A very busy and long week for me……………………………………….

As always, first the chronology:

9/15/24 – Sunday – Up around 8:30AM. Cleaned up and out to church with Kathy. Home and lunch. Kathy took a nap. I went to the shack and did the blog. Joined Kathy for a nap for about 20 minutes. Kathy was up and out to Julie’s to help with some clothes alterations for the grand kids. I went to Gary’s for the afternoon get together. Home and waited for Kathy. She came home late. We went to Cracker Barrel and met the Rice family. Had dinner. Home and usual evening routine.

9/16/24 – Monday – Up around 8AM. Breakfast and cleaned up. Out to Shelbyville to stop at the hospital and get my blood drawn for my labs before I go to my routine doctor’s appointment when I come back. That took an hour. The office crew up at his office never put the order in the system. Then to the bank to get some traveling money. They have those damn ATMs programmed such that you can’t get $300 in twenties. Ridiculous. Then to the car wash and got the truck a bath. Then home. Started cleaning windows. Stopped for lunch. My OBD reader came so I took that out with me to the truck and got it working. Finished cleaning the windows, put the antenna back on along with the bed cover. Drove it over to the house. Kathy took the dogs to the Kennel where we are boarding them while we are gone. She came home and we took a drive down to Taylorsville and Country Mart. They still didn’t have our favorite trail mix. Picked up a few other items to keep us happy while traveling. Home and put the truck away. Then packed clothes. Had dinner. Usual evening routine.

9/17/24 – Tuesday – Up, breakfast, cleaned up and over to get the truck. Loaded up and off at 8:30AM. Had to stop for gas so we had an early lunch at Arby’s. Onward and had to stop for gas again around Cumberland, MD as we got off interstate 87. Got to chat with a young man on the Altoona repeater that hosts the “Over the Hill” net I make once in awhile. Got to Danville, PA around 8PM. Had dinner at Perkins Restaurant then to the Pine Barn Inn and got checked in. A very long day. Total of 635.9 mile and I got 19.5 MPG on the truck. Not a bad day.

9/18/24 – Wednesday – Up around 8AM. We got cleaned up. I took off a little after 9:30AM. Went to CVS and did some shopping after getting lost. Then to Perkins Restaurant for a late breakfast/early lunch. Had a good time. Left there a little before 11AM and got the truck full of gas. Back to the motel and Kathy was already gone to her reunion. I took a nap. Then up and did computer work till Kathy came back around 5PM. We took off and did a drive around the hospital for Kathy to take a look see. Then to Friendly’s for dinner which did not look very inviting. So we passed that and went back to the Pine Barn Inn and had a sucky dinner at the restaurant there. Picked up some stuff in the truck and in for the night. Total Miles today 11 but only got 11.4 MPG.

9/19/24 – Thursday – Up at 7:30AM, cleaned up and started to pack. Got some stuff out to the truck then into the dining room for breakfast some of Kathy friends from nursing school. A delight eating breakfast with a bunch of old ladies talking about their experiences with C-Diff. Back to the room and collected the remainder of our stuff, took it to the truck and off about 10AM. Got to Todd’s house around 12:30PM. Had sandwiches for lunch. I helped Todd with a couple things, one of which required a trip to Lowes. Then decided to buy him a barbecue grill and all the accessories. Another trip to Lowes. Todd made us a super good dinner. I tried to make the simplex net up here but not close enough to hear the net control. Total miles today was 189.2 and 20.2 MPG.

9/20/24 – Friday – Up a little late. Cleaned up and had breakfast. Made some calls to see people. Drove to Carmel and made a quick stop at CVAC to see Dave Jacobsen. Then over to the Eveready Diner for Kathy to meet up with Margaret and Barbara. Stopped at Ludingtonville on the way back to get gas in the truck. Got back to Todd’s around 3PM. I went for a nap. Then up and did some things for Todd. Had dinner then made a run to the ice cream store but they were closed. Back home and to bed to do my computer work and wind down. Total miles today 120.2 and 19 MPG.

9/21/24 – Saturday – Up at more like a usual time today. Got cleaned up and Todd and I started assembling a new coat hanger assembly that he bought and has little storage areas. We got the unit assembled but ran into issues when we tried to mount it to the wall. We made several trips to the store but we needed hardware that wasn’t available here. So I ended up ordering the stuff he needs from Boltdepot in Ma. He should get it by the middle of this coming week and all should be good. Had lunch at the house then went to a great Italian place for dinner followed up with a trip to the ice cream store. Then a trip to Hannafords for Linzer tarts for Julie. Total miles today was 82.8 and 17.2 MPG.

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Now the particulars:

I have a routine Doctor’s appointment this coming week on Thursday so I thought I should go get my blood drawn before I go in case there is a problem. Well, sure enough, after the assurance of the office staff at Dr. Combs office, the order for the blood work never got into the system. However, those folks at the Shelbyville hospital are great and managed to get the necessary paperwork and they took my blood. I was amazed that the results came back in Mychart before I got home. I will never go back to the doctor’s office to get blood drawn. This is much easier.

I swear they are programming ATMs just to piss people off these days. I wanted to get $300 for traveling money. You have two options, take what they give you or customize it. If you let them give you what they want you end up with $50 bills and a bunch of singles and fives. So, I customize. Well, you can hit the minus button beside the singles and reduce that so you don’t get a any singles. But when you go up to reduce the number of $50 bills which you can never get rid of, then they increase the number for singles. I guess you gotta go into the branch, write a check and tell them I want all $20.

Only other thing to mention for Monday was getting packed for our trip to PA and NY.

Tuesday we started early, around 8:30AM and drove up to Danville, PA where we arrived around 8:30PM. I was exhausted. But we got Kathy to her reunion.

Wednesday Kathy was all set to go to her reunion luncheon around 11:30 so I decided to take off around 10AM. Went to CVS and did some shopping. Then to Perkins Restaurant for a breakfast/lunch. While there my waitress came over and sat down in the booth and gave me a speech about this “Give a Kid a Wish” program down in Florida. So, sounded rather good and the selling point was that 93% of what is collected actually gets to the facility to help kids in need. So I donated $10 that they add to your check and thought I was done with it. Wrong. She kept coming back sitting down and chatting me up. I was about done and she invited me to stick around. For at least another 20 minutes she said. I though that interesting then I realized that it was exactly 20 minutes till 11AM which is probably when she got off. Yea, maybe another place or another time. But not this time. I got out of there like my ass was on fire.

Thursday morning I had the pleasure of sitting with Kathy and 3 of her graduating class for breakfast. What a delight to sit with them eating my breakfast listening to them discuss their experiences with C-diff. Yum.

Kathy of course took her good old time making arrangements so I didn’t have time to do a lot. I did manage to swing by the old ambulance quarters to see my friend Dave Jacobsen for 15 minutes or so. Then we had to rush over to the Eveready Diner where Kathy had made arrangements to have lunch with her friend’s Margaret and Barbara. Wasn’t a bad lunch but there were people I would have liked to see. Oh well, next time perhaps.

We took pictures at Todd’s house and I think I’ll reserve those happenings for next weeks blog. I am writing this on Sunday evening and we are staying in Fairmont, WV. We drove a total of 407.8 mile today and have around 5 hours and 15 minutes to get home tomorrow (Monday).

That’s it for this week. Look for some pictures next week. As always, hope this finds everyone save and healthy. Stay that way and I’ll blog at you again next week.