Are you ready for this?

Are you ready for this?

June 12th - your analog TV stops receiving over the air analog broadcasts. The long talked about and delayed transition from analog to digital TV occurs in just under two weeks. Do you have your digital TV tuner? Or a new HDTV? Or maybe you subscribe to cable or satellite - you don't need to do anything yet, because they probably provide a device which outputs an analog signal to your good old Channel 3.

Remember when TV was simple?

Housekeeping note - Yard Work 2009 #10 - May 25th. A little later (and thus the grass was longer) than needed due to the Memorial Day Weekend. Now - we're in a stretch of warm without rain - maybe the grass growth rate will slow down. If you compare the your current 'weather' with your expectations due to the 'climate' of where you are - it seems that it is never normal. Right now is just about Rose Festival time in the Portland area - and that usually means rain on your parade.

For an interesting book on how we as humans deal with randomness in everyday things like the weather - check out The Drunkard's Walk - How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow. Not too mathy for those of you without a math degree. Interesting ways to think about experiences and how our brain classifies them. Like - with ten checkout lanes at the grocery store - why do you always pick 'the slowest line'?



Just how random are these letters? Did your brain run a randomness test? Probably not. I'll bet even unconsciously you are looking for patterns. One pattern is highlighted for you.

Can you find your name in these letters?
- What if your name was John Twelve Hawks?
What symbol is made by following the letters in a word you can make up?
- What does that mean?
Why are six hearts visible?
- Does that have anything to do with six letters in 'random'?

If the letters are random - there is no meaning there. But what if they are carefully placed on the table, and not just poured from a container? Did someone hide a clue for you to find? Or is your brain trying to make sense of randomness?

Fun stuff!

Marshmallow

Memorial Day Weekend
South Beach State Park
Newport, Oregon

A family tradition

Tour de Cure 2009

The cool looking poster for this year's Tour de Cure in Oregon...come join us!

http://tour.diabetes.org/goto/TeamTegan2009

Yard Work 2009 #9

May 14th - break in the rain, and a jump start on the weekend. Lawn work number nine of 2009.

May 16th - my neighbor mows his lawn for the first time this year. Guess what his yard looked like before he accomplished that task....

The previous week, our other neighbor had a yard service come in and trim some bushes, pull some weeds, and lay down some nice bark dust. Her yard was looking pretty good - and now I didn't have to think about the bushes growing through the fence. A few days later - up goes the For Sale sign. Not quite sure why she is moving - she has only lived there a year and a half, and we really don't see her much at all. Maybe it is the mortgage crisis...

Maybe the work involved in keeping up a house was too much for her. It sure ain't no picnic. She did have woodpeckers knocking on her chimney. For a while - we had the same problem. They land on the chimney cap and hammer away on the metal cover. Inside the house it sounds like a machine gun in the fireplace. We solved this problem by putting a small 'dome' of chicken wire on the cap. The woodpeckers could no longer land where they wanted to - so they moved to the neighbor's house.

I don't have any woodpecker photos - but here is a squirrel that was chirping away quite loudly yesterday morning. He wasn't happy about something. Maybe he had been talking to Woody...

Yard Work 2009 #7 & 8

Another mindless post...feel free to ignore. My in-depth analysis of days between lawn mowings is still to come.

Cut #7 was April 30th - a quick break of a sunny day in between rain.

Cut #8 was 8 days later on May 8th. A sunny day after quite a bit of rain. In fact - soccer practice was canceled this Monday night because of the rain downpour. Not your normal Pacific NW light rain - this was a Midwest thunderstorm.

Some cool photos to be posted soon. Stay tuned!

Yard Work 2009 #6

Quick housekeeping post - please ignore. I know these yard work postings can be boring.

April 22th - cut number six of 2009. Seven days between cuts - and three bags of grass each.

It's a jungle out there...

Clean out my refigerator!

We need help cleaning out my refrigerator.

We've got the normal food and drink in our refrigerator. We've also got something you probably don't have in your 'dairy' section. You would probably put eggs or a butter dish in here.

In our frig, this is where we keep insulin.

Lantus and Humalog Insulins - fresh and cold

Insulin is hormone that in a healthy person is made in the pancreas. In a person with Type 1 diabetes - the pancreas no longer makes insulin. In the body, insulin acts as a key that unlocks the cells doors allowing them to use glucose as energy. Without insulin, the glucose cannot get from the bloodstream into the body's cells. As the blood glucose level rises, the kidneys work hard to extract out the excess glucose. This causes excessive trips to the restroom and a great thirst as soon much water is being removed from the body.

Since insulin is a protein, a type 1 diabetic cannot take a pill or drink a solution of insulin. The insulin would be digested and never reach the bloodstream. Diabetics must take insulin subcutaneously using needles. The bottles of insulin a diabetic is using should only be at room temperature for about a month. So the future bottles of insulin that will be needed are kept cool in a refrigerator.

There is currently no cure for diabetes. Diabetics must manage their blood sugar levels by balancing the amount of food they eat, the amount of exercise they get, and the amount of insulin they inject. This process is like those performers who balance multiple plates on sticks. Sometimes it seems like everything is going well and no great effort is needed to keep them spinning. But then a little something happens - like a breeze blows by, the performer gives a little too much spin, maybe they bump the table, or something unexplainable happens and a plate just falls.

Diabetes management is just like this. For days everything can be going well - blood sugars are in the normal range, insulin injections are timed perfectly with meals, exercise is normal, and the body is healthy. Throw in a late meal, a missed insulin dose or maybe mismeasured dose, a little bit more effort in an exercise routine or soccer practice, a restaurant that serves up a regular Coke instead of a diet Coke (no joke - this has happened more than once), coming down with a cold....or something else that you'll never figure out. Soon there can be high blood sugars causing discomfort in the muscles or low blood sugars risking the possibility of becoming disoriented or passing out.

After all that is over - well - you keep on doing it. This is not a disease that can be cured. You don't go to the doctor's visits to get well - you go to see how well you are managing a process that your body should be doing on its own. Four (or more) shots of insulin a day. Eight (or more) finger pricks to get out the blood to be tested. Carbohydrates to count on everything you eat. Guessing how much less insulin you need for those 15 minutes of exercise. Fighting with the insurance company over the most absurb things (how can they be so incredibly blind? Oh wait...I forgot. It's a profit thing.) Diabetes is a real thing. Concentration is always needed. No time off. Not for birthday parties with cake. Not for Halloween. Not for midnight snacks (unless you wake up incoherent due to low blood sugar). No vacation days from diabetes.

So how can you help us? How about donating to the American Diabetes Association (ADA)? The ADA is involved in efforts to improve diabetes care - and efforts to find a cure. There are many research programs in need of money. Our family is participating in one of the fundraisers again this year. The Tour de Cure is a series of bike riding events all over the USA. Bike riders pay a small fee to register, then go out and raise money to support the ADA. Last year our team of riders raised $8,340. We'd like to raise that much or more again - but the donations this year are coming in very slowly... It is disappointing - but I realize people just may not have that much extra money. Maybe if you can't donate - help spread the work. Pass along this posting and our donation page URL. http://tour.diabetes.org/goto/TeamTegan2009 Or you could join our team and raise some money yourself. We are looking for some more riders...

If you want to donate - head on over the the Tour de Cure page and go to the Portland, Oregon event. We'd love it if you donated to (or joined!) Team Tegan and Her Daddy - but anyone registered would love your support. Check out the ride in Minneapolis - Uncle Kevin, Auntie Paula, and cousins Jake, Luke, and Kyle have their own team - Tegan Power. Sponsor them! Both Tegan and Her Daddy (that's me!) would be very grateful.



Help clean out our refrigerator.

Repositioning of the steps

This past weekend I finally got a latch installed on my new gate. I added a new gate up near the house when I was rebuilding the fence this past summer. My only problem is that I needed to move the steps I had built at the old gate location. I also had to get a latch installed on the new gate, and I just about finished up the fence/gate work as the November rains hit last fall.

I had to raise up the latch catch a few fractions of an inch, due to the way the latch fit together. A small piece of metal from the garage worked for this. I wasn't wearing work gloves at this point, which soon caused me some pain. As I was screwing in the first screw - it caught the metal, which began to rotate. So - at drill speed - the sharp corner of this piece of metal sliced a finger on my left hand holding the piece in place. A few drops of blood later, putting on some gloves, and a small scrap of wood kept the metal from spinning any more. The latch was now installed.

New latch - with the owie bad metal

In order to place the steps, I had to do a little digging first. Before I could do the digging, I needed to remove some of the ground cover plants. No problem here.

I then needed to remove some dirt near the curb so I could place some flat concrete blocks. I needed these to be the support at the bottom of the steps. Due to the slope up to our yard, I also needed to remove some dirt where the step hangers would be. More dirt also needed to be removed from the top of the bank for more concrete blocks to provide a firm foundation for the top of the steps. Since Sunday was over 80° - this was starting to feel like a hard summer's day worth of work. Connor was a big help to me. He managed to move the concrete blocks from the old stair location to the new. There were just about at his maximum strength - but he did it. That gave me more time to keep digging. But - I still ran out of time, though I did get the steps level and stable. I still need to do a little more construction - a small landing or one step up to the deck. I guess that will have to happen on another day.... But for now - we can get out the back fence without having to walk to the corner of the yard. This would have been really great all winter long when the grass was soaking wet each day. I also need to make the latch workable from both sides of the fence...a piece of string would work, but I am thinking of something a little more sturdy. Check back later for that solution.

Steps moved...not quite OSHA approved yet, but workable

Yard Work 2009 - Extra!

Pretty flowers no one sees - they are on the back side of the house

The weather was so nice this weekend - we got out in the yard and tended to all kinds of issues that had waited patiently all winter. Maybe not patiently...but the issues themselves could only nag at us. I certainly felt fine ignoring them for a while.

Mick did a great job weeding out our flower beds and the long strip down our front fence. It looks awesome now.

I cleaned up some large branches that had fallen in our backyard from a neighbor's tree during the December snows. I trimmed up the small stuff, and cut up the large main branches for firewood. We're going camping soon - so that pile of cut up branches just might last about an hour or two.

Right...don't believe everything you read

I also pulled out the edger and spent way too much time edging. I posted a while back about our 'bump-less' edger that didn't work. It still doesn't work, so every couple of feet of lawn I have to pull off the housing on the bottom of the edger and advance the spool.

Looking at the mechanism in there - it seems like it has a good idea behind it. I guess if the line gets short, the edger should rotate faster. Then a little switch should move in place based on solid physics principles. When the edger is stopped and started again, the mechanism (I like that word) should advance the spool. This rotation should allow more line should go out, thus slowing down the rotation of the motor. Simple physics. Maybe I just can't figure out what angle to hold the edger. Maybe it needs a sudden stop to jolt the little switch. Maybe the switch has some friction in the wrong spot, preventing it from moving at the right time. Maybe I just bought a defective product - and the other 99,999 edgers of that 99.999% defect-free batch are fine.

Enough of that...it still bugs me.

Look at that edge!

I also got to work on moving the step for the new gate I built in our back fence. Connor helped me with this - I had a lot of cinder blocks to move from the old location to the new spot. That will have to be another post...stay turned Uncle Earl. I know you can't wait for the Fix The Fence saga to be completed.

Soccer 2009 - Warm!

Tegan and Connor had their fourth class this Monday. We had nice weather all weekend, and it continues to hold on for a few more days. This Monday was nice and clear and warm. No sweatshirts, long pants, or gloves this week. Tank tops and shorts were the attire this night. The high temp during the afternoon was at least 80° - most likely higher, but our Oregon Scientific thermometer was most likely in the sun - since it read around 89°.

Tegan's class gets a pointer in a scrimmage from their coach

The setting sun, Mt. Hood, and the warm breezes almost made up for the freezing time we had a week ago.

Can't wait to see what next week brings!