It’s great to be back…………………………………………………………….

As always, first the chronology:

1/1/23 – Sunday – Up late.  Really felt like shit again today.  Didn’t go to church.  Spent most of the day in bed. 

1/2/23 – Monday – Up at the usual time.  Starting to feel a little better.  Got online to see if the urgent care facility was open up on Old Henry Road.  It wasn’t.  Looked at the doctor’s office and they had an appointment for 10AM tomorrow morning so I scheduled that.  Programmed some remote garage door openers and put one in the truck.  Tried to start Mike’s car and the battery is dead again.  Kathy and I went to Country Mart for a few things.  Nothing else notable for the day.

1/3/23 – Tuesday – Up early this morning.  Thunderstorms and a lot of rain during the night.  Got cleaned up and out at 8AM for a doctor’s appointment.  Then home and made some phone calls.  Had lunch.  Did chores and cleaned up around the  house.  Dinner and usual evening routine.

1/4/23 – Wednesday – Up at the usual time.  Cleaned up and out to Harbor Freight for some items.  Stopped at Arby’s on the way home and picked up sandwiches for lunch.  Home and had lunch.  Out to put the new receiver cover on Kathy’s car that she got for Christmas.  Then took a nap.  Up and down to the shack to work on a few things.  Dinner and usual evening routine.

1/5/23 – Thursday – Up at the usual time.  Cleaned up and out for haircut.  Home and did some chores around the house.  Had soup for lunch.  Down to the shack and put my new battery on my new battery charger I got yesterday.  Watched it carefully to make sure it will charge the AGM cell correctly.  All appeared to work well.  Took Kathy out for pizza at Hometown for dinner.  Home and usual evening routine.

1/6/23 – Friday – Up at the usual time.  Started getting my butt in gear.  Closed up my new battery and got it put back together and put all the stuff for my go box in one place.  Worked on cleaning up some other things.  Had lunch.  Then did some things on the computer for Kathy.  Outside to open up the access door for under the deck for the duct cleaning guy.  Then helped Kathy take down the outside Christmas decorations.  Did some more computer work.  Dinner and usual evening routine.

1/7/23 – Saturday – Up at the usual time.  Legs hurt last night but still feeling better than I was.  Kathy was out grocery shopping.  I had breakfast did some chores and got cleaned up.  She came home around 10AM.  Helped her bring in groceries and put them away.  She was off to color Julie’s hair.  I did work on the computer.  Took a break about 1PM and had a sandwich for lunch.  Kathy came home and we took a nap till 2:30.  Then up, dressed and off to Carter’s District band concert.  Had dinner at Milano’s with the Rice family.  Home and got comfortable.  Then the usual evening routine.

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And now the specifics:

I’ll do things in chronological order so you don’t get confused. Monday night into Tuesday morning we had tremendous rains and storms. Put down over 3 inches of water in about 8 hours. Tuesday morning I had to go up for a doctor’s appointment and Wilsonville Road was flood in two spots. Passable but you had to go slow. There was an area off Taylorsville road where it was flooded and appeared to be 4 to 5 feel deep with a car stranded in the middle of it. The local fire department did several dozen call on Tuesday morning that were all associated with the flooding. It’s the most water I’ve seen in this area. But by noon it was all receding.

So I made the doctors appointment because I was tired of feeling like shit. Of course he couldn’t find anything wrong and told me to continue what I was doing. Well that included taking Mucinex. It is a cough suppressant and expectorant. However, as I found out, it also dehydrated the hell out of you. I started drinking copious amounts of water and that started relieving the problems. Then toward the end of the week I decided to stop taking it during the day. The package says to take it every 12 hours so I started taking one around 7PM which gave it time to work before I went to bed. That’s when I started feeling much better. I think I’m almost back to normal except I think I’m weak from laying around and being inactive for almost 3 weeks. I guess God does this to us every now and again to make us appreciate feeling good.

Friday evening we went to see Carter play in the district band concert. Those middle school kids were spectacular to say the least. I guess the most of it was the talent of the director but I was impressed. He was talking about not playing trumpet in the high school band but in talking to him last night he thought he might try it rather than signup for some activities that he didn’t know anything about. I was glad he decided to do that.

Well, not much else going on. I have several things to accomplish this week. First I have to address the dead battery in Mike’s Land Rover. Need to find out if it’s the car putting a drain on the battery or if it’s a bad battery. Next I want to get the coax replaced on the truck. The radio is not working well and it’s probably because I have the coax spliced and the connection on the bottom is not very good.

Wednesday I will be going for the ablation on my back. When they did the injection I sucked it up and did it without sedation. But, I’ve been advised against that with the ablation. So, I’ll bite the bullet and stop eating 6 hours before the procedure. I’ll let you know next week how that goes.

I also have to look at the amplifier at church. They tell me the fan makes a noise and after awhile the fault light comes on. I have no way to test it without the speakers and I’m not going to bring them to the house so I’ll just have to look at and replace the fan and hope that is the problem.

Last but not least, I’m working toward building a “Go Box”. That’s a box that contains everything you need to setup a HAM station. Basically for an apocalypse type scenario. I’m not a big believer in that sort of thing. I feel if that situation ever came to be, we would all be worrying about things more important than setting up a HAM station for emergency communications. But I’d like to have it to perhaps do some POTA (Parks On The Air) stuff. I did a little of that when I was down visiting my friend in Maryland. It was rather interesting. Anyway, I got the battery for Christmas that would hold me for around 10 hours of operation. I want to put together some things to monitor the battery condition and if I have AC power to charge the battery. Again, I’ll keep you posted on that.

Well that’s about it for this first week of January and 2023. As always, hope this finds everyone safe and healthy. Stay that way. Blog at you again next week.