Category Anything and Everything

Last night I actually pulled into a dry driveway for the first time all week.  It isn’t just my imagination that the amount of rain and standing water we are experiencing right now are among the worst of the last two decades.  I happened to get a notification of a NextDoor thread of dozens of people in my area complaining about the same thing.  There were multiple long time residents saying this is about as bad as they can remember.

The problem lies in the half assed drainage system out where I live which basically does nothing.  All properties are supposed to have drainage ditches in front of them which are the lowest point in the yard.  If there is a house on a property there are culverts that allow the water to pass under the driveway.  This network of ditches are all supposed to drain into the canals the Army Corp of Engineers created in the 60’s to drain the area.  Well they don’t work for various reasons, mostly because they are not maintained by the county.  The end result is water piling up to insane levels.

I went out and checked on Kathy.  It looked like she ate some of the berries and tomatoes I put down.  She wasn’t better but didn’t seem worse either so I guess that’s good. When I came out to put her to bed she had already made her way up into the coop and was laying in the nesting box.  So about 6:45 I looked at the sun outside and decided I needed to take Elsa over to the park and walk.  The flooded property has meant walking her around the backyard has been a no go for a week.

It’s amazing the amount of fear she has when we first get there.  When I am trying to put her leash on in the back of the truck she shakes uncontrollably, despite my taking her to the park dozens of time. She knows it’s no big deal yet this is her reaction every single time.  The other side effect is near instantaneous pooping when we get out of the truck.  Last night she pooped, I picked it up and threw it away and then 60 seconds later she pooped again, unreal.

Despite her initial fear we had a nice walk.  I stay on the very outside boundaries which gives Elsa long stretches of limited scary things like children or loud noises.  The park was very alive last night, there was softball, soccer, and football all going on simultaneously.  I feel very fortunate to have such a nice facility so close to the house.  I caught this pretty sky driving out of there.

I still have not booked my flight to LA for the EUC tour.  With the CT scan coming up I feel I need to know those results before booking any travel plans.  Kathy’s status also plays into my trigger finger being on the slow side.

So you all recall me complaining about just how saturated the property is after getting slammed with torrential rain repeatedly over the last week or so.  With that in mind you can imagine the joy that filled my heart when I pulled in the driveway and saw that another massive rain event went through during the afternoon, dumping even more water.  It feels like this is about as bad as it can get.  We would likely need a solid week of little to no precipitation in order for the standing water to subside.

This coinciding with Kathy’s health demise has made it equally frustrating.  I moved one of the shelters I built to a high spot in the chicken yard so she didn’t have to be in the coop all day.  I was surprised when I got home to see she actually had the energy to make her way back up into the coop and into the nesting box on the floor.  I feel so badly for her.  I brought out some small cherry tomatoes along with the blueberries last night.  She ate a small amount but nothing substantial.

Last night I edited a video that I actually shot Monday night during the Eagles game.  The video, which I shot entirely from my couch, talks about the latest wheel purchase I made as well as the wheel sales I am doing as a result.  I’m selling three wheels, one of which I dropped off already to get shipped out to Damon in Texas.  If I can sell the other two for the numbers I am thinking it will help greatly in offsetting the huge chunk of money I have spent on PEVs the last few months.

Last night I also shot a brief 13 second YouTube Short.  Shorts have sort of become the new Vine for me, a platform I was very much into in 2013.  It’s all brief quick hitting videos, meant to capture attention.  For some reason my brain will lock into random visuals, moments or sounds that sometimes work out perfectly for this sort of format.  I think last night’s was one of the best.  In less than 12 hours it has 11,000 plus views.

Despite the property already being inundated Mother Nature once again let loose with her fury last night, dumping another huge amount of rain in a short period of time.  The degree of frustration I feel when I walk out into the lake which was once my back yard is immense.  Once the rain stopped I was able to go out and check on Kathy.  Evidently she did not have the energy to get up into the coop for shelter.  Instead I found her standing in the run, soaked.  I felt terrible.  I put her in the coop where she immediately went and laid down in her nesting box that I filled with fresh shavings.  She is getting very weak and feels incredibly light compared to how she used to be.  I keep trying to pamper her any way I can, surrounding her with treats she has always loved.  Unfortunately her interest or ability to eat them is severely limited.

Last night when I came back to shower during halftime of the Eagles game I found Elsa had dug herself into the pillow area of my bed.  At one point of her life she would have been scolded harshly and chased away.  I didn’t care and left her there, looking as cute as you can imagine.  She is back to flying solo as Don picked up Lucky yesterday.

Speaking of the Eagles game, they put on a hell of a performance last night.  Unlike week 1 where it was all offense and no defense, the Eagles held the Vikings in check, winning convincingly 24-7.  The team performance was a double positive for me as I have three Eagles on my fantasy roster.  Jalen Hurts pretty much single-handedly won my fantasy game for me, which I was trailing badly in at the start of the night.  It was a great win and hopefully is indicative of good things for the Birds this year.

So I got the results of my follow up blood test.  There was no mention of the PSA test this time, which I was glad based on the false alarm the prior results seemed to indicate.  However the CEA test clicked up 3 tenths from 3.5 to 3.8, not what I was looking for.  The fact that it went up made me agreeable to the proposed next course of action, having a chest and abdomen CT done in 10 days.  In the remote chance that there is something going on, I would be stupid to not have these relatively simple tests run to rule out anything nefarious going on.  I still feel confident I am fine and I am moving forward as if that is the case.

Friday night I was thinking about doing my bike ride but the skies were menacing.  It was good as it started raining shortly afterward.  I also figured since Lucky was there it would be best if I hung around.  So instead I put on my boots and weeded the ridiculously wet yard.  It was miserable as you could imagine.  I am counting down the weeks until wet season officially ends.

So Kathy had a bit of a plateau.  She still is sleeping in a nesting box on the floor and not eating much.  For whatever reason she can’t hardly get the blueberries down, even after I cut them into quarters inside before bringing them out. I bought watermelon at the store which she still is able to eat.  So even though she is weak and not eating much her energy level seemed to take a little bit of an uptick.  However much like I have heard about humans, I have seen in my chickens brief bounces up on the way down.  This week will likely be the turning point one way or the other.

Saturday morning before I ran errands I took Elsa and Lucky to the park to walk around.  Don takes Lucky on walks every day so he is used to it.  I wish I could get Elsa out walking every day.  Having her walk next to Lucky made it even more apparent how I need to keep working to get extra chub off of Elsa.  Her days of nothing but sleep have packed on the pounds, despite my efforts to reduce her calorie intake.

I did not take the dogs with me to run errands which probably confused Elsa.  Lucky gets car sick so I did not want to push my luck.  One of my stops was Home Depot, a place I used to frequent almost weekly, nowadays if I get there once every other month I’m lucky.  I grabbed some bags of sand to pile on top of the really wet spots in the chicken run as well as some garden soil.  I intend to reboot using the garden as it is intended.  I got a few lettuce plants to fuel the renewed inclusion of salad with my dinners.

Later Saturday afternoon I picked up Monique, she asked if I wanted to go to the psychic fair with her, something I did once before.  I said sure why not?  While we were there we saw her sister Margaret and her mom who had gone right before us.  Monique went in first, I spent some time talking to her sister and mom. Margaret is Leilani’s mom who was along and cute as always.

So the reading this time was with someone different, her name was Andrea.  Within seconds I picked up on her high energy and good vibes, the type of person I normally enjoy hanging around.  I did not ask for anything specific when I sat down.  She told me she felt like my grandfather and mom were there.  She said she felt like I was like my grandfather in many ways, which I am to some degree.  When she talked about my mom some of the stuff was very similar to what the last median said which was bizarre, referring to her inability to speak at the end which was true as she never regained consciousness after the heart attack.

Monique said I could ask for a “scan” where the median tells you what they sense about your wellness.  I was interested in this especially considering the recent blood test results, which I still am very skeptical of.   When Andrea did this she homed in on my heart but not a physical ailment but an emotional one.  She said she could feel I was carrying a lot of sadness and weight.  She said I still need to release these feelings.  She told me an interesting story that had to do with a simple mantra that she has seen time and again provide surprising positive results.  The mantra only consists of four lines:

I love you
I’m sorry
Please forgive me
Thank you

So when you see this your reflex reaction would make it seem like you are apologizing and I guess in a way you are but not specifically.  Andrea said putting this mantra out there, saying it and believing it, has a way of closing whatever emotional wounds you may still be feeling.  The 20 minutes I had with Andrea went quickly, she continued talking to me a good 10 minutes past the timer.  I like her.

After the session Monique and I stopped at Dunkin Donuts to grab coffee for ourselves as well as Margaret and their mom.  We took it back to their house and enjoyed it there while Leilani entertained us.  I 3D printed an owl bank for her which she liked. I felt useful as Margaret asked me if I could put together a potty training stand that arrived while I was there. I have finally reached a point where Leilani isn’t scared of me, she even gave me a high five when I left which made me smile.  She is such a cute little girl.

A good portion of my day on Sunday was spent traveling and filming spots for Xnito, the company that had me promote their helmet a couple months ago.  I did a mix of video, pictures, and drone footage for them.  It is supposed to be used in an upcoming ad campaign.  They are paying me for the footage but if I break it down by the amount of hours I spent I’m not going to get rich any time soon.  My hope is it results in more opportunities down the road.

I am now actively trying to sell some of my older electric unicycles.  I made another snap buy of a new model over the weekend.  I plan to sell three of my wheels to help take a large bite out of the big pile of money that has been spent.  I talked to my brother-in-law last night who I got into EUC’s during my Thanksgiving visit.  I asked if he wanted to buy my V11 for a good number.  He has had a deposit down on a new V11 for awhile but will be lucky to see it before October.  He said he was down with buying mine as long as he could get his deposit back.  One down, two to go.

When I got home last night it was amid yet another deluge, the third day of the week we have been buried in rain.  As I was outside doing chicken chores I felt a surge of anger as I sloshed through water in the yard that was several inches deep.  I swore out loud at the rain, as if it could hear me, expressing my disgust for these times of the year when I feel like I live in the middle of a literal swamp.

So I was supposed to play pickleball with the guy I know from the gym at the park by me.  He told me it was raining there as well but apparently not to the level it was at my house.  I told him to let me know if it stopped and I would still play.  To my surprise the rain did stop within 15 minutes.  He told me they were still going to play and to bring my cordless blower.  When I got there we used it to get any standing water off the court, it worked pretty well.  We played doubles exclusively, switching up the teams every couple games.  I felt I played pretty well overall and more importantly came out of the session not feeling like I reinjured anything.  It’s a good group to play with.  I look forward to doing it more often.

Kathy is slipping downhill fast.  Last night I put her on the perch but she looked too weak for me to trust leaving her up there.  Instead I put one of the nesting boxes on the floor and let her sleep in that.  I feel so bad for the old girl.  For her to be in that shape AND have the chicken area flooded out at the same time sucks.  Really the only dry place she can be is in the coop which is where I left her this morning.  She has even started struggling to get the blueberries down, a sure sign that the end is near.

Don dropped off Lucky this morning for his weekend visit.  60 seconds after Don brought Lucky’s bed in Elsa decided to go over and mark it which pissed me off.  Lucky and Elsa have hung out before but it has been something like 3 years since they last came nose to nose.  Once again, it sucks that the yard is half submerged, meaning I can’t let them just run free back there.  We will have fun regardless.

The decline I have been seeing in Kathy is following an all too familiar path.  A few days ago she did not make it all the way up onto the perch, stopping 2 or 3 rungs short on the ladder.  I picked her up and placed her in her normal spot. Last night I went in there to put her to bed and she was on the floor, she didn’t even try to get up on the perch.  I again picked her up and placed her where she normally likes to sleep.  This morning I came out and she was on the floor by the door, evidently she fell off the perch overnight.  I will probably need to start putting her in a nesting box for her safety.  It’s difficult seeing her getting so weak as she has always been the queen of the flock for so many years.  I just keep trying to spoil her the best I can.  She still gets excited by the handful of blueberries I give her twice a day.

I had more blood drawn this morning to rerun the PSA and CEA tests.  As I mentioned yesterday I already have my game plan established in my mind even if they say the numbers are the same, call me in 6 months and we will retest/reevaluate then.

This weekend I am going to be dog sitting Lucky, my buddy Don’s dog.  I have watched him several times in the past but it has been a number of years since he has been out at the house.  He is a sweet dog and I look forward to spending time with him.

On Monday I got a message from the clinic regarding my blood results.  I tried calling back three times during the afternoon and got voicemail.  So I called again yesterday and finally got through.  Like I mentioned last week they were testing for testosterone and cancer screening markers which came about when I revealed I lost 13-14lbs without really trying so far this year.  I guess the ARNP was being cautious.

So when I call I get transferred to the ARNP.  She tells me my testosterone number was good, 800+ which is higher than I expected.  However she also said the two of the tests for cancer markers were borderline.  One was a PSA test for prostate cancer and the other is a CEA test that measures substances that can be produced by cancer in the body.  She wanted me to come in Thursday to rerun the blood tests to verify the results.  I started having flashbacks to my “borderline” EKG which resulted in a rush of testing that revealed absolutely nothing.  However hearing information that these tests for cancer were not all clean was unsettling, of course.

After I got off the phone I went online and looked at the test results myself and utilized Google to make some sense of it all.  The PSA test interpretation by the ARNP seems off for sure .  There are three things reported on it, your total PSA, your free PSA and %free PSA.  My total PSA number was 1.2 which after researching is very low.  They don’t even pay attention until it is 2.4 and they get more concerned if it is 4.0 or higher.  My free PSA was .3 which meant my %free was 25 which is on the low end of the acceptable range, BUT there was very important information not being looked at.

Under the results it had a chart showing how the info should be interpreted.  It said if your total PSA was less than 2.5, your %FREE is basically irrelevant.  It seems to me like the ARNP just saw one number that was on edge of range and did not look at the rest of the info.  She was saying that maybe she would need to send me to a urologist to have my prostate checked further.  Uh no, we won’t be doing that.

The CEA test result was 3.5.  The “reference range” for this test is 2.5 or less for a non-smoker or 5.0 or less if you smoke. So I was outside the range but not by much.  Again after researching, a HIGH CEA number that causes major alarm is 20 or more.  So again, since I have never had this test before, 3.5 might just be a normal number for me.  So anyway I will let them draw blood again tomorrow but I have already laid out my treatment plan for them.  Test me again in 6 months and see if either number has changed significantly, if they haven’t, I’m good to go .  I think the weight loss is probably mostly pointed at stress and the fact that I just don’t eat as much food as when Cindy cooked for me.  I’m certainly not subjecting myself to another merry go round of testing to only come up with another shoulder shrug at the end.

By the end of the day I found myself being more angry than upset about the test results.  I’m a bit annoyed at the clinic being so eager to shuffle me off for testing.  I wonder if it is a bit of CYA mentality where in order to absolve themselves of any responsibility it is better to over test than under test and potentially miss something. Whatever the case may be, I walked around the house with a bit of a chip on my shoulder the rest of the night. I felt angry and unwilling to relent to the seemingly endless health/pain related issues that keep getting thrown in my face.  When I did my calisthenics in the bar park after work the reps had more edge, anger and intensity to them. Time may be coming for me but I’m not going down easily. I did at least catch another peaceful sunset to temper my anger.

Last night I fired up my Oculus Quest 2 for the first time in months.  It literally could be 6 months or more since I was inside the virtual reality the headset provides.  I think VR is extremely cool and I always had fun and interesting experiences in it but for whatever reason it has just fallen to the wayside.  Other things always take priority or seem more appealing.  The same thing has happened with WoW recently, I have hardly played the game at all the last several months.  I experienced this the last time I was single as well.  I thought I would have all this time to play around, doing whatever I wanted as much as I wanted and whenever I wanted.  Reality was not anything close to what I imagined.

This morning I dropped off the Tacoma to get the windshield replaced.  I still have no idea why the crack, which is now close to two feet long started.  Roughly $400 will take care of the problem.  The Tacoma will be getting some more love in the next month or so as it is overdue for a new set of tires.  I’m almost at 55K miles and still on the original rubber.

Last night when I pulled into the driveway I was greeted by another severely flooded yard.  You may recall I had just mowed Sunday because the yard was clear of standing water. I was glad I did. Thanks to a couple inches of rain in a short period of time, that changed in a hurry, it was a mess.  I have always felt the worst for the chickens when the yard floods.  It’s the reason I spent a couple thousand dollars bringing fill and sod into their area.  Even with my efforts there are some spots that still are submerged, including the sand in the run.  It’s miserable.  I can’t wait to have rainy season in the rear view mirror.

I was productive last night, doing some extended work in the the hobby room, putting together stands, starting prints, and just cleaning up.  Keeping the hobby room in a semi-organized state is a constant battle because of the ebb and flow of what goes on in there.  I concentrated on my main build table last night but there are other spots in the room that require attention as well.

I have been burning through season 5 of Cobra Kai.  I have loved the show ever since it debuted on YouTube Red years ago.

The last few days I have found myself drowning in a lot of negative thoughts that seemingly pop up out of nowhere and within milliseconds lead to a chain reaction of bullshit.  When that gets teamed up with the every morning occurrence of acute pain in my lower back quadrant that is approaching immobilizing at times, I am just a barrel full of sunshine and rainbows.  So as I am limping out to the chicken coop at 5:40AM to take care of Kathy, who I am watching fade away each day, I look up in the sky and see the bright full moon shining down on me.  I should have known.

My Friday was stupid full.  During my lunch hour I got another pickleball session in.  My knee which was randomly painful on Thursday was less so on Friday, although I still could feel shots of ouch depending on what I did.  When I got home I was thinking I needed to choose to either get a 10 mile bike ride in OR get the weeding done.  I decided to do, BOTH.  It was my first ride in awhile so I was looking to survive, not excel.  As I was pumping the tires I decided to pull out my phone and film a YouTube Short, something they began pushing this year.  They are short random videos designed to get attention.  In my case I thought popping the pump off the valve pressurized to 100 PSI was something random to get attention.  It did, over the weekend it amassed something like 7000 views.

I returned from my ride breathing heavy and sweating but motivated to immediately start weeding since daylight is decreasing nowadays.  I talked to Gladys on my headset as I roamed the yard so it helped make the task go by faster.  By the time I got back inside it was close to 8. Of course since it was Friday the pizza still needed to be made/eaten which I did, feeling like I definitely earned it that day.

Despite knocking the weeding out Friday it felt like I was spinning my wheels Saturday morning.  I just had a number of tasks that kept popping up in my head.  By the time I left to run errands it was basically the same time frame as a normal, weed on Saturday morning, day.  One of my early stops was at Gladys’s families house.  The 3D printed Hello Kitty I made for Gladys’s niece had lost a foot so I printed another one.  While I was there I was given a bunch of Honduran style food to take home with me which I really appreciated.  Gladys’s family is very kind to me which means a lot, especially since I have no family within 1200 miles of me otherwise. After stopping there Elsa and I went to Costco and Publix as well before returning home.  I did not eat lunch until almost 3PM, it was just one of those days where I felt behind schedule, despite my best efforts.

So one of the things I had to deal with was Directv.  The Eagles season opened this weekend so I was dreading the annual call where I have to explain to low level tech support how to get just the Sunday Ticket enabled for my account.  I have never had a year where this did not consume at least two hours of frustration on the phone.  So before I made the call I flipped on the receiver and noticed the picture quality was bad, like I had poor signal.  It was overcast which never helps but the signal strength numbers were really low, 50-60 instead of 85-100 they used to be.

I have had an increasingly more problematic issue with the satellite dish since the oak tree in front of it has become so large.  Repeatedly I have had to trim branches to clear my line of sight.  So I went out and stood by the dish, looking up in the sky along the angle that I think the dish uses.  I see some small branches down low that could be in the way.  I get the ladder out and do some dangerous tree climbing to reach them.  I get back down and check the signal meters again, they are basically unchanged, great.    I go back out and eyeball some more.  It looks like there could be more branches in the way but these are way up there, probably 30-40 feet or more, out of my reach, even if I throw all caution to the wind, great. The last thing I want to do is hire someone to cut these branches back, a problem that is only going to keep reoccurring over the years. I started to think about options.

After some googling I saw Directv has an option where you can STREAM just the Sunday Ticket, no dish required.  That would be perfect, I thought. Well it has some bizarre requirements like you have to either be a college student or can not get Directv service any other way.  I was trying to log into my Directv account but was stuck in a loop.  I got on an online chat and discovered that ATT, who had bought Directv years ago evidently is undoing that, Directv is it’s own thing once again.  Because of this a new account had to be created.

The chat rep I had seemed nice.  I mentioned to him how it would be awesome if I could convert to just streaming the Sunday Ticket.  He said he would look into if I could do it, he seemed to think I could.  After about 15 minutes of back and forth he abruptly tells me he was going to transfer me to someone in the streaming department who should be able to get me going, great!  So I get transferred to another rep who seems nice, they ask me a lot of the same questions but again seem confident they could get this going. However again, after a prolonged period of time I am transferred to a THIRD person that evidently is THE person for this request, ok great, I think.  At this point I had already wasted around 45 minutes on this chat session.

So this third individual is VERY confident that they can accomplish this, they even wanted me to call to cancel my existing satellite service awhile.  I told them I would rather wait to make sure the streaming option is available.  Again there are a lot of delays but always assurance that we were almost done.  However once again, suddenly, I am told that I would be moved to a supervisor that could assist me.  I was now over an hour of time on this chat and losing my patience.  I inform “Robert” the supervisor he was the fourth person I spoke to.  He makes zero effort to help and just tells me to call a phone number.  I was pissssssed.

Of course I had absolutely no recourse but to complain into nothingness.  However the incident was finally the straw that broke the camel’s back.  As I said, every year I have had this horrible experience trying to get the service activated for the privilege of giving Directv $450 or so.  The Sunday Ticket only shows games if they are not nationally broadcast.  With the Eagles, that means typically there were 4-6 games per year that the Sunday Ticket did nothing for.  So I asked myself the question, “Do I really need it anymore….”

Lord knows the last year or so has been filled with things that I have done for a long time dropping to the wayside.  I signed up for Directv almost immediately after moving to Florida.  That first year I had the dish mounted inside of a Home Depot bucket on a 4×4 inside of cement on the south facing lanai. Seeing the Eagles was that important to me.  Fast forward 22 years and although the Eagles are still important to me, with my Sirius XM subscription I already get the Eagles home radio broadcast for free which honestly is good enough most of the time.  Having to block off 3 hours on a Sunday to lay on the sofa just is not a great fit for me anymore.  Hell half the time I fall asleep for half the game or more.  Listening to the broadcast would allow me to multi-task which I normally am a big fan of.

So it was decided, I was canceling Directv.  Ironically when I called in to cancel, picking the correct menu item I was transferred to dead air.  I had to call back a second time to get it done.  The rep on the other line did not try very hard to keep me, he could tell I was pretty much done.  I felt an odd sense of relief once the cancellation was finished, no more two hour calls, no more dish dictated tree trimming.  I celebrated with another Short.

Saturday night I watched the latest Thor movie, Love and Thunder which recently released on Disney +.  Much like the last Thor movie, it was a bit too silly for me.  I love the sense of humor most Marvel movies employ but this one was a bit too much.  As a result I can’t go higher than B+ on it.

Saturday evening I also worked in the time to do a review video on a percussion massager I was sent. I have had a percussion massager for awhile thanks to Randall’s recommendation.  I actually like the unit I was sent a little more than what I have.  The video is nothing spectacular but hey, it’s a massager, what do you expect….

My Sunday was decent.  After grabbing coffee Elsa and I did our second 1 mile walk in the park in as many days.  It’s funny how she acts terrified every single time when I leash her up and 60 seconds later she is fine. While I was there a took a picture of this insane crack that started to appear in the Tacoma last weekend.  There is no impact mark, just a crack that started in the middle of the windshield and has grown another foot since then.  I have an appointment to get the windshield replaced on Wednesday.

I took advantage of my new freedom from being in front of the TV for the Eagles game. I put on my bluetooth headphones and listened to the game as I mowed the grass, a perfect example of why I like to multitask.  What I heard was the Eagles going up big and then begin gagging, with the game being decided by 3 points, fortunately in the Eagles favor.  Oh well it’s win, and the grass is mowed….

Kathy is going downhill.  Based on my unfortunately extensive experience with chickens demise, it would not surprise me me if she is gone in less than a couple weeks.  Her weight continues to fall and her activity/energy level is really dropping off.  It makes me sad because I know what is coming all too well, including my ultimate reaction to it.