Keeping track

Spring time activities include John trimming many trees. Tamaracks this week (no photos), and Black Walnut tree last weekend.
Sunday, Apr 24

For Apr 23 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 5 hrs 24 min with AHI=3.14. Events: 5 CSR, 17 H, 10 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 21 L/min).

I did not have a good start to my morning. My laptop shut down on its own from a Sleep mode and messed up my morning trying to get it restarted. I hooked up my backup external drive and for some reason, it appears to be backing up everything again, not just adding ones since the last backup. It has sat at 8% for over 2 hours. I’m not sure what to do, so I have been going through filing cabinets recycling class materials back to 1991 !!! I am reorganizing the file folders in my most accessible filing cabinet to put all my monthly records. Some were there but not all. I have filled one wine box already this morning with office paper, and half another with magazine type paper (both to be recycled and out of our way). I thought I had tossed all the old (make that OLD) overhead transparencies but I found a few more this morning, brown with age. They and several CDs went to trash for the landfill. I found a few books still usable that I will carry to Dean Hall and donate to the students. I’d better hurry before they are gone for the summer. I suppose the best time is the start of a fall quarter.

John came in and fixed lunch for us, helped me correct some errors on the blog, and has gone back to unload all the Tamarack (aka Larch) trimmings he made this morning and put into his old truck. I’m still waiting for the backup drive to get above 8%. But now, I’m typing in my blood pressure readings for the past week, which my cardiologist wishes to see, each visit. When done, I’ll continue filing. I made good progress and accomplished much, but I still have a ton more sorting within months to do.

The most frustrating part of the day has been dealing with the new backup external drive. I thought it would backup only files that were new since the last time and not spend all day and night doing it. I think there is something I need to know that I do not.

I finally used my combo 4-USBs plug in component to run my oximetry data and mouse off the same USB port on the right side of my laptop, because the other external drive is still in use on the left. It’s only 10% done, so likely will run all night. That was a slick use of my new toy.

John picked asparagus and we had dinner with it as part, along with fried cauliflower, chicken, pears, and a neat toasted dipping bread with cheese atop. Such a gourmet supper.

Monday, Apr 18

For Apr 24 CPAP. CPAP off because of nose irritation. I wore an oximeter all night.

Up, dressed, and ready to go to Yakima. Took data and printed from Oximeter both SpO2 graph and results. Shows the need for the CPAP to keep the SpO2 up all night.

Crazy day. We left early to drive around the rural block to deliver extra asparagus John picked last night. Then on to Thrall Rd, via No. 6 road, only to be turned away at Tjossem, requiring us to make a detour to get on I-82 for Yakima.
This link below gives the story I wish we had known before leaving this morning. Interesting valley history in this little piece, primarily meant to explain the road closure.
No. 6 Road approach to Thrall Rd.

We made it back to Ellensburg, late afternoon and were strongly buffeted coming into the valley. The airport’s thermometer must have been destroyed in the winds yesterday. It did not start reporting temperatures until 12:53 p.m. today, after being out all night and morning. By then, we were in Yakima. The wind anemometer did fine the entire time. I just checked and found the highest gusts today were at 39 mph, exactly when we came into the valley.

My doctors’ visits were okay. I’m not happy with their consideration that I may have to have another CT scan on my lungs**, and possibly switch from a medication to one that requires 3 nights’ stay in the hospital to regulate the dosage.

[**John says: this is routine diagnostic stuff – some people develop scarring of lungs with the one drug she is on. This is to be done every 2 years. Last time the outcome was fine.]
Another concern was a kidney function test that I might have been dehydrated for after my exercise class. That was also the day they withdrew 5 vials of blood. I think that would dehydrate anyone.

From there we went to the tooth surgeon for him to remove all the sutures from a month ago. That procedure was more painful than expected. I must go back in a month to see how it is healing and if the bone is grafting properly in my jaw to support an implant.

Next Tuesday, I have an appointment with my family physician in Cle Elum to see if he will approve a referral to a massage therapist or a physical therapist. My left shoulder’s range of motion has deteriorated since the Dec 18, 2015 surgery on my changed defibrillator, and I have decided that a cortisone shot I first thought I would ask for, is not what I need. I’m confident my family physician will agree. I have spoken to a woman here in town who owns her own physical therapy business and comes highly recommended. The place is Canyon View Physical Therapy.

Tuesday, Apr 26

For Apr 25 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 6 hrs 36 min with AHI=0.76. Events: 0 CSR, 5 H, 8 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 9 L/min). Good night’s seem to follow being worn out during the day.

Spent all morning trying to sort out the donation of money John and I donate to a Distinguish Service Award Scholarship for an undergrad and a graduate student each spring. I found out one that was supposed to be distributed last year was withheld (not given as we and the Geog. Folks thought). I’m contacting the recipient to see if I can get her the money, but she has to fill out a FAFSA form on line through Student Financial Aid. Perhaps she did not want to. She has not responded to my inquiry via email.

Then I started working with another person in the University to change my donation from my bank account so that next May there will be enough saved up to take out $ for the two scholarships.

John went to town to have his tires rotated at Les Schwab. They were new 6,000 miles ago, and he needs to drive twice this weekend to WTA trail maintenance.

John worked on some old plastic pipe and valves he put in years ago in the high end of our irrigation ditch. He moved the garden spot years ago but not the pipe and valves. He killed and cut the many little trees that had grown there and now is digging it all up, smoothing and moving dirt. He bought 2 tomatoes and a package of Gladioli bulbs today and some sort of daisy seeds. The veggies got planted but not the flowers – yet.

We also dropped by the Ace Hardware store to spend our $20 to get $7 off. We bought two cans of paint, two plastic hose connectors, and a set of 3 of the N-95 face masks for me to wear when we are starting a fire, or adding to the fuel, in the wood stove.

Finally, our last stop of the day was the Kittitas Valley Hospital to visit our friend, Rosy Carvo, from Selah, who had a knee replacement early this morning. Both sons were able to come with her and stay until after lunch. We were there from about 3:30 to 5:00.

Wednesday, Apr 27

For Apr 26 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 4 hrs 16 min with AHI=0.23 Events: 1 H, 6 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 8 L/min). Oximeter ran out of charge before midnight.

I stopped to get Gloria and carried her Costco purchases, from Tuesday, into the house. Carried a hen & 3 chicks plant to a gal who met me at the parking lot of the Food Bank. I got there early because two of our instrumentalists were arriving late. We had played about 6 songs when they arrived. We had a huge crowd today. I did stop on the way from the Food Bank to SAIL exercise class and buy two bags of horse feed pellets. John did yard work all day, in the cold and wind. Winds hit 44 mph gusts today and were 41 for a couple hours.

Midweek beauty – pastel tulips and a special burgundy one, in our kitchen window:

Thursday, Apr 28

For Apr 27 CPAP Reported figures. Time on 6 hrs 46 min with AHI=0.15. Events: 1 CSR, 1 H, 16 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 7 L/min).
Oximetry on while CPAP was on, and off for 2 more hours, showing a lowering of the SpO2 during that time.

We had an 8:00 a.m. visit from a neighbor 1/2 mi away on Thomas Road, Kay Powers, who lost her bridge with the high creek waters. She saw our logs at the end of the driveway, and stopped to ask the source. She thought they were utility poles. John took her down and showed her our pile of wood from the Naneum fire and offered her two of them. Some fellow is going to come get them and carry them over to install a bridge for her moving her goats from one side of the stream to the other, and not having them going onto Thomas Road. Her place is less than ½ mile away, although by county roads it is 1.6 miles.

Now, John is back down in the pasture spraying weeds after feeding the horses and cats.

I played music today at Hearthstone and drove by the pharmacy beforehand to give them my new Amiodarone pills to quarter for me. They are from a different manufacturer, and they are too hard to break by hand. They have a 1/2 split mark, but it is not even easy. No way I can half the halves, even with a pill splitter.

We had 12 players there today, and a full house of audience.

Friday, Apr 29

For Apr 28 CPAP. No CPAP report. I apparently did not push the SD card in far enough. Dang. I hate wearing it all night and not getting results. My oximeter was on for the entire time, even after I got up at 5:00, so I have those results that show okay figures all night with a jump to 85% SpO2 before awaking, with CPAP off.

At 8:00 a.m. we had an unannounced visit by the woman from yesterday with her friend to check out the logs for her bridge he will build from our donated two Ponderosa pine logs. We were supposed to have a telephone call but did not receive advance notice.

Our Internet connection started bouncing on and off last night, and seems to be doing the same this morning. It has been several months since it last did this sort of thing.

John got a lot of yard work completed. I did some kitchen chores, but spent a lot of time (a couple hours) updating my medical records in my Medic Alert Data Base. Oh, well, if ever needed, my Medic Alert bracelet will notify medical providers of all my medical information. That is reassuring.

I need to get back to filing, or blog writing or both alternately.

John spent the rest of the afternoon and evening getting his stuff ready for his trail work trip tomorrow.

Saturday, Apr 30

For Apr 29 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 6 hrs 9 min with AHI=0.16. Events: 1 CSR, 1 H, 9 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 10 L/min).
I had my oximeter on. all night.

John goes to do WTA work at a place called Boulder Cave up the road from Naches, WA just past Cliffdell, WA.
Boulder Cave has Bats

I’m going to a lunch and concert by the Issaquah Singers Community Choir.

I picked up my quartered pills before the lunch at the Activity Center and also a new prescription refill for my Coumadin. I had gone by the Food Bank bread room to get 5 items of bread stuffs (loaf, two hotdog bun packages, bag of soft dinner rolls, and a package of some sort of dessert sweet bread. Several in the community are trying to help out a woman and her grandchildren from the shock of losing her grocery money. She lost a $50 bill in the Dollar store, yesterday, but when she checked back to see if one had been turned in, she was told a man claimed it, when he saw a woman turn it in, but it was not his. Rather sad.

The Adult Activity Center fixed a meal and hosted the Issaquah Singers:

Side by Side

High Hopes

Intro to Issaquah Singers Group

Third Sing-along – Happy Trails

More scenes around our place to end on. A couple of days ago you heard the story of the woman 1/2 mile away who drove by our place and saw the Ponderosa pine logs John pulled to the entrance of our driveway.
Here’s a view past the logs onto Naneum Road, into the hay field of our neighbors, and toward the hills beyond.

Walking back toward our house down the drive to the edge of the corral, I found a showy wildflower of the shrub-steppe the Indians favored along with Bitterroot.

Arrowleaf Balsamroot (Balsamorhiza sagittata)

Hope your week was fine.

Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan

Sunday, Apr 17

For Apr 16 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 6 hrs 39 min with AHI=0.60. Events: 2 CSR, 4 H, 10 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 18 L/min).

Worked on the blog and other things this morning, and will be publishing just after Noon. John has been working outside in the sunny weather and picked 6 ounces of fresh asparagus for our neighbors a mile away. They will do a drive-by to pick it up from our paper tube below our mailbox. Good thing they got it. Our asparagus crop is quite “down” this year.

I backed up my camera’s SD card on my new back-up drive, and I cleared space on it to take on my Columbia River cruise tomorrow.

I have been considering what to carry along. I wanted to travel light, but I guess I will take a bag with a shoulder strap in which to carry my jacket, water bottle, wallet, camera, phone and car keys. Turns out I also used it to carry a white board for communication with a hearing impaired friend. We had quite a nice conversation on the bus ride down, with a little bit on the boat. He also had a smaller one he carried in his pocket when I left for a lower deck of the ship, to get out of the sun.

I went to bed early for me – to be able to leave early.

Monday, Apr 18

I did not put on the CPAP Sunday night.

I left about 7:05 for the Senior Center, and we pulled out at 8:05 for Kennewick, WA. The day was fantastic, and I will share a lot of it with you below. We returned at 5:00 p.m. Fourteen of us had a very nice day.

Not sure where to start. I think I will make some collages from the photos I took all day to cover the highlights. I will throw in a couple of videos for fun, starting with one my friend and former student (we figured I met him 12 years ago) took. He (Glenn Engels) and his mom, Anne, went along on the trip.

Glenn Engels Captured Stern Wheel

Glenn managed to capture a nice 11 seconds of the stern wheel on the back of our ship, the Columbia Gorge Stern Wheeler. The ship holds 500 passengers, was built in 1983, weighs 330 tons, and rides with a 5 ft. draft.

Stern Wheel from Bottom Deck taken by Nancy – 12 seconds
Note at the end, Olivia is in the middle of some of the people walking away from viewing the stern wheel.

Let me start the collages near the beginning of the trip. We left in the Ellensburg Adult Activity Center’s bus to drive to Clover Island in Kennewick, WA (Tri Cities area) on the Columbia River, to board the Columbia Gorge Stern Wheeler for a planned 2.5 hour ride that included a lovely luncheon.

The ship comes up-river from the Portland, OR area, and remains here for ~10 days each year. The right photo was taken by a crew member, sold for $11 at the end of our trip, and thanks to Dolores (behind me) for buying the picture to share with all of us. She wouldn’t let us contribute any money. The two on either end are our leaders for the day from the AAC’s staff. Left is Olivia Estill and right is Erica Batchelder (also our bus driver).

The above collage is of our trip down. I was sitting next to the window going but in the aisle seat returning. The map I created using Google Earth to show the area south of Vantage, from Beverly, by Mattawa, and Desert Aire, to the Vernita Bridge crossing of the Columbia River. This is a shrub-steppe (dry) environment, watered by the Columbia Basin Project, that powers center-pivot irrigation lines and other water purveyors to allow orchard and vineyard growth.

The top middle photo is of Priest Rapids Dam. While we passed Wanapum Dam, I did not take a photo. The middle photo below the dam is an orchard with wind machines to blow when a frost is possible from cold air drainage. Along our route were mostly pear and apple orchards on the right of the bus, and added to those on the left were many vineyards growing wine grapes for Milbrandt. The orchards and vineyards primarily use drip irrigation, rather than center-pivot, noticeable as circles on the landscape on the imagery map. The other fields may use wheel lines or gated pipe.

The top right photo is of the railroad bridge (now abandoned) over the Columbia, from the old Milwaukee Road, officially named the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad that operated from 1847 until 1980. Railroad lines went from Chicago, IL to Seattle, WA, through Central Washington University’s Campus. Beneath it, are two photos. One is of Sentinel Gap, where the hills (western part of the Saddle Mountains) have tectonically been pushed up to their height and the river has cut down through and formed the gap. It was a major passage for water from the Ice Age Floods through northern and eastern WA, when Glacial Lake Missoula drained, creating scabland topography.

We made it to our first stop across the river at Vernita Bridge. Anne and Glenn pose by the entrance sign, and a pigeon overlooked the information board, wishing for a handout no one provided. From there we drove to our destination with Hanford Site stretching out on our left. Not familiar with the Hanford Site? Look here. Once at Kennewick, we made our way to Clover Island and had almost 45 minutes until we were to board. Some folks took a walk.

The left photo above is one I took before we boarded, and the right one is the Captain talking with one of our group, Pat Carney.

The above collage is of our luncheon provided. We had a choice of coffee, soft drinks, with water, nice linen napkins and tablecloth, and 4 choices of entrees: Ravioli, Chicken Breast, Salisbury Steak, or Tilapia, with seasonal vegetables, rice pilaf, or potatoes. I chose the chicken breast, which was large and quite tender. Top row, Anne & Glenn, Nancy, Erica (table behind), Olivia, bunch of our bus load, our meals, and Erica. I missed getting Don and Dolores, at our table.

The Captain explained about the ship’s features and safety items, such as life vests, and had a crew member demonstrate putting one on. After we ate, many of us made it to the top deck, with the intent of visiting the captain at the ship’s wheel, in the Wheelhouse (top, left, below).

The above collage shows left to right Anne & Glenn in front of the wheelhouse, with two AAC folks looking past to the front of the ship. Next photo is inside with Anne asking the Captain questions, with Glenn in the background. Next shots are of Dolores, Olivia, and Helen.

This collage includes mostly pictures taken from the top deck – clockwise from the stern wheel (top left). The top two bridge photos middle were taken by Glenn Engels, and I took the rest. The one at the top right is of kayakers on the river. The very middle picture is of ducks, Mallards and domesticated Greylag geese (all white ones), along the shore of Goat Island. The bottom right Columbia Gorge map is on the side of the wheelhouse from where the captain guides the ship. Three of us went inside and talked with the captain and co-captain. I have a short video below the photos, where the captain is explaining the electric and diesel motors that run the stern wheel. Continuing around the collage above shows the sign on the openings of the ports on the lower deck, the lower level view of the stern wheel, and the two on the bottom left were where I spent the return trip downstream with a couple from Ritzville at their table next to the open window. It was a good view and in the shade.

In the Wheel House with Captain Tom, talking about the ship’s power, 49 seconds.
We were on the river for about 3 hours. We returned to EBRG at just before 5:00 p.m. – a happy bunch of people who shared a nice day together.

Tuesday, Apr 19

For Apr 18 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 8 hrs 2 min with AHI=0.00. Events: 0 CSR, 0 H, 7 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 6 L/min). Great night on CPAP. Guess the day of activity yesterday made me sleep well. Oximetry good all night.

I spent most of the morning (starting last night) with removing and organizing the photos I made of the trip. Before I left, I mailed them to the AAC for them to use to put on the Facebook site for the Ellensburg Adult Activity Center (AAC). If you have access to Facebook, you can view many of the pictures there, later. They are not there yet. There were 3 trips of 14 each this week from our center – M_W_F.

Today for lunch I had leftovers from our snacks yesterday, and then left for Jazzercise. We had 3 people there and the routine was doable. I went by Safeway for two dozen eggs at $ .99/ dozen. Hen’s get real busy in April as the daylight gets longer and the warmth increases.

Tonight I take off again for music in town at the Rehab center. This is the religious music at 6:30. I hope a woman from the BNE site meets me to pick up a dress I’m giving her. (She didn’t). I did run by and pick up 2 more dozen eggs, this being the last day it’s $2.00 off the regular price. I had gone by Super 1 before music to get a dozen marked-down donuts. They were nice fruit/filled ones, two chocolate, and others glazed, with one big rectangular one with chocolate on top that John had. I froze the rest, and we have not had any yet by the end of this week.

Wednesday, Apr 20

For Apr 19 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 7 hrs 19 min with AHI=1.23. Events: 2 CSR, 9 H, 12 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=9 L/min). Oximetry only for 4 hours and it ran out of charge.

I planned to go to the KVH hospital lab for a blood draw for tests my cardiologist ordered for next Monday’s visit. I went by Gloria’s to pick her up, we went for music, and we ate at the Food Bank. Today was chicken Alfredo with mushrooms, my favorite of the pastas served on Wednesdays, which we have not had in awhile. On from there by Rachael’s house to pick up my old can opener and deliver a new one (for which she paid me), and on to SAIL exercise class. On the way we stopped off at Quiznos to leave a dress for a BNE person at her work place.

I did a stupid thing at the hospital. I failed to take my lab papers, went in for a routine Coumadin check (INR), which I had just had on Apr 5. I was supposed to be taking my lab orders in for Dr. Kim’s (cardiology visit) next week. After the first draw, I was talking to a new phlebotomist there about the different sized vials and what they were used for. She showed me a very large one for serum, some smaller sizes, and pointed out what each one was used for. Something she said made me remember I was supposed to be there prior to next week’s visit for a good number of tests. However, the paper work was at home. She gave me the fax number and I went back to my car for my cell phone to call the Yakima Heart center to have them FAX my orders to the lab. It was a relatively quick procedure, but to get all the tests needed and have extra blood just in case, she had to draw four more vials.

She used the same vein as before, but hit it above my previous spot that was bruised a little.

I stopped to fill my car with gasoline on the way home. Price is up to $2.20.

This photo below was taken two days previously on Bar 14 road where it crosses our Naneum Creek (after another couple of streams have added their load).

Today, below, was the view from the West. After taking the video below, I turned around and left the site without crossing, and went a mile north to Thomas Road to come across to Naneum Road and back home.

Bar 14 Naneum Creek Bridge Flooding 4-20-16

Flowering trees to end the day.
The one on the left is visible from the parking lot of the AAC; and Gloria & I thought it was so pretty with the blue sky behind. I don’t know what tree it is and John can’t tell much from the photo. His guess was a Sunburst Locust just getting started. The middle is in our orchard and is the only pear tree. We got a bunch of very nice pears from it last year and hope for more this year. The one on the right is our pie tree, a Montmorency cherry.

Thursday, Apr 21

For Apr 20 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 4 hrs 40 min with AHI=0.86. Events: 0 CSR, 4 H, 7 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 21 L/min). Oximetry was good all night, 4 hours on CPAP and 3 off, but okay readings for blood oxygen saturation percentage levels too.

When I left for town, I had intended to go across Bar 14 but I met a herd of cattle on Naneum, so I turned around and drove back to Charlton and went across. That gave me a view of our creek above the diversion to our side, and an Oregon Grape.

I took videos of the creek.

From Charlton Bridge Naneum Cr. Downstream 4-21-16

From Charlton Bridge Naneum Upstream

We had a lot of people there today – 12, with a large and involved audience. Here’s the roll count: Minerva, Manord, Maury, Gerald, Charlie, Evelyn, Nancy Amy, Laura, Bob, & Anne (plus Amy’s daughter, our little mascot, Haley).

I spent time tonight writing up all the places people can donate clothing in Ellensburg (and Cle Elum) where it will be distributed freely to county families. I posted it on a Facebook group site, Community Connect Kittitas County. It was my compilation of places, locations, times open, for people to have to donate their clothing. I originally compiled it for people from the places to come pick up from the clothing share we had 3/22/16, and back on 9/1/15, so none of it ended up at Goodwill or the town dump (aka a landfill).

One of the coolest things from that share was a leftover item I brought home because no one of the clothing shares would have wanted it. It was a very nice red jacket with the name CAROLYN on the front. I put out a call on the BNE site calling all Carolyn’s. A woman caregiver had a friend who is DD and doesn’t read much other than her name, and she spoke for it. Then, today, she sent me the picture of a very happy new owner. I had met Becky at the AAC to deliver the jacket, as I was leaving Tuesday.

The right side photo shows the company name – you can check it out but it really isn’t interesting. The phone number, from the west side, isn’t important.
Finally, I’ll end with the signs now on Bar 14 road. It is closed to traffic from Naneum, because the bridge is impassable. Here’s the scene today.

The near water is at the intersection while in the distance barracades are near the bridge with a lot of gushing water and debris on the road.

Friday, Apr 22

For Apr 21 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 7 hrs 6 min with AHI=0.84. Events: 3 CSR, 6 H, 14 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 12 L/min). Oximetry was all right all night.

Thanks John for an early breakfast, and I just completed loading and starting the dishwasher for a couple days’ worth. John and Annie have been out taking care of chores. Yesterday, she brought him the foot and leg of a deer, complete with maggots. He threw it across the raging creek but there is still a lot of deer left out there somewhere, so she will likely come back with more parts. This seems to happen about every 3 years.

John is driving me to scholarship luncheon and to deliver hen & chicks and an external hard drive I had borrowed for a couple weeks. He has been busy loading the truck with a canopy with trash to take to the transfer station. He ended up transferring 230 lbs. and a bit less than $15. He let me off and I walked past a building to another on campus near where a new science building is being built that has taken out the main central parking area that used to service the building where we were meeting (the old music building, Hertz Hall).

I brought him back a BBQ chicken slider from Amy McCoy – former Geography student, now in our luncheon group. He decided to wait to eat it with a supper because when we got home it was already 2:30, and we had some other left-overs.

We didn’t make it to Ace Hardware as planned because we didn’t figure the truck would fit into the slanting parking spaces of the City’s streets. So, we dropped by Grocery Outlet for ice cream and a couple of other things for brunch, drove by two places to deliver the hen & chicks plants, and came on home.

John took a nap, and I stayed up answer the phone until I had to take a power nap myself. It lasted over an hour.

The batteries finally went out in my blood pressure measurer. I thought the past couple of days were giving strange readings. Maybe that was why? Now, however it was running fine all day, and just took it twice and found it lower than I think it should be. 99/62, but my heartbeat is 63. I’ll wait 10 minutes and retake. It was back up 30 minutes later.

Saturday, Apr 23

For Apr 22 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 4 hrs 55 min with AHI=3.25. Events: 2 CSR, 14 H, 2 OA, 5 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 22 L/min). Not very good. I slept on until morning without CPAP, but kept Oximeter on. all night. Nothing unusual.

I walked out the front door while John was out feeding the horses. Our wind has been wicked all night, staying above 29 mph since 3:00 p.m. yesterday afternoon and going all night. Now this morning, it has been 40 mph or above, up to 45 for a couple hours and 46 another. High temp is 63, and winds are still above 40 mph at 3:30 p.m. John is working in the lee of the house. He killed a section of grass and is digging it out, to be replaced with gravel. The dirt is headed for a flower bed.

My purpose for going out this morning to see what the temp was like because someone planned to drive in for my signature on some paperwork. When I walked out the door, I saw two heads over the wooden fence chewing on our crabapple tree. I went back for my camera and took two short videos of our morning visitors.

Above collage comes from the videos below. The two at the bottom middle are the same doe, who moved, keeping an eye on me.

First Deer Sighting, 24 secs

Second Deer Sighting, 50 secs

The second part is a little longer than the first and has some cute glimpses of the action of a deer when she spied me.
I met folks in the driveway to sign paperwork for community service for a young high school student who volunteered 2.5 hours work organizing at the community clothing share back in March, and I was chosen as the signer because I was involved as a helper and I live only 7 miles up Naneum from the family. I had planned to drop by on my way home or into town, but they didn’t get the paper until after I was home yesterday, and I had no plans to go back this weekend.

I have been working on the report of our trip on the stern wheeler on Monday.

I think I’m about ready to give this to John when he comes in at dark, so I can get back to worrying about doing filing, dishes and other cleanup and getting ready for my two doctor appointments on Monday in Yakima.

Hope your week was fine.

Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan

Sunday, Apr 10

For Apr 9 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 6 hrs 38 min with AHI=2.41. Events: 12 CSR, 16 H, 12 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 8 L/min). Oximeter not accepting charge; not used. Still cannot explain high AHI.

This will be the day we publish last week’s tome. Just posted after 11:00 a.m. and John is out back working next to our raging creek, but he is on the hill above. For more excitement, see Thursday below.

My goodness, I love it when a plan comes together. Wedding clothing for the mother and father of the groom is about to happen this week. Well, the mom’s dress happened, but not the groom’s slacks. His size required is smaller than what was offered.

I tackled filing planned for today, mixed in with putting together clothing to share with the woman planning to set the couple up with what they need. We both ended up taking a bunch of clothes to her shop.

John has been out working in back and side yards, and now is arranging for water set up for our southern neighbors, after the rise in water on the control gate yesterday to the “stream diversion through our pasture.” Spring snow melt is happening at the 3,000 to 5,000′ level in the Cascades.

He came in the front and looked out the back (I was doing dishes) and saw a Merriam turkey walking across the area west of the house John is clearing of brush and low limbs, as a fire preventative. I tried to get a picture and only got a couple of glimpses after he left the hill and return via the path (you will see this path from the creek on Thursday).
Then John came back in and went to his original garden to pick asparagus for the neighbors. Now, he’s headed up to pick rocks, where he can deliver the asparagus to our friend as he drives by. Never ending chore on the Naneum Alluvial Fan, where rocks “grow” – coming to the surface.

We had leftovers for dinner, but John added a nice bunch of fresh steamed asparagus from that he picked today. It was nice, and I enjoyed a little, even though it is quite high in Vitamin K and not much is suggested for my intake. Later this week we have had pieces in our omelets (or in quiche one night).

The County has has water over the road in many places south of us. I didn’t get any pictures when the surge was at its highest. This year nothing spectacular is happening – it is an every year occurrence. The county road crews get out and put up warning signs, saying, WATER OVER ROAD, anchoring them with sandbags.

Monday, Apr 11

For Apr 10 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 5 hrs 47 min with AHI=1.90 Events: 7 CSR, 11 H, 11 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 8 L/min). Oximeter not accepting charge; not used. Figured it out for tomorrow night, and will be returning with data on my SpO2.

The solution came when I decided to try my cable for my Motorola phone, plugged it in to charge the Oximeter, and it worked!!! So happy.

We prepared for our meetings of the day. The first was with the foot doctor to trim toenails on both our feet, and hear the results of the DNA analysis. The name of the toenail fungus I have on nails of my right foot starts with the letter “T” and I didn’t write it down. The cure is to apply topically a cream daily to the toenail and 1/4″ above the cuticle, for 3 months. That will be a troublesome application, but if it gets rid of it, I shall be glad. At least I no longer have to go through laser surgery in Yakima every month or so. THAT treatment was painful and unavailable in Ellensburg, requiring another trip to Yakima. For 10 minutes, the time involved was a couple hours, because of front-end waits in the office once there. The only advantage was a trip to Costco or other, Yakima only, thing to do.

We drove by the pharmacy and got one of my meds that lasts for 90 days, and then by the USPS to send my check to the IRS in a certified manner. We were near Safeway, so we went there for John’s 2-liter colas (best price in town at $ .89) and to take advantage of their Monday special of 8 pieces of chicken for $4.49. On to fill John’s car with gasoline and come home a different way. The Gas Buddy website says the Love’s station west of town is cheaper, $2.09/gal, but in town the lowest price is $2.12/gal. Now at the end of this week, when I need gas in my car, the price is much higher. Many roads had shallow water at intersections and other places where culverts are not large enough to handle the flow. Things do float out onto the road and remain after the water, so until the road crew sweeps (?), or the stuff is otherwise gone, road hazards need to be watched for.

We were buffeted by the wind while driving to town. Turns out the winds were high all day, above 30, but when we were out they were 38 mph, and once at 6:00 a.m. (maybe what woke me) were 39 mph gusts. For 11 hours, the gusts starting at 4:00 a.m. averaged 34.2 mph.

We got a lovely thank you card for B.D. cards sent to Ethel Reynolds in PA for her 98th birthday party. She enclosed a photo with at least 9 or 10 balloons and her, and mentioned her sister said she told Pat, her daughter, to buy her 98 balloons. I think they’d have burned down the house if they had made a cake with 98 candles.
Ethel Reynolds, John’s cousin in PA, at her 98th birthday party.

Tuesday, Apr 12

For Apr 11 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 5 hrs 38 min with AHI=6.22. Events: 13 CSR, 35 H, 7 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 11 L/min). Oximeter working again. SpO2 on CPAP reached to 85-88% a couple times.

This morning I left early to set up for the Emeriti geography meeting, because I took Costco’s Apple Strudel pieces again for all. We had 12 attending, and there were 4 pieces left which I could take to my planned lunch in Kittitas. I introduced Jennifer Hackett, our guest speaker. She had been my student in the past and took over teaching my Intermediate GIS (Winter Quarter, 2010) class when I was ill. I was back at the Rehab the beginning of January for learning to walk again and use all my muscles that had atrophied. She came, visited, and consulted with me about the course, and then when I was out toward the end of the quarter, using a walker, she invited me to come hear the final presentations and be a co-evaluator with her. I thought that was special, and she continued doing it for her subsequent offering of the course for several years. I had been the only geography professor previously teaching it, since 1988. My other graduate GIS seminar sadly was removed from the schedule when I retired. It was REM 515: GIS in Resource Management. It was a good class that natural and cultural resource management students took as well as students from biology masters programs.

Roads south of us still have water over the road. One is the runoff from Naneum (we are on one of the distributaries of the main Naneum, after it separates from Wilson Creek). Our creek is running high as well, as you will see below.

I made and took a lunch for our Kittitas, WA meeting at 11:00. A woman (Fran Rairdan) who is a member of the BNE site saw my plea for friends needing a mother of the groom dress for the wedding and a pair of black slacks for her hubby. Fran owns a shop called, A Tisket A Tasket, and she knew she had some dresses that might work, and hoped one of the suits or a pair of slacks would. A dress did, but the suits were too large. These were outright gifts (as no money is exchanged on the BNE site). I was very happy to be able to help set up the meeting.

After the retired geographers’ meeting was over, I drove to Kittitas with the lunch I had prepared for four people, with plastic plates, stainless steel forks, chips, tuna fish salad with lots of egg, sharp cheddar cheese sticks, and the leftover dessert from the morning meeting – enough for all of us.

It was still before 1:00 when I left Kittitas, so I drove home and decided to rest rather than go back in for Jazzercise. I was rather tired anyway from a restless night and all the morning activity.

John managed to fix the clogged buried pipe problem on our neighbor’s property, getting it unplugged and watering a small field with an apple tree near the center. The tree is pretty when it blooms and wild things get the apples. The fields here have to be watered at least once every 5 years to hold the water rights. (We think that’s correct.)

I worked on a few things and rested until 5:00 when John left for his 6:30 meeting in Quincy. I called Gloria to be sure she still wanted me to come by and take her to the music venue for the night. It is religious music by The Connections, at Hearthstone, same place I was earlier in the day. It was fun, as she knew almost all of the hymns without even looking at the music book, and was able to visit with several people from our SAIL exercise class we have known over the past 6 years, including Earl, Rudy, and Clare. Her husband, Paul, mentioned below was one of the few guys in our class, with the two there now at Hearthstone.

Wednesday, Apr 13

For Apr 12 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 6 hrs 55 min with AHI=0.72. Events: 2 CSR, 5 H, 13 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 14 L/min). Oximetry shows a much nicer night than recently, however my SpO2 dropped 57 times, and pulse changed 56 times. I am on increased meds that will lower my heart rate, so I guess that’s to be expected.

I picked up Gloria and went to the Food Bank and on to SAIL exercise at the Senior Center.

Afterwards, we picked up two cherry pies at the Daily Bread & Mercantile (run by German Baptists in our valley) for her to take to Paul to share celebration of their 66th wedding anniversary with the people living in the assisted living home, Belair House, in Cle Elum, where he is a resident. I apologize for the run-on sentence.

Thursday, Apr 14

For Apr 13 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 8 hrs 48 min with AHI=1.90. Events: 2 CSR, 9 H, 18 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 21 L/min). Oximetry on and even all night.

We started the morning with a walk out the back door of our house down to see the creek. It is higher than usual. I will have to take a picture in a few weeks when the flow has subsided. It’s already going down, but right now I don’t have any comparison to these videos below.

Our Flooding Creek April 14, 36 seconds

The Adventure Location for Brittany Annie April 14, 20 seconds of the route Annie took — starting at the beginning, and being pulled out at the location about 13 seconds into the video.

In normal conditions our Brittanys have easily crossed the creek to the other side, and we once had a large wooden plank that served as a bridge for us to cross to the other part of our property west on the opposite side of the creek.

However, this day was not a good day for Annie to get into the creek.
In the collage above of 5 pictures, I’ll try to explain the sequence. The left one was taken in 2015 during the construction of our driveway access across a culvert over the irrigation diversion through our pasture. This photo of Annie shows the height of the water in various places, and the only place it is deeper is behind a small dam John set up in the pasture. The middle photos above were taken today “behind” our house. The top one has the main stream in the back and the flooding toward the front. The middle bottom one shows the entrance where Annie walked into the normally easy flowing stream and was swooped out by the current. I saw what was happening, and yelled at her to come back. She managed to grab onto the roots on the bank John and I were standing on, and he reached over the fence to grab her collar and pull her out (top right photo above). I’m afraid to think what might have happened if she’d gone on downstream. The bottom right photo is the path leading up from the creek to our house (the same one the Turkey was walking on, earlier in the week). This is the closest photo I have of our “creek” in normal flow, taken Nov. 7, 2014. The land across the creek is part of our property we seldom use.

Friday, Apr 15

For Apr 14 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 5 hrs 26 min with AHI=0.55. Events: 0 CSR, 3 H, 4 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 18 L/min). Oximetry on and even all night.

Much of the day I spent messing with my new external drive disk, but finally now, it is working. The very first “backup” took half the day and all night. Now it only has to do files that are changed between backups.

I also finalized my giveaway of plastic pots of hen & chicks to distribute tomorrow. Who knew they would be so in demand!

I was able to get my data off my CPAP and Oximeter, and now I’m recharging the Oximeter with my cell phone charger so it doesn’t run down. Even with Tylenol, I’m having a lot of pain with my left shoulder, when I move it up certain ways.

Saturday, Apr 16

For Apr 15 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 6 hrs 22 min with AHI=0.63. Events: 1 CSR, 4 H, 6 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 16 L/min). Oximetry good all night.

Started the morning marking tags for the pots of hen & chicks for dispersal today at Briarwood. One person has already had a family emergency and won’t be able to be there today, and won’t be back in town until next week. Another cannot meet at the time needed, so I just dropped hers off on my way home.

Sirens at 10:30 a.m. alerted us to an EMT vehicle and a pumper truck going to a neighbor’s on Charlton Road. They probably took someone to the hospital, because John saw the returning vehicles and heard them turn on their sirens once down a mile or so on Naneum. They slowly navigated the two northern curves. No details. Later found out our neighbor was having chest pains, but we haven’t gotten an update yet. Now right before publishing time Sunday, we heard they had to shock his heart back into rhythm, because the medication for atrial fibrillation did not work.

My back-up external drive just finally finished 10 hours after I started it last night. I need to see how to change it to do a backup continuously, rather than weekly. I have 300 gigabytes backed up there. Luckily, that happened before I left for town.

I received a phone call from one of the music players that she cannot make it today, as she is in an emergency with her little doggy at the vet. We had five players there and a large audience. They presented us at the end with a lot of good food, rolled meat (turkey/ham), cheese, rolls, various salads, and some very large luscious strawberries. They treat us well.

On my way home, I came by the bridge over “our” creek, 1.5 miles downstream. It has gone down considerably over the past couple of days. It had covered the road with water, and brought up large limbs, and in addition, was splashing on the side of the bridge and causing a waterspout. Today, only the spray was visible, but the water is still moving fast beneath.
View from the bridge. The center curb is wet but in recent days, the water was up flowing over the curb, filling the road with water and debris. The right two are just more pictures of the bridge on Bar 14 Road, down from us.

Sunday, Apr 17

For Apr 16 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 6 hrs 39 min with AHI=0.60. Events: 2 CSR, 4 H, 10 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 18 L/min). Oximetry good all night.

Blog being published today.

Hope your week was fine.

Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan

Community Volunteering and Recognition Dinner (see Thursday)

Monday, Apr 4

For Apr 3 CPAP. I began using it again tonight. Reported figures. Time on 4 hrs 31 min with AHI=0.21. Events: 1 H, 3 CSR, 13 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=9 L/min); oximeter on entire time with SpO2 in the 90s all night, spiking to 85 at 4:30 a.m. and below at 4:45 (can happen when I switch fingers to a cold finger), but then returned to the 90s the rest of the time.

I got up thinking I would write the oral surgery team to tell them about my last night’s successful use of the CPAP machine, after a week off, but I wanted to take off the CPAP data and join it with the Oximetry data before reporting in.

Before I had retrieved the data from my CPAP’s SD card, I had a morning call from my sleep doctor, Dr. Kumar, about my question. He asked for the rundown of what happened and gave his opinion. He agreed that while he did not think the machine would have caused the bleeding, that he would have recommended NOT using it in my case until as much as 2 weeks after the surgery. He said that everyone is different, but the tissue needed to be healed prior to use. What he said likely caused the bleeding was the dryness of the air being forced in, just as people get nosebleeds from dryness. In addition, he mentioned I should use the CPAP with the humidity turned up. (I had figured that much when I put it on last night, and set the humidity higher. I normally do not turn it on, and the night (3 days after the surgery I did not increase the humidity). Last night, I set the humidity to 1, and probably tonight, I will set it higher, maybe 3. I was grateful for his call and concern and very sorry we did not seek his advice sooner.

David, the farrier, called and postponed a morning appointment from 9:30 to 11. Thus brunch was late because John holds Myst for her trimming. My part is writing the check, and otherwise I have been working on music for the Fiddlers. We’ll use this set for the next 2.5 months.

After lunch, John emptied the ashes from the wood stove and started a fire. The wind is wicked today and the temperature is cooler feeling than the 56° reported, because of up to 33 mph gusts but 50 mph predicted as being possible. (Never happened here).

Tuesday, Apr 5

For Apr 4 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 6 hrs 49 min with AHI=0.14. Events: 0 H, 2 CSR, 1 CA, 2 PP, 8 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=8 L/min). That’s a low AHI for all the activity occurring, but it is because of the calculation formula for it depending so highly on hypopnea, of which I had none.

I have an 11:30 a.m. meeting at The Tav (local bar and eatery) with the fabulous clothing sorting team from the BNE site for the 3/22 clothing share we successfully held.

I went by the hospital for my blood draw and it was rather fast (for a change), but they extracted too much for the first vial and had to draw another. Darn – vampires in white lab coats.

After picking up my meds at Super 1, I came home and filled the box for the week, realizing I was out of another. So now I have to go back to get it. Too bad I did not do this yesterday and could have saved myself a trip.

I stopped off at Jazzercise, but did not stay because I wasn’t feeling up to par and still had nearly an hour of work to finish in town because I needed to take my music masters in for making copies for our Kittitas Valley Fiddlers & Friends. That I managed to finish by 2:45 and so I came on home. On my way, I picked up a loaner external disk from CWU to use for a couple weeks, while I locate mine.

I came home to a totally unexpected finding. When I left, I did not hibernate or put my laptop to sleep. I looked at it to see if I had any responses to any of my emails I sent before leaving this morning, and there was a new screen, telling me I now had to configure Windows 10 that had been downloaded in my absence. I was extremely upset because I had not requested it and did not want it. However, it was done, so I spent the next hour + answering questions and setting it up. I was a very unhappy camper. I am over the initial shock now, and have pretty much figured out the usage. I restored a few software programs that were wiped out, and I think I have almost everything now that I need.

Wednesday, Apr 6

For Apr 5 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 5 hrs 14 min with AHI=0.00. Events: 0 H, 15 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 7 L/min). Oximeter not accepting charge; not used.

I worked on music separation of copies designating for players by name, and packing those along with the audience copies, for tomorrow’s distribution and use.

I picked up my friend Gloria on my way to Food Bank. We had a bunch of players there and were videotaped for advertising for the F.I.S.H. Food Bank. For lunch, after the singing, we had white sauce pasta with sausage, with too much garlic for my likes, as well as a tomato-based sauce (one I did not take), green salad, and carrot cake roll slice with cream cheese fill; in hindsight, I should have chosen two red velvet cookies with white chocolate, because the other was too dry. We packed foodstuffs in the back of our car to bring for our neighbors. Then dropped off at Grocery Outlet for food for Gloria, and while there, I checked the cat food. No pate, so will get some from Bi-Mart while it is on sale. From there on to SAIL class where we enjoyed with 12 people. I was too tired to go to Bi-Mart so I came on home, let Gloria off at her place, and helped take in her groceries. I spent a bunch of time on the computer with email, and searching the web about external disk drives.

John picked asparagus once I was home. I washed a load of dishes. We had a late dinner of leftovers.

A little after 9:00 p.m., we got a call from our neighbor Louaine that she smelled smoke in her bathroom. John got dressed and went down. I stayed on the phone talking as he was getting there. Things seemed all right and they thought a neighbor started a stove earlier and smoke had collected in her place via the soffit vents. John returned home. Still, a scary ordeal. John found nothing on a walk around the house, and so she was able to rest easier. Next morning she realized the furnace was not working and warming the house, so that was the source of the smell. The thermostat may have failed but a repairman, coming Friday, will have to determine the cause and the fix. With the temperatures we are having, that’s not a problem.

Thursday, Apr 7

For Apr 6 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 6 hrs 10 min with AHI=0.32. Events: 1 CSR, 2 H, 4 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 3 L/min). Oximeter not accepting charge; not used.

I received info about a community paper shredding opportunity so made a page for posting on Facebook, on a public group (Community Connect, Kittitas County) that reaches many people; you can get to this link to see my handiwork.

Come Shred with us

I went to town for music at the REHAB and saw people I had known there 6 years ago, residents as well as staff, including one staff member who does laundry and remembers me. Gave me a big hug. She’s worked there for 36 years. Then our group played music for an hour + including a request for ONE MORE by our little Haley, our mascot, all dressed in western garb for tonight. She requested, “I’ll Fly Away,” and so she did – dancing circles in front of us at the end. Sorry I don’t have a video of that and the residents’ reaction; it was priceless.

Tonight a little before 5 we left for the Volunteer Recognition Dinner. I know they will have a good evening planned for us. Serving starts at 5:30. It’s held at the local Moose. I am sorry I didn’t get a photo with John all duded up in a cowboy hat, jeans, western shirt, and leather vest. I got the leather vest at the recent BNE clothing share, 3/22. It appeared to be brand new and his size. Our older vests are a little too small on us – as they were when we got them at a yard sale years ago.
We have cowgirl, Haley Davison, not 3 until April 26, all dressed in western attire for the evening. She had on jeans and cowboy boots too.

Nancy in her funky cowgirl hat and Laura. The flower arrangement in front of us I won as a door prize. I subsequently gave it to Haley (above) because she loved the horse on the side of the vase (I didn’t get it in the picture above with Haley), and she loved smelling the pretty daisies. Laura plays the guitar and violin in our group, that just played this afternoon as mentioned above, and Haley danced around in her bare feet, kicking off her boots early in the hour of entertainment. This photo by Laura’s husband, Dale. Last November, Dale drove himself to the ER while having a heart attack. We talked heart-capades. John is the only one of the four that doesn’t have a seriously troubled heart. We visited over a high calorie dinner plate, with the main dish being pulled pork tenderly cooked in a good BBQ sauce. Sides were beans, potato salads, green mixed salad (with mandarins, the only part that I had). The dessert tables extended half the wall.

Friday, Apr 8

For Apr 7 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 6 hrs 11 min with AHI=0.32. Events: 2 CSR, 2 H, 12 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 6 L/min). Oximeter not accepting charge; not used.

Spent the morning with dishes, animal feeding, and ordering a 2-terabyte Seagate Backup Plus Slim External Hard Drive in pretty blue, with a bright red case I may not misplace. With “two day shipping” it will arrive in four days. Go figure. [Okay, Sat & Sun don’t count.]

John went up the creek (smile) to check the gate on the irrigation water. Our cattle-rancher neighbor (Sam; ~2 mi away), was, uncharacteristically, complaining about too much water. We don’t have a lot of water in our ditch, that comes off the same outlet. John did go check and shut his down as much as he could, shunting it to our side. Now John will have to spread it around our land and 2 others. There is a decrepit wood structure at the ‘Y’ that was designed to have slots for boards to adjust the flow. Now a plastic tarp has to do the job and doesn’t fit well.

I’m getting off my computer now to tackle more boxes of STUFF. I made fair progress today, getting receipts and related tax papers into months. Tomorrow, I shall worry with organizing by days of the month (never got it completed). Then I need to start entering into my Excel spreadsheet for ease in subtotaling. Guess both will wait until Sunday. Time to write IRS and go for an extension. (Actually, I did that and the letter is in my car waiting to take to the USPS to send certified).

I managed to change the filter in my CPAP and it was very dark – no doubt from all the smoke from our wood stove usage; certainly not from my not changing it every 2 weeks, as recommended in a clean house. Our is a very dusty house!

Today’s mail delivery brought a dozen rubber faced work gloves for John, and my present of a One Touch can opener. Very clever invention, as seen working below:

Literally, all you do is set it on top of a can (never the bottom), press the top switch for a couple of seconds, and it takes off on its own; step back and watch. It stops when done, and you can flip up the top with no rough edges anywhere, can or lid. I am thrilled. Not bad for $9. These things must be invented by the folks that make batteries – this takes 2 AA type.

Saturday, Apr 9

For Apr 8 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 6 hrs 39 min with AHI=3.16. Events: 8 CSR, 21 H, 5 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 9 L/min). Oximeter not accepting charge; not used. Don’t know the reason for the high number of hypopneas.

We awoke to sunshine and pretty young light green leaves, new grass showing, and fruit trees in the early stage of bloom. John looked at the backyard cam of a home 6 miles from his sister Peggy’s home, in Parma, OH, and here’s the view.

SNOW IN BACK YARD IN AVON, OH
We got on the phone and had a nice visit. She and John were reminiscing about places of business and people they knew in Clarion, PA, where they grew up.

Peggy finally remembered the name of the beer distributor that would bring their Mom a case of beer, or you could back your car into the place and they would load it. They can’t recall the name or exact place nearby where John (little then) would take glass beer and pop bottles for the refund. The proprietor once asked John if the bottles had holes in them. No, John said, looking at the bottoms. The fellow said if they didn’t have a hole, how could they refill them? Big joke on a little kid!

High of 79 today, and highest wind gust was 33 mph at the airport.

After a couple hours outside, John returned and we had lunch. I’ve managed to wash a load of dishes and now have the clothes ready once the water can warm again. Later: Clothes completed too.

We both worked on chores – John’s were mostly outside, except for a magnificent chicken soup casserole dinner, made with his homegrown asparagus, a butternut squash, pieces of chicken breast, mushrooms, in a creamy sauce, and topped with French fried onion bits. He doesn’t like me taking pictures of his creations, but this one was picturesque. It was also baked in a vintage brown Pyrex rectangular dish with high sides. You’ll just have to use your imagination. And, as well, it was quite tasty.

Sunday, Apr 10

For Apr 9 CPAP. Reported figures. Time on 6 hrs 38 min with AHI=2.41. Events: 12 CSR, 16 H, 12 RERA. No major mask leaks (max= 8 L/min). Oximeter not accepting charge; not used. Still cannot explain high AHI.

Started overcast and cold. Now sunny and pretty. Two outside cats fed, also Rascal, and John’s on his way to feed the horses, after reviewing this.

Hope your week was fine.

Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan

Sunday, Mar 20

For Mar 19 CPAP. Reported figures, 7 hrs 55 min with AHI=2.65. Events: 19 H, 16 CSR, 2 CA, 6 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=10 L/min); oximeter lost its battery power, and was only on from 11:23 to 2:37.

I received photos of our Brittany in California from an early morning training session. Seems folks are getting lots of 4-legged creatures running with all feet in the air. Here’s Daisy:

Daisy with all four feet off the ground running and hunting for birds; middle pointing; right Jeri searching for bird to flush. Dog must hold for the shot and be sent for the retrieve. (Terminology is a ‘broke’ dog.)

On point again; middle Jeri flushing the bird in front of her and Daisy standing to await the flush; Daisy going for the retrieve.

We went to a potluck and practice session to get ready for the April 2 celebration of the 40th Anniversary Dance of the Blue Agates Round and Square dance club. Prior to our practice session we eat. John fixed a pork loin roast and a side dish of sweet cherries and Honeycrisp apples. He came home and I stayed for 3 hours to practice the repertoire – same songs we have done for the past several years, with a couple of corrections to chords, notes, and size of lyrics for aging eyes.

Each year the square-dancers invite a dozen of us to provide dinner music, and afterwards, we too (with spouses) get to go through an awesome buffet for the dancers. This year our little mascot, Haley, who dances for and interacts with the residents, is invited.

Monday, Mar 21

For Mar 20 CPAP. Reported figures, 7 hrs 19 min with AHI=0.41. Events: 3 H, 2 CSR, 6 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=9 L/min); oximeter on entire time with high SpO2 and normal pulse.

I worked on photographing music pages of Maury’s book. I want to return the book Thursday. While I found The M.T.A. song, it is not the version & melody the Kingston Trio used. I will be able to listen to their video and do the tune by ear from the notes I have. Parts are right on, but other phrases are strangely different.

In addition, I worked on corrections to last night’s performance practice session for changes to send to people involved on 4/2 at the fairgrounds.

I heard from Carol Findley that John is welcomed at the Volunteer Recognition dinner, Apr 7. Some of the things people volunteer for did not fit the “wants” of the elites running the system. Many people’s views of the world got left off the diagram.

John does trail work and isn’t about to switch to doing meals on wheels or one of the other desired activities. So his hours on the trails no longer count and we wondered if he was also dis-invited to the annual celebratory community dinner.

I am able to use my external 4-socket USB port (can choose which ones); my camera and oximeter are hooked up now and I was working between them. YIPPEE. I suppose I can use it for my external disk back up too, and I need to do that soon, as I am overdue.

I called the Safeway Pharmacy today to check on why I had a prescription waiting for me when I haven’t ordered anything. Found out it was the drug dose increase I was supposed to have refilled at Super 1, not Safeway. Now that has been corrected. I only get one prescription filled at Safeway, because it is cheaper by paying cash.

Need still to load in my meds container for the week, but I realized I was low on my Furosemide last night, and called in to see about getting that prescription refilled. I found out it was outdated and needed reordered. That was done and it only cost me 42¢ co-pay for 45 pills. That’s a 3-month supply because I take only every other day. Amazing. For once (probably the last time), the cost of a medication decreased!

Tuesday, Mar 22

For Mar 21 CPAP. Reported figures 6 hrs 15 min with AHI=0.00. Events: 5 H, 9 CSR, 11 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=10 L/min); oximeter on entire time with high SpO2 and normal pulse.

I went by CWU music library for Whistling Gypsy Rover – from Mary Wise, an acquaintance of many years.

Delivered clothes for Joni Zehler at share; some a gift for her and her daughter, and the other bag for her to use her sewing prowess on. Later this week I have been able to use the rice bag she sewed for me to put on my swelled cheek (still) from the oral surgery. More below on this.

GOOD NEWS ABOUT DAISY Jeri called OFA to find out the results on her recent trip to the Newport Beach Veterinary Hospital for OFA X-rays with Dr. Debra Cohen and found that Cedaridge Kip’s Camelot Shay Tre’ JH has Excellent hips (this after she got a fair on her first X-ray from her local vet — probably from improper positioning). This is our co-owned Brittany you saw in training photos above. The two following dogs also belong to Jeri & Kurt Conklin: Camelot’s Coppers Rollin’ Four Dice JH – Excellent Hips (Good on his prelim X-rays) and CH Camelot’s Labyrinth N Illusions Magie JH – Excellent Hips (Good on her prelim X-rays). All elbows were normal!

Winds up to 46 mph gusts blew through the Kittitas valley today.

It was a long day. I went to CWU music library to retrieve a book of folk music that I can check out as an Emerita professor and also used my complimentary parking sticker I paid much annually for during the 22 years I was there.

Had to run by Super 1 for some meds and then went to the clothing share for an hour, and while there picked up an aluminum pan gift from a member to have to feed the rest of the grain to our horses that Ebony left behind. We were short one feeding pan, having just 3 of the black rubber type. I stayed and helped until I had to leave for our local hospital for my annual required Pulmonary Function Test. It is required to check for Amiodarone’s effect on my lungs, if any. The drug has successfully controlled my atrial fibrillation since 2010, but for some, a side effect is lung scaring and a poorer lung function.

Results of my PFT show an improvement in all items, so that was good.

After my test, I went back to clothing share until the end. I had been in charge of arranging for the county’s free clothing banks to send a representative or two to pick up leftovers. We managed to distribute everything out of the room, so that was a positive thing. Many people came throughout the day, finding clothing for their family, and other families throughout the county will benefit. It was a quite successful event. Our personal stash of unused clothing is diminished. Nice.

Photos of the collection process for our Buy Nothing Ellensburg Second Annual Clothing Share Event, under the guidance of Kathryn Carlson, wonder woman, who stored the majority of the buildup of sorted, organized clothing by size and type from newborn to plus adult clothing and wearable accessories, boxed and stored in her den, extra bedroom, and hallway. She hosted others in our BNE (Buy Nothing Ellensburg Facebook Group) to come into her home to sort. She was a drop off site for containers of donated clothing. She and her hubby, Jim, went to other collection homes and carted stuff into the event. A couple of us went to homes in town and in Kittitas to pick up clothes, delivering them to Kathryn’s house.

The above collage shows from top left to bottom right the tables of clothing set out the day before at the LDS church – kind folks to donate the space and volunteer helpers for the set up, distribution, and clean-up. The share was open freely with no limits to the community. Other photos show boxes stored at two members’ houses, top right the hallway at Kathryn’s, followed below left other shots of stored material there, bottom middle are a couple of the vehicles and a trailer used to transfer the “stuff” from the various places. Missing are a clothes hanger full of women’s clothing donated by a gal whose mom died. Also included were men’s clothes from another member’s dad who passed. Shoes and accessories are not displayed in these photos. I tried not to bring anything home.

Wednesday, Mar 16

For Mar 13 CPAP. Reported figures 6 hrs 50 min with AHI=1.46. Events: 9 H, 8 CSR, 15 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=10 L/min); oximeter on entire time with high SpO2 and normal pulse. An extra hour of oximeter without CPAP usage lowered the AHI to 1.41.

I picked up my friend Gloria and we went to the Food Bank & SAIL and delivered some clothes to a gal, and then I drove on home to my neighborhood to deliver food.

John sent me a photo from the Wall Street Journal that I shared with a few people.

Caitlin LaBar says, “It’s the Owl Butterfly, Caligo memnon, a common species often used in butterfly houses.”

Thursday, Mar 24

For Mar 23 CPAP. Reported figures 4 hrs 37 min with AHI=2.60. Events: 12 H, 6 CSR, 10 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=22 L/min); oximeter on for couple more hours. I have no explanation for the high numbers.
I was working on music much of the morning, and then went to play at Hearthstone. Was a small showing of players, but we did well and had a good involved audience. We did have one of our players have a hypoglycemic-type event so they got him a cookie and orange juice, and he rested awhile before going home. He was okay. John drove me in and went shopping while we were playing.

Our little Leprechaun, Haley, was there in her dress, for the last day of Irish music. In April, she will be 3 years old.

Note, the people directly behind the top of her head are our friends, Jim and Lillian Brooks. He was a geography professor in the department I joined in 1988, and was still teaching. For 17 years, he actually served as the President of Central Washington University, and when he left office, he returned to teach for several more years. The CWU library is named after him – and here is a photo below, as I have just mentioned going there earlier in the week.

This is the James E. Brooks Library at Central Washington University. The music library is on the 4th floor. [Note sign, white on black.]

During our playing at Hearthstone, Haley crashed, beneath the grand piano. {We don’t use a piano in our group.}

Previously to this, she had been running around the room making many residents smile. She is not bashful at all. All the residents love her.

Friday, Mar 25

For Mar 24 CPAP. Reported figures 6 hrs 57 min with AHI=1.29. Events: 9 H, 10 CSR, 9 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=8 L/min); oximeter on entire time with high SpO2 and normal pulse.

John fixed an early breakfast and we left at 11:25 in my car with John driving, for my oral surgery. We paused at 11:35 for me to take my Amoxicillin, for the 12:30 p.m. check in for two implants.

Afterwards, John will drive us by Big 5 for him to check out a good price on boots, and I will sit in the car; then to Costco to fill my car with gasoline, $2.09/gal only 2 cents/gal cheaper than Ellensburg. He did not find boots with the kind of “top” he wants. Many styles do not have sides that when laced come nearly together over the tongue. Waterproof trail boots are thus only WP a couple of inches higher than the sole. Not good.

From Costco, he brought me a frozen yogurt w/ strawberries and a 6-variety case (24) of yogurt cups.

On the way home, we had to go through Ellensburg to pick up my pain medication. I was lying pretty low the rest of the night, wishing for my pain to cease. The pain pills did not make a difference until I got a little relief at 2:30 in the morning. I have been faithfully taking it along with 3 Amoxicillin / day for the rest of a week following the procedure.
I have been taking two 500mg tablets of Acetaminophen every 6 hours. I called the pharmacist to see how much Acetaminophen was in the Percoset pill, after reading that it had a lot and one needed to be careful with supplements. The literature warned about not exceeding 4000 mg per day because of potential liver damage.
She told me each pill had 325mg of Acetaminophen, and that she usually told patients to stop their supplements with Tylenol or Acetaminophen but that she trusted me to watch the arithmetic. I started keeping my notes, and I usually take one Percoset with one 500 mg Acetaminophen until I reach a maximum, under the 4000.

Now for a report on my oral surgery. The preparation began with an attempt to get their CT scanner working, but it never did, so they had me walk around the corner to a another X-ray machine, which did not provide a 3D image. They will retake the next time I am in the office in a month for suture removal. Third time should be a charm. It wasn’t working right on my consultation appointment either, when they usually take them.
They drew blood to get my platelets to make a mixture to pump into my gums where there needs to be bone to be re-grown to support the implant posts.
Then the surgery began with a local antiseptic, without epinephrine. Getting the back root canal fillings out was a tough job. Then they inserted the platelets. The doctor had two assistants – one handing him the instruments and the other holding the drainage suction and keeping my cheek out of his way. The team was competent and I heard most of the commentary, plus was getting an explanation about what was happening along the way. I appreciated that. The surgical procedures lasted about an hour. After that, I was given post-operative instructions.

We made it home about 4:30. It seemed okay but I took a Percoset at 4:00, as we were driving home because the pain had started. It got worse through the evening and I could not take another pill until 8:00 p.m. Then I realized the places opened and covered at the end and sutured were oozing with some blood, I began pressuring the gum with a gauze roll in the place of the two missing teeth. Not sure that will help. The area was not losing blood right after the surgery, so they did not install a gauze pad. They said the platelet mixture often serves to clot the blood.
I would like to go to sleep, but I have to put ice on and off every 20 minutes – to prevent swelling. I just wish I had something to help the pain. Plus, I am quite tired.

This below came from the Earth Science Web (Weekly sends) I’m on from a Geographer friend in Michigan, Mark Francek. His commentary is interesting – so I will start with that, and then give you the link.

Eclipse as Viewed from a Plane
Mark’s comment: (WARNING: You will want to pummel the guy for his repeated OMG’s. Mute this and then enjoy.) “Passengers on a flight from Anchorage, AK to Honolulu, HI witnessed a solar eclipse high in the sky. They all cheered when they saw the moon cast a shadow over the land. They were also in awe when the sun shined like a diamond when the moon moved and helped create flares in the sky.”
Link: DEFINITELY MUTE THIS BEFORE WATCHING:

Saturday, Mar 26

For Mar 25 CPAP. I did not use my CPAP or my oximeter last night.

I spent the morning finding the details of what was expected from us at the Memorial service today, and getting music copies ready for our Fiddlers and Friends (6 of us) to play after the memorial service at the lunch for the attendees. We were requested to play only happy songs.

Our group has known Lois since 2001 and she always enjoyed our music. She sang every song without needing to look at the lyrics. A dear lady, she picked the songs for her celebration of life and wrote her obituary, including that she enjoyed our music very much. She also loved flowers and wanted everyone who came to remember the beauty of flowers. Her family arranged to give packets of flower seeds to all the folks attending. She was the mom of Barb Pettit, married to Jerry Pettit, the Auditor for Kittitas County. He and Barb also are members of the Blue Agate Square and Round Dance club for whom we will be playing next weekend, while they eat their dinner at their annual anniversary dance. They knew of her love for our music, so they invited us to play for an hour after the end of the service, at the luncheon, and then they fed us afterwards.

I am only supposed to be eating soft foods, and I was happy they had a lovely fresh fruit salad, potato salad, and BBQ sauce for very tender small shredded beef, pork, and turkey. That was my dinner.

Sunday, Mar 27 Happy Easter!

For Mar 26 CPAP. I did not wear my CPAP machine mask last night. Oximeter recorded all night, however, from 11:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. Without the CPAP on, the chart below shows me that my Sp02 is improved with it on.

The day has been blustery with alternate sunshine and clouds, but consistent wind since 9:30 a.m., with gusts above 30, max 36. Finally, the temperature got to 52.

Weather report partial today:

John started by tackling building a fence around the top of a big planter-box out front. One of the cats thought it a litter box – just as tulip leaves began to show. The deer will nibble the leaves on the tulips or anything green but this year the cats disturbed it first.

I spent time on various inside projects including records, blog work, dishes, putting ice on my still swelled face, taking medicine for pain and antibiotic need, and scanning some stuff I needed to capture.

John just returned from all his outside chores, I have to proof and spellcheck this, put on a jump drive with the photos, and give it to him for his editing work.

Hope your week was fine.

Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan

Sunday, Mar 13

For Mar 12 CPAP. Reported figures, 6 hrs 24 min with AHI=0.94. Events: 6 H, 2 CSR, 15 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=4 L/min); oximeter on entire time with high SpO2 and normal pulse.

I finished my draft of the blog, and John went to town in the old truck to fill with gasoline. While in town, he shopped at Safeway and found a good markdown (50%) on beef stew meat, which he now is combining with beans, onions, and mushrooms into a big Crockpot of chili.

Still need to reset my watch for the day – waited for Daylight Saving Time change.

I have managed to get all my data uploaded from my CPAP and Oximeter. I worked on coordinating upcoming events for our music group, and am sitting watching a wintry mix with about 20% snow now.

Will need to load up my medicines for the week and work on several other projects too. They never end. Trying to set up end of March gigs and get to planning my oral surgery, as well as getting to tax stuff, now that I have the ability to load the Turbo Tax software on my computer where the previous year will carry over.

John saw the sole Ring-Neck Pheasant come in our yard and told me I could get his picture if I’d walk out the driveway some. I lucked out and got a couple minutes of him on video. The wind was wicked and I didn’t have my tripod. We have many quail around but he is the first pheasant I’ve seen in many years. They are pretty birds. Later in the week, Annie had an encounter with him.

This is the same bird in the collage as viewed from each side of his body. To see him in action, follow this link: pheasant video

Monday, Mar 14

For Mar 13 CPAP. Reported figures, 7 hrs 58 min with AHI=0.67. Events: 5 H, 3 CSR, 7 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=10 L/min); oximeter on entire time with high SpO2 and normal pulse.

I went by Karen’s for 2 bags of clothes, on the way to Kathryn’s for sorting clothes for the share, then to the AAC to meet Glenn to transfer some items, to SAIL class, and from there to Burger King for chicken strips and fries (coupon special, $3), a very much needed late lunch at 2:45, having only had a piece of toast early and working hard for a several hours. I only ate half and brought John the rest for his lunch on Wednesday when I’m gone.

I went by the $1 store, looking for St. Patrick’s Day hats. They were out. I drove by Fred Meyers’ parking lot to meet a woman in a Jeep to pick up nice large heavy duty bag with the Costco logo. This was listed free on the BNE site. I have used it much the rest of the week. It is quite large and has long enough strap handles, which I can swing over my back to carry on my right side, but move it to the middle rear for support to be able to carry my heavy violin case with my left arm and balance the bag with my right.

Found out today, where John’s 2 liter bottles went that we mentioned in last week’s blog.

Here is a message from the recipient, “Thank you Nancy. It is for a mini class at Lincoln Elementary where we are going to make recycled rockets with them. They are fun. We fill them with water, pump with air, and they fly up. “Mini science experiment!” [John says: Interesting. One of the possibilities being tried for storing energy is to do this on a really huge scale and then allow the compressed air to flow out and turn an electric generator.]

Tuesday, Mar 15

For Mar 14 CPAP. Reported figures 6 hrs 54 min with AHI=1.30. Events: 5 H, 9 CSR, 11 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=7 L/min); oximeter on entire time with high SpO2 and normal pulse.

Up early to leave before 10:00 a.m. for a 10:55 appointment at the cardiologist in Yakima. We got there and were admitted very close to 11:00 a.m. Justine took all my vitals and gave me an ECG. Dr. Kim came in quickly. He spent a lot of time with us (as usual), but is being cut back on his preferred time with patients by government-induced regulations. He had not seen me alone since last July 14. I had visited with two PAs in the heart center in the meantime after my surgery 12/18. We didn’t leave the building until about 12:45.
We and the staff of the Heart Center are members of Group Health Coop (GH) of Seattle. California’s Kaiser Permanente ($60B annual revenue) is acquiring GH ($3.5B annual revenue). This is supposed to be a great deal for GH but we don’t know if it will be a great deal for us.

From there we went to the Dollar Tree store on Nob Hill Blvd, not too far from the Yakima Heart Center. Needing a different St. Pat’s hat, I had called the $1 store in Yakima, this morning, and got the manager. She checked to see if there were any St. Patrick’s Day hats in stock. She found two and put them at her front register (#1) for me to come check out after my appt. Actually when I got there she had found 5. I picked two and took them. While there, John searched for a new spatula and got a similar silicone spoon as well, both bright red. An ancient spatula’s handle broke on the carrot cake he made earlier. I decided to buy 2 lighting shamrock necklaces too. I gave one of the hats that looks like her daughter’s hat to Amy and gave her the blinking green light shamrock necklace. Daughter Haley called it awesome. I haven’t yet gotten a photo of me in my new St. Patrick’s Day garb yet, but will try before next year, or maybe even put in next week’s blog. We are still doing Irish music, so it won’t hurt to wear it.

On to the foot doctor by way of Burger King. I bought $10 worth using coupons mostly. Got enough for our late lunch and then had leftovers for a late dinner. I got a free Whopper with the purchase of one; $3 worth of 10 chicken nuggets, with large fries, and a small cola. For lunch we halved the whopper (I had the smaller half) and some of the fries and nuggets. We brought home the rest, and added to the leftovers I brought from yesterday for supper. Rather funny as the cardiologist has just told me to lose weight, and he changed the dosage on two of my meds. One is for Uric acid in my kidneys, and John found on the Internet that mushrooms have some chemical that raises a person’s uric acid. Rather concerning as we intake a lot of cooked mushrooms. Bright green veggies are out, so mushrooms have been adding some variety.

Foot doctor. I was scheduled for Laser Treatment of the right foot’s toenails that have had a fungus for awhile. At our last toenail trim (I think we explained this in the blog at that time about DNA testing of toenail clippings), we expected to have a test set up. The goal is to find which other underlying fungi are present that the first treatment did not cure. A medication specific to what’s left to get rid of will be tried; probably a topical one, because I cannot take internal ones that mess with my liver and therefore conflict with my other heart medications. The lab is in Texas so a part of me is now there, or soon will be.

We stopped at Costco for gasoline (good price, $1.95) and picked up a few groceries, including some for our neighbor. We were late arriving back home, about 4:30 p.m. With daylight saving time, John still had light for feeding the animals.

I had to drive back to town shortly after arriving home, to play & sing at the REHAB with The Connections group. It was another long day.

Wednesday, Mar 16

For Mar 13 CPAP. Reported figures 5 hrs 22 min with AHI=0.93. Events: 5 H, 5 CSR, 13 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=5 L/min); oximeter on entire time with high SpO2 and normal pulse.

John took off for his pruning activities before 8:00 a.m.. I only had one cat wanting food – our long-haired small female (fixed) feral kitty, Woody, you have seen previously who comes to a food call to the cable-table 20 feet from the front door.

I started the morning with arranging for an appointment for my Pulmonary Function Test in Ellensburg at our hospital. I have to have it annually to check my lungs because of the Amiodarone I’m taking for atrial fibrillation. The images will show scaring, if any. Thus far, I have had none, being on since March 2010, and have had no reactions to the drug. Many people have problems and have to cease using it. This is good because the alternative requires an overnight or longer hospital stay to set and monitor the dosage.

After doing other paperwork stuff, I drove to pick up Gloria to run around town with me. Luckily, my access to her from the north is in line with the detour around a road I use to get to the northwest part of town the quickest. However, it is closed for water main construction until May 2. We started at the Food Bank, where I was dressed in my new Shamrock hat, but I didn’t get my photo taken either today or on Thursday. Neat that I had invited a BNE person to come by on her lunch hour to pick up a gift from me, and join us for lunch and our singing. She came, got it, and stayed for lunch while we played. We left there with food we transport each Wednesday to our neighbors and went to SAIL (exercise) class at the AAC. We were able to pick up Gloria’s Income Tax forms from the Accountant on our way by. On the return trip, we made a stop for her and us to pick up food items from Grocery Outlet. A few weeks ago we bought 2 cans of Pear halfs there. They were hard and part of the 2nd can got put in a glass jar and slowly found its way to the back of the shelf. Oops!

When John took Ebony her pelleted food and carrots to all the horses he returned with the caution that she was behaving oddly and not interested. A bad sign.

Thursday, Mar 17 Happy St. Patrick’s Day

For Mar 16 CPAP. Reported figures 5 hrs 46 min with AHI=1.21. Events: 10 H, 11 CSR, 13 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=8 L/min); oximeter off entire time, quit working, apparently. (or, perhaps it ran out of battery power).

John left early for a morning of pruning grapevines at White Heron, leaving me to feed the feral cats their morning vittles. Only two arrived in the morning, and the other came back for the evening meal. They have dry food available 24/7.

I started the morning with normal catch up duties, but was sure to pack a bunch of gallon jugs from my neighbor to give to a gal on the BNE site from Thorp. She also needed 18-count egg cartons, which I assembled as well. The plan was to take them by her workplace in Ellensburg on my way home from playing music at Dry Creek/Brookdale assisted living place. I also packed up music and clothes for others I would see there today, and I called in the need for 9 chairs for our play group. We were happy to have our friends from the west side (Winlock) join us to fill the group’s good sound. Dave plays a bass fiddle and his wife Janet plays violin. I’d carried my camera to get some photos of Haley, our mascot, in action as a Leprechaun. I took these pictures before all players arrived. I will describe below the photos.

Haley, daughter of our flute player & tin/penny whistle player, Amy, has on her mom’s made dress and is carrying a pot of gold covered coins (chocolates). Three of the guys are in the background in the second photo, and third shows Amy in her home sewn paneled skirt, with matching green shamrocks material to Haley’s dress. Haley’s hat Amy got at the $1 store in Ellensburg, and I bought the matching hat for Amy at the $1 store in Yakima, Tuesday. On the right is a resident with our sheets of Irish songs for the day. I don’t think she is of Irish heritage, but she has the spirit. Her hat says, “Kiss Me” – “I’m Irish.”

Here we have Haley bringing her pot of gold to share with the players. Left she is with Maury, and right she is handing to Charlie, with Manord and Gerald enjoying in the background, having been previously gifted with candy.

On a sad note, my horse Ebony died last night or while we were gone today, and I came home to find John in the pasture pulling her body with the truck up to the top of our property. He managed to pull her into the hole (previously dug 3 years ago by our friend Allen Aronica with his backhoe), where since then, Shay, Meghan and Dan are resting in peace. Also, there is one neutered feral cat, there. His name was Johnny Cashew (because of his color, and that early in life we called him Little Sue only to find out he was male), hence a man named Sue, a Johnny Cash song. Another neighbor, Ken Swedberg, with a skid-steer** loader, came over and pushed in the rocks and dirt. John is removing some top rocks and rejuvenating the surface.
Link: Explains the name and has a photo

She was near 30, or older – we were told she was 8 when we got here. She could have been older. She’d looked at the hole 3 years ago, and rallied and we’d been supplementing with grain, carrots and apples. She was a talker and would come up to meet us and declare she was ready for dinner. This photo below is the last one I took of her with her special vittles, November 15, 2015, but she seemed in good shape through the winter until just this week.

She was a friendly horse who visited with the neighbors. Last year we were astounded (alarmed and disturbed) to find out cousins of new neighbors’ kids had come through the woods into our pasture (without notifying us) and gotten on her to ride bareback. Happily, she was sweet to put up with it gently.

Ebony was my horse from the 1990s until into the 2000s when she bowed a tendon and could no longer be ridden. She was a cross between a Tennessee Walker and a Quarter horse and had a nice very smooth gait for riding. She carried me around many field trials and on many fun trail rides. I will happily keep those memories.

Friday, Mar 18

For Mar 17 CPAP. Reported figures 7 hrs 16 min with AHI=0.69. Events: 5 H, 2 CSR, 19 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=9 L/min); oximeter on entire time with high SpO2 and normal pulse.

I spoke with a former friend (who knew Ebony) from our old club, Kittitas Valley Trail Riders. Turns out in trying to get information from the Music Library at CWU, I found Mary Wise is now in charge there. She is the one we knew from our past. She led me through the system on line for searching for music, after spending much time searching herself for a song we need in our group, the score for Kingston Trio’s, “The M.T.A..” Access is through cwu.edu and I’m able to login with my “edu” account. I choose Services and then searched All One Search, if not there, then Summit, and finally later in the afternoon she made a document for me with special instructions and emailed them to allow me to search the World Catalog of Libraries (where she had found M.T.A., to get to such things as the Illiad data base, which I can access through the CWU Brooks Library to obtain books through Interlibrary loan on my Emeritus account at CWU. No gold watch, but I do have a CWU parking permit for life and access to the library. Nice benefits for years of hard work and teaching. She had researched and found that only two libraries had the book with the score: one in Texas and one in New York City. Whether they will part with the books for a week is questionable, but I hope they do. I went through the process to request it through CWU. I’m grateful to Mary for the instructions to use in future searches.

Saturday, Mar 19

For Mar 18 CPAP. Reported figures 6 hrs 29 min with AHI=0.31. Events: 2 H, 1 CSR, 11 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=5 L/min); oximeter on entire time with high SpO2 and normal pulse. The extra 1.2 hrs were consistent with higher SpO2 and normal pulse.

Besides working on a card for Ethel’s 98th birthday (John’s cousin in Pennsylvania) coming March 23, I spent all morning sorting clothes from as far back in our history to Iowa (and we came to the PNW in 1974, so that goes way back.) I’m sure there are more packed away. One piece today was a vest-like sweater we both liked, but now it won’t fit us. It was from the Amana Woolen Mill in the Amana Colonies, in Iowa.

Off to town by way of Kathryn’s to drop off 7 bags of sorted clothes: coats, sweaters, men’s Large, women’s L, some XL I don’t need, and 2X. We now have more clothing that we need. I still have 3 days left until the clothing share on Tuesday to sort out more to get to good homes and clean up our clutter.

While moving stuff from my car to John’s, so I could drive it and get him some gasoline and cased-sausage (summer or non-refrigeration type) for his last day of pruning, I realized I had left my Irish music in my tote bag container on a table in the dining room, at Dry Creek, on Thursday. It would have been nice if someone on the staff had notified me, but they didn’t. I called on my way into town and asked if it had been turned in. The only one woman at the front desk was busy and did not have keys to the business office, where it might have been left. I described the bright green bag it was in, and what it had written on the side. Luckily, she got back to me rather fast, and said she’d found it and would leave it on the front counter. That place was on my way from dropping off the clothes on my trip going to Briarwood where we needed the music for the audience.

This group prepares food for us at the end of our music. Today was a great soup with tortellini, carrots, ground beef, cabbage, and was very tasty. Everyone loved it. They had good homemade croutons to add, Ritz crackers with cheese, and a wonderful orange Jello salad with mandarin oranges that went well with the hot soup. Also, there were cookies and a special crusty sweet pastry concoction, without fruit.

From there I went to Super 1 for John’s sausage contribution. He and the pruners are celebrating at the end of their last morning of pruning, this Monday. with tasty morsels, no doubt with wine. They have worked from 9 to Noon but will finish the short remaining rows by 11 – or not.

On to buy some gasoline for John’s car. Price has risen to $2.04. Then from there I went to drop off a bag of skirts (mostly) to our flute player. I had them at Briarwood, but she left in a hurry because the grandparents were visiting. I remembered her house address from when I was giving her directions to another friend’s house, and so it was right on my way home, and I stopped off and handed them to her. While I will see her tomorrow night, the time will be busy and involved with other things. Food and practice.

John fixed us a fabulous beef stew meat in the Crockpot with potatoes and mushrooms. I need to find out if eating as many mushrooms as we do is detrimental to my health. John just learned that they may contribute to high Uric acid. I was started a couple months ago on a pill to lower it, and while it has, some, my dosage was doubled this week by my Cardiologist.

Boy, I have been busy and I haven’t scanned for malware in 10 days. I have 3 programs I use faithfully, usually a couple times a week. But things have been so busy, I did not until tonight. [John says – Time to upgrade the operating system.]

Sunday, Mar 20

For Mar 19 CPAP. Reported figures, 7 hrs 55 min with AHI=2.63. Events: 19 H, 16 CSR, 2CA, 6 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=10 L/min); I haven’t done my oximeter yet.

Going to a potluck jam session tonight in prep for an upcoming performance. I need to finish Mountain Dew with corrected lyrics and chords added, and add a larger copy of T for Texas lyrics. John has put on a pork loin roast (he will add cherries from our trees to make a sauce for the side and add some baked Honeycrisp apples). We’ll potluck and practice afterwards for our performance April 2 at the Blue Agates Round and Square Dance Anniversary Dance dinner; they feed us and our spouses after we provide the dinner music. A dozen of us have played for them for several years. It is always a fun event. I think when April comes around, we may want to switch to that music for April for the Fiddlers & Friends group. Only problem will be I won’t have copies of all of the songs for our audiences. We will be able to pull a few from the books after the Irish songs. I’ll decide later.

Hope your week was fine.

Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan

. . . end of week did not get the memo – snow level is about 1,500 ft

Sunday, Mar 6

For Mar 5 CPAP. Reported figures, 7 hrs 51 min with AHI=1.66 . Events: 13 H, 5 CSR, 12 RERA. All events were in the last hour — weird. No major mask leaks (max=6 L/min); oximeter on entire time, with high SpO2 and normal pulse.

Found a smaller bra in my clean-up activities, so I offered it on the BNE site. Finally, the end of this week, I found a taker. She will meet me next week at the Food Bank, where I play music, and join us for song and food (nice free reward for picking up and saving me the gasoline to deliver to her home). I wouldn’t want to go to her place anyway because of her residence being 10 miles east of EBRG and I have no reason to go there (Kittitas).

Still need to reset my watch for the day — now will just wait for Daylight Saving Time change, this coming Saturday night.

Worked on music for Thursday, and managed to do my medicines for the week, and had to laugh at Annie (a hunting dog) leaving the room because of the noise of my halving large Magnesium tablets. We wonder why she does not like loud noises; maybe it is genetic. Her mom competed in field trials with blank pistols and shotguns fired, but in her old age became gun shy and hated fireworks as well. We have to close her in a crate during fireworks times, as we did her mom. Our neighbor’s target shooting bugs her too. The teen son got a new pistol for Christmas, we think, and when the school bus drops him off (about 4 pm) he fires about 4 or 5 shots within a few minutes. Mom and dad must have placed a limit on the shells per day. We usually exchange info when we have things to trade. Her eggs. Us garden produce. Haven’t been in touch during the winter.

John has been editing the blog.
Sunny now, but supposed to be raining later, and he needs to empty the full buckets and 55 gallon barrel using a siphon and garden hose to get it to near-house trees.

We had leftovers from last night’s supper for lunch today, with added hash browns. We eat too well with John’s efforts.
Sun still shining, after wind started blowing and I thought rain was coming. John’s out giving horses carrots and starting his truck. I was doing the final proofing on the blog this week after he entered all the stuff into WordPress and the computer froze.
Published the blog after a ton of problems with a locked up computer. We even had to borrow a mouse from a neighbor that did not fix the problem. Shutting down the computer worked, after we had tried it once previously. Who knows what lurks in bits and bytes lost in cyberspace.

Monday, Mar 7

For Mar 6 CPAP. Reported figures 7 hrs 16 min with AHI=1.79. Events: 13 H, 9 CSR, 18 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=10 L/min); oximeter on entire time with high SpO2 and normal pulse.

I decided to stay home and take care of matters–did dishes, clothes, showered, worked on clothing pickup for March 22, worked on getting representatives to come to the end of the day pickup from the clothing share, who all provide a service in 5 locations (churches, university and Food Bank), to distribute free clothing to the community throughout Kittitas County. Also worked on the Jobs list (through Google Groups– NW Geography Jobs) and much paperwork, plus taking the medical data off two machines that monitor some heart-things all night.

John used a store-bought frozen concoction to bake 2 dozen choc/cherry cookies. Then, he went to the neighbors with the freshly sharpened Stihl chainsaw. Along the driveway, they had several Spruce trees. Other trees blocked light from all directions except south. Our prevailing wind is from the NW. Thus, tree growth and wind had shaped the trees and they lean over the driveway. For many years they had a motor home parked there. John and one of the sons kept urging that it be moved. It hadn’t been used in 15 years. So, it got moved about 5 years ago using a tractor to pull it. Last fall, with the ground wet and a few hefty gusts of wind, the east-most tree came down. There is a 1940s era garage and in the sense of horseshoes and hand grenades – the tree just missed the garage. Limbs rested on it but unlike a big Pine, there are no big limbs on the Spruce. John cut the limbs off that were not holding the tree up. Then he cut 6 feet sections from the top and bottom directions. He left one section standing like a multi-legged Pterosaur with one wing. That needs to be pulled away from the garage with a truck and a chain.
I arranged to give away a garden rake on the Buy Nothing Ellensburg site to a young family named Roundy. That’s to go on Tuesday.

A ‘Memory from Facebook’ – Maggie Rose to Nancy B. Hultquist, March 7, 2016 at 3:10 pm. The workshop mentioned was in April of ’09 and intended to introduce young ladies to science: called Expanding Your Horizons. One of the last really fun things I did before retiring from CWU.
Maggie Rose wrote: “La Ninas, who attended your workshop, really liked it, especially Google Earth. One 5th grader mentioned that she would like to learn geography in college.”

Tuesday, Mar 8

For Mar 7 CPAP. Reported figures 6 hrs 54 min with AHI=1.30. Events: 5 H, 9 CSR, 11 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=7 L/min); oximeter on entire time with high SpO2 and normal pulse.

A busy, busy day started with having to re-cut Apple Strudel because we took the wrong one out of the freezer — not the one marked Emeritus Geog Faculty. So, after John took off for pruning activities, I cut them into 20 pieces for the meeting today. Then I went in, set up the table, and made some hot chocolate / coffee mixture, for my drink. We had 8 people there to listen to Jim Armstrong (ex-CWU Alumni Director), the Executive Director of the Kittitas County Chamber of Commerce since 2011. He gave a nice presentation. We stayed around visiting after he left, for another half hour. I drove north in town to deliver the rake we were giving. It is a small light-duty one bought a couple of years ago at an Ace Hardware sale. Having used it some, John found it uncomfortable because it is short. Photos below show the old one (green) and its replacement (black & blue).

From there I went to Jack in the Box for a fast lunch so I could go to a friend’s house to help with 3 others sort clean clothes for the clothing share coming March 22. I used a coupon for a free Jumbo Jack I got at the Parkinson’s fundraiser, but it required a purchase of a large drink ($1.99 +tax). [Note that a similar drink can be had for 89¢ at the Circle K Mart.] I also had coupons for things there, and one was for a free curly fries (worth $2.29 with the purchase of a meal item). I asked if the drink I was purchasing was a meal item, and it was, so I got all that for $2.15. I brought home most of the drink, most of the fries, and half the burger. We had fries with dinner. John finished off the drink and will eat the burger for lunch tomorrow, when I’m gone to the Food Bank for music and lunch.

Meanwhile, back to earlier in the day, I left the clothing organization after almost 2 hours, to get to Line Dancing (Boot Scootin’ Boogie, was the last one we worked up to doing). It was fun and taxing. We had about 15 people participating.
Here, from the Web, is You Tube line dancing to Brooks & Dunn’s Boot Scootin’ Boogie

In the evening I went back to town to play music at Hearthstone with The Connections, and on the way, I dropped off two bags of clothes for the Career Closet. At the playing time tonight, a couple brought me two bags of clothes to put in the share. From them I heard about the death of a fellow I have gotten to known during the past 2 years. I met him, along with his wife and dog, at Royal Vista nursing home, and then when they closed, he moved to the Rehab, where I rehabbed in 2010, and our KV Fiddlers and Friends also play. Additionally, I saw him once a month when another group I play in (The Connections) is there.

Wednesday, Mar 9

For Mar 8 CPAP. Reported figures 6 hrs 38 min with AHI=0.30. Events: 2 H, 2 CSR, 11 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=6 L/min); oximeter on entire time with high SpO2 and normal pulse.

Today is my neighbor Lorene’s 90th birthday. Her son was taking her to The Palace Restaurant to meet with a bunch of her similarly young friends. I went last year, but not this, and she knew I play music and eat at the food bank on Wednesdays. I did get a card fixed up for her and dropped it off once I was home today, after SAIL exercise class.

John stayed home from pruning today, because of rain. It rained here all day and still is raining tonight, but he claims it will stop tomorrow.

I was up quite early working on many chores and getting ready to leave for picking up my friend Gloria for the day. I picked her up at 11:20 and we went to the food bank. We were unable to get a close place to park.

We went inside and I had to return to the parking lot to pick up 6 bags of clothes for the share from one of our players. He and his wife donated a lot of clothes. It was pouring rain when we went for the transfer, but he pulled right next to my car, so that was convenient. I closed the back. We played (with all 7 singing, and 4 using instruments–guitar, ukulele, banjo, and violin). We started with a few Irish songs. Afterwards, we visited and ate a nice meal–pasta, salad, fruit, dessert (none for me), and pineapple/orange juice. When it was time to go it was still raining hard, and I needed to take a lot of food to my neighbors (2 dozen eggs, 2 milk jugs, large loaf of garlic bread, huge dish of pasta, and some frosted cupcakes for dessert. I went out and got the car pulled to the door, but then could not get the back hatch door to open, not with the key transponder, or from inside, or manually from outside. I was upset, but we piled the stuff into my back seat. I tried again and could not get it to work.
I need to empty it out tomorrow to pick up more clothes from people bringing them to the Thursday music playing time at Meadows Place.

From there we went to SAIL and at the end of exercising, we celebrated the 99th birthday of a woman who still is the most agile in our class, Faye Kollmeyer, whose husband, Louie, drives her in each week. (He is 101, retired from CWU Art Department). All the class was treated to a red frosted, heart-shaped frosted red velvet cake. Katrina sent a piece home to John so he was happy too.

Came home and worked on contacting more people representing the free clothing dispersal places for the clothing share, to come at the end to pick up clothes for their respective organizations. Places included must send a representative to the LDS church near the end of the day. These are the ones we have included this year:

1. CWU’s Career Clothing Closet (for any student to get professional clothing to attend a job interview).

2. Compassion Closet, newborn – size 12 clothing, near the Food Bank, behind Mercer Cr. Church, for Foster Families in the County.

3. Clothing Bank at the Church of Christ, open to anyone in the community, on Monday and Friday mornings.

4. APOYO — (food & clothing bank) located on CWU campus.

5. At United Methodist Church is the Ellensburg Community Clothing Center (ECCC), open for the community on Tuesdays and Saturdays from 9 a.m. – Noon.

I will continue contacting people in those organizations above to plan for sharing the leftovers.

Thursday, Mar 10

For Mar 9 CPAP. Reported figures 6 hrs 9 min with AHI=1.63. Events: 10 H, 11 CSR, 13 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=13 L/min); oximeter on entire time with high SpO2 and normal pulse.

John walked up to the back of my car, manually tried what I had, and it opened. No clue what happened. It has worked since. John claims there are Gremlins around that like to tinker mischievously with modern gadgets. It must be true – it’s on the Web. One just needs to know how to chase them away. Apparently he does.

Then he left for grapevine pruning. I cleaned and sorted clothes, and called in the number of chairs needed for people playing today: Maury, Manord, Charlie, Gerald, Nancy, Amy, Anne, Laura, and Minerva. Later before leaving, I washed a load of dishes.

I fixed myself a chicken/egg salad for lunch today. On my way to play, I went by Kathryn’s and dropped off a box of baby clothes and 7 bags of adult clothes.

I went to Meadows Place and made a stupid mistake. I put my camera and keys in a different purse, left it and the cell phone in the car, locked it, when I took out all the stuff I was carrying into the building. I was carrying music for several people, for the audience, my own, my Irish hat, and my violin case.

I looked for my camera and keys before we started playing and realized what I had done. I was unable to contact John because he was on the road, and he does not turn on his emergency phone unless he decides to call me. I left a message at home and then my friend Anne Engels (our Tambourine player), said, “Do you have AAA?” I did, but my wallet and card was in the car. She went out to get her number for me to call on her phone. We finally got through, and they sent a person to unlock it, but they could not get there for an hour. No problem, I had to play music for the next hour.

We had a small audience, maybe 10, but a board meeting of the staff with corporate reps was going on concurrently, and they kept having breaks and coming to the back of the room, listening, and enjoying watching Haley dance and run around the room entertaining the residents and their family.

When we stopped, I carted my stuff to the door, and waited for the locksmith to come rescue me. He pulled in shortly after I had moved my stuff to the front door. I had a bag of clothes in my hand (donated by the activities director there for the share), and I carried it out with me to leave beside my car. He opened it and set off the alarm in the process, but warned me that would happen so I was supposed to fast get inside, get the keys, and push the red button. All was done in a minute. I failed to learn what was done. I thanked him, gave him a hug, and proceeded back inside with my camera and keys.

Once back inside, I was offered a piece of chocolate cake which I enjoyed with Amy, Haley, and one of the residents (John) who had his Lieutenant’s hat from his time in the Kent, WA Fire Department. He had Haley put it on her head. It was a little big, but everyone got a kick out of that.

This collage has Haley in the fireman’s hat on the left with him, in the middle one she is smiling nicely, and on the right photo is her mom, Amy, and me with her in a living room off the dining area where we perform. Note she has green polish on her toenails. She also had white socks and black patent leather shoes she removed. In the USA, the inventor was Seth Boyden of Newark, NJ in 1818. That’s from this story:

Patent leather is old

Below is another collage from pictures taken on Amy’s camera. The two side photos Amy took earlier to show her handiwork. She made that dress without a pattern from scratch for Haley, and had her model it in their backyard. Haley will be 3 in April. What a cutie. She has quite the personality, and when she realized the camera was her mother’s phone, she gave a funny face to our friend taking the picture. Her hat came from the $1 store. Mine is falling apart with disintegrating foam, having been left over from a Senior Center party two years ago. I think I deserve a new green derby for the rest of our performances in March, especially with Haley in her Leprechaun dress.

Friday, Mar 11

For Mar 10 CPAP. Reported figures 7 hrs 59 min with AHI=0.13. Events: 1 H, 0 CSR, 14 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=5 L/min); oximeter on entire time with high SpO2 and normal pulse.

I spent much of my day on different telephone and email and Facebook conversations. I managed to finalize all the pickups of leftovers from the Mar 22 clothing share by community members that run places for distributing free clothing to those in need (discussed in detail above).

I sat through and did not answer several phone calls I knew were telemarketers. Thank goodness for caller ID. I never thought I would appreciate paying the fee so much. I do believe it has gotten worse over the past few years, after the unsuccessful arrival of the DON’T CALL list. Yeah, right!

John made it home before 2:00 and we had a late lunch. He had pizza (frozen; reheated) and I had chicken/egg salad, the rest from yesterday’s lunch. We shared a half of a very large Honeycrisp apple that weighed over a pound. When John went to Safeway, he saw some nice Honeycrisps, for $4/lb. Considering he brought home over 10 lbs last week for $10/box, we feel fortunate to have access to them near Quincy on his trips over and back for pruning.

Saturday, Mar 12

For Mar 11 CPAP. Reported figures 6 hrs 44 min with AHI=0.45. Events: 3 H, 1 CSR, 11 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=10 L/min); oximeter on entire time with high SpO2 and normal pulse.

I went to town to drop off two bags of clothing for the Career Closet, hand off a bag of clothes and pick up another from a different person, and on to the American Legion for a Memorial for a fellow who died at 87 from pneumonia (see the end of Tuesday’s write-up above). His name was Ken Broostrom. I just saw him two weeks before his death at the Rehab, when I showed up alone because of not receiving notification, and stayed for 50 minutes singing hymns and playing the violin for him to sing along with me and about 10 others.

I went by Hannah Rd on the way home to leave a garbage bag full of two-liter cola bottles a couple intends to use to make an exploration display for a class. I have no clue what that means, and have asked.

Once home, I rested and then returned to visit my neighbor Lorene, whose family came from around the state to celebrate her 90th birthday. She has given me a lot of clothing in the past, and she has lost weight, so I carried her some Medium tops – a light blue shirt jacket, purple frilly blouse, and a white lightweight sweater. I had a nice visit with her and with one of her grandchildren, and visited with one of her sons, Dale, and his wife, Kathy. The funniest thing we shared was Dale showing me and her some cat and cucumber videos on his smart-phone. I haven’t seen her laugh and enjoy herself so much in recent years. It was pretty cool.

Here are a couple..(but not the ones we were looking at yesterday afternoon):
Why do they do this?

Then, at the very end, why eat it?

This morning I got a link to a performance of the Junior Jammers – Katrina & Bobbie Pearce’s group in Nampa, ID. (Bobbie was my teacher for 22 years in WA Old Time Fiddlers Workshops). Her daughter Katrina is a a world champion LEFT HANDED violinist and is teaching and leading the group now. Bobbie still teaches.

Junior Jammers of Nampa, Idaho

Sunday, Mar 13

For Mar 12 CPAP. Reported figures 6 hrs 24 min with AHI=0.94. Events: 6 H, 2 CSR, 15 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=4 L/min); oximeter on entire time with high SpO2 and normal pulse.

Supposed to storm in western WA and snow in the mountains. Scheduled for 11 a.m. so John headed to town with the old truck and two 5 gallon cans for gas. He almost made it to town before the rain started. Did leave before the snow began. Townies were posting photos and complaining because the storm was going to disrupt their travel plans. We got rain but no snow. We can see it on the hill to the north at about 3,000 feet. Ellensburg is about 1,500 feet. Figure that out. A Robin visited just now – so spring just sprung. The photo below (WA-DOT) is from 16 miles north of us:

Hope your week was fine.

Nancy & John

Still on the Naneum Fan

Hundreds of articles about changes in the way we keep track of dates. One explains why George Washington became a year younger during his life – and lots of others too.

Monday, Feb 29 LEAP YEAR (?) with another day in Feb

For Feb 28 CPAP. Reported figures 6 hrs 11 min with AHI=0.32. Events: 2 H, 1 CSR, 17 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=11 L/min); oximeter on entire time +45 m, AOK, AHI=.29.

The extra February day apparently screwed up my Armitron watch, as it thought there was no 29th day. I have to reset it. I’ve been screwed up all week – numbers being a day ahead of me. I normally only look at it when writing the date on our mileage in the car glove box book, if I don’t remember.

We left several small vases for Lisa R to pick up (at the gate), and when she picked those up she left a large glass vase in the box, another gift from the BNE site. It’s a very heavy vase. My photo ought to have included a batch of flowers, but we are short of flowers this week. Still, the vase is beautiful.

We grew Dahlias 2 years ago. There were 2 color patterns (orange-ish) in the package. John did not dig them up and store them, so they are gone. With the impressive vase to prod him, the next day at Costco, he bought another package (purple-ish). Dahlia starts are “tuberous roots”** .
**What are . . .

How to . . .Dahlia

Photos from web – our new ones are NOT the color of the pinkish one.

They will look very pretty in it. Actually, I asked him if he would have Dahlias in the garden this year. (Ans. = no) I figured they and colorful Iris would work beautifully in this vase. So we will have both. The Iris do winter but occasionally need dug up, separated and replanted. That did not get done but the dead leaves were replaced with semi-composted horse d’oeuvres, of which we have plenty.

This afternoon, I went to a the presentation by a candidate for a Geography instructor job at CWU, teaching almost the same set of courses I taught. After that I met with a few folks for a practice session for an upcoming music event. I carried a partially eaten can of Cashew Mocha Roca that I bought for John thinking it was chocolate covered (it was), but it had little pieces of coffee grounds in with the cashews. I’m still upset about picking up two cans of that and not realizing it wasn’t what I thought it was. If I still had the cash register receipt from Bi-Mart, I would return the one left, but I think I got all concerned with cleaning receipts not needed for taxes and threw everything away except medical things.

Tuesday, Mar 1

For Feb 29 CPAP. Reported figures 7 hrs 17 min with AHI=0.14. Events: 1 H, 2 CSR, 14 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=8 L/min); oximeter on entire time AOK.

John did not go pruning because of rain. However, he left for Yakima, primarily to have his car serviced and also to visit a hardware store and Costco. Pretty cool what he got at Lowe’s—new broom, a heavy duty rake, a couple of blades for a 7 ¼ inch circular saw, and a circular wire brush for the hand-held drill. He accumulated >$70 of stuff, and used a friend’s gift card of $50 to pay for most of it. He also bought a bunch of stuff from Costco, and got gas there for a good price.
I have been working on adding words and correcting chords on the song, “Who Threw the Overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s Chowder?” I did the best I could with the score without chords that Evelyn had downloaded from the web, and I just sent off the latest with chords to be viewed by her eagle musical eyes to add chords for a measure I couldn’t figure out and two other problem phrases.
I went to Jazzercise and owe $.50 for today — I left my $1 in the car. We only had 3 people there in class, but we had a nice routine mainly involving the torso and abdominals—a much needed exercise. The rest of the month will be 4 sessions of different dance types. Next week is Line Dancing, and I will participate. (That class is free with our annual membership). The next week I will be at the cardiologist’s, the foot doctor, and Costco.
John called just after I got home at 3:35 to tell me he was still at the Subaru dealer from a 2:30 appointment for a scheduled oil change/lube – about 800 miles late. The car is a 2009 and has regular oil with a recommended 3,000 mile interval. They found it needed alignment, so he had to stay and pay an additional $80. I don’t know yet if all 4 were aligned , but I checked with Les Schwab out of curiosity, and they charge $60.75 for the front and $90 for all four. (John had all 4 done and it only cost $80, so that was good and saved him an additional trip.)
I spent 1/2 hour probably on the phone with Joseph in Honduras to get my next 6 months of Sirius XM satellite radio to my Subaru, for a total of $28.08 because I made the effort to request and wait on the phone. I was armed with a code I could get it for $25. Now I have to do the same thing before September 1, 2016, when it expires and automatically reverts to $102.44. Thanks to my friend Bob West in Yakima for telling me this little secret to save money, and still enjoy my satellite radio music in my car. I enjoy listening primarily to 3 stations for all my road travel. It makes me happy, so well worth 15 cents/day.

See: Post-purchase rationalization

Today, a photo from last week at the Fundraiser for Parkinson’s Disease was published on Facebook from the Ellensburg Adult Activity Center (AAC). On my last blog-post I wrote about winning the long-sleeved tee-shirt, I wore it today to Jazzercise class, and stopped by Knudson’s to thank them for their donations to the AAC events. She remembered John wearing in his sweatshirt last year to thank them. This photo was at the very end, and probably only 1/3 of those attending were still there. It was a good turnout. I didn’t hear the final amount of money raised, but at a minimum of $5/head it was a nice piece of change.

Nancy with her prize in a white bag. Also, she wore the “colors” of Parkinson’s research, unless you go with the red tulip logo, or the original yellow ribbon.

Wednesday, Mar 2

For Mar 1 CPAP. Reported figures 7 hrs 29 min with AHI=0.27. Events: 2 H, 3 CSR, 10 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=8 L/min); oximeter on entire time AOK.

Pretty and sunny day for pruning. John left at 7:44 a.m.

I picked up Gloria at 11:15 and went by a BNE person’s house, Heather B-H on our way in to Food Bank to get two medicine bottles to sort some of my extra Vitamin supplements into from smaller containers (see collage below, on Friday).

Our Epson printer claims a thirst issue. John replaced the black ink cartridge and it now seems happy. Me too – I’ll be able to run music pages for my group. I corrected and printed the first page of Who Threw the Overalls in Mrs Murphy’s Chowder and made one page of lyrics only for the audience.

John and I went to the last of the 4 special new lectures this winter by Nick Zentner. This week was Snoqualmie Pass geology. Excellent as usual. I was the only video-taper tonight. John has worked on the trails that start at the Pass – boots on the ground sort of thing – so he enjoys hearing of the recent work Nick manages to find from publications and (geology) colleagues.

Here’s the results from LAST Wednesday’s lecture. Nick Zentner’s recent lecture “Bing Crosby, the Sunset Highway, & the Channeled Scablands” is now available on You Tube. This was done by CWU staff that sets up in the very back of the room. I sit in the front row, almost at Nick’s feet. Mine doesn’t have the professional look, but are a challenge following his antics during his presentations.

Click here to view the CWU version: Sunset Highway and more

In this unusual lecture, Bing Crosby’s first road trip across the state of Washington is used as a vehicle for learning about Glacial Lake Columbia and the Channeled Scablands. Crosby and Al Rinker drove the Sunset Highway on Thursday, October 15, 1925 from Spokane to Seattle – and then on to Hollywood, California.
Some 240 folks attended this lecture at the Hal Holmes Center in downtown Ellensburg, Washington. February 24, 2016. Nick claims that his university students have no idea about Bing Crosby [Harry Lillis “Bing” Crosby, Jr.]. Maybe their grandparents do. Do you remember the “Road to Series” of pictures with Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour?

Bing, Bob, and Dorothy

On the Road to Blewett Pass:

I have the links to all his downtown lectures over the past several years. We have listed them below at the end of this blog, by name only. If you want them emailed to you, you can request it, or you can copy and paste the ones you want to watch into your browser.

We were late leaving the talk for home, and dropped by Dominoes Pizza for a special $7.99 large pizza with 3 toppings (Philly Steak, Pepperoni, and Canadian bacon). That way we could eat as soon as we got home.

Finally, with John’s help, I got my transmitter for my heart set up tonight, so it will now be in contact with the doctor and technicians in the Yakima Heart Center. The monitoring and sending unit (needs a landline phone), named Latitude™ for a reason that eludes us. Why not, from mythology, Mercury, Zephyrus, or Iris?
Below are all my captures of the evening’s presentation put on You Tube.

Nick Zentner’s #4 Lecture 3-2-16
Snoqualmie Pass Geology

Link 1: 2.5 minutes

Link 2: 7 more minutes on the green/black boards

Link 3: Dueling Green & Blackboard Discussion, 28 min.

This one above has some interesting topography noted by the geologic timing the Yakima Glacier was retreating and created a bunch of moraines along the I-90 corridor. Dates for the moraines from the Yakima Glacier follow: near Thorp & Rocky Canyon, over 500,000 years ago, Indian John Hill, 130, 000, Suncadia, 80,000, Golf Course Road, 56,000, Keechelus Dam, 18,000, and Hyak, 11,000 years ago. It is expected that there were/are more but evidence of some get wiped out by more recent ice advances.

Link 4: Nick narrates Tom Foster’s Photography work 19 min

Link 5: I-90 Rocks video Tom Foster with Nick 15 min.

Thursday, Mar 3

For Mar 2 CPAP. Reported figures 7 hrs 28 min with AHI=0.13. Events: 1 H, 1 CSR, 13 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=6 L/min); oximeter on entire time AOK.

I finally figured out the count for today and called in 8 but they decided to set up 9 chairs. It worked because Haley had a seat next to her mom, when she wasn’t running around visiting.
I set up a few copies of the audience music. Not very many folks at the rehab are capable of following. I was limited by the faulty printer wifi connection and happy I had printed copies last night from my computer, because this morning I was unable to access the printer from my computer. I shall leave a note for John to fix when he gets home (he left for pruning before 8:00), and then I can finish later for next week’s group — who are right with it, and even able to eat and drink their favors presented by the activities director, Mo, who makes an event out of our visits.

I sent in the Boston Scientific Paperwork for my Latitude unit.

We both filled our cars with gas today in Ellensburg, at $1.87 / gallon.

Friday, Mar 4

For Mar 3 CPAP. Reported figures 7 hrs 5 min with AHI=1.27. Events: 9 H, 1 CSR, 13 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=13 L/min); oximeter on entire time AOK.

John stayed home from pruning so that Cameron Fries could go visit a Seattle area farmer’s market to sell his wine and fresh eggs. He has chickens to eat bugs in the vineyard. Another vendor was selling “free range organic eggs” for $9/dz. Cameron doesn’t claim “organic” and sells a few dozen each weekend for $6. Now, he is going to take along a bundle of vine canes because another vendor told him he could sell them to those interested in home crafts. On the web, we found this item list at $60.

John thinks he’ll make a couple with local items (Pine cones and river pebbles) for Cameron to take over. People can add a pretty bow to suit their artistic sense – that’s a selling point, not a flaw.

Minutes ticked away today as I worked on my computer and on chores – while sending up (slow process) the last of the videotaping I had done last Wednesday night of Nick Zentner’s last lecture this year for the community.

Just before 3:00 today, I rushed out the door to pick up my friend Gloria {lives next door to the speaker} to attend a 4:00 p.m. Science Colloquium with Elvin Delgado speaking on the subject of Natural Gas Fracking in the large field in the Patagonia region (Vaca Muerta) of Argentina—with all the associated socio-economic-political-environmental problems. One small town nearby went from 3000 people in 2011 to 15,000 in 2015. There are insufficient services or money to provide such things as sewage and water for all of the inhabitants. The cost of housing is quite high. For a little shack it’s $3,500/ month. Locals cannot afford to stay in the town because of the high prices and degradation of the environment.

For many years, natural gas deposits were tapped by single wells drilled vertically down (sometimes 1500′) to pockets of gas. Subsequent /recent technology came up with “fracking,” a combination method using water and chemicals to extract the natural gas (methane) trapped in shales. This process is toxic to human health and that of the environment. One fracking well uses ~2 to 8 million gallons of water and 10 to 40,000 gallons of chemicals. The water used is contaminated forever.

Vaca Muerta translates to Dead Cow in Spanish, and is a geologic formation of Jurassic and Cretaceous age at the red spot above on the map of Argentina. It holds major reserve deposits of shale oil and shale gas. This discovery occurred in 2010. Total expected reserves are over 920 million barrels. Production is close to 45,000 barrels per day. Issues of getting the reserves out of the ground and into the economy are complicated by many factors. The presentation was an eye opener to many there, I’m sure. Dr. Delgado returns this July to continue his research. There, in July, it is winter time.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
From John: Argentina is a basket case:
More wrong with Argentina than a little fracking
. . . and the real issue is lack of good government. But that’s a different story.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

While in town, I stopped by Dairy Queen to pick up a Peace Symbol necklace from a gal who offered it on the BNE site, and I was chosen to receive it. Her name is Tashia (pronounced, TASIA, Asia with a T). I was on Alder on my way to take Gloria home, so I stopped off to deposit my blue massage tool giveaway to a gal named Nung, using a hand-off at the apartment of her brother-in-law, to save us both a long trip to or from town (she lives in Badger Pocket).

Earlier this week, while searching for clothes to wash and put in the clothing share, I found a Nike biking shirt in our things. I cleaned it, and offered it to my friend, Glenn, and I passed it to his mom this week when we met in a Jazzercise class. He took his photo in it to thank me, and I got his permission to print it here. The collage below shows the items received or given this week, and you already saw the vase at the start. Actually, Gloria was with me when I picked up two medicine bottles Wednesday and gave me another from her stash (described below the photo).

Here’s an explanation of the collage of receives and gives above. On the left you will have to use your imagination. The top two containers I received from the BNE site, and you need to imagine the smaller one is actually larger and orange, and was given to me by Gloria, after she was with me to pick up the top two, and heard my story of wanting to combine my vitamin supplements from smaller bottles to larger ones. The second photo of the Peace Symbol necklace is described in the text above and below. This symbol was originally designed for the British nuclear disarmament movement, and thus carries a lot of protest baggage. A dove and an olive branch is a nicer peace symbol. Yes. No. Maybe.
Doves and Olives
The third photo is of a massage tool for sore muscles from exercise or stress, which I gave to the person also described above the photo, and the fourth is Glenn in his new cycling shirt.

Saturday, Mar 5

For Mar 4 CPAP. Reported figures 7 hrs 59 min with AHI=0.63. Events: 5 H, 7 CSR, 12 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=13 L/min); oximeter on entire time AOK.

A morning funny–As John was leaving late for morning chores, he reminded me he had asked for a haircut a couple weeks ago, and I hadn’t worked it into my schedule. I said, well, I can do it this weekend, because I am free. He laughed out loud, and said, “How many 72-year old women could make that statement?” Well, I am happy I can! However, even with nothing scheduled out of the house, I will stay busy until late trying to catch up on all the organization awaiting me for my social calendar. We were just talking yesterday on his day off from pruning at White Heron, that he no longer had time with his busy schedule of chores here ever to read paperbacks anymore. With that said, he went out to prune our plum trees, as I went off to town late afternoon.

Sunny today, so John is outside now doing chores, after loading the wood stove for my warmth and emptying the clean dishes from the dishwasher so I can add more to be cleaned. I am splitting house chores between working on the blog, sorting receipts, (just located the last of the AMEX cash rebate payments for Costco, which we have to pick up next week when there, for $89.00). It is now in my wallet!! The coupon arrives the end of February with our credit card statement and we must cash it in at the Union Gap (south of Yakima) store.

The last chore took me awhile, but I was finally successful. Packed my Latitude Boston Scientific transmitter that sends data from my defibrillator to my cardiologist’s office. It was replaced because it quit working, and I had to repack the old in the packing box to send via FedEx back to St. Paul, MN. (They sent me the proper address label so it doesn’t cost me). I had to speak to a representative in the Dominican Republic to arrange for the pick up on Monday morning at my front door. In the process of the transaction I got to know him and he invited me to his country where he would give me a tour. Now I’m curious to find a traveling friend to make the trip to an rci.com resort near where he lives. Looks as if the country is about 200 miles east west and ~ 70 miles (in the smallest section from Santa Domingo) north-south. Might be money well spent for a week away, even though it would be a lot of time on an airplane. I’m tempted. He gave me his email and his Facebook name and encourage me to write him. He is 24. He’s already been communicating since he got home from work tonight. We are earlier than they are by 4 hours.

I had the windows open today, and heard geese flying over and honking and also a frog croaking. John was out and says this flock had 7 – heading west. Earlier he saw 12 heading north but they were too far east of here and I did not hear them.

We now have rain and just finished a seafood dinner — coconut shrimp, beer-battered cod, and pears. We will have very berry pie for dessert.

Hope your week was fine.

Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Meanwhile, to end this week’s blog, here are the links to all the excellent Geology lectures put on by Nick Zentner since 2010.

This came in an email today from the source, CWU Geology professor, Nick Zentner. “Many have requested a complete list of the lectures. Please see below.”

Rather than take two hours to put these links in WordPress, just copy paste the links after the title, if you are interested in viewing. Those without links (except 2010) I may well have and put into the blog at the time, as with the first below, in this week’s blog.

Mar 3, 2016 25. Snoqualmie Pass Geology
Feb 24, 2016 24. Bing Crosby, the Sunset Highway, & the Channeled Scablands

Feb 17, 2016 23. Liberty Gold & the Yellowstone Hot Spot: Is there a Connection? https://youtu.be/MXEQeTg0Xww
Feb 10, 2016 22. Great Earthquakes of the Pacific Northwest: Are we really overdue? https://youtu.be/UJ7Qc3bsxjI

Mar 18, 2015 21. Earthquake Research in Washington
Mar 11, 2015 20. Gold Mining in Liberty https://youtu.be/QsBZfRJihdw
Mar 4, 2015 19. Columbia River Gorge Geology
Feb 25, 2015 18. Seattle to North Bend: I-90 Geology

June 12, 2013 17. Palouse Falls & Dry Falls https://youtu.be/F8zLwXfxS7w
June 5, 2013 16. Wenatchee Ice Age Floods https://youtu.be/8Sbxn94vLWM
May 29, 2013 15. Yakima River Canyon https://youtu.be/0o19BMrPmhs
May 22, 2013 14. Ginkgo Petrified Forest https://youtu.be/nfbMxrPnYcc
May 15, 2013 13. Ellensburg Blue Agates https://youtu.be/j8BFvKoabJ0

Nov 17, 2010 12. Geology of Kittitas Valley https://youtu.be/v6LtXsViDNI
Nov 10, 2010 11. Floods of Lava & Water https://youtu.be/ZgVmW_OAB0s
Nov 3, 2010 10. Mount Rainier https://youtu.be/YcSPrk9l22I
Oct 27, 2010 9. Slow Earthquakes https://youtu.be/r9recENBhiU
Oct 20, 2010 8. Tsunami in our Future https://youtu.be/QAtheBYU9Xs
Oct 13, 2010 7. Mount Stuart https://youtu.be/k70sjpHwJnU

June 9, 2010 6. Glaciers in Kittitas County
June 2, 2010 5. Cascade Volcanoes in Washington
May 26, 2010 4. Columbia River Basalts in Washington
May 19, 2010 3. Shallow Earthquakes in Washington
May 12, 2010 2. Magnitude 9.0 Earthquakes in Washington
May 5, 2010 1. Building Washington Piece by Piece

Sunday, Feb 21

Long weekend of frustration, but the blog was published 11:30 p.m. PST.

John reconfigured his computer, but still has not had time to try installing the downloads of the Epson printer drivers to give us printer access again. He wanted to wait until the blog was published, before risking a try.

Monday, Feb 22

For Feb 21 CPAP. Reported figures 7 hrs 2 min with AHI=1.71. Events: 12 H, 4 CSR, 10 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=22 L/min); oximeter on entire time AOK.

John removed ice from the horse water. Then he added a little warm water to keep it from icing over. The horses can break thin ice and drink but the idea is to make drinking easy. Sort of like the difference between drinking beer and whiskey over ice. He left just before 8:00 for pruning. We are out of dry cat food so he went by Wenatchee’s Costco on the way home from White Heron pruning, to get it, gasoline (unexpectedly priced much higher than in EBRG), and to check the new special prices that ended yesterday. He loaded up on quite a few things, including a large boneless pork loin roast that he will fix for an upcoming potluck.

I await a call today from CCSOE that my keyboard has arrived and they can install it. I lost two more keys over the weekend so this will be sweet. Call came and I left home, arriving about 1:45. I went away for over 1/2 hour and when I returned, they had cleaned my laptop, while replacing the keyboard. It was very dirty inside from all the dust in our house, and the fact it is 4 years old and never been cleaned. When I left it, I had the technician check my CD drive because I couldn’t open it and needed to burn some information on a disk. I last used it the start of October.

I did dishes, started working on March music, and wrote my reminder (organizing) email to the group about this week’s location, asking who might be expected. I have to call ahead with a chair count, and also this week, I must take along packets of music for those there to have before we start a new set next week.

I spent some time researching a 1979 picture of Brittanys with the 4th placement claimed to be our old dog, FC Simons Ruff-Shod O’Dee. I saw the picture and immediately knew it was our trainer, Dan Richmond, but it was not Ruffy. I notified the people who needed to check further for the correct dog (it was found in an old American Brittany magazine).

I worked on a new song for our group – the Ash Grove, a Welsh folk song to the tune of “Let All Things Now Living” (a hymn). My father’s family was from Wales, so that makes it special to me.

The director of the Adult Activity Center, Katrina, wrote me an email request for our group to play the July 4th music at the celebration this year on July 1. This is perhaps the 10th year we have provided the music. I have lost count. I responded right away and confirmed the timing. We will set up between 10:00 and 11:00 and they will start serving at 11:30, but we are fed first. They grill hamburgers, hot dogs, fix many salads, and people potluck desserts and sides.

John was able to get our printer running again and, after over 6 months of not being able to scan from across the room, that too is fixed. I’ve been putting songs onto a jump drive, then plugged that into the printer, and used the screen buttons. I then had to return to my computer to process it and get to interested folks. Now he has gotten all the parts talking politely to each other.

Tuesday, Feb 23

For Feb 22 CPAP. Reported figures 7 hrs 1 min with AHI=0.43. Events: 3 H, 2 CSR, 18 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=12 L/min); oximeter on entire time AOK.

John left 7:47 a.m. for pruning.

I took off just before noon for a haircut from my friend in her house about a mile away. She began cutting my hair in 1988 when I arrived in town. At that time, she had a shop in town, across the street from Lind Hall, the old science building, where my office was for the first 11 years. Over my employment there (22 years), I had 3 different office locations.

While there, she gave me some professional clothes to offer to CWU’s Career Closet. The department, Career Services, is setting up a clothing place for students to borrow items for going to a job interview. She gave me a blouse, jacket, and a complete women’s suit. The recipient, my friend, in charge of the program, was thrilled when I delivered them to her.

I dropped off my computer to have its CD drive checked at the place where my keyboard was installed yesterday, with the intent to go to my Jazzercise class and come back by afterwards to pick it up. The class only had three people, and it was a rather tough workout, but I made it through.

I dropped off more clothes for the share by the organizer’s house on my way to pick up my computer.

I was not surprised that it could not be restored. This morning, I called around to see if I could locate an external CD drive on campus – computer center, surplus, or geography. Nothing was available. I also searched the web to get an idea about prices and read reviews of different models.

Once I returned to the computer shop, they told me the news and showed me an LG model for $40. During the demo, LG installed its driver software on my computer.

I came home and had John’s help researching a cheaper one I found on line this morning. He did not like that one – not that it was the wrong thing, but that it was being sold by a company not noted for its tech-savvy. However, LG had one for just $23.94.
We ended up adding to his Amazon Cart from a couple of weeks ago when he ran out of Italian seasoning mix he once got at Costco (they no longer have). I added a Micro USB to USB Cable (for our cell phones with a camera), a portable hard travel storage case for the external CD drive, a 4-port USB 2.0 hub, to go along with my new LG Electronics 8x, USB 2.0 Super Multi Ultra Slim Portable DVD Rewriter, CD drive we ordered and received free 2-day shipping through UPS. It was interesting how it went from Amazon’s fulfillment center

Link: codename PHX6

Also: { Put ‘ Amazon Fulfillment Center ‘ in Google Earth to see. } Note, there are 3 large Amazon Fulfillment Centers in Phoenix, AZ.

… in southwest Phoenix, AZ to UPS Worldport Air Hub at Louisville International Airport, to SeaTac, to Redmond, to EBRG.
Just before I left for town, my Latitude transmitter (for my defibrillator data) came by FedEx.

Wednesday, Feb 24

For Feb 23 CPAP. Reported figures 6 hrs 40 min with AHI=0.75. Events: 5 H, 2 CSR, 14 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=19 L/min); oximeter on entire time AOK.

John left at 7:43 a.m. and will bring back clothes for the BNE share from the Snyders in Quincy. Tom is one of the pruners.

Got all data from CPAP, Oximeter, and clean a lot of dishes after unloading yesterday’s. I picked up Gloria at 11:15, and we went on to set up at the Food Bank. Our normal setter-upper was gone. He is taking a friend to Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle for removal of two gallstones. These were not seen on an X-ray because of the liver getting in the way. Don’t know if they had been in previously and missed them? I thought gall bladders were just removed when a problem arose.

On our way home, we went by near the north end of campus to pick up clothes from a gal there at her apt. to deliver my next time by 3rd Avenue on my travel to town.

I was very tired when I got home, and lay down hoping for a 20-minute power nap (or longer). I lay there for an hour’s rest but never went to sleep.

We went back for a lecture from Nick Zentner on the old Sunset Hwy through WA. It was well done as usual. The Sunset Hwy was the first designated cross-State road and went between Spokane and Seattle. Bing Crosby used it as the first leg of his journey to stardom.

I have not yet received the professionally videoed one by CWU, and have not put up all the ones I took, but here is what I have thus far, of my own.

Nick Zentner’s #3 Lecture 2-24-16
Bing Crosby, the Sunset Highway, & the Channeled Scablands

Part 1, Nick’s Greenboard Intro – 25 min.

Part 2, Nick’s Sunset Start of Visuals.

Part 3, Nick’s Sunset Visuals.

Part 4 Bing Crosby 1.5 Minutes.

Thursday, Feb 25

For Feb 24 CPAP. Reported figures 7x hrs 16 min with AHI=0.28. Events: 2 H, 0 CSR, 12 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=14 L/min); oximeter on entire time AOK.

I got John’s help removing staples from some copies of music from last March and replaced the changed playlist, and removed some pages at the end, replacing with new songs. I was able to give copies out today to the people there, and keep some for others to give next week.

People who came today to Hearthstone included Amy, Maury, Charlie, Gerald, Dave, Bob, Liana, and me. We had a huge and appreciative audience, with good participation. Four of us actually stayed around until 3:30 working on one of our songs for next month you will hear about below. Some stayed and listened to us practice and thanked us for that. They really enjoy music and our coming to visit.

When I got home, I saw a report on Facebook (I was tagged so was notified on email). It was complete with photos from Jeri Conklin in Lancaster, CA about Daisy’s action in field training today. Below are some photos of our sweet little Cedaridge Kip’s Camelot Shay Tre’ JH in training for her SH (Senior Hunter) title:

Left, she leaps sagebrush with one bound. Middle shows her running (eyes closed), and the right is her on point. Anyone not familiar with Brittanys, note the pink nose and compare with the next non-Britt you see.

Above is Daisy again in the spa. Left is her happy smile, and the one on the right is described by Jeri as showing Poodle Berries (named by her grandma). I asked her for a definition, and this is her explanation, “Poodle berries are when you put your lips together and blow out. The air escapes out of both sides of your cheeks, so that your checks blow out. It makes the sound of a horse, so to speak.” (Eyes closed again from dunking her head in the water.)

Friday, Feb 26

For Feb 25 CPAP. Reported figures 6 hrs 28 min with AHI=0.31. Events: 2 H, 12 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=13 L/min); oximeter on entire time AOK.

Morning sunrise brightly greeted us.

The collage above shows Woody coming down the drive past a deer on her way to the pallet she climbs to the cable-table, where she prefers to eat. The middle bottom photo left is the orange sunrise that John mentioned to get me out with my camera (my first view — almost looked like a wildfire in the hills above the valley). Normally, our sunrises are shades of purple and pink pastels, so this was strikingly different. I almost waited too long to get the rich darker oranges. Far right Woody awaits her morning vittles.

Got some remote collar information for Daisy to Jeri that she needs to follow up on. During my clean-up of the wooden cabinet at the end off our hallway, I found this collar we had for training Cedaridge Duch’ss Dancer back in the 1990s. It is not a shock collar but a vibration one to discourage behavior and encourage what a dog is supposed to do on a retrieve (or other behaviors) associated with obedience.

I left for town about 11:10, stopped and took a photo of two Eagles (mature & juvenile), having missed capturing one last week, at the end of our driveway (no camera along).

Here we have an eagle and a younger one a half mile down Naneum from our driveway.

I will eventually initiate my new cell phone that has a camera on it, so opportunities are not lost. I now have the proper MicroUSB to USB that I can remove photos from John’s camera that is like mine. I’ll check his soon to be sure it works. Back when he got the phone to replace his lost one, I took a few pictures on it.

I arrived at Dean Hall (my old department office hangout), in time to help set the tables for 12 people to eat at the Ruth Harrington Scholarship Luncheon. Monica (the Geography secretary) is in our group and she and Carrie were the hostesses. It was a fantastic lunch — a Caesar salad with large pieces of grilled chicken, and an Olive Garden Italian dressing, creamy and quite nice. They had fresh rolls and soft real butter, with cookies and ice cream for dessert. I rushed through the food, brought home my chocolate frosted chocolate cookie to share with John, skipped ice cream, and took off for the AAC for the planned Bingo fundraiser for Parkinson’s disease. It was well attended and I was an hour late getting there. The staff knew I would be arriving late. I had previously decided to pay $10 for four cards, and had my check ready. I managed to win Bingo on 3 cards to get some coupons. At the end, we pick what we want from two tables of certificates and packages, and place one half of a ticket in an associated cup. I was fortunate and won a long-sleeved tee shirt with the Seahawk colors from Knudson’s, a local wood & hardware store. Oddly enough, I won one of their sweatshirts last year and gave it to John, who wore it into the store and thanked the manager for the donation. I suppose I should do it this year to thank them again. They also gave sweatshirts again this year. Other certificates for $10 purchases were given out, from Knudson’s and other places, as well as several $20-25 certificates at other stores (Bi-Mart) and several different restaurants, plus many free large pizzas, mostly from Pizza Hut. My being gone for an hour left me with fewer coupons than in the past, but I still walked away with a nice gift, and we had fun, for a good cause. Associated food on tables with red tulips (the international symbol for Parkinson’s research), and lemonade was served with sherbet, pretzels, fruit, and a raspberry layered cake. Below is my reward for winning Bingo games, the long-sleeved tee shirt, which I might wear to exercise, or John might wear to prune, if their temperatures warm before they finish.

On my way out, I walked by a table of take-away items with pamphlets and pens that had a penlight on one end. That will be handy for when I get home in the dark and need to write down my mileage and don’t wish to turn on the inside car light, which is easily forgotten and will run down the battery.

From there I went by two places — first, to Bi-Mart, for a special price on canned cat food. Only problem was they overcharged me, $2 / box, but I realized it, and they corrected it. I also found my GenTeal Gel on sale for $2 off, so $2 was the number of the day. I stopped another place to deliver a box and bags of clothes from several friends, and my own purging, to put in the organization sorting for the upcoming BNE clothing share. Finally, my last stop was at Bouillon Hall, on campus, where my office was from 1997 to 2008, to drop off a bag of professional clothes for the CWU Career Closet. {Mentioned Tuesday.}

I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening on one piece of music to try to coordinate it with Martina McBride’s version on the web, which did not match the score I had put into my computer to print for our group. The song is, “I’ll Be All Smiles Tonight.” Her big voice is in a 5′ 3″ body.

Here is the on-line link with Martina singing with the Chieftains.

Saturday, Feb 27

For Feb 26 CPAP. Reported figures 6 hrs 41 min with AHI=0.90. Events: 5 H, 5 CSR, 5 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=18 L/min); oximeter on entire time AOK.

I spent the entire day working on music, cleaning and sorting clothes, washing dishes, filing, and worrying about other things for the future, medical, musical, and tax related. John worked on several long-delayed outside projects, including cleaning and sharpening the chainsaw. He cut one 4″ piece of young Cottonwood and announced it stupendously superb. I think he meant the saw.

Sunday, Feb 28

For Feb 27 CPAP. Reported figures, 4 hrs 37 min with AHI=1.08. Events: 4 H, 3 CSR, 6 RERA. No major mask leaks (max=10 L/min); oximeter on entire time, with high SpO2 and normal pulse. Apparently, I removed the mask after a 1:03 a.m. H, and a CA @ 1:06 with a PP @ 1:15 a.m., and awoke at 4:00 a.m. realized it was off, and replaced it.

We have both been working, me on the blog and John on cleaning up Ponderosa pine limbs cut when cold and snow stressed the deer. As soon as about half the ground was snow free they lost interest in both trees and hay. They are still around but haven’t said what they are dining on.

We saw a pheasant today. John has seen it recently, and I seldom have seen one here, just lots of quail. I tried to get a picture of it, but did not succeed. Deer were coming over the fence into the driveway and checking him out, so he left.

I spent time with two people trying to match them with a timeshare for upcoming trips. If we do not use our timeshares expiring after two years, on May 31, 2016, we lose access to a lot of trading power and use of them goes away. This condo-by-the-week thing is something we got into when still in Idaho and a local place (new) had a sales pitch we could not refuse. In 1988, with the move to CWU, we went from a semester to a quarter system, couldn’t use the week as intended, and began trading it. Then found friends could go more often than we could. God laughs when humans make plans.

Hope your week was fine.

Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan