Category Archives: Marcia

Wotcher, World

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Well, I *intended* to put up at least a brief post last night, but the world conspired against me. Or Jack Frost did. Hard to tell, really.

Marcia is doing well. Her surgery last Monday went off without a hitch, and she’s plowing through her Physical Therapy goals without hardly blinking an eye. Of course, when she plows through those goals, she reaches points of real pain pretty quickly. That’s what the pain meds are for – to control things while she does the necessary work.

Speaking of work, other than a couple of hours worth of email, I haven’t done any remunerative work to speak of since the second day of this year. So this morning I was up at my usual time, got Marcia rolling, then settled and fed, and started working (from home) myself. This is now possible because our routine is stable enough, and Marcia’s recovered enough, that I can get an hour or more of continuous time in. There’s not much point if I can’t get at least a clear half hour, since the productivity ramp-up from interruptions is a killer.

More when there’s more to tell.

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DoD reported no new casualties in the last week. Militant Islam continues to be a global problem, though.

Going Fast

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The year sure is flying by. It seems that New Year’s Day was only a couple of days ago, and already 1% of my year is gone already! As anticipated, I did get some flooring installed in the basement on Parade/Bowl Day, too:

Vinyl plank flooring

Vinyl plank flooring

The flooring goes down pretty easy. I made use of my Dremel multi-tool to get under the edges of door jams and such. In the last couple of days, I fabricated some maple edge transitions, and got them installed today (pictures some other day). There’s still floor prep + painting and moulding to apply before the project is done. In fact, I still have to peel up another 10×10 space of vinyl sheet from the basement kitchen area. But that should go quickly, one hopes.

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Tomorrow, Marcia trades in her right knee for an upgraded titanium model.  Wish us luck.

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DoD announced no new casualties in the last week.

Gone Fishin’

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Or more rightly, back from fishin’ …

Marcia & her yellow perch

Marcia & her yellow perch

Friday we headed out of town, driving to Deep Creek Lake for a long weekend. We stayed three nights at a nicely-appointed lakeside condo in McHenry. Fishing on Friday evening, Saturday (on a boat rental) most of the day, and Sunday morning until the rains moved in. Nothing of real keeper/eater size was caught by either of us (though we could have kept Marcia’s yellow perch, pictured above with captor). We cooked in most of the time, only going out to Ledo Pizza on Saturday evening. Oh, yeah … and Marcia slaughtered me when we played Rummy.

I barely turned the computer on over the whole weekend, which is why I’m here now – a day late and several dollars short. So be it.

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Our condolences to the families, friends, and units of these fallen warriors:

  • Sgt. Charles C. Strong, 28, of Suffolk, Virginia, died Sept. 15, in Herat province, Afghanistan while conducting combat operations.
  • Maj. Michael J. Donahue, 41, of Columbus, Ohio, died Sept. 16, in Kabul, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered from an enemy attack.
  • Stephen Byus, 39, of Reynoldsburg, Ohio, working as a civilian supply specialist, died Sept. 16, in Kabul, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered from an enemy attack.

 

Improbably So

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A relatively lazy day for me today: just shopping, laundry, and coffee roasting. Yard stuff consumed the Saturday. Hot and muggy, still tonight, but storms are coming, and cooler weather is (unusually) due by mid-week (yay!) The garden is starting to produce some tomatoes and more peppers to join the zucchini and cucumbers. Maybe first salsa next week!

Marcia’s doing great. Up and down the stairs like a champ … a hobbling champ, but much progress every day. She may be done with the cane by the end of this week, too, which is stellar.

In my tiny elective time, for work I’m starting to bone up on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, which was released a couple of weeks ago. There are some big changes at the system level in RHEL7, worth learning more about before I go into a rapid track course and certification exams at the end of the month. For myself, I’m getting into Harvard’s Statistics 101, via iTunes U. Statistics seem like they should be intuitively “easy”, which is usually, well, wrong. So learning more fundamentals will do me good.

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For a second consecutive week, no casualties have been announced by DoD.

Summer Arrives in Force

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Yeah, we’re making mid-90’s and up this time of year (both temp and humidity), although that storm gave us a couple of nice days in the mid-80’s, Friday and Saturday.

Marcia news: She’s mostly tapered off her pain meds, with a plan to be fully off by week’s end (or earlier), and driving, too! She got fed up with the walker by Friday, and put it to the side. Now she’s using the cane everywhere, which is much better for her in several ways. Her gait is better, and she leans less on the cane than she did on the walker. More mobility, the faster the recovery will go. Yay!

The week in pictures:

From the garden

From the garden – first of the summer.

So, those were yummy. But then there was the Fourth of July, and the day after that …

Lexi disagrees with bangs

Lexi disagrees with bangs

The noise was still going on the day following the Fourth, so she walked into one of my cabinets and looked like she’d prefer it if I closed the door. Then today (Sunday), the heat came back … in more ways than one:

Spicy grilled chicken

Spicy grilled chicken

We had spicy grilled chicken. The prep was in a habañero/pineapple marinade, then I grilled all of the chicken. I dressed mine with lots of happy, happy jalapeño.

 

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No new casualties were announced by DoD in the last week. So that’s good.

At the Edge of the Woods

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We’re not out of them yet, but there’s more scrub brush at the edges, right? Stuff that needs pushing through before we can be out of the woods? Yeah, that’s it. Overall, Marcia’s doing well. We got here home midday on Wednesday, and had formal outpatient PT on both Thursday and Friday. We managed a lot (relatively) of exercise yesterday, including a couple of walks up and down the sidewalk on our block. So she’s improving rapidly. Today: blood test (for effectiveness of blood thinner) and PT.

Me? By the time I was done with all the chores plus the Marcia-care, I was wiped. That’s my reason for failing to post last night. Sorry about that. This week I’ll be working from home as many hours as I can manage, starting in just a couple of minutes…

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Our condolences to the families, friends, and units of these fallen warriors:

  • Staff Sgt. David H. Stewart, 34, of Stafford, Virginia, died June 20, while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
  • Lance Cpl. Brandon J. Garabrant, 19, of Peterborough, New Hampshire, died June 20, while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
  • Lance Cpl. Adam F. Wolff, 25, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, died June 20, while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
  • Sgt. Thomas Z. Spitzer, 23, of New Braunfels, Texas, died June 25 while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.

Another Marcia Update

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As of this evening, she’s still in hospital. All of the Occupational and Physical Therapy goals have been met, but her hematocrit number remains low (but not alarmingly so). So they decided to keep her another day. Excellent day of movement, up and down stairs plus lots of walking about. That’s all I’ve got for you, now. Ciao!

Hip Replacement Update(s)

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Update 1130 EDT:

We were up at 0430 this morning, and left for the hospital at 0520. Got her into pre-op by 0630, with surgery scheduled to begin at 0840. Lots of paperwork and people coming in and asking Marcia what her name was, and why she was in the hospital. I *still* think she should have made a list, and given a different answer to each questioner. The staff might not have found that amusing, however. They wheeled her back into the OR at 0830. I went into the waiting area, and … waited.

At 10:15, Marcia’s surgeon reported that all went well during surgery. They were 10 minutes away from wheeling her into recovery when I spoke to him. I came home to walk the dog and get a spot of lunch. I’ll be back at the hospital by 1. Marcia should be in her room by then, and I’ll hang out with her for a few hours.

More when I know more, but possibly not until late. No AT&T cell service, at least in the lower levels of the hospital.

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Ready for tomorrow

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Marcia gets even more bionic tomorrow early, with a full (left) hip replacement. They’ll have her on her feet in the afternoon, walking around and doing stuff on Tuesday, and presuming everything goes dory and hunky, home on Tuesday evening. Wow! We expect wonders from Dr. King and the great staff at AAMC. Wish us luck.

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I’m glad to note that DoD has reported no casualties in the last week.

A Lovely Day for an Anniversary

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Yep. Sixteen wonderful years I’ve been married to Marcia. To celebrate, she worked on a t-shirt quilt for a customer, while I … went to work. But this evening, on the way home …

Got my gal some roses

Got my gal some roses

She seems to like them. She also got a sewing thing accessory as a pressie, while I’ve got a set of E. E. “Doc” Smith paperbacks headed my way. We’re so romantical. We’ll go out to supper to complete our celebration one of these days.

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Marcia got a FitBit thing a while back, and she likes it very much. It helps her keep track of a lot of the things she needs to. Since I’ve been trying to do better on that front, like this (this evening):

Burned a kilocalorie

Burned a kilocalorie

I could also do better at keeping track of such things, as well as managing my portion control through better records keeping. But I chose a different bit of gear: a Jawbone UP24. I executed the purchase through Amazon, which saved a few bucks, and I have had very few problems puzzling out how to make the App interface operate. I’ll report further on the product, the app, and how/if it’s helping me with any of my goals at some ill-defined later date.