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

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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

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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

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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

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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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Archives: available upon request.

Haiku:

subtle signs of spring

thunderstorms and meadowlarks

promises of beauty

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flower 12

flower 11

Well, for every hour of sleep that I lose I’ve gotta pay for it with more sleep somewhere… so thirteen hours of sleep got me up at 15:30.

I did make almost all of the phone calls that I needed to make, however.

The cardiology lab called early this morning and I called them back and got the report from the device check last week, it was fine. The nurse also set me up with an appointment in September to see Dr. Seals again, the cardiologist/cardiac electrophysiologist.

Lots of physician appointments this week, all of them with folks that I really like.

flower 4

That’s a silly thing to say… I like them all, that’s why I picked them, heh. Cardiologist – 22 years… GP-25 years… endocrinologist – 3 years. All really nice people, and competent.

Shortly after I got up we went to Lazio’s and then to the store… I think that I still wasn’t awake yet….

We did get some mint chocolate chip ice cream sandwiches, I figgered that they’d be worth the 25 carbs and the extra shot, and I was right, they are. Probably be an every-other-day thing.

I’m already really sleepy, it’s only 22:45.

I had to do my pills this morning before I could take them, and I need to make another trip to Walgreen’s before two week’s worth of boxes are filled… I was three pills short of getting it completely done.That’ll be on the list for tomorrow.

flower 1

Jean’s getting her MRI tomorrow and she’ll have the surgery in about a month. She’s really looking forward to having two good knees, heh.

Hopefully, we’ll be able to travel to ArKansas for Sawyer’s birthday party three weeks after her surgery… we might have to prop her up in the back seat, but she really doesn’t want to miss that!

Jean made Tuna Salad for supper, very good. I love her tuna salad.

In fact, I love almost everything that she cooks/makes… the almost is there ’cause there are some things that happened in my childhood to prevent me from liking certain dishes… I’m sure that almost everyone has had the same experience.

Images today are still from Blackburn’s greenhouse….

flower 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 1

flower 4

A very nice day.

Jean got all kinds of accolades for being such a good mother, and I missed mine and I know that Karen’s kids missed her….

I ate the other half of my breakfast sandwich from yesterday, still pretty damned good.

We went out to Walgreens and got prescriptions and that was about it.

flower 7

It was a beautiful day, though… it’s supposed to be 81 F tomorrow… and 93 on Tuesday. I’m not ready for summer, no no no!

Wednesday it gets reasonable again, with highs in the low 80s at least until Sunday. It’ll be an up & down week. We’ve got the AC going in anticipation….

I fixed steak for supper and we had asparagus with cheese sauce, and it was wonderful. And we started watching “The Scarlet Pimpernel”. Pretty fun movie.

flower 8

I got up all by myself this morning… at 10:!5. Had a coupla pots of tea before eating my sandwich.

Jean got up shortly after that, she says, but stayed downstairs to finish up the laundry.

So it was a nice relaxing day… I got caught up on Words with Friends, but that was a coupla hours ago, heh. I’m trying to limit the time I spend playing that, even though I love it… it takes a lot of time.

What I really need to do is limit the time on every play… like to 3 minutes. That would only be like an hour a day. But it takes more time to figger out the cool words, which is what it’s all about anyway….

Flower images today are from yesterday… and I’ve still got a bunch more unprocessed. And I spelled “flower” right today!

flower 10

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Archives: available upon request.

Haiku:

subtle signs of spring

thunderstorms and meadowlarks

promises of beauty

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

fkower 8

fkower 1

Nice day.

Once again, I didn’t really sleep well last night.

Jean went down to Hot Java for breakfast sandwiches… that could get to be a habit.

Jean and I went to the greenhouse on Gage, Blackburn’s, and she bought some plants and I took pictures of every blooming flower in the place.

I used the D60, I still don’t have the Tamron lens that I ordered for the Mark III, dammit. They said that it would be 5-7 days before it would ship and it’s been almost two weeks and I haven’t heard from them… but they haven’t charged me for it yet, either.

fkower 3

I was tuckered by the end of that trip, but Jean wanted to get more plants, so she dropped me off and went to the set-up in the mall parking lot and came home with more plants.

So I sat down & processed ten of the images, decided to let the next hundred be tomorrow’s project.

Still not really feeling well… my belly’s sore like I’ve got an sub-dermal infection. I’m gonna be seeing my doc next Wednesday and get some antibiotics if that’s it.

fkower 4

It almost has to be, even though my sterile technique is impeccable, I thought. I’ll be using my thighs for the injections until then.

Heather, JD’s SO, told us the story about her dad injecting himself through his shirt and got an infection… he stopped doing that, heh.

When Jean got home we watched two hours of British comedy and an hour-long English cop program from the BBC on PBS… no commercial interruptions, I like that.

No plans for tomorrow, we might just be. Or rather, I might just be… I’m pretty sure that Jean will be doing a bit of gardening.

And… we have a frost warning for tonight… but the low will be 36. I don’t know how that works. They used to warn of frost in “low-lying” areas, and we’re 110′ above the river, so we should be OK.

Heh… I noticed that I misspelled “flower” on all of the names of the images… “fkower” is kinda cute, though….

fkower 7

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