A busy week but no fun…………………………………..

As always, first the chronology:

1/7/18 – Sunday – Up and out early to church. Left the church and went over to the hospital to see Gary. He was discharged a little after noon. Stopped on the way to take him home to drop off the prescriptions for him. Then got him home. Went back into J-town and made a quick stop at McDonald’s for a fish sandwich while I waited to pick up the prescriptions. Picked up prescriptions and dropped them off and headed home. Got home around 3PM. Took a nap. Up and had dinner. Then to my room for the blog. To bed, some TV and sleep.

1/8/18 – Monday – Up and the usual exercises and clean up. Then got the truck and took Kathy to the church to inventory things for Dare to Care dinner on Wednesday evening. Then to Olive Garden for a late lunch. To GFS to pick up items for the church. Back to the church to drop things off. Picked up an item she had dropped off to have the zipper fixed on. Then home. Did chores around the house. To my room and computer work. Chatted with the guys on the radio. To bed, some TV and sleep.

1/9/18 – Tuesday – Up and the usual things. Then up to Mike and Julie’s to look at their garage door. Couldn’t do much other than check the obvious as Julie’s car was parked under the drive unit. So came back home after a stop at the bank. Kathy was out getting her hair done so I checked email and the radio bands. Nothing doing well so came up and waited for Kathy to come home then we went for Chinese food. Back home and she was off again to run errands. I did chores around the house. She came home and we had dinner. Down and chatted with the guys on the radio. Then bed, computer work, Big Bang and sleep.

1/10/18 – Wednesday – Up and out to take Gary to the doctor’s office. Home and had lunch then took a nap. Up and did some things on the computer and out to pick up Gary for dinner at Dare to Care. Home, desert and to bed. Computer work, Big Bang and sleep.

1/11/18 – Thursday – Up and out early for shopping. Went to Rural King for deer feed, Lowes for light bulbs, then to Middletown to CVS for decongestant. Up to Homedepot and Meijer’s then lunch at Bob Evans. Then to Mike and Julie’s to wait for the garage door repair guy. Mike came home so we left and came home. Unloaded the car. Had some desert then a nap. Kathy went to bell choir practice. I had a snack for dinner then to my room to play radio and do computer work. Upstairs to bed, did diary, watched some TV and sleep.

1/12/18 – Friday – Up and did some chores around the house, did exercises, got cleaned up. Lunch and then to my room to do some computer work and play radio. Kathy made a great dinner that we had around 5:30. Back to my room and chatted with Mike on the radio. Some computer work. Up to bed, some more computer work, TV and sleep.

1/13/18 – Saturday – Had snow and freezing rain last night. So stayed inside and did chores this morning. Then lunch. Outside and scraped some of the snow away and got my car thawed out. Everything was ice so no point in getting the tractor out. It would slip and slide even with chains on. Did a bunch of research in my room. Kathy had another great dinner tonight. Did some computer work then to bed, some reading and Big Bang and sleep.

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Now the specifics:

My friend Gary went to the hospital emergency room last Friday with a badly infected foot.  Since he is diabetic they wanted to keep him and get him on some IV antibiotics.  Gary was resistant but his daughter Konnie came over and convinced him.  She is a very intelligent young lady and very persuasive.  I like her.

Gary’s wife Loretta has not been doing well either.  She has been battling some viral thing.  She has not had much energy or ability to get out so I was taking care of Gary for the most part.  Had to take him to a followup appointment with his doctor on Wednesday morning.

Loretta also runs the Dare to Care dinners on Wednesday evening and Kathy is her backup.  So, I also spent some time this week helping Kathy pull food at the church to prepare and to go out shopping to pick up things they didn’t have in stock.

The garage door on the garage that Julie uses broke a spring that assists lifting the door.  Needless to say the drive mechanism couldn’t work with the broke spring.  It would only lift it about 4 inches and then give up.  I tried releasing the door and manually opening it but it was too heavy for me to lift.  So they called a repair person and we went over to wait for him awhile on Thursday.  They were suppose to arrive between 2PM and 4PM so we went over at 2 and Mike came home at 3 so we left.

Had a winter storm here Friday afternoon into Saturday morning.  Got ice to start with then about an inch of snow.  We made arrangement to just stay in on Friday.  Saturday afternoon I went out and cleaned the car off and ran it awhile to defrost.  Started shoveling the drive way and decided that wasn’t a good idea.  It was a dusting of snow and then about a 1/4″ of ice on the bottom.  I wasn’t going to waste enough salt to do the entire driveway so I just left the snow.  I cleaned out right outside the garage but the rest will be gone without my help in a week or so.

Two things going on with HAM radio.  Number one, the bands have been terrible.  Either very poor propagation or very high noise levels.  Both making it difficult for any communication.  So, I have been doing a lot of research and I’m thinking of buying a mixing console with equalizer to process all my audio.  It will do a number of things.  It will improve the sound of the station, make switching the audio easier.  It will also enable me to simultaneously interface the receive and transmit audio to a computer to do digital transmission.

Only other thing notable is that Kathy and I decided we were wasting too much money eating out so often.  So, Kathy has been preparing some great dinners.

OK, that’s probably more than you wanted to hear.  Hope you are doing well and I will blog at you again next week.