastic cherry Jello with much fruit, and two super great desserts: a blueberry cream cheese Bundt cake and a super good pumpkin cake (normally I don’t like pumpkin stuff but this was magnificent). We had Cool Whip to go along with either.
At the end, I gave apples to a guitarist who goes for a complete knee replacement on Monday, and to whom I also took music today for our December’s play dates. He brought me in trade a very nice large apple storage box. He usually eats 2 of our apples/day.
From there I went to my pharmacy and forked out $80. $70 was for one medication that only is a 2-month supply, 1/2 pill each day. It’s still expensive after a 50% payment by my insurance for the generic equivalent! That one med alone will be nearly $500, which I suppose is worth it, if it keeps me alive. I would rather be on this side of the grass.
John stayed home and cut trees into firewood lengths. We reported on the cutting of the trees in fall of last year. Most are about 9 inches through at the base but taper very slowly. They are great because the pieces don’t require splitting. I put time in on music – getting compositions in a form the group can handle. It is always appreciated, and our clarinet player, who can’t play many things unless I transpose songs, thinks so highly of it that she rewarded me with a hand-made blouse from cloth carrying a musical theme. She locates the material, and I pay the cost of that, but she volunteers the rest. The pattern on today’s shirt has yellow and white staffs. I don’t have a photo of me in it, but here’s a glance at it on a hanger. I actually wore it to two different events this week and received many compliments.

On my way home, I stopped at our former secretary’s home (she retired), and saw a nice canopy on their truck. Her hubby met me in their driveway to pick up the Ibuprofen I got for them yesterday and gave them 10 egg cartons too, in trade for one filled with eggs. Their chickens are not laying as much now, but they still surprised me with a dozen. She was off at the grocery store, so her husband accepted the goodies, giving me some gifts. While visiting with him, I ask about their new tall canopy I saw on their truck. It’s cool and exactly what we need for John’s truck. It is a LEER, made of aluminum, high enough to almost stand in, with a rack on top, and is called a CC model (commercial something, maybe canopy ?). It has two doors on the back (I think with windows). Cost was $2300 from the place in town where I had some reconditioning done on the travel trailer I bought. This likely will be our Christmas or Birthday present this year. Or maybe not. I’m going to shop around for the best price. Below is from the web but the closest I could find to what I remember about his canopy: His definitely had that same rack on top, and the two doors, LEER was written on the bottom left door. I wonder how easily it goes on and off. Remains to be seen. John has front, rear, and side racks so he can carry a cord of firewood. Those are easily put on or taken off. An enclosed canopy has a different purpose and we want to be able to switch easily.

John crashed on the loveseat this afternoon while I worked on email and things. It’s down to 26° outside and going to 19° tonight.
I did not eat tonight except for a special cookie, a macadamia nut one, made by my friend who plays guitar with us. Later, I’ll have a piece of pecan pie with John and call it a night. Yeah — we have a lot of sugar content in our diet. John thinks if we slow down we will have to change much of what we eat. We are (have been & will continue) on very low salt.

Sunday, Nov 16

CPAP report. Reported figures: 5 hrs 30 min with AHI = 0.00.
Sunny and cool, not up to freezing yet at 11:00 AM but almost, (30).
Been on the phone setting up help for our friendly neighbor (and hay broker; he lives about 3 miles NW) needing just about all household items. Found a dryer (still need a washer), BBQ small grill, and older chest freezer (all freely given).
A young couple arrived for wood at 2:30, and left a little over an hour later with a full truckload (although they don’t have racks and are limited to how much they can take). During the time they were loading was the highest temperature of the day (38). I saw only the first part of the loading and came back in the house. John took them farther through the pasture near our big Ponderosa pine). Photo is blurry because I captured it from a video of a few seconds, before my battery died. This is from my old camera.

After loading the wood there, John took them to the spot where he had been making firewood (mentioned above). His discards there finished a load for their truck so they did not need to cut anything today – about ½ a cord. They may have to split some of it, but they can come back and work with their chainsaw on other stacks that do need cut-up.
I am still working on dishes and never made time to switch to cleaning clothes. I took out time to talk with John’s sister, Peggy. A Clarion (home town) friend had reported on the death of a fellow that was between Peggy and John in HS. He had not been sick, apparently, had played a round of golf, came home and went out to fill a feeder for birds. His wife, whom we do not know, found him. Peggy’s area had a little snow but the “lake effect” stuff is an odd creation. She lives south of Cleveland and the wind has to come from the north. This week the wind is more from the west and so the places farther east, where the lake ends — near Buffalo, get the effect. There were wrecks on the roads east of Cleveland. When the weather is bad, she stays home. Good plan. We can keep up on her neighborhood’s weather through a couple of web-cameras just to her west and about the same distance south of the Lake.
I’m still unhappy with all the changes in my meds (that I picked up yesterday on the way home). It took me awhile to insert them into my medicine daily container for the week, morning and night time dosages. I also filled out on a calendar the times I am supposed to take weekly ones and every other day ones. I thought I was under control of daily ones, but this throws a monkey wrench in the proceedings. I was also put on a diuretic for fluid retention, and therefore have to take potassium in conjunction with the Furosemide (generic Lasix). My Dr. changed my Losartan dosage, completely to another Beta Blocker (I think), called Micardis (actually it was filled with the generic, Telmisartan). I hope it does the job intended. I was also put on Vitamin D (50,000 units), once a week, for 25 weeks, and then it will be 5,000 units each day after that (2000 units more than I have been on for the last 2-3 years).
All this is when I’m fine, and do not feel I am having any congestive heart failure symptoms. I know I’m not the Dr., but I still have opinions. [John says the Doctor is “looking out in front” of my cardiac issues. Like driving on an interstate highway and seeing flashing lights way out in front, you don’t cruise onward at 70 until you are just 100 feet away from a wreck.] We still have not settled the Sleep Apnea problem and whether I can find out my O2 level while sleeping to coordinate with the CPAP machine figures and also consider without the CPAP on for the night. I took the overnight Oximetry test and won’t hear until next week what those results were. During the time tested, I had no events and was on the machine and the oximeter for 8 hrs. I don’t think it will be a definitive and valid test, but I’m not the Dr. (as I’m continually told). This is a frustrating experience.

Monday, Nov 17

CPAP report. Reported figures: 4 hrs 52 min with AHI = 0.00. Mask leakage problem noted. In looking at my graphs, the major leak is after a reset of the ramp at the beginning of putting on the mask. The nosepiece has been chafing and irritating me so I have been readjusting and letting cool compressed air out when adjusting the situation of the mask for the night.
This morning John is holding horses for our farrier to trim 3 horses’ feet. It was above freezing. Predicted high today is only 33, but yesterday it was only predicted for a high of 29, and it got to 38. It took them an hour, and John was freezing when he came in, particularly his feet because he wasn’t moving around working; just standing. He has bigger warmer boots – they are in the bedroom! I wrote the check and went out to say hi and ask if our farrier wanted some apples. He did.
Returned to honcho the scholarship luncheon for this week. My friend and I are putting it on, this Friday at noon. I sent an email invitation to 17 people and asked for a response so we can plan. I gave them the details of the menu, checking for allergies.
I also managed to get a photo of a Cedar Waxwing in our Mountain Ash tree. You can see the berries poked at by others, and see the inside smashed on its beak. We think this is a juvenile. There is a lot of fruit on the ground so maybe some of the birds just want the seed. Some say the fruit tastes bitter but who knows what a bird tastes.

Tuesday, Nov 18

CPAP report. Reported figures: 7 hrs 5 min with AHI = 0.00.
Worked on several projects today. Gave away a Metal Tea Pot on the Buy Nothing Ellensburg site that has been sitting around our place for years and not used. I had an interest expressed by 15 people, so I used a random number generator 15 times and then took the most often occurring number. The winner was a gal who lived in North Carolina, loves metal teapots, but she accidentally left hers behind when she moved west. I know it will be loved and cherished. Complete story is in tomorrow’s blog.
Am finishing the list of people coming to the Friday Scholarship Luncheon, so we know how much to cook and how many utensils, plates, bowls, cups to take, and drinks too.
I will be going in a little early to visit our guitar player in the hospital who had a complete knee replacement yesterday. We had a nice visit and he was happy to have the visit. Two others of our musician group had been by to see him.
I dropped by Super One while in town and got a dozen donuts (including apple fritters) at $3 off the usual dozen price. I went on to play music with The Connections at Royal Vista, only 9 miles from our home.
I decided to buy my oximeter, and tonight we ordered it. It is due to arrive next week on Friday after Thanksgiving. I’m going to get this:

Now they are claiming (on Friday night), this pkg left Spokane in the evening. My guess is if it doesn’t make it by tomorrow (we doubt), it will be here Monday, ahead of time of the original estimate. Check below for status this Saturday, when the blog will be published. The trip was from the Lake Shore north of Chicago, IL through the postal service, supposedly to our mailbox.

Wednesday, Nov 19

CPAP report. Reported figures: 5 hrs 4 min with AHI = 0.00.

An early morning email notified us of the death of the husband (70) of a long time Brittany friend; of a heart attack. Unexpected – again; so that makes 2 in the last 10 days.
Food Bank & SAIL exercise.
Food there included more of the butternut squash we donated. Here’s a photo of the offering, which everyone seemed to like very much.

I prefer John’s method of halving and cooking in the skin with brown sugar and nuts, but this was good and easier to serve to a bunch of people. Many of the patrons said they did not know what a Butternut squash is. Maybe that’s not odd, but it seems so to us. Today, I managed to deliver a lot of apples around town. Also, gave away a nice little teapot to my newly found friend from the SE.

I advertised it for freely given, on the Buy Nothing Ellensburg site. Had 15 people interested, so I figured out a nice random way of creating a random.org decision. FYI, here is my different strategy. Instead of using it just once on the number of those interested (1 – 15), I applied it the number of times of interest and then took the largest number of hits for a person (three). That selected only one person. I had 2 others whose number came up twice. What was interesting, however, was that the first number returned was the winner. Amazing. It must have been meant to be. She was thrilled. Her name is Hannah, and I told her my childhood story of my Hanna Softball bat my dad bought for me early in my life, and how he taught me to throw a baseball and a softball, and to bat. I was able to bat left or right handed. An interesting link to follow on the Hanna Company. My bat was dark wood, made of hickory.
I made several stops in town (Briarwood, Hearthstone, Grocery Outlet). In the process, I totally forgot to join Karen Eslinger at Royal Vista. She goes every third Wednesday of the month with her accordion and a packet of music. I usually join her, but I screwed up today with all the other stuff happening. We sing and play and between songs, run around the room getting people on the right page. I know it was more difficult for her without my help.
In the evening, I spent a bunch of time getting music entered in my computer software, SongWriter. The one tonight was “We Gather Together.” We need to play tomorrow to practice for Thanksgiving next week, and then to add to the repertoire for all of December. I have one more song I will add when I have time– Over the River and Through the Woods. Next week, instead of Thursday, we go to Hearthstone Cottages on Wednesday afternoon.

Thursday, Nov 20

CPAP report. Reported figures: 7 hrs 21 min with AHI = 0.14.
Today Dry Creek — was a cool entertainment day. We had a huge group of players, and a large audience as well. We went through 22 songs. We had music-makers on guitar (Minerva, Manord, Gerald, Charlie, Roberta), banjo (Evelyn), mandolin (Tim), fiddle (Janet and I), clarinet, Ellen, and bass (Dave).
Afterwards, I went to Grocery outlet again and picked up more pies, ice cream (for the scholarship luncheon), dog food, some socks, a veggie peeler (we have 2 old-style metal ones but they are hiding), and a new manual can opener. I was able to reach $31.03 (required $30 purchase), allowing me $3.00 off on my bill. Every little bit helps. John tested the peeler on butternut squash, and it works well.
They have gotten a bit of snow in Buffalo. Here is a link that talks some about that. About the lake effect snow.
Someone made a snow sculpture and took a picture on a street with cars and buildings in the background. Then someone took the main items – two feet of snow – and placed a nice wintery scene behind – maybe from a Christmas card. We cropped that a bit and present it here.

I was late getting home, but a beautiful sunset awaited me.

We made Kittitas Cobbler, late, and didn’t get to bed until after midnight.

Friday, Nov 21

CPAP report. Reported figures: 6 hrs 9 min with AHI = 0.16.
I awoke early without having a good night’s sleep.

I fiddled around a little on the computer and then started getting the rest of the stuff ready to take along. I cut up the Zucchini bread made with pineapple. We got the Kittitas Cobbler covered with heavy-duty aluminum foil and into a box with the Crystal Light Lemonade and Pink Lemonade I had put into 2-liter bottles. I packed some stainless steel forks because I was afraid they’d be needed for eating the cobbler. Worked good for the Asian dishes too. Many folks used chopsticks provided by Mary. People were late coming because of the weather, and then a few people whom we thought were coming, were unable at the last minute (five), so we had much more food than needed. We planned for 13 and ended up with only 8. Mary’s staff was happy to share food and a couple of people took home some for their family. I made a plate and dropped it off for Ruth Harrington (the person who started this project over 35 years ago). It funds scholarships for students.
Mary and I are at the table before the festivities began.

Today’s MENU included Mary’s famous Asian Cooking. Mary grew up in Taiwan and came to the U.S. when she was 25. She creates all her Chinese dishes with her own homemade ingredients (sauces, etc.), buying only a few things, such as pasta and veggies. She does not own a wok. The first platter on the table had spring rolls (those came from Costco), served with her homemade sweet sauce. The next dish had cabbage and wood ear mushrooms (only available in Asian markets in Seattle, WA). That dish had a spice for it that she warned us was very hot. Indeed it was.

THIS LINK will take you to a short story about this dish, and you will hear it is “heart-healthy” food.

Another dish she made from scratch had jumbo shrimp, chicken, English cucumbers, red/orange peppers, green some things, with angel hair spaghetti and sauce (the sauce contained her own Apricot marmalade with lemon and lime juice).

Here’s a little story about the cold Pasta Dish with Stir Fry:

Our dessert, made by John and me, was Kittitas Cobbler.

We normally make it with cherries and blueberries, but now we have very many apples, so we used unpeeled apples cubed, blueberries, pecans, and brown sugar, with the cake from scratch (& Almond Breeze, because it is the only milk in the house). Glad no one was allergic to nuts.

Here’s A LINK to my story about the Kittitas Cobbler.

If you want the actual recipe, we can send it via email, as a .pdf file.

Also included between the main dishes was a loaf of zucchini bread made by my friend at Briarwood, from our homegrown zucchini. He adds pineapple, and his is the only such zucchini bread I will touch. John thinks it would be even better with nuts added. I froze this loaf in September to use for a special occasion, and it fit perfectly today with our meal.
Liquid refreshments included cold Crystal Light lemonade, and/or, hot Coffee/Tea.

One last presentation by Mary — roasted chestnuts. And, she provided a little bowl of Chinese candy too. We got our cultural geography lesson today and our culinary tastes and education expanded.

Very little in the mail today. Only a bill for $8.11 from a medical lab in Oregon for John’s recent procedure. It claimed Medicare paid $31. I called and suggested they may not have properly sent the paperwork to our secondary insurance provider. We went around and again before she finally agreed to submit to Group Health. I had to give her the ID number for John and the group #. Mind you, every time we go to the doctor’s office or the hospital we have to provide our insurance cards for the current day. All this was done a month ago but apparently didn’t get into the system. What is wrong with the system? If we go to Amazon.com a screen pops up and has all our current information. The highly touted electronic medical record thing is a joke.

Saturday, Nov 22

CPAP report. Reported figures: 7 hrs 35 min with AHI = 0.00.

Awoke to higher temperatures, sunny day. Warmer temps during the night, interestingly. I have the blog to complete today, and I am sure John will spend a lot of time in the yard, without the icy rain/snow mix interrupting his work schedule as yesterday. However, the weather forecast has changed this morning to a wintry mix expected. I thought it was going to be nicer. The temps were up to 41, this morning at 9:00, then down to 38 at 10:00, but now moving up to 39 at 11:00 a.m., to 41 at noon, and then 42 at 1:00 p.m. Eventually to a high of 44 and no precipitation, so our prediction was correct. Strangely variable weather. Winds have started gusting, still sunny. John’s out working.

Whoopee — our Amazon.com tracker verified my oximeter made it to Ellensburg at 5:20 a.m. this morning and will be delivered today. What a great surprise!

Hope your week was fine.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan

Sunday, Nov 2

CPAP report. Reported figures: 6 hrs 56 min with AHI = 0.00.
John’s out and about moving some brush cut a year or so ago that is still piled closer to a shed than is good. Generally, when time is available, he is cleaning our woods area close to buildings or along fence lines (see below on Friday’s entry) and I’m alternating between clothes & dishwashing, email, recordkeeping, and other chores. On recordkeeping. I filed a bunch of receipts and realized I was charged for my fasting blood draw last week. A follow-up this next week, saved me $37.31, because they had failed to indicate I had insurance to bill. These goofs appear all too often, and I wonder how many people just pay the owed bills they received from the doctor’s office. I put the music “Winter Wonderland” into software for December’s repertoire. The music was written in 1934 by Felix Bernard, and the lyrics were written by Dick Smith.

Monday, Nov 3

CPAP report. Reported figures: 7 hrs 45 min with AHI = 0.13.
I had to go in for a fasting blood draw, but wanted it to coincide with my one necessary trip to town (for exercise). As soon as I had the blood draw, I was hungry for a special biscuit, but they do not sell them after 11:00. I thought maybe another fast food place would have breakfast items, but they didn’t. I guess they remove those grills to make ready for lunch food. I always imagined they used the same grills for hamburgers. ?? After trying to use my free coupon for an Egg McMuffin at McDonalds, and get a Crosswich sandwich at Burger King, I gave up on breakfast I really wanted, and got a lunch instead, at Dairy Queen, for which I had an OLD $5 free coupon from a Poker Ride (horseback), before I was ill. It had no expiration date–so I got a $5 meal with 3 pieces of chicken strips, fries, bleu cheese dressing, drink, and dessert (free sundae, or a small Blizzard, for an extra $1.) I took the dessert coupon to use later because I didn’t want that much to eat, and I carried home a large amount of potato fries for John to have for his lunch the next day. From there I went on to the SAIL class and transferred containers of green tomatoes to two people. Many green ones got thrown away – into compost for next year.
I came home and worked a little on December’s music — “The Chipmunk Song” is a song written by Ross Bagdasarian, Sr. in 1958. Although it was written and sung by Bagdasarian, the singing credits are given to The Chipmunks, a fictitious singing group consisting of three chipmunks by the names of Alvin, Simon, and Theodore. The song won three Grammy Awards in 1958: Best Comedy Performance, Best Children’s Recording, and Best Engineered Record. “White Christmas” is a favorite of many, written by Irving Berlin in 1940. Most will remember Bing Crosby singing this, but you might not realize he first sung it on Christmas Day on the Kraft Music Hall show, and then recorded on a 78 Decca record in 1942. A couple of years ago, I began researching more information about the songs we play, so that I can introduce to our audiences. It is written on each piece of music we play (for which I can find the information).

John surprised me with a special dinner tonight: salmon (1/3 of a large one) caught in the Columbia River (a Tribal fishing right) by a nephew of a friend, cooked apples, and left-over spaghetti sauce on fancy pasta.

Tuesday, Nov 4

CPAP report. Reported figures: 7 hrs 8 min with AHI = 0.00.
My First ever CSR (lasted 1 min 49 sec) ~5:00 a.m. That stands for a Cheyne-Stokes Respiration event. Cheyne & Stokes are UK doctors who discovered this in the 1800s. It’s an abnormal pattern of breathing characterized by progressively deeper and sometime faster breathing, followed by a temporary pause in breathing, called an apnea. The pattern repeats with each cycle usually taking 30 seconds to 2 mins.

Rained all night but is clearing up for the day, we think.
I heard the squirrels chattering this morning and said to John, “I hope Rascal catches another one.” He said there are several around. My wish was fulfilled. I know this comment and photo will upset a few people, but these guys are pests and have caused much damage and problems for us, over the years. They take most of our Carpathian walnut crop (7 trees), and while we don’t eat the black walnuts, they carry them into places around to chew and put up for winter. The worst case was gobs of shells and fine waste (sharp teeth and hard shells) under the hood of our ’80 Chev truck. After consulting with the mechanic, John drove it to town and they used high pressure water while the engine was running to get rid of the stuff without causing more problems. Actually, cancel that last description. The truly worst we are still living with. We inherited a 1.5 story shed with this house. It is not property closed and squirrels can go under big swinging doors or climb the rough wood siding to find other routes. Inside, the former owner never finished putting plywood over the large pads of glass fiber insulation, and the squirrels got in to bury their nuts, and knocked it all out over everything we have stored there. The fiberglass is not nice and the mess is worse. It will take an effort to clean up because it is all over and in everything that was stored there. So, I was just telling John this morning to go pull out his 22 and shoot the critters. Rascal took it in his own hands/mouth. Then brought it in the house, but we got him to take it back outside.

When he brings something inside and we or one of the dogs gets near him he objects with a growl that would warm the heart of a Harley-Davidson fan. He can be chased or herded out an open door so the above photo I took just off the back concrete slab.
So, on to our own brunch: pancake w/strawberries, and bacon. Winds have blown all day. John has cut brush and moved it to stacks all around the property. We had a visit from a neighbor to return some 5-gallon buckets and a large container that we used to carry carrots to her pigs. We gave her some onions, apples, egg cartons, and two boxes of black walnuts, now almost completely fallen from the trees.
I’ve been working on the computer trying to catch up. Still have much left to do. Managed to change the filters in my CPAP machine, finally. I just got off the phone planning the date for our fiddlers & friends to go to Briarwood for fun and fellowship. It will be Nov 15, so fast to be the 3rd Sat in the month.
John provided a dinner of roasted chicken, baked potato, and baked carrots. For dessert, we had a Mrs. Smith’s cherry pie that John enhanced with a sugar glaze on top of the moistened crust. We have a big tub (1.25 gallons) of cheap ice cream from Grocery Outlet – mentioned above. Meanwhile, the cardboard containers get smaller as they introduce confusing shapes – oval, cylindrical, tall, squat, and so on. Marketers and marketing seems more confusing than particle physics.
More music today –this time, All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth, written by Donald Yetter Gardner in Smithtown, NY in 1944. He was a 2nd grade teacher and wrote it in a half hour after asking his class what they wanted for Christmas, and realized they were having difficulty with sounds through their missing front teeth. Spike Jones and His City Slickers recorded it December 5, 1947.

Wednesday, Nov 5

CPAP report. Reported figures: 7 hrs 5 min with AHI = 0.14.
I went to the Food Bank today, dropping off produce with neighbors on the way (onions & apples). Once there I delivered a package to a person at the Food Bank who lives in Kittitas close to the intended recipient. On to exercise class, where I delivered more green tomatoes, and back home in the rain via Grocery Outlet where I loaded up on sale items. This is a strange but sometimes useful store. Many chores at home awaited me, and I have not made a dent. I spent a lot of phone time today talking with people who needed a shoulder upon which to rest their thoughts. A worry for me was removed: John informed me he had taken care of the Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) from my retirement account. This is something I know (but not much) about. Still, if you are turning 70 ½ and have an IRA – someone needs to keep up on this stuff.

Thursday, Nov 6

CPAP report. Reported figures: 5 hrs 53 min with AHI = 0.00.

My Dr.’s appointment was across the street from my grocery store where they were having a special 12-hr sale on baking goods, such as flour, sugar, cake mixes, and frosting, and cartons of 18-eggs (for $1.78). I went by before my 11:00 appt at the Lung Specialist. The place was crowded and I had to park at the end of the parking lot, a good 300′ from the store. Luckily, I took a cart from a lady on my way in, because when I got inside, there were none! The store was filled. I went directly to the eggs and bought a carton because I figured there might not be any left after my appointment. The sale items are there until the supply is exhausted. That has happened to me before (when I lost out). So, when I got to my appointment, I had raised my blood pressure). My meeting went well and I didn’t have to take the walking test I expected to repeat from last time. We discussed my recent concern for an oximeter to record that data while I sleep. He said I could borrow one from them overnight and Medicare would cover the reading, and analysis and I could bring it back the next day. When I chose the next day I would be down there for seeing my cardiologist, it was a Friday. Therefore, I don’t have to take it back until Monday. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have a big enough memory for me to use it more than one night, however, and the technician said it would confuse the interpreters, who are used to having only one night’s recording, so my idea of doing it one night with the machine on, and one night without, won’t pan out. It will show me if the machine is preventing my O2 level from going below the desired level. It needs to stay in the 90s. I’m still searching for an oximeter that will coordinate with the software I have for my CPAP machine, to evaluate the SD card’s storage of data. I want to be able to sleep off the machine and record what happens… and to sleep while on the machine and view the synchronization of the numbers from the oximeter with those from my CPAP machine.
On my way to the courthouse to deliver more goodies, in a driving rainstorm, I stopped to fill my car for the trip tomorrow, and it was down to $2.95/gal, here in EBRG.
I went to play music at Royal Vista. We observed many smiles today on the faces of residents as we played our music for them and encouraged them to sing-along. Many did. One of the residents there is a woman who started, playing the accordion, in this group, with her father, in the 1950s. She can no longer hold the instrument, but she uses a tambourine occasionally, and sings with us when we are there.
Once done, I delivered yet more produce from the back of my car. Gave away bags or boxes of onions, carrots, apples, to six people. Both onions and apples are showing the first signs of reaching their “use by” dates. Our warm fall hasn’t helped. The coming week is going to be our first cold spell. Not near as cold as the parts of the country east of the Rockies, though. You know who you are – look out.
John told me to be sure to go check out the tiny little apples still on the crabapple tree, with all its leaves now gone. They are only slightly bigger than a large pea and pale red. The blooms are white. All the walnut tree leaves are gone as well, but a few walnuts still hang up there.

(John has used some larger files for photos. For some they may load slowly. Try right clicking and opening in a new window. Google Chrome then allows you to Zoom again just by clicking on the image. The side and bottom scroll sliders can then be used.)

Friday, Nov 7

CPAP report. Reported figures: 5 hrs 49 min with AHI = 0.00.
I need to ask some more questions about my mask. I seem occasionally to get leaks from my mouth being pushed open, ever so slightly, during the compressed air entry. I also need to know the importance of running with the heated air humidifier. I tend to run it without the humidifier (knob set on zero on the far left, which provides unheated air–yet I assume it is using some of the humidifier’s water, as I have to replace it).

Started the morning with a lovely view from our back patio, of the beautiful colors still on a few trees with their leaves still holding. This is adjacent to the stream on the west side of our acreage.

Early morning of today, when we are going to the WTA Volunteer Appreciation Dinner in Seattle, John decided to take me on a tour of his recent trailblazing projects within the woods and our so called swamp. John claims we went ~1/2 mile and it took almost an hour. Not sure it was that much distance unless one counts the up, down, under, and over trees, roots, hills, fences, and springs. I’ll try to show a few photos I took on the trip. For starters, we walked to the edge of the woods with a view into and toward the easterly tributary of Naneum Creek. John had to help me climb over a big tree to get down passed the gate keeping the horses out of this area.

This is at the edge where the pasture drops off to trees and brush. Note that some of the trees are (were) nearly horizontal. A cut one in the lower left has a hollow center. The dots show our route and out at the 3rd to last dot there is a side trail to the left that goes to a small spring. One that I have not previously seen.

The little spring is on the left with the reflection of the blue sky. The water flows from left to right and then off toward the top right. About 100 feet away it meets a second little flow from another spring. The area has some big trees and lots of small brush – rose, red Osier dogwood, hawthorne, nettles, and much more. Here is what it looks like:

On down the trail, he’s brushed out and “blazed” to the creek. Already the deer have started moving through the area, and finding nesting spots to spend the night. We walked on around a tree that had recently lost a limb, and he picked it up and threw it off the trail. Our main creek is in the distance.

As we walked on around the property, we came by a stack of tree-trunk-rounds he had sawed and stacked from a large fallen tree a couple years ago. The oval shows where the tree broke off.

Now he has to remove it by wheelbarrow because there is no way to back his truck any place nearby. We crossed the little streams from the springs several times on our tour, and viewed much he had cleared, with more to go and be taken from the area.
I was tired by the time we got back to the house, but had the energy to take a photo of the lovely Mountain Ash tree:

We left shortly after 2:00 p.m. for Seattle. The first 1.75 hours went fine, until we reached Issaquah, and the traffic was incredibly heavy from Issaquah to past the 405 turnoff and through Mercer Island. We traveled several miles at THREE MPH. No joke. All four lanes of traffic lighted traffic signs above the lanes claimed we could go 50 mph in the express lane and 30 mph in the other 3, but all four lanes crawled stop and go. We don’t go to Seattle often, and traffic is why. At home, on Naneum Road, 3 cars is a traffic jam. Well, and getting lost – didn’t do that this time.
Our purpose was to enjoy fun and fellowship with many of the volunteers he has worked with over the years on trail maintenance projects (he, as an Assistant Crew Leader). Over 250 attended. The evening started at 5:30 on the 2nd (3rd ?) floor of the REI building, with nice catered dishes, wine (we didn’t have any), and other drinks. Food items included large shrimp, little meatballs, dips, veggies, cheese and various other dips, bread, crackers, and two choices of cake for dessert.
Last year the WTA awarded John the Carhartt Award, and this year have changed it to the Above and Beyond Award, with the same gift of a jacket and pants, plus now a fleece hat with the WTA emblem, as is on his fleece vest (given after 25 work days), and there were 12 winners this year, as last. All previous winners will receive a hat. He also got an over 100 award for over 100 days on the trail. He has about 150. It is an insignia to put on his orange hard hat. As well, he qualified for a free National Park’s pass. There were nice raffle prizes, but we did not win anything. Other gifts at the door were loud safety whistles and Clif (energy) bars. We each got a blueberry or chocolate-coconut one. On our way upstairs, we searched for a wool hat for John, and found one made in Nepal, so we bought it. I need to take his photo wearing it. It is quite cool looking, but we hope it will be warm for his outdoor work. On our way out, I suggested we stop at the front desk and ask if we could get a free voucher for our parking for the first hour, because of our purchase before dinner. The gal asked if we had been attending a meeting upstairs, and of course, we said yes. She took our parking receipt and put an REI sticker on it, which gave us free parking for the entire time (saving us $7.00). Pretty cool. We seriously doubt that WTA even knew about this perk’s existence.
We got back home at 10:15, but didn’t retire until 12:30.

Saturday, Nov 8

CPAP report. Reported figures: 8 hrs 56 min with AHI = 1.01.
John went to town to get some soft drinks for him, some food for Ebony, and gasoline (in a can) for his chainsaw. He managed to get it at a lower price than I was able on Thursday. He paid $2.87, currently the best price in EBRG. While there he saw one of our friends (and former student), and learned her husband was going to have to go through a sleep apnea test. So, John offered my services for advice (which I wish I had had in advance of going for the overnight sleep evaluation). I plan to start by referring her back to this blog when this mess started in June and follow through to present.
Rest of the day was full of chores, except for an interesting receipt from our friend, Sonja Willitts, whose Brittany, Tug, you’ve heard about in recent blogs is a poster boy within a deck of cards (Tahoe Pets) to raise money for the Tahoe Humane Society, in S. Lake Tahoe, CA/NV/

Hope your week was fine.

Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan

Sunday, Oct 26
CPAP Report. Lots of sleep, and low AHI. 8 hrs 35 min AHI = 0.00.
I left about 10:00 a.m. Sunday morning for Diamond Lake, SW of Newport, WA. It was a very windy trip, with white caps on Sprague Lake.
I made it to Spokane to Costco and on to the party / family reunion at Sonja & Kevin’s lakefront house, arriving about 2:00 so I could help with dinner preparations. Here is a lake scene taken from their deck. (Click to make bigger.)

We had a wonderful dinner with wine, enjoyed a gorgeous sunset, after other views of Mergansers and Canada geese on the lake. While I took many pictures of family too (a few I had known since the 1980s), I failed to get one of me with our hosts and the two Brittany pups from our lines. Sonja and I began our friendship in 1977 in Moscow/Troy, ID when she bought a Brittany puppy from us. She was 18 at the time. We traveled all over the PNW to dog shows and field trials with our dogs and horses. Today, I carried along some wine I thought they would like for dinner and we managed only to drink 3 bottles, but also I took along a box of huge carrots, from the Columbia Basin, our own sweet onions, and with basin potatoes beneath.


The photo above is 10-month old Cameron, who enjoyed a piece of the large carrot. When he was through teething on it, he gave it to the Brittanys.

I also carried a large butternut squash, pecans, brown sugar, from which Sonja created a wonderful dish for our dinner. As well, I took along tomatoes (cherry, yellow pear, and regular size), and I stopped at Costco in Spokane, where I filled my gasoline tank for only $2.99/gal !! and bought two pies for dinner: Pumpkin and Lattice Apple. We had a lovely dinner, with more food brought potluck by others: rolls, green salad, radishes, mashed potatoes, potato salad, green beans, baked beans, deviled eggs with cut up olives on top to resemble spiders (with only 6 legs).
(Click for better view.)

To the left is Ruth in blue in front of the food island, where the appetizers were first put and later the buffet choices of the main meal. The red, green, and white pieces on a slice of dried bread, directly in front of her on a platter, are described below the pictures. Risteen and Jacquie are behind.

Below the spiders is my plate of colorful food. Wow!

Sonja had bought two pre-sliced rolls of mozzarella cheese, a package of dried bread, and of fresh basil. She had me assemble two large platters of hors d’oeurves for the table. Kevin helped by topping my pyramids with cut basil leaves. I started with the dry toast, then added the cheese, put our sliced tomatoes on top of the cheese, and then the basil went on top. We also had a large dish of cherry & yellow pear tomatoes on the table. I had already washed them, but a couple of people destemmed them for presentation and ate most of them as appetizers before dinner. The main meat dish was presented by Sonja & Kevin — Tri-tip roasts. All 16 of us managed to sit around two large tables.
Here’s the family photo I took, after dinner. It was cool to see members I had not seen in 35 years, and meet or see pix of other grandchildren and great grandchildren I had never met.

The two people in white shirts are Sonja and Kevin Willitts, our hosts. Her sister Jacquie is behind her. Her older brother Mike is in the light blue shirt beside Jacquie.
I skipped using the CPAP machine tonight so there will be no CPAP report tomorrow morning.

Monday, Oct 27

We had a nice breakfast that Sonja put together, including some of the potatoes I took (from which she made hash browns), and a scrambled egg concoction using our smaller tomatoes and onions, with her cheese and eggs. Scrumptious.
Before leaving, I got a tour of the loft and upstairs rooms from Sonja and two of our Cedaridge Brittany lines pups, Tug and Kip (his father).

From last night, here is a cute short video of the two of them playing. Kip and Tug playing

One thing I noticed while there, was that both of them were always wagging their tails, just like their dad and granddad (Dan) here in Ellensburg. Dan and his daughter Annie are always wagging their tails. Must be in the genes.

Yesterday, Jeri Conklin was at a trial in California and sent a photo of Tug’s sister/ Kip’s daughter, Daisy, our co-owned Brittany, with her trainer, Paul Doiron, and Jeri holding all her recent ribbons. The blues are for her Open Puppy and Open Derby points toward her field championship. Sorry for the low resolution of the photo, but I think Facebook reduces resolution.

I made an uneventful trip back from Diamond Lake in 4 hours, but with stops at several rest stops to put gel ointment in my scratchy right eye. I took a photo of a truck carrying 3 very large basalt columns, probably for someone’s expensive landscaping project. I had enjoyed all the basalt columns around the Spokane area on my trip over. Here is a link about the basalt and how it is used in landscapes.Basalt & Landscaping

Tuesday, Oct 28

CPAP report. I got a lot of sleep last night: 8 hrs 32 min with AHI = 0.47.
We left for Yakima a little before noon, after a nice omelet and toast, by John. I had called in the morning to arrange to leave my SD card from my CPAP machine with the Memorial Sleep Center for a report of the past 13 days activity (since the new more accommodating Swift Fx mask). I dropped it off before going downstairs for an echocardiogram with Angie B., at the Yakima Heart Center. We both went in at 1:00. It was a very good and thorough examination. We both were able to watch the monitor and ask questions. The results will be in within a week, but I shall just wait to see my cardiologist on Nov 14, and then I can actually request a CD of the images. From there, back upstairs, where I picked up my CPAP report from their software, Encore. My Average AHI = 0.2 for the previous 13 days.
After that, we went to Costco and on to Howard’s Medical Supply to see about an oxygen monitor that can be synchronized with the CPAP results. Both doctors sent prescriptions for the oximeter but insurance gurus don’t think one is necessary and so, if I want one I have to pay for it. First, I will have to determine the appropriate one for my software tracking of my CPAP machine daily statistics. We found this oximeter, named Blue Finger model CMS 50 d+ and costing $42; supposedly it worked in 2012 on the SleepyHead software, but we cannot find any detailed recent information on it. I’m searching the web with a friend’s suggestions to find the correct one to buy before I do. I definitely think it is important to find out if this contraption is lowering my events of lowering my oxygen blood saturation below the approved percentage. I want a separate unit I can wear when the machine is operating and wear when it is not. When the machine is on overnight, then I can upload the oximetry data the next morning to coincide with my graphic representations of the sleep parameters measured as I slept — such as the events (apnea, hypopnea – [a partially obstructed airway causing shallow breathing], obstructive apnea, respiratory effort related arousal (RERA), snores, & several other recorded measurements), flow rate, respiratory rate, rate pressure (set by machine), AHI, and more. I have never had anything occur (since Oct 4 when I started using the machine), other than a small amount of hypopnea and some RERAs). No apnea (paused breathing) or snoring.

Wednesday, Oct 29

CPAP report. I got a lot of sleep last night: 8 hrs 11 min with AHI = 0.37.
I started my busy day by finally giving John a much-needed haircut. It took about a half hour.
I left for town about 11:00 after loading the car (John helped) with produce to give out a couple of places. I had to clean up some tomatoes and sort through to be sure none was inedible. With John’s help, I packed a few apples, tomatoes, and some potatoes & large carrots. I gave some away at the Food Bank (just to people I knew), and then off to deliver some produce and groceries to a gal who ask on the Buy Nothing Ellensburg Facebook page for help. Everything transferred on the site is freely given. From there on to my SAIL exercise class where I gave away more produce (carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, and apples).

Thursday, Oct 30

CPAP report. Last night I slept: 7 hrs 33 min with AHI = 0.13.
The events of the day started earlier than usual for a Thursday. I had to be at the courthouse at noon to meet a friend from Thorp who was willing to take two boxes of groceries (mostly produce) — some onions, and all the things mentioned above on Wednesday to drop off west of town to a couple. She came out to her truck parked a block away and I met her there. We transferred the goodies from mine to hers, plus I gave her an Acorn & a Butternut squash and some nice large onions for her effort in delivering to the people on her way home. It saved me at least a 13-mile trip out of my way. From there to the hospital for my routine INR blood draw. Got a call on my way home from my family physician’s nurse that it was only 2.5, a perfect number. I had worn my fancy pumpkins in love shirt that cheers up people when they see it.
Our play date today was a place we don’t often get to because there are only about 3 to 4 months / year where there is a 5th Thursday. We have too many assisting living homes to play our music, for the normal number of Thursdays. In 2015, we will have January, April, July, & October. It was pretty cool yesterday. There’s a fellow named Jay, 86, on oxygen, blind in one eye and cannot see out of the other (very well), with arthritis in his fingers, but he is a great honky-tonk piano player. I encouraged him to play for us before we were on at 2:00. Our 93 yr old guitar player walked over and joined him, and then I (71) went over and joined them. We did several songs, and repeated the first, his favorite, “You are My Sunshine,” and another musician, Roberta took a video on her phone. I hope she can figure how to get it off. I will put a link to it on You Tube for inclusion in a future blog, if possible.
John has cooked the Tri-Tip roast tonight we bought at Costco Tuesday. It was the same type (Morton of Omaha Tri Tip and is marinated with spices). It was identical to the one I had eaten at the lake house-dinner party. John added some baked potatoes and a baked Acorn squash. I cut up some of our tomatoes and the last of our pears.

Friday, Oct 31 Happy Halloween

John and I are going to a lunch party with games afterwards at the Adult Activity Center where they provide the food and fun, and we are encouraged to dress up in a costume. I will wear my pumpkins-in-love sweatshirt, orange beads (amber necklace), black mask over my nose and eyes, and an orange/green top hat. John will wear his new orange shirt I bought for him a couple weeks ago that was just delivered yesterday, in time for the party. I also found a nice bolo tie in a drawer that has a dark orange pendant of a skull. Here is a photo of us there (sorry about the focus).

After lunch (chili dogs, butternut squash & black bean dish, spinach salad with pecans and cranberries, Cheez-It crackers (yellow & white cheddar), and desserts, we played games using monopoly money they gave us with which we could win more play money to use in an auction for prizes at the end of the party. I did best in throwing beanbags into a leaning board with little nets and with tossing darts at balloons. We stayed for the auction and I got John a nice new XL sweatshirt advertising a local lumber business. I got myself an Anytime Fitness tee shirt with a month’s free membership, but on my way home, I gave the gym access away to a friend who goes their regularly (the tee shirt wouldn’t fit him). Then I bid (blindly) on something I didn’t know what except that it was for the kitchen. It was a local restaurant’s bottle of special spices for rubbing on steaks (or roasts). The restaurant is one we have gone to a couple of times over the years, The Yellow Church Cafe. The center gave everyone a bag with candy, some free coupons for a McDonald’s Big Mac and an English Muffin, including an envelope with $2000 of play money we returned for the next games day. John didn’t want to play any games (he just visited), so I got to spend his money, to win more. I thought we would leave early, so I had given $2000 away to two friends. Instead, we stayed and I still had enough to buy some gifts.
We are back, it took 4 hours out of our day, but it rained most of the time, so John couldn’t have done much around the property outside. We dropped some of our remaining tomatoes off at Briarwood for the people there (a retirement community), and went home by way of the friend who videoed the honky-tonk music yesterday. We dropped off a flash drive for her and two of our winter squash (a butternut and an acorn), and left the fitness certificate for her husband. He plays the mandolin with our group and she normally plays the guitar, but at Christmas, she will play an autoharp.

Saturday, Nov 1

CPAP Report. Strange one. I slept 6 hrs 29 min with AHI = 0.15, and had my first ever vibratory snore recorded, just one, a little after 5:00. Starting at 5:30 my respiratory rate increased from 16 to 22 just before awakening. I attribute that to a crazy dream I was having before awakening. I was in a strange city, driving my old ’35 Ford, with a female passenger whom I let off somewhere and left to drive across town to another place, where I actually stopped in a room in the building to eat some food at a dinner gathering of an organization I was crashing. They invited me to stay. I was running late returning, because I got in traffic and I did not have her phone number to call and tell her I was okay and would be back to get her. The other strange thing was my guitar case was attached to the car outside on the running board. Once up, I did not replace my mask and slept another 3 hours without it. I have recently been replacing it after getting up, but did not this morning. This mask is much friendlier than the two I started with. This one goes on easy and comes off easy. The others were a real challenge.
John must upload the pictures for use in the blog so we are not set back tonight trying to post the blog, as has frustratingly happened for the past couple of weeks. John has been out in the sun (and wind) moving stuff he piled into the truck in previous days. Now he is back in creating a brunch for us: bacon, pancake, and tomatoes. He’s back out again, this time trying to start his chainsaw. If it starts, he will come back in and put on his heavy duty pants for sawing [Husqvarna Pro Forest Wrap Chaps (Blue)], steel-toed boots, and Stihl helmet with face screen and hearing muffs.

The small bushes with red leaves are Hawthorns — emphasis on the thorns. See the red berries here (LINK that all manner of birds, deer, and horses (others?) will eat. They do not become big trees but the wood is strong and very hard.
So to end, here is a link to John cutting the (waste) wood that he has been gathering from around out place. Making Firewood We store a little just in case the electricity goes off in the winter but almost all of this will go to someone that has a need for firewood.

Hope your week was fine.

Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan

Sunday, Oct 19

Starting with last night’s CPAP report — NOTICE THIS WEEK IS MORE POSITIVE.
Up late with blog till 12:45. Slept on the machine for 6 hrs 22 min., with AHI= 0.31. Awoke with dry eyes, particularly the right. Wetness beneath nose, but not bad. After putting aloe cream in nostrils, I’m heading back to sleep w/o mask. Stayed there until 9:00 a.m.
Finished blog for last week and finally published it late. Our morning started with a little 2 point buck in our backyard. We put his photo in, so if you missed it, go back and check (below) on last week’s blog. We have seen him several times since.
Now we have had brunch of pancakes and are headed to town in the truck to get some free carrots for the horses and next door neighbors’ hogs. That took several hours of our time plus filling the truck’s tank. Gasoline cost $3.299 /gal here at Love’s.
John’s on the tail end of his low fiber diet. Tomorrow will be a clear fluids only diet. I’ll be on my own. I took my old Exlim camera I had uncovered and took some photos of the carrots, but in the clean up, I have lost the holder and connector to take the photos off my camera. I should have gone and taken a picture on my newer camera, but I am running short of time (this was written 10-25) and behind on getting ready to leave on my trip in the early morning).

Monday, Oct 20
CPAP report. On the machine for 5 hrs 8 minutes with an AHI= 0.58
Awesome breakfast for me with all the things John cannot eat on his liquid diet in prep for tomorrow morning’s colonoscopy. He was out of the house, but I took a photo:

OATMEAL with pecans, plum preserves, brown sugar and almond breeze.

I was headed around the block for a haircut from Celia at 2:00. John was working in the swamp (near our natural springs area), clearing trail. Rained, and he had forgotten to take down the front gate so I had to. I managed, but did not really completely get the last log off the driveway. He cannot get reception on his phone in the bottom of the pasture, so I could not call him for help. The gate (2 long skinny trees across the drive from one rock-crib to another) was up because our horses were around the back of the house last evening, and it is a protection in case they find a weak spot and come on around into the orchard (out front), then up the driveway and onto the road (as they have been known to do).
I shared some carrots, onions, and apples with our friends. Bobby, her husband, restores military jeeps and has just finished one with a tag on the front of its year, 1943. That’s my birth year, so I have enjoyed watching the restoration. I had a Jeep jacket, black and never used that I got at a yard sale, and it was too tight for me to raise my bad arm to put get it on. I gave it to him, and he was thrilled, saying, “I love it, I love it, thank you so much.” He’s a Viet Nam vet, and they take their Jeep to military parades or Veterans’ Day events with their grandkids in the backseat. Celia has cut my hair since I arrived in Ellensburg in 1988. When I was recovering in the rehabilitation center in 2010, she came in there and gave us both haircuts (for free). I’ll always be indebted to her for that nice gift.

CPAP MASK COMPARISON
Going to end day’s report with a comparison of masks I have been using. The first is the old WISP and the second is the Swift Fx. A couple of weeks ago I pictured my starting one, the Eson that was so terrible an experience, but thankfully, that’s long past my concern. It was not appropriate for me. The WISP was a little better, but the Swift FX is true to its name. I definitely like it as it is much less confining. My statistics of length of sleep time is much, much better. (Click on photo.)

Forget the shadow behind my head. The nasal pillow (Swift Fx) has a thin plastic top head piece and a cushioned small bottom piece behind my head. It’s also easy to put on and take off. The other two were a real challenge.

Tuesday, Oct 21

CPAP report. Actually, very good, but only on for 4 hrs 45 minutes with AHI= 0.00.
I had to take John to hospital and be there by 7:00 am. He was up to take the 2nd and final clean-out chemicals at 3:00 a.m., so we had a very short night’s sleep. At the hospital cafeteria, I ate breakfast (Eggs Benedict with single serving brought home for John) and was back by 8:00 to the waiting room outside Outpatient Services, where he was. I could have free coffee there and use my computer laptop. I saw staff members, Karen, Chris, Kara, and Nancy from my many times (9 weeks) in for daily IV antibiotics in 2009 & again in 2010) for bacteria in my blood. Today, John had assistance from Annie, Diane, and Kara. Kara retrieved me to come back to the recovery room. John did fine and was totally aware of everything, but had no pain. He was recovering in the room where he started when they had him remove his clothes, get into a gown and hospital socks (with a non-slip sole). While there, they fixed up his IV, put an oximeter on his finger, and had him wired to the blood pressure device. They got him ready there and wheeled the bed on to the “procedure room.” It is considered that and not an operation.
As mentioned, the procedure went well, and he was able to watch the whole thing on a monitor. The doctor found one very small polyp that he cauterized. They had put a cold pack on his hip, which when we asked later, they said was to ground him for a possible cauterization. He did not feel what the doctor was doing. They even gave him 3 color photos taken from inside during the procedure. We waited awhile until the doctor came in and gave us his final report. Then we waited a bit longer for the nurse to return to check us out officially and remove all the measuring paraphernalia, IV, etc. She walked us to the door. Earlier, it was delightful when she walked through the door and we recognized each other. Her name is Nancy and she gave me a big hug and said how good I looked. Kara also remembered me and how I always was given a chocolate Ensure milkshake when I came in for my IV. On my birthday, they gave me a cute little Teddy Bear with my shake.
We stopped on the way home for some stuff from the grocery store, and then John took the dogs for a short run. He had a bite to eat but still had a lot of air inside he couldn’t get rid of. Finally, after drinking and eating some, he did and then he lay down to sleep. He slept hard for several hours. No surprise, he was up from 3:00 a.m. and we hadn’t gotten to bed until 11:30. I had a little more sleep than he did, maybe 2.5 hrs. I went back to sleep without my mask. I didn’t nap in the afternoon because I figured I needed to be available to answer the phone if it rang. We had 2 calls while we were gone, and I had to return those. One was about my appt follow-up in November with the lung specialist. It will actually be here in town and no trip will be required to Yakima. They come to EBRG two days a week. I also managed to wash & dry a load of clothes. While I need a nap, I stayed awake to leave for town to play music for an hour starting at 6:30. I then came home to figure something to eat. John’s still on a low-fiber diet for 3 days. I’m sure we will both go to bed early tonight.

Wednesday, Oct 22

CPAP report. I was on the machine for 7 hrs 16 min., with an AHI= 0.55. We were both very tired, and it showed in our sleep patterns. We hit the hay finally at 11:30, and I slept in my mask until 6:41, got up to go potty, and went back to sleep without the mask. Slept in until 9:00 a.m.! So did John. It’s been rainy all day. I did not go to town today because my banjo buddy is sick with the flu, and I had stuff to do regarding my CPAP and my efforts toward helping with cemetery restoration at the Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, GA of my family plot of the Eiseman-Brannen families. What’s interesting is its location in the Foundation books there, as Lot 748, Hog Pen Corner.
I also found out my SleepyHead software supports Contec CMS50 oximeters so I need to consult with my medical supply place and with my doctors for a “prescription” to get the right device. CPAP machines do not read that O2 level, and supposedly mine decreases when I sleep. I want to see the results and if the CPAP is worth the effort.
Nice brunch today… sausage, pancakes (I had plum preserves and John had our strawberries), and he made a 3-egg cheese omelet for us to share.

Thursday, Oct 23

CPAP report. Nothing to report, we both were tired and slept long. I was 8 hrs. 56 minutes on my machine, with an AHI =0.11 We awoke to a cat growling / protecting (from the dogs) the squirrel he brought in through the doggie door and into the bedroom. I cannot lie; I was happy to see the little fellow taken out of our walnut trees. He’s been taking more than his half of the crop. Unfortunately, there’s more than that one around. Then I was going to cut John’s hair this morning, until we got a 9:30 call from a neighbor needing help on barn repair in expectation of delivery of 2 wildish steers. It took the two of them until almost 1:00 p.m., and I need to be in town at 2. John had planned to go along and shop. However, because he was running so late, we went directly to Burger King for a fast lunch. We took it back to Hearthstone and ate it. Then our group entertained the appreciative crowd. They gave us butterscotch bars that were great, and we brought some home to have tonight with ice cream for dessert. From there to Bi-Mart for some tax record keeping purchases. The 2015 desk calendar (we hang on our wall), was on sale for 30% off, so we got it and a folding fan-sorter for receipts. On to Super One where John went in for frozen pizzas on sale, while I stayed in the car to arrange with the Medical Supply place about my need for an oximeter. Then, I called and left a message for my cardiologist’s nurse. I’m hoping to combine trips next week when I go to Yakima for an echocardiogram on Tuesday. From there, we went by the CWU surplus sale. We bought 6 five-gallon buckets for 50¢ each. Actually they are 18 liters or about 4 ¾ gallons.

CWU uses a lot of paint and they always have these but many are stuck together. It took John quite awhile to find a few. (They’re stuck together because of leaving latex paint in them). We have two sets of two we have not been able to separate. We found 6 quite clean white ones this trip.

We missed seeing the solar eclipse today. John should have gone outside while we were playing to check it out. Many views from our state and some interesting ones, particularly my favorite of the large sunspot cluster and then the next day Mr. Sun was quite active.

Try this site to see what is going on. The rapid changes may require that you search on the site to see things even a few days old. Solar images here.

Friday, Oct 24

CPAP report. A few leaks around my nose piece at the start, but I got 6 hrs. 49 min with AHI= 0.15
I sent a sympathy letter to a former student whose father died of cardiac arrest. He was a podiatrist and only 70 yrs old. Very sad. At least he got to meet his family (wife, Korean) with his 11 and 8 yr old granddaughters. The family had returned to the states last year. I got some mail ready to take to the post office and got two butternut squash delivered, some apples, and an acorn squash. Our scholarship luncheon met at Facilities Planning today. For lunch we were served turkey chili, with many toppings to choose from, including, green onions, grated cheese, small Fritos, and sour cream. A large green salad with grape tomatoes (that I put in my chili). Halloween decorated sugar cookies for dessert. All good stuff. From there to SAIL exercise class, with 23 people participating.

On home to hear from our doctor’s nurse that the biopsy of John’s small polyp was negative and he doesn’t have to consider the procedure again for 10 years.

Another huge surprise — an email from a friend we have lost contact with in recent years, James Gardner, from the Univ. of Iowa, and our days there with him in the early 70s. He was a fantastic guy, teacher, and researcher. He was my advisor for awhile, and we (John and I and another couple of grad students), went to Calgary for a conference to present a paper of our joint research. While there, we stay with his family and after the conference, we got a special tour by Jim of Banff and Jasper on hikes above the Columbia ice fields (glacier) to view them and glacial lakes and ridges, carved valleys and moraines, and at the top of a 4 mile hike we fed mountain goats crackers by hand. I have a set of slides I used parts of in my follow-up teaching of Physical Geography at the Univ. of Idaho and at Central WA University. The best landscape portrait I ever made was of Peyto Lake (azure colored from the glacial silt), within a beautiful U-shaped valley. This photo is from the web and not mine, but it is taken from the same viewpoint and mine is very similar. I just do not have a digital copy or a hard copy to scan. Mine was originally taken as a 35mm slide. Somewhere I have a framed large print; one of the many things still packed away.

We still have many memories of that trip. Also, Jim was the one who helped us name our first Brittany, Lovely Wistful Lady, call name Wisty, we got in 1970, and who is the base of our lines, coming from lines of DC Dr. Joe of Kaymore (Wisconsin Brittany breeding). She was born in a barn in Iowa and we bought her for $25. She was a wonderful gal. Frisbie catcher and great hunter. Jim said we should name her by her characteristics. He pointed out her “wistful” eyes (nice brown eyes — she was a liver/white Brittany with lots of ticking). So, that’s what we went with. Many people thought we were saying, “whiskey.” But not so. I have sweet memories of photos of her on point at the Coralville Reservoir, but this is the only easily accessible photo of her as a puppy with us and my grandmother in Savannah, GA in 1970.

While we are on our Brittanys, last week we told you our puppy in CA got her first place and 2 field points in a derby event. We await pictures of her with her handler and ribbon, but meanwhile, here she is pointing her bird in the winning brace. Jeri Conklin, Daisy’s co-owner with me, was riding behind the gallery in the dog wagon, and took this picture with a telephoto lens. That’s her handler, Paul Doiron.

Dinner tonight was likewise a nice surprise. John put pork ribs in to roast while I was away from home, and then baked Gala apples with buttermilk pancake mix covering, and served with green beans, and a pear (from our tree), I cut up.

Saturday, Oct 25

CPAP report. On machine 5 hrs 55 min. with AHI=.34

Need to get ready for my trip away tomorrow, but first will work on this blog, so John can enter it into WordPress for my review and posting. John came in and fixed a great brunch, which we will finish tomorrow for breakfast before I leave. It was an omelet made of eggs, our tomato & onion, and fresh mushrooms from the grocery, all stirred in with a lot of chipped leftover beef roast John got from our freezer. It was scrumptious. Here’s the view:

Sunday, Oct 26
I’m out-a here. Back at you next week.

Hope your week was fine.

Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan

. . . rosin; owned since 4th grade.

Sunday, Oct 12

John left this morning for the Franklin Falls Trail — the last day of the season for WTA work on trails in the I-90 corridor – and, thus, his last such outing. He carried yellow pear and cherry tomatoes to the potluck lunch. Another ACL, our friend Jon N., will provide chicken soup for the crew. John also carried a box of apples and a few regular tomatoes for the 2 crew leaders, Ben and Greg. We are both hoping for no rain as the crew had to contend with yesterday. Update: The day started cool (see photo below) but became pleasant, and the photos are in, but nothing of the large group picnic table of food.

At about 9 AM John still wore a white t-shirt, a red long sleeve shirt, a black polar fleece vest, a purple shirt, and rubber surfaced thermal gloves.
As a start of my email day, I usually run a couple of malware programs to clean my system. For the past 3 days, my Spybot-Search & Destroy has not let me “run as an administrator,” thereby preventing me from immunizing my system files after downloading updates (that can be daily). I decided to uninstall my current version (from 2012) and download the newest one. It was a long process, but currently, the newly installed version is doing what I wanted with all my browsers, except it doesn’t list Google Chrome and that has me a bit worried. That is my choice of browsers. I only use Internet Explorer when some feature of settings on my cwu.edu account won’t work with anything but IE. Others I have on my system include Opera, Thunderbird, and Mozilla. I’m finally through most of the setup for Spybot S&D, and am waiting for it to finish scanning my computer so I can open my browser again and check emails. Meanwhile, I can work off line on Word to update this discussion for my blog.
After a few email exchanges, I was hungry. I decided to fix myself a maple bar with my friend Gloria’s plum preserves. It was a good brunch and very tasty.

Next item of concern is my nightly CPAP report. We were up entirely too late with finishing the blog because John would be gone all today. It was not until ~12:40 a.m. that we published it. I hope we got everything properly entered. I “installed” my CPAP mask about 12:50, figuring I would sleep well because I was very tired. I slept from 1:15 (probably) to 2:30, awoke, adjusted and hit the ramp button to reset it to 5. It gets back up to a forced air pressure of 8 within an hour and that might be the reason with the machine I’m usually sleeping in one-hour increments. Yet, this morning, I managed to sleep until 4:30, when I needed to pee very badly. Once up, I realized I had a stuffed-up nose and did not wish to return to the confinement. Also, I needed to take my acetaminophen, which is much more easily done without the mask connected. I went back to bed without the mask. I awoke briefly when John got up (earlier than the alarm); then I went back to sleep. I imagine he will be tired and need a nap when he returns, or to go to bed early tonight. I heard him leave the house before 7:00 and I continued sleeping until 9:12.
I also need to install the SleepyHead software but I cannot while this computer check is occurring. I’ve waited several days since my friend was checking my SD card and displaying my statistics, and I need to get set up so I can do my own, daily. I just checked and the scan of my system with the newly installed malware finder still has 41 minutes to go, so I will have to wait before returning to email. I need to make a phone call to Alaska to a fellow in Nome, Dan, who is looking for another Brittany from our lines. He has had two of our Brittanys and used to live in Fairbanks. We are no longer breeding, but we know some folks that have our dog’s blood-lines and occasionally have puppies. I managed to get the phone for him (I think it’s him) from off switchboard.com (a very fine resource for people with land lines; doesn’t work with cell phones, however). I hope he receives the message and gets back to me on email, preferably. (He did).
I have been expecting a phone call from John to say his workday is over and he’s on his way home, but maybe his battery ran down. I didn’t remember to check it last night. It does not hold a charge as well as my phone does. Mental telepathy; he just called at 3:42 from the side of the road near Snoqualmie Summit and in sight of a cell tower. He is about an hour from home. Everything went fine with his day, no rain, and mine went likewise. He made it home just before 5:00 and has been taking care of animal chores: dogs, horses, and cats. I’ve been alternately working on dishes in the kitchen and on installing my SleepyHead software, version SleepyHead v0.9.8-1 Testing.

Monday, Oct 13

Nat’l Holiday and my parents’ anniversary. [It is not a holiday for some, and not Columbus Day for all, . . . but that’s another story.]
This day would mark my parent’s 77th wedding anniversary. Considering my father was 16 years older than my mom, they’d have not even gotten close. In fact, he died young, 57 yrs ago.
Last night I had the CPAP SD Card reader software running, but now I cannot run the program again. Totally weird. Rehash of my CPAP experience last night — another one I wish to forget. We tried going to bed earlier because of our lack of sleep yesterday, especially John’s. I imagine I was in bed with mask in place by 10:30. I believe I dozed off soon. I awoke with a leaking mask at 12:30. It seemed to be loose on my head, but I readjusted and stayed in bed. Had to get up to pee at 2:30 and my nose was all stuffed up, eyes dry (added drops), sore muscles, tired, and the inside top of my right arm hurt. I took some Acetaminophen and removed the mask. I guess I had it on for 4 hours. I was unable to go back to sleep in the normal 1/2 hr or at most 1 hr. Things kept running through my thoughts. Last, I remember was 6:30 when I settled back down again, after reaching to turn off my chirping cell phone whose battery was too low and thought I ought to know. After that, I fell into a deep sleep until 9:25. I didn’t know John fixed toast and coffee with honey – the latter to dunk the toast in, but with the honey therein he manages to drink it. He goes to the computer and reads stuff and forgets the coffee when the toast is gone. Microwave oven reheats it.
John went out this morning to search for his missing hook from a broken chain he was using to drag a tree, and he took along the lawnmower to take down some of the weeds/grass. When he arrives back, he’ll fix some brunch. I need to go clean up more in the kitchen. We had BLTs from one of our huge Super-Fantastic tomatoes. John used the mower to clean the area where he had used to pull with and broke the chain (did not find the hook) and now is in the backyard mowing off weeds. He promised to come in about 4:00 so I can take a shower to make ready for tomorrow’s trip to Yakima to the Yakima Heart Center and the Medical Supply place to switch my mask.
We just finished a great dinner — stir fry (chicken, pineapple, grapes, cashews, on radiator-type pasta. It was going to be on brown rice, but when he poured that in the steamer pan, he saw a couple of tiny multi-leg bugs — so the birds will have a treat in the morning. He knows he should have used a glass or plastic container – the 3-layer paper bag had a small hole near the bottom. We don’t need different protein from that in the chicken. I cut up one of our nice medium-sized tomatoes and should have cut more. We could have used them in the very spicy sauce (Korean Chicken via Costco).

Tuesday, Oct 14 Medical visits in Yakima

Today was a visit after 6 months to my principal cardiologist, Dr. Anatole Kim, to whom I owe my life for his insistence to the team of doctors that I wasn’t going to last without the open-heart surgery to replace my mitral valve (even though it was a risky operation for someone in my condition). Mind you my health has been fine for the past 4 years, going on 5 the end of this December. My last visit with him in May resulted in a summer of events which were trying to determine why my heart was reportedly weaker on one side because of numbers created in an echocardiogram and a pulmonary function exam (lung volume capacity). Part of the plan was to examine the condition of my lungs to see if they were involved, possibility through the 4 year usage of Amiodarone for controlling atrial fibrillation. That required a Chest CT scan. He also requested I visit another nuclear cardiologist in the Yakima Heart Center to determine if the addition of another wire (and upgrade) to my ICD wouldn’t help my “situation.” Finally, he thought I should have a sleep apnea test overnight in the Sleep Center (same building but upper floor). All those issues and visits were scheduled and evaluated over the summer. Short version is I had the CT scan, first interpreted by one MD (radiologist), who listed all the potentially serious things I might be experiencing – or not. For a refined second opinion we went to a lung specialist (took 2 months to get an appointment), but we received a favorable report that there was no damage to my lungs and they were healthy. The doctor sat with us for about 20 minutes in front of a display of my lungs and explained all he could to us. Very impressive, he was. I also had the appointment and review of my situation with the nuclear cardiologist, who (2nd visit) still feels I would not benefit right now from an updated 2-wire ICD. He did encourage the plan to pursue the CPAP mask to prevent sleep-time low blood oxygen saturation. [My ICD battery at about 4.5 years still has over 20% capacity so maybe in a year or so all this will be reevaluated. In that short time the new ones are smaller and better – so says Toni, ICD checker par excellence.] She reads my computer chip every 3 months, with a fancy set up over my ICD, all hooked up to electrodes placed in a few places on my chest and legs. (That requires a trip to the recliner in her office in Yakima.)

Review of CPAP experience.
I had my first overnight at the sleep center in June, and at first, it seemed fine. I was not awakened to put on a CPAP mask, so I figured all was well and that I was done with the study. However, two days later, I was called back for another test, with using the mask from the start. I had very few apnea/hypopnea events, (a low AHI), but for a short time my blood oxygen level touched 79% (I was told). I cannot see it that low on the graphs with the report, I obtained. The second overnight test was 2 months later. That time (with mask) I had even fewer events, but I only slept for 3 hrs. 14 minutes, and my O2 level went down to 89%, but for only one minute. Still that was enough for my sleep doctor to recommend my going on a CPAP machine.
I first went to the Medical Supply place to be fitted (9/30). The first mask (an Eson) was a disaster, but I managed to persist for a week, and Oct 7, took my SD card into my sleep doctor to have it read (and summarized). It recorded 1.0 AHI (Apnea Hypopnea Index). Most of my discussion with the sleep doctor (Kumar) was about the horrible mask and my experiences. He determined that I needed a more satisfactory mask, because keeping my blood oxygen saturation level up is important and without being comfortable I would likely quit. John had found some numbers on dropouts that seemed high but the doctor thought them reasonable. There is a qualification. The machine that was given to me came from a young woman that solved her snoring problem by dropping 50 pounds. That apparently shows up as “not using” in surveys. Anyway, the doctor prescribed a change to one of 3 possibilities. We picked one up on the way home. I picked the WISP one, because it seemed to have less head gear over my forehead and head. I used it for a week and was still unsatisfied with the feel and confinement. I was ready for one more change, but needed to see what the readings for the week preceding were. Next week, I will show a photo of me in the WISP, along side of the newest one mentioned below, the Swift Fx. The comparison will be useful for understanding my comments and complaints in my daily CPAP reports.
Thus, we have arrived at today’s meetings. My first stop was at the sleep center where I left my SD card to be read and reported on by their software (Encore). The report was an AHI of .5 (down 1/2 from the week before). Next was my visit with my cardiologist. First, we were sent away for lunch because he was running an hour behind on appointments. We returned and he reviewed with us all the things that had happened since May. I discussed my concern for knowing the oximeter results happening to me because the CPAP machine was not able to indicate that, and the sole reason for putting myself through the suffering was to raise my sleep O2 saturation level. I told him I had found there was a possibility to obtain an oximeter whose data could be synched into the software I have to read the SD card and present daily graphs and summary statistics. I showed him a couple derived (by my friend) from my own data of the previous 9 days. I printed each on a full 8 1/2 x 11 inch page and stood up and showed him the figures, pie chart, and graphs of 3 measured items overnight. He agreed and said it would be a good idea to consult with my sleep doctor and have him prescribe an oximeter to enhance the data summaries. He made a change in one of my meds, by requesting me to half it daily, and requested I have another echocardiogram. My last was in March. I’m going back down for that in two weeks.
Next stop Costco, but I will leave out those details (except to say, gasoline there was only $3.199/gal. On the way back we dropped by the medical supply place to exchange the WISP for a Swift Fx nasal pillow mask (with a lot fewer head and face and neck straps involved than the other two). When I walked in I took my old (free) ResMed nasal pillow mask and asked if I could get a fabric Velcro wrap for the exposed plastic piece that was bothering my neck. For the first time, I looked at the current version of the ResMed Swift Fx and realized it was nearly the same as my old pink one. I showed it to a customer service rep who called over a Respiratory Therapist (RT), (different from the one I first went through there), and he said, those are just as good as they always were. There is only a change to the head piece from plastic to two fabric ones. It has been a popular mask. One of the reps went back and found the Velcro pieces, and then I said something to the RT about the plastic strap under my skull hurting and needing covered. He realized that part should have been on top of my head, so I had been putting the mask on incorrectly. Once I got it on properly, it was much better … and they decided to change my nose piece from a M to a S. That was covered by my insurance because it was a different code (only meaningful to someone in the business), but it was meaningful to me not to have to fork out $29.99. I left the Velcro behind, deciding I would try wearing it the correct way for awhile before buying them. I imagine I will have to pay for them. Because I was able to use my own Swift Fx nasal pillow, I did not have to trade in the WISP. In 3 months, I can get a new mask, and I probably will switch to the newer ResMed Swift Fx. It supposedly has been improved. A couple of friends say it is good to switch back and forth between two, so as time goes on, I will have the option to go back to the WISP occasionally. Right now, I’m much happier with the nasal pillow, rather than the full nose cover.
While there, I asked the “new” RT whether they sold Oximeters. He said yes, and I asked if that was covered by insurance. Yes, but they need a prescription from the doctor. I asked him which doctor, the sleep one or my cardiologist (for whom the real reason for my using a CPAP is). He said the cardiologist. I am working on finding an appropriate one which will synch with the software that reads my SD card on my CPAP machine. We’ll work on getting the sleep and oxygen info together but it seems such a combo is not quite ready for prime time, or at least not automatic enough for the average user. That friend mentioned earlier is a bit of a computer geek so I have hope.
We came back home only for me to turn around and go back to town to Hearthstone Cottages for playing music and singing with The Connections group. It was a good thing I went, because we only had 3 singers (included me, while playing – good thing I don’t play a clarinet) and two instruments (piano and fiddle). I stopped off at Super One on my way there for inexpensive donuts (ones in the glass cabinet put out early morning). At the end of the day they package up an assortment of different ones by the dozen, and sell for $3.00 off the regular dozen price. I got there before the person started boxing them, and it was > 1.5 hrs after they normally do, so I wasn’t early. She asked me to pick what I wanted. Wow, that was nice. Once home, John had heated a meal we bought at Costco, and it was interesting… a ravioli lasagna … too spicy for me.

Wednesday, Oct 15

What a cool day! Started the morning by sleeping in, after a fairly good night with the new (old) CPAP mask with a smaller nose piece on a nasal pillow. I got ~6 hours of time on the Swift Fx mask last night. I might not have slept quite that long, awaking about 5:21 or something with a sort of drooling wetness on my chin. I talked via email with my friend in NM who uses a new ResMed Swift Fx mask. He has occasionally had the same thing happen, but controlled it by raising his head. I haven’t asked him yet or my “new” Respiratory Therapist what MIGHT cause that. It is much more comfortable than any of the others I have tried. I do sleep propped up, and he does too, for best results. I might have been situated a little flatter last night. I’ll try to pay more attention tonight.
I then slept in until 9:00 without the mask.
I left for the day’s activities at 11:00. First, was music at the Food Bank Soup Kitchen. We had a good couple of singers with the two of us (on banjo & fiddle), and a quite responsive and involved audience. For lunch, we were fed a feast. Main dish was barbecued beef made by a local restaurant who always donates the main dish for Wednesday’s lunch at the Food Bank Soup Kitchen. It was great, and reminded me of one similar recipe we used to make in our old Rival Crockpot bought over 45 years ago. I need to find the little recipe folder that came with it, where the recipe is printed. I imagine it is in our better homes and garden plaid covered cook book along with a ton of loose recipes. With the BBQ was an excellent coleslaw with carrots, a salad, mostly tomatoes, with some other additions of cheese, green onions, olives (that I gave to my banjo buddy), and a chocolate brownie type thing for dessert. Also, there was also a piece of focaccia bread, but I don’t like that.
As I was leaving I picked up my violin case and I had not zipped it closed so it dumped some stuff on the floor .. I caught my violin before it hit, but my rosin (since 4th grade) busted into many pieces. I am saddened by that. I picked up the largest pieces and the label (split) on the side of the resin cake, held in cork. I will scan it for my memories. And show you here.

My first violin came from Ned Jarrett & Son’s store in Atlanta, GA, on Ivy St. I still have that 3/4 size violin, but have been using a full size (from Germany, made in 1889), since the early 1990s. I am sure this 3/4 one was only purchased (as the rosin) from the downtown store, and that it was not one of the original ones made by the violin maker, Ned Jarrett. Yet, following this link to an old post is interesting. *Ned Jarret*
I handed out a few tomatoes to some friends at the Food Bank, and continued on to the Adult Activity center where I gave away more to several people in our SAIL exercise class. I was sore and hurting today for some reason, and not alone; maybe it is caused by the weather changes? I left there to drop by Grocery Outlet, because I need the cheaper cat food I used to buy there. It is very sporadically on their shelves – a strange store. None there again today, but I did find some dog food and loaded it into a wine bottle box.

Thursday, Oct 16

CPAP report for last night. I went from 11:50 until 4:20 (had to pee). It was pretty good, no drooling, not as dry eyes, and only a little breathing noise to try to ignore, but otherwise an overall good night. Some dryness in nostrils (more in the right), with a little chafing perhaps. I slept at a little higher angle than flatter. Had a little bit of neck pain.
Large group for music at Dry Creek. John dropped me off and went on for his fasting blood draw. Afterwards he grabbed some food for his lunch from McDonalds. We had the largest turnout of musicians in many months – 11 — included Minerva, Gerald, Charlie, Manord & Maury on guitar (last two had classical guitars), Evelyn on banjo, Bob (singer), Nancy on fiddle, Joanie on viola, Ellen on clarinet, Megan & Dave on Bass, and for much of the time, Dave on guitar or on ukulele. We had an enthusiastic crowd who joined in and let us know at the end how much they appreciated our coming. The last song, Westphalia Waltz, was really special. A fellow disconnected his oxygen, stood up from his wheelchair, and waltzed with the lady next to him. We played two times through the song, and they danced the entire time we played. At the end, they got a roaring applause by everyone including the musicians. John had returned and heard about 20 minutes of music. Then, in the parking lot, we handed out apples and/or tomatoes to all but 3 of the musicians.

Friday, Oct 17

CPAP review from last night. Started at 11:38. Early on, a little bit of forced air opened my mouth. I had a little problem at the first with my position and escaping air. It seemed related to my head direction (straight was better) and height. I awoke at 5:32 with not too many wake-up memories. My eyes, particularly the right one was very dry, needing Gel ointment. I planned to go back to sleep without the mask. It is so nice to have easy access to my nose, eyes, after the mask is positioned and also for on and off access.
I was writing these notes, and suddenly had to return to the potty with diarrhea. Wow. Wonder what I ate yesterday and hope that is the source rather than a virus. It’s John who needs to cleanse his system, not me. However, his “diet” doesn’t begin until tomorrow. I shall attempt to return to sleep. Oops, not yet. Back to the oval office. Maybe I will stay up awhile and work on the computer. I may have to cancel my haircut today. I do hope I didn’t pick up a virus somewhere. Still not settled and I can find nothing in the medicine cabinet to take. Perhaps in my suitcase? I need some Imodium. FOUND IT and took two caplets at 6:40. Its expiration date is 9-13, but I didn’t figure that would matter. Also, the package had never been opened and has been kept in the suitcase in a cool back room of the house. I went back to bed at 7:36, but didn’t get any restful sleep. I took another caplet at 10:30, according to the directions on the package. I finally got better after noon. John never experienced anything, and we had pretty much been eating the same food, at least on Thursday, so I’m not sure what was the cause.

Saturday, Oct 18

Reviewing last night’s CPAP stuff. I went to bed at 11:30 without adjusting my mask in the mirror and just put it on my head. I think it was crooked so I won’t do that again tonight. I will get it adjusted before reclining, and wait to plug in the mask to the tubing (normally what I have been doing). I could not get comfortable and get the mask fitting correctly and comfortably. I think the top plastic strap was not in the right place, and it was pinching my hair and pulling it, when I tried adjusting. (Maybe I do need the Velcro coverings). I tossed and turned for at least a hour, maybe longer before I managed to fall asleep. When I started, I had a very sore eye from the previous day’s happenings and dryness (I guess). I started with gel in my eyes for the night. I slept finally until 6:00 ish, but stayed with the mask until 6:50. My neck was hurting slightly, but okay, no more diarrhea, and decided to lay back down at 7:15. That was after I fed the cat, took some Acetaminophen, and put more gel ointment in my eyes.
I really must have been tired from all of yesterday’s happenings. I slept in until 9:20 !
I hadn’t been up too long, when I got a phone call from Jeri Conklin in CA with the news that Daisy had had a nice field trial run in an Open Derby stake, found and handled her bird well, and might be in the placements. She wouldn’t know until the banquet this evening when they announce all the placements of the day’s runs. I will hear back from her this evening.
I was better but still a little weak and not wanting to do more than I absolutely had to today. The most important thing was music at Briarwood, and I decided against going to the Grange tonight for a potluck and Bluegrass group concert. We only had Gerald (guitar), me (violin), Joanie (viola), Benj (violin), and his wife, Megan (bass fiddle). It was a great success and they fed us a magnificent meal. We had Split Green Pea soup with lots of ham, and cooked around a ham hock, two kinds of very large croissants, regular and whole wheat, a Caesar salad with homemade dressing, a pasta salad, cut up tomatoes from us, and tortilla chips. For dessert, a Trifle home made by Lee. It was made in layers in a large glass circular compote (best description I can come up with). It was made in layers in a large glass circular compote (best description I can come up with). Lee’s had layers of pumpkin pudding, pecans, gingerbread crumble crust as a layer or two, whipped cream, and I’m not sure what else. It was one of the yummiest desserts I have ever had. I wish I had had my camera along. Here is a link (with a photo) to something similar:
Pumpkin-Butterscotch Gingerbread Trifle Recipe
We also had cookies a couple of types, pumpkin bread, and an excellent cherry cobbler with whipped cream, and a platter of Asian pears. No, I did not need any dinner tonight.
Finally, I got home, and later tonight, I heard from Jeri the good news from the Southern San Joaquin Valley Brittany Club trial at Spanish Ranch, New Cuyama, CA. that our Daisy had won the Blue and received her Derby points (2), and she already had 1 Derby point in an Amateur Walking event. She also has her 2 Open Puppy points, and 2 Amateur Puppy points. So, she has 4 points toward her field championship (10 points), and the other 6 required must be in adult stakes that require more specialized preparation. Dogs are not allowed to break their point or at the flush. They must “back and honor” another dog on point, if the situation arises. They must stand on a stop to flush (if a bird goes up near them). Her picture with the winning Blue Ribbon will have to wait until next week’s blog. Interestingly, that trial awarded her great, great grandmother, DC/AFC/CC Sirius Sashay (Shay), her Derby Win, in 1979, and we still use a coffee mug with Benny Gatley’s Brittany Head on one side. Remember, Daisy is the third Shay in our lines.
Finally, for this day’s entry, a lovely photo by my friend Elise in New Jersey of a Fritillary, a bee, and an ant. The ant is in front of the butterfly and shows in the left corner of the second image.

Sunday, Oct.19

Last night our local internet provider must have been doing something and the connection was either slow or giving errors. Photos would not upload at all or took minutes. We went to bed. This morning, all seems to be well again.
When John looked out to the back patio door there were several members of the local deer herd browsing on the brush. A small buck was with a couple of does and their 2014 spring fawns, now well developed. The most we have seen at one time (across the road from the end of our driveway) is 15. So, here he is:

Hope your week was fine.

Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan