Archives: available upon request.

Haiku:

subtle signs of spring

thunderstorms and meadowlarks

promises of beauty

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flower5

flower3

Nice day, the weather’s a bit cool, making me re-think my decision that it’s time to start wearing shorts….

I got up rather late today after a very restful night, and pretty much didn’t get anything done at all.

The days are really short when you don’t get up until 15:00…  that was a thirteen-hour sleep.

flower4

It kinda bothers me that I need so much sleep… making up for those years of insomnia that still gives me fits every few months.

If I just knew that I wasn’t gonna be able to sleep, I could get up and get stuff done… but when I’m having one of those spells I want to sleep more than anything and try to stay in bed so that will happen.

flower2

O’well, it’ll all even out some day.

We went to Grover’s and brought home a slab of ribs and beans and potato salad, even though we ordered beans and cole-slaw.

I had only taken insulin for the cole-slaw (lot fewer carbs than tater salad) and not potato salad, so I don’t know where I’ll end up on my blood glucose tonight.

More flower re-do images from 2010… the nice thing bout flower pictures is that there are all kinds of ways to present them….

flower1

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Archives: available upon request.

Haiku:

subtle signs of spring

thunderstorms and meadowlarks

promises of beauty

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rose 2

flowers 1

Nice day, weather-wise and otherwise.

There was a bit of a sunset, but it wasn’t all that good… so I didn’t snap a shutter today. I did dredge some flower images off of the RAID and processed them… I really wish that I would have started shooting RAW sooner than I did.

Jean went up to Hot Java and got breakfast & coffee for us… she let me have bacon today! She’s a lot more stringent about my low-salt diet than I would be, I’m afraid.

Plans for tomorrow: replace the bulbs in the tail-light of the truck and start the job of cleaning off my desk to have a place for my scanner so I can re-start that project… I’ve had it on the back burner for way too long.

rose 1

I’ve actually got someone interested in the truck… it would be nice to be rid of it. I love it, but I don’t need it and I don’t use it.

Kinda watched TV most of the afternoon… I can do that while being on facebook with the iPad and also play Words with Friends… they sent me a message that I could now have 30 games going instead of 20.

And that’s gonna be a big no thanks, I think… I know that I don’t have to spend that much time playing, but I do. And I could probably find another 10 people willing to play with me, but see above: time.

flowers 2

I have been making hastier plays and I find that I’m losing more, and I would like to be able to take the time to do cool words when I have the tiles… but there’s that time factor again.

Jean went to her WFT meeting tonight, and came back home with the idea that another group should be started that would include men and separate from ACT and be invitation-only. Interesting things going on there. Sounds like fun to me.

I am, of course, prohibited from being a member of the WFT, heh.

We are going to have some perfect spring weather for the next week or so, with highs in the upper 70s and low 80s and chances of rain starting Friday night.

rose 4

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Archives: available upon request.

Haiku:

subtle signs of spring

thunderstorms and meadowlarks

promises of beauty

—————————————————————————————————————-

sunset 2

sunset 7

One month until summer, WhoooHoooo!

I’m really not a big fan of summer, especially the long hot part without a cloud in the sky for weeks and weeks… maybe this one won’t be that way, I hope.

Drug myself out of bed today for my 14:15 appointment with the dermatologist… had a peanut butter and honey biscuit for breakfast.

Purple flower

My blood-sugar numbers have been pleasing me lately, it’s been a few days since I had a reading over 170, and more and more are in the 120 range.

But I know, just when I think I’ve got it figgered out? It will throw me a curve ball that I have no idea how to handle.

So, the dermatologist: Very nice guy, wasn’t impressed with my ear at all, just gave me some lotion to put on it for a coupla weeks and then give it a break and do it again for a coupla more weeks and if it’s still there in two months come back and see him.

Heh, I just put that on the calender… otherwise I will have no idea when I started the treatment.

He also removed a growth (by freezing) on the back of my head that I didn’t really realize was there… well, I kinda did, ’cause I would pick at it occasionally, but I didn’t put the occasional picking with something being in the same place on a constant basis. Well, yeah, now that you mention it, that does sound rather stupid….

So now I have a bump on the back/top of my head that I’m gonna keep my hands off of.

Interesting that Google Earth couldn’t find his office address but Tom-Tom did just fine with it.

We were only home for a while and it was time to go to the Topeka Science Cafe, where we listened to a woman give a talk on teaching quark-level physics… pretty fun. She runs the web site quark.com if you’re interested, it’s stuffed full of physics stuff on a level that I can kinda understand….

sunset 6

We had supper there and it was pretty good… I had the shrimp basket and Jean had the brisket that she thought was pretty good.

And we came home and watched more or the Moore, OK tragedy… happy to hear that the death count was lower than originally reported…. I was thinking it would be around 80-120 and I’m happy that I was wrong.

We’ve got nothing at all on the calender tomorrow other than sending out some boxes to Washington… and sleep.

The sunset wasn’t really worth driving out to the hill for but I did do some shots from the front yard.

sunset 5

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Archives: available upon request.

Haiku:

subtle signs of spring

thunderstorms and meadowlarks

promises of beauty

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bird in tree

sunset 6

I feel so badly for the people in Moore, and in OK City, and really, for Oklahomans everywhere. The destruction I’ve seen on TV was horrible.

Their senator Tom Coburn (and their other senator and two of their reps) voted twice against relief for the victims of Sandy… and Coburn’s also implicit in the alteration of the white-house emails regarding Benghazi being faked and released to ABC. Asking for help. Yeah, we need to help the tornado victims… but fuck him… just fuck him and his fellow senator and the two reps.

Typical republicans, if it ain’t good for them, it ain’t good for the country. Fuck ‘em all.

As an aside, good strong storm shelters could be built in every school in tornado alley if we’d stop giving the rich corporations welfare and tax the rich at an equitable rate.

sunset 2

As a day, it was OK…. got up around noon, went to my anti-coagulation nurse… and I was doing 4.4 INR. That’s dangerously high, dammit, and this is why I want to go on the other medication.

I’ve been taking PCN, of course, and also Advil for the gouty stuff… and that jacks it up. Interestingly, the PCN has not screwed with my blood sugar that much since I’ve been taking it.

We met a friend serendipitously at Lazio’s and had a nice conversation with him… there’s kind of a kerfuffle with the atheist group that I haven’t gotten involved in yet, and I might just stay out of it completely.

oblate moon

We watched the coverage of Moore most of the afternoon and evening and then there were some clouds around sunset so we headed out to observation hill and it was rather disappointing… the clouds were every which way but west, dammit, except for one little bit… and that might have been from the power plant that’s in that direction. But, when it comes to sunsets, clouds is clouds, heh. Ya takes what ya can gets.

Tomorrow I’ll get my ear biopsied or cut off, one or the other… and that’s the end of my doc appointments until July, I hope.

And then there’s the Topeka Science Cafe tomorrow evening, looking forward to that. I still want to make a logo but I haven’t got around to doing that yet….

sunset 7

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Archives: available upon request.

Haiku:

subtle signs of spring

thunderstorms and meadowlarks

promises of beauty

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flower 9 accidental roly-poly

flower 2

I got up a bit late but I did get to see the sun briefly, heh.

From then on until into the night, it was full-time weather… some bad stuff happening all around us, but none right here.

I made a trip to Dillon’s and got biscuits ’cause Jean had promised me biscuits & gravy and nothing would stand in my way, heh.

Before the storm got here, I got some pictures of our flowers and then I put them (the flowers) underneath the chairs where they would be safe from hail.

flower 6

I spent some time taking video of the storm coming in, but every time I would stop recording, there would be a big bolt of lightning that I really would have liked to capture. Luck wasn’t with me today, at least photographically.

But hey, we didn’t get blown away.

I did make a conscious decision to not do the dishes, though, since it would be wasted work in case we DID get blown away….

And it’s damned near midnight so I’ll post this up before I finish writing it and adding the images….

After the storms became uninteresting, we watched some Big Bang Theory and a coupla How I Met Your Mother episodes.

flower 10

And… one of the images that I took had an accidental roly-poly on the flower, the red one. Yeah, I know that there’s another name for them but I can’t remember it right now and besides, I like “roly-poly”.

Tomorrow I have an appointment with the anti-coagulation nurse, and I’ll have to tell her that I’m leaving her for another drug, one that doesn’t need to be monitored so closely, like once every six months or so. Xeralto… it will save me a lot of worry about my diet, although I don’t really plan on making any big changes there, the little cumulative changes won’t kill me.

And that’s important to me.

So… all I have to do is have my INR be below 3.0 tomorrow… and I do have to check with the pharmacy to make sure that it’s at least partially paid for.

flower 7

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Archives: available upon request.

Haiku:

subtle signs of spring

thunderstorms and meadowlarks

promises of beauty

—————————————————————————————————————-

cactus 1

red cactus flower

I pretty much frittered the day away but I’m not really sure how that happened… but that happens a lot to me.

We didn’t get up until 13:00, which would explain a lot of that.

Decided to go to IHOP for breakfast and after that we went to TJ MAXX… got some stuff there.

And then we had to go to Wal-Mart, Jean was unable to find any pants that she liked and that was the last resort.

Lots of rude, crude people in Wal-mart, more than usual. And parents behaving horribly… Jean gave the stink-eye to one couple and they straightened out… she’s still got it, she says. Heh.

red flower

We came home and watched TV for a while and we both started getting hungry around 21:00, so my bright idea was to go to Sonic and get foot-long chili-dogs.

And they were very good.

We watched some season finales that had been recorded while we ate, keeping an eye on the weather. Some pretty good storms in the area and we’re in a tornado watch until 04:00… but on radar, the storms seem to be dying. For today, at least, they’ll be back tomorrow.

succulent flower 4

Gas prices are going up again what with the holiday coming up… they used to go up a penny or two a gallon … now it’s ten, twenty, thirty cents leap at a time.

Jackasses.

Storm coming in… I just love standing outside when a thunderstorm is approaching… the outflow from the storm whipping the trees and a few raindrops hitting me and that wonderful, wonderful smell….

I remember that from my childhood on the farm by Kremlin in 1952….

pink cluster

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Archives: available upon request.

Haiku:

subtle signs of spring

thunderstorms and meadowlarks

promises of beauty

—————————————————————————————————————-

flower 2

flower 11

Strange day, in a way… but nice.

I slept all night, and all morning, and half of the afternoon… got up at 15:00 or so.

Well, it wasn’t really all night, I got to sleep around 03:00.

We went to Lazio’s for breakfast and toyed with the idea of going to the atheist koffee klatch at the Blackbird and decided against it.

We just don’t seem to be very social lately, not sure what’s up with that, but neither of us are unhappy about it, so it’s all good.

One thing that I’m kinda pissed about… all day long we’ve had these fluffy clouds, you know, the fluffy ones that look like different things to different people… and then, around sunset, they are all gone. WTF, world? It would really make for a pretty sunset to see the bottoms of these clouds illuminated by the setting sun… and we deserve that!

flower 1

Well, I do, and if I get it, everyone gets it, ’cause I will document the shit out of it and put the images on here!

I’m really kinda sure that’ll happen someday soon.

Hopefully, my new lens will be here by then, the Tameron 18-270 mm one. I’m also looking forward to getting out in the country somewhere and doing some star track photos with the fish-eye.

Interesting, I was in a conversation on FB today, and I mentioned (concerning the Benghazi “scandal”) that someone who “leaked” falsified “information” (the altered e-mails supposedly from the white house) was not an informant to be protected, but a con-person who duped you and who did not need to be protected.

flower 13

Rachel Maddow pointed that out on her show tonight, adding, and I paraphrase, “that person *IS* the story”….

Ah, politics. I’m really sorry that the tea party is happening to our country… but when I look at the countries where theocracy has prevailed (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan) I know that we have to keep fighting to keep our nation secular.

And, sorry to say, that means that I have to fight my friends and neighbors, because they are not only voting against *their* best interests, but mine too.

And I really thinking that they should not be allowed to prevail, here in the land of the free… where 3% of our citizens are in jail or on parole. Yeah, right. Half of them for drug possession, just so the private prison industry can keep their profits high.

Images today are brought to you from yesterday via last Saturday and through the courtesy (that I paid for) of Fractalius.

flower 10

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Archives: available upon request.

Haiku:

subtle signs of spring

thunderstorms and meadowlarks

promises of beauty

—————————————————————————————————————-

flower 10

flower 11

Nice day, had trouble getting up, of course, what with the last two nights being so screwy.

We made it to the endocrinologist’s office on time, and when he saw us he did have some good news.

First, my A1C was 6.8! It hasn’t been below 7.2 for a long time, and this bodes well for the future.

Second, I’d lost five pounds since my last visit there. Which is no big deal, really, because my scales at home say that I haven’t.

All of my other labs (thyroid, etc) were normal.

He looked at my charts on my iPad and pointed out that even though there are lots of ups and downs, the trend  for my glucose is gradually getting lower… just since I started Carb-Counting.

And I didn’t have to go anywhere else to get my fasting labs done, since they’re part of Cotton-O’Neil and Stormont.

flower 1

The next stop we made was IHOP for the usual 2X2X2 and then we did something else, I forget what.

O’yeah, we went to the Burlington Coat Factory and Jean bought some pants and I bought some dish towels and a drying mat.

Then on to the bank.

And on to Big lots from there, where we bought car chargers for our phones and iPads… we normally leave a cord in the car but it’s always getting into the house… these won’t be any good in the house, so they’ll stay in the car, I hope.

I had forgotten to plug my phone in last night and it ran out of juice as I was waiting for Jean.

I did get to talk to JD today for a while, and that was nice. I’d been trying to get ahold of him for three or four days just to talk… if it would have been important I would have texted him, heh.

flower 13

We came home after that, and watched the “Big Bang Theory” for an hour and then decided to go out for supper… we went to McGuey’s, which seems to have become our favorite Mexican place.

When we got home, two of the shows that Jean was taping were having their finales and were halfway done, and since the device only has two tuners, We couldn’t wtch anything else. Jean watched TEDs with the ROCU and we’ll watch the finales some other time. And I came in to process images and write.

I really feel good about the three docs that I’ve seen this week, got nothing negative from any of them, quite the opposite. The only problem that I might have is with the dermatologist who will biopsy my left ear… I hope that they don’t have to cut my ear off, that’s my best ear… and how would I keep my glasses up?

In actuality,I would only lost a small portion of it near the back. And I’m not worried about it at all, except if it would conflict with Jean’s after-care, which I definitely have to be around for… hopefully that biopsy and any necessary treatment would be done before she has her knee replaced.

Images today are from last Saturday, once again… and that’s about got all of those done. But I have lots left over from the trip to the hill.

flower 5

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Archives: available upon request.

Haiku:

subtle signs of spring

thunderstorms and meadowlarks

promises of beauty

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deer, meet gobbler

sunset with moon 1

Yet another sucky night, but it was a great day nonetheless.

We got to bed earlier last night, and again I went right to sleep… and woke up, again, at 05:30 and was awake until 09:00, trying to sleep.

Got up about 11:30 after snoozebarring for a bit.

Had a peanut butter & honey sandwich for breakfast & a cuppa tea… 60 carbs… and then we were off to see the cardiologist at 13:15.

It was a good visit… and I will be going off of Coumadin and onto another drug that doesn’t need to be monitored so closely… and that will be great. Coumadin is greatly affected by diet, and this other drug isn’t… can’t remember what it is right now but it starts with an “X”….

Xeralto is the name of it, and I need to find out if my insurance covers it…it’s about $3K/year… I’ll go by Walgreens tomorrow and have them do the research, they know my policy better that I do… the pharmaceutical part, at least.

sunset 8

That the doc told me to research that probably means that it’s terrible expensive and not always covered, (He says that I do qualify medically…). but so is seeing a nurse in the anti-coagulation clinic on a frequent basis.

But… in between visits… I’ve got the feeling that my INR isn’t really very stable… lately I’ve been getting lots of bruising, indicating that it’s too high… and I really don’t know how much salad to eat to keep it in line… because being too low has a whole ‘nother set of problems.

After that… it was off to see my favorite doc, my GP. Ostensibly, I was there for him to look at some skin lesions, in particular the one on my left ear that he “froze” off two months ago.

He looked at the questionable lesions, one on each nipple and one on my back, and declared them to not be a problem… they had probably been there for a while.

The ear, though? He wants a biopsy… which will be scheduled before Jean’s surgery. If there is a problem there, it’s a slow one.

He prescribed an antibiotic for me for my belly and my sinuses… yeah, it can get both places at the same time! Isn’t modern medicine wonderful?

Well, it’s penicillin, been on the market for almost a century in some formulation of another, heh.

And he wrote in the notes that we discussed the C-PAP… that’s for Medicare. The C-PAP is doing well, and I can’t sleep without it… and I’ve been using one for ten years. No-brainer.

After seeing him I went to the lab to get blood and urine analyzed for my doc appointment tomorrow… the endocrinologist. Looking forward to that. Hoping for good news….

sunset 2

I also need to get a fasting test, a lipid panel. I’ll do that either tomorrow or Friday, no hurry on that one.

By the time we got out of there, Jean was famished, so we stopped by Sonic and got her a sandwich and she ate it and then we stopped at Walgreens and dropped off the ‘Script… it was gonna be a while so I decided to pick it up later.

We both got on the computers and then the TV, watching MSNBC (I’m pretty liberal, in case you haven’t figgered that out yet) and I looked outside about the time Rachel came on… and it looked very promising that there might be a sunset worth recording.

So we headed out to Observation Hill and watched a beautiful sunset and I got some good images of some deer and a turkey. And the turkey flew off gobbling away as I watched, Jean said that he (it) landed in a tree in her line-of-sight.

After the sun had set, we went to Jason’s and got a salad, nutty mixed-up salad… excellent, as usual. Lots of different greens and grapes and pecans… and just plain good stuff.

I’ll be up early again tomorrow for my 13:15 appointment….

deer 1

 
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Archives: available upon request.

Haiku:

subtle signs of spring

thunderstorms and meadowlarks

promises of beauty

—————————————————————————————————————-

flower 6

flower 10

Horrible night, or rather morning.

Got to sleep at 02:00 as soon as my head hit the pillow, but I woke up at 06:30… and could not get back to sleep. Stayed in bed trying until past 10:00, though. Gave up on it, came upstairs, made a pot of tea and started the day.

And… I wasn’t good for too much today at all, needless to say.

Sat and watched TV a bit, and then it was time for Jean to go get her MRI that they need to get started building her new knee.

flower 4

Pretty fascinating process… I’m surprised that they’re not feeding the data into a 3-D printer… but what they are probably doing is feeding the numbers into a C-C lathe… which is kinda the same thing, only in reverse.

She had her WTF (Women of Topeka Freethinkers) meeting at the Outback, so I drove us home and she went off to that.

I was starting to get hungry again, so I had an ice cream sandwich….

When she came home, she had a box with her… carrot cake, so I had a bite of two of that, it’s pretty good.

We watched the Big Bang Theory until Rachel came on, then we watched her, of course.

It seems that the President is very busy dodging mud-balls thrown by the republicans… they are trying as hard as they can to come up with something, anything, to make him look bad.

flower 2

I think that the IRS was doing their jobs, although they have some horrible-written rules to comply with.

Benghazi has been blown way out of proportion… it was really over after Hillary testified. But the republicans don’t seem to know when their heads were blown off, they’re running around like headless chickens.

I think that when it all gets sorted out that it’ll all drop far from his feet, although he will take the blame for it.

Benghazi, the IRS… what else was there? Seems like there were three things, but I forget the third one. Oops.

Still using the images from Saturday, but I’m gonna have to get some more before long.

flower 1

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