Category Archives: printer

birthday, misc, Molly, printer

That Was The Week That Was

6 Comments

Am I the only one here old enough to remember that TV show? (Even I remember it only from reruns on late night TV; it originally aired on the BBC way back in the early 60’s. I seem to remember seeing it as late night filler on a Boston UHF station in the 70’s.) In any case, it supplied a catchy title so the memory space it occupies in my mind is not totally wasted. For the insanely curious, go read the Wikipedia synopsis at That Was The Week That Was.

Last week I mentioned that I would write about the beautiful printer/scanner I won from the wonderful ladies of Aiming Low and HP. Late last week I finally got it unpacked and set up. (My delay was making it dangerously close to losing my tech geek card – true geeks must drop everything to play with any new piece of equipment!) Setup was trivial since it has built in wireless connectivity. And the photo prints are spectacular! Thank you Aiming Low and HP! Oh, it also looks pretty nifty as well:

Nothing like all black with a neat little touch screen to appeal to the tech geek in me.

L was home this weekend and we had the big thirtieth birthday party for my friend the writer to attend. A group of friends, great BBQ, two kinds of cake, and pie – the ideal way to say happy birthday. It doesn’t seem possible that he is that old. I have known him since he was in high school and it just doesn’t seem to be that long ago. (I suspect that is a symptom of aging – everything seems to have happened just a moment ago. When you are young, it seems like everything is yet to happen in the far distant future. The older you get, the faster things seem to happen.) In any case, Happy Birthday Bryson!

Time for Molly and I to head out for our walk. I think Molly will trust me by now. This morning it was time for her annual veterinary checkup and vaccinations.  She and I hopped in the truck went to the bank where the drive up clerk gave her a doggy biscuit. Molly thought that was pretty neat. Then we drove out to the clinic and Molly could smell all the dogs and cats and other critters in the gravel parking lot. That really excited her. She led me in the doors and sat with me in the waiting room. But when it came time to sit on the scale and she really didn’t want to be still. But we got through it and into the exam room.

That was when all those things that she blames me for happened. The cold stethoscope to the chest, the thermometer up the rear, and of course the three shots. All while I am holding her against my chest and beginning to look like I sprouted a white fur coat from her shedding on me. We came home and she carefully spent most of the day sleeping across the room from me in my office, raising her head to be sure I wasn’t up to another sneaky trick whenever I moved. By this evening she was willing to let by-gones be by-gones and was rubbing furballs all over my legs. So I think it is time for us to go. {*grin*}

diabetes, printer, work

Excuses, Excuses, …

5 Comments

Time for me to continue being the bad summer blogger that I have become. If I were the type for confession, I’d have to begin with “Forgive me father for I have sinned. It has been one week since my last blog post…” I actually have been busy for the last week and the blog took the back seat to real life. In the words of that famous aphorism, “Shit happens!”

What have I been doing? Well … on the work side I am trying to keep everything on track for our upcoming 5K Run and Pet Walk. So I have been doing everything from artwork procurement to tee shirt manufacture. And of course still working on all the contracts to get our new facility constructed. And trying to get all the staff through FEMA certification and then CART certified so we can proceed with the plans for our expanding role in emergency preparation (with some of the staff definitely exhibiting a bit of resistance to getting trained). (I would never have believed the number of youngsters that have deep seated fears of web based learning.)

On the personal side, my annual medical tests a few weeks ago indicated that the beta cells in my pancreas finally gave up the ghost. Now, after decades of all sorts of drugs and hormones to trick my liver, pancreas, and muscle cells to make up for the ever decreasing number of beta cells (and thus less insulin production) to keep my blood glucose under control, I am a fully insulin dependent diabetic. The last week has been consumed with the process of adjusting dosages and timings for the daily injections of insulin, working with the fact that walking 6 miles can drop the blood glucose levels radically. Now my walks require a bit of forethought and preparation that was absent before.

The process has been interesting. Modern diabetic injection equipment uses such fine needles that the shots are painless.

It’s hard to convince yourself that it isn’t going to hurt to stick a needle in yourself, but after a few times with no pain, the mind begins to accept it. There are definite advantages to the insulin treatment compared to the oral drugs and hormones. The biggest plus from my point of view is that the chronic muscle pain has faded – which is great. The biggest drawback thus far is the number of finger sticks to test glucose level as we (my internist and I) try to get the base levels of insulin right. I’ll try to put together a post on the whole experience later on if anyone is interested.

I have been so busy that I haven’t had time to even open the box with the new printer that arrived via FedEx. I’ll wait to disclose more until I can do my thank you up right. I’ll leave you with the teaser that I won it on another blog. (Yeah, shocked me too.)