| Good News - Bad News |
[May. 11th, 2008|10:43 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  grateful | ] |
The good news - Mom didn't have to go to work today on Mother's Day. The bad news - she couldn't get out of the subdivision due to down trees and power lines. We lost two trees including one of the big ones out front. See picture:
and
This one in the back was one of those 60-70 feet high Southern Pines, broke off about half way up...
The one in front could not have fallen in a better direction. Any other way and it would have hit the house or blocked the driveway or street. |
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| The End of the Week End |
[Feb. 24th, 2008|07:52 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | relieved | ] |
What a weekend...
Got home on Friday night from a week in Indiana. Had spent 7 hours in a rented Yukon with three sweet old southern ladies. Drove from Co headquarters in Evansville, In. through Kentucky, Tennesee, down through Atlanta and back to the plant listening to their conversation. Did I say they were southern? 7 hours of y'all, sho 'nuff, dropped vowels and consonants and generally poor english. But enough about that.... I wanted to get home to see Mom and Aaron who was home for the weekend.
At 4:00AM Saturday morning Aunt Missy called with bad news. Gracedale had sent Grammy to Easton Hospital Emergency Room because she was unresponsive. They were asking Missy for instructions if things got worse.... Should they perform CPR? Should they put her on a ventilator? She wanted my opinion. She said that Grammy looked like she was sleeping... snoring... but she couldn't be awakened. Her blood sugar was 76 - not too low. They were doing testing but they thought that she had a stroke. I put Mom on the phone and we both talked with Missy. I was pretty sure my Mom wouldn't want to be put on a ventilator. But I felt strongly that she should have CPR performed until at least they could find out what was wrong. I called Aunt Darlene. Uncle Joe is in Florida and she's got a bad hip and there's 5 inches of snow, but Darlene made her way over to the hospital. The hospital decided to do a CAT scan.
Around 8:AM a resident checked Grammy. Her pupils were pinpoint and when he moved her head her eyes did not lock in on anything - he thought she had had a brainstem bloodclot - a stroke he thought there was brain damage. But the CAT scan didn't reveal anything. They needed to do more tests and they moved her to intensive care. I started to do my laundry from my trip thinking that I was going to be packing again right away. Should I fly or drive. I called Aunt Michelle in Florida who was already up on everything that was going on and she had decided to drive and offered to pick me up on the way...
At 10:15AM Mom and I headed to Covington, her in the Civic and me in the rented Yukon so that I could drop it off. I got to the Enterprise rental place a couple of minutes before Mom so I waited outside for her. When she pulled up she yelled out of the car "She's awake! She's awake! Missy's been tying to call you. She woke up!" I called Missy and she said that she and Darlene were with Grammy and she just kept yelling "Mom! Mom!" and Grammy responded with a yell "What!" and then she opened her eyes and started crying. They talked with her and she talked back to them, though not very coherently. As if she was confused. She was, of course. She didn't know what had happened.
Later Saturday they determined that Grammy's blood sugar had gone too low. That in combination with her poor kidney functions (they are at about 10 - 15%) had caused her blood to go acidic. She was suffering from metabolic acidosis. But NO stroke and NO heart attack. At 10:30 last night I got another call from 610 area code. I answered Hello... I heard "Hi Den"... It was my Mom.... She asked me how I was.... Isn't that just like Grammy?
Today Grammy got moved to a regular room because the hospital thought she was having too much fun in the IC Unit. Her primary care Dr. is putting her on a different Insulin, one not likely to drive her blood sugar too low, and her Kidney Dr is changing her medication to help with the acidosis. I talked to her again today. We chatted for a few minutes... She wanted to know about her three grandsons... "Does Aaron like school? Is Mark still in Alaska? What a pretty state, I saw a program about it on the Discovery channel. How about Brian. Why is he in San Francisco? and his wife, how's she?" While we were talking I could hear Aunt Missy and Aunt Michelle (Yeah, she got there already) in the background, talking loud. I asked her if she would do me a favor. She said "Anything". I said "Will you please tell them to be quiet because you're talking to your favorite child?" And she did, of course. They broke out laughing. I broke out laughing. And best of all Grammy broke out laughing. It was the best thing I've heard in a long time.
We have to go north for Easter and help Grammy celebrate her 82nd birthday. |
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| Let's make that horse |
[Feb. 7th, 2007|12:56 pm] |
Hey Jean,
Mom and I need to get back to some stained glass. Let's get this project going again, OK? |
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| B'Day Thank You |
[Jan. 7th, 2007|01:39 pm] |
Thank you, Brian and Jean, for the "Get-away-to-Dinner" certificate. I've wanted to try Ruth's Chris Steak since I began to hear how good they were. We will enjoy!
Thanks! |
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| A Christmas Tradition |
[Dec. 19th, 2006|12:53 pm] |
I am so looking forward to having our family all together for Christmas this year! I think we should let Jean in on one of our most cherished Christmas traditions. NO! Not the one where I have a big argument with Aunt Missy over how lumpy her gravy is. And not the one where I give someone a present that I forgot that I gave them last year. I'm talkin' 'bout goin' to da movies!!! Anyone wanna see Rocky Balboa??? |
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| Stained Glass Project |
[Jan. 31st, 2006|09:33 pm] |
I'm going to use my LJ to track our cross-continental collaboration with our daughter in the far north.
Hi Jean
I've been thinking about our collaboration - how exactly we will do this and its time to discuss. As you know, stained glass art is just pieces of glass, cut (broken) into shapes, wrapped in copper foil and soldered together. The most difficult part is the shape of the glass piece. There are limitations to what you can do. The shapes are made by scoring the glass with a scoring tool which creates a tiny fracture in the surface of the glass. Then you break the glass (using another tool by putting pressure on either side of the fracture), hoping that the break follows the score. If its a straight line score - no problem, it'll follow the line every time. If you put a small curve in the score, it still breaks on the score. But the greater the curve, the more the chance that as the break occurs along the fracture, if the fracture finds another imperfection along the way it will go astray.
I'm telling you this because I would like to invite you to create the pattern that tweetypie and I will use to make the glass figure. Once we look over the pattern and decide if our skills can make the pieces, then we'll ask you to choose colors and glass to use. Here's a web sight that will help us along the way.
http://www.warner-criv.com/default.aspx
Once there, check out the free patterns from the menu on the left. You can see how patterns are usually designed. You can also search for Horse and see a bunch of good ideas. I'm thinking that as we get this going we'll post pictures of the techniques and progress along the way.
What do you think? |
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| Hot Dogs, House Paint, Termites and Mom's BIG NEWS |
[Nov. 8th, 2005|09:29 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  quixotic | ] |
Last Friday I was at the football game - Salem made the playoffs again:
http://www.salemseminolesfootball.com/ - but I didn't see much of it. I was making hot dogs on the grill with the band boosters. The game was a defensive struggle but Salem came out on top and advanced to the second round. Two more wins and they get to play in the Georgia Dome again. I did get to see some of the half-time show and I thought the band was great, as usual. I'm glad that Aaron can take such pride in his contribution to the band. Also last week we contracted to get the house painted. It needed a few repairs (window sills that had started to rot) but I found someone that's doing a great job. Also last week we discovered that we had unwanted houseguests. Some termites had discovered that the ten-year treatment in the earth around our home had expired and they thought we were inviting them in. I'm afraid they were mistaken. We infected them with something that they can share with all their little friends. Here's an excerpt from their web site:
"Termidor is made from a revolutionary new nonrepellent or "undetectable" chemical technology treatment. That means termites cannot see, smell, taste or avoid Termidor. Instead they contact, ingest, and share it with their nestmates. This is in sharp contrast to older liquid termite controls, which rely on repellent barriers that termites can finds breaks in or avoid completely. After Termidor is applied, termites that contact it transfer it to every other termite they in turn contact in a unique process called the "Transfer Effect." And because Termidor is engineered to be slow-acting, termites have ample time to spread it throughout their entire termite population."
Sorry to be so graphic but this stuff fascinates me. The termidor "infects" them like a virus. It interrupts their lifecycle process of shedding their outer shell and the bug then expires - naked! I can hear them keeling over right now - dead and cold.
Here's an amusing video comparing systems, 9 minuts long with special guests like Mike Myers, Sly Stallone, and Tony the Termite. Enjoy... :
http://www.unexco.com/pub/BAITS.MPG
Last but most important - Mom's big news (read in tweetypie11). Not only does she get away from the very physically demanding patient care - but no more weekends!! No more weekends! No more weekends! No more weekends! No more weekends! No more weekends! No more weekends! No more weekends! No more weekends! No....... more........ weekends..... I guess that means she'll be planning more stuff for me to do on weekends.... with her..... of course. Rake leaves, clean hobby room, repair closet door, organize garage, ..... {gasp}. |
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| 1st real entry |
[Oct. 29th, 2005|11:04 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  peaceful | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Does anyone here know In-A-Godda-Da-Vida | ] |
Ok, I'm going to have some fun with this - my kids do!
First - this is a busy week. We're trying to get a lot of things done around the house, preparing for the holidays and just doing good maintenance. Some new carpeting, exterior house painting and wood repairs (window sills and window shutters), already got two of the bedrooms painted. Just sprucing things up a little.
Latest update from work is that the bidders for the plastics and adhesives business have been narrowed down to three - all of them investment groups: JP Morgan, Blackstone, (third I can't remember right now). I'm hoping for JP Morgan since they own a competitor in our Stretch Wrap business which should make our share of the business bigger and hopefully more profitable. We had a "due diligence" visit on Friday which means that a prospective buyer sent an environmental consultant to the plant to see if we have any radioactive waste or anything less serious buried in the backyard. Should know by the end of November.
Now something I enjoy in the posts of others - some humor:
http://www.ifilm.com/player/?ifilmId=2533314&pg=superbowl2004&skin=default&refsite=default&mediaSize=default&context=product&launchVal=1&data=null
Also check out Craig Ferguson Week in Review
Hope this works... |
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