Wow, 2 posts a month!

Yeah, I'm at a new low in posting I think but I've got an excuse....  Talk about a dull life!  I used to have a dull enough life but recently I've been sitting around taking pain pills that make me sleepy.  Now, if that isn't a recipe for dull I don't know what would be.  

However, recently I've gotten off the pills and I've even tried driving.  The driving isn't going too well though because I'm having trouble turning my head and sometimes you've just got to do that in traffic.  Happily my wife is an excellent driver so our local restaurants haven't missed out on too much of our business.  I have a nap in the morning then we go out to lunch then we come home and I have a nap in the afternoon.  Now that I'm off the pills I'm hoping to go back to a mere 8 hours of sleep every 24.  

Recently I've been reading about people who don't want to be vaccinated for COVID or even wear a mask to prevent the spread and some of the reasons they give.  The big one is always that it is a violation of their rights.  Bah, humbug!  We have laws that you must wear a seatbelt in your car; there's a violation of your right to get thrown clear of the accident.  We have laws that you must have a driver's license; a clear violation of your right to endanger others.  We have laws regarding ownership of property; another clear violation of your right to take what you can.  As Arnold Schwarzenegger pointed out 'with freedom comes rights and responsibilities' including caring about your fellow citizens.  He also pointed out that 'freedom and duty have always gone hand in hand'.  Yea, Arnie!

As some of you may remember, we had solar panels placed on our roof a couple months ago.  It's early still but so far things seem to be working well.  Our electric bill has gone down to the $20 minimum payment that our electric coop requires.  That means we are generating more power than we are using.  We'll see how things are going in six months when it is cold and there are fewer hours of sunlight.  There were a few hiccups along the line with the electronic tracking but they seem to have been worked out.

Anyway, that's all the news from dullsville.  Keep safe and keep washing those hands! 

Quite times have become even more quiet!

 I've written several times about how it's pretty quiet around here.  Well, this is a new high in quiet!  This morning I went in to the grocery store with my wife; almost the first time I've left the house since coming home late last Saturday night.  We've had a nurse from Home Health come by; she said she didn't see a lot for her to do but she would come once a week for a couple weeks just to check on me.  We had a trainer from Home Health come by; he said I didn't need him at all and he wouldn't return unless we requested it.  We went to visit my local doctor; he had nothing to say except to suggest that I should give up drinking.  

So that is my new excitement:  having someone tell me not to drink.  You can imagine how that goes over!  Of course I've got lots of drugs to help me through all this:  NOT.  I have acetaminophen 650mg and methocarbamol 500mg FOUR times a day but that's it.  The methocarbamol is a muscle relaxant but the dosage is only 1/3rd of what I saw on the Mayo Clinic website.   The acetaminophen is a pain reliever, of course, and if you are sitting around in a cervical collar all day; yeah, you'll probably have some pains so I'm not unhappy about having it prescribed.  Still, in my mind these are pretty minor drugs to be taking given that someone just put a big old screw in my neck to hold it together.  At any rate, things seem to be all fixed up and I'm hopeful that I'll be out of this collar soon!  I've got an appointment with the surgeon on Tuesday, the 10th, so I may get some answers then.  

We have been continuing in the Southern Nevada heat wave with most days being around 115F (46C).  While I was having fun in the hospital we had severe RAIN storms here!  There was a fair amount of damage to homes and businesses caused both by the amount of water and the strength of the accompanying winds.  Gee, and I missed it!  At least our two cactus plants got some water while I was laid up.  

We have a street called Lost Creek Drive.  Every two or three years there will be an eruption of water just downhill from Lost Creek Drive.  I have to admit that I'd be a bit uncomfortable if I lived on that street.  That creek is clearly NOT lost forever.  

That's all I've got to whine about today.  Hope you are having great times.  But keep washing those hands and mask up if you need to.  Take care.

Gone Walkaway....

Ok, we wandered off finally.  Photos:  oh hell no!  Not trying to make lots of miles but landed in Leeds, UT for our first time. The Leed's park is a nice little place off the highway; we have been here before; didn't go to the Zion Park just because we'd been at the park before.  Drove on to Salt Lake City today.  Nice quite drive until.....

We were in Salt Lake City coming off I-15 coming onto Westbound I-80 and it was just crazy.  First of all I must admit that my wife and I have different ideas about what happened.  I'm kind of supporting her version but that's because I was busy at the time.  Let's face it, I'm driving and I don't have the universal view.  Here's the deal.

While we were coming off I-15 towards I-80 Westbound we saw an accident.  My wife says that a vehicle ran up onto the INSIDE of the curve, turned over and stuff flew out.  I don't know, I was too busy avoiding the guy in front of us who moved over into our lane.  Happily, there wasn't anyone in the lane to our right so I was able to escape him.  I was also able to escape a LOT of sharp rock that the rolling vehicle had tossed into our lane.  We called 911 and reported the wreck but we didn't really want to park a 50+ foor rig on the side of the road and block things up even more! 

So now we are in Salt Lake City and headed north.  We'll update you from time to time.  Hope there aren't any more accidents!  Take care.

Another trip to Vegas!

Yesterday we made yet another trip to Las Vegas; this time for lunch with our daughter.  She gave me a gift card for my birthday that was good at several chains; we decided to go for Maggiano's in the Fashion Show mall.  It is actually on the strip just across from the Wynn.  We got there early so we could stroll around the mall before lunch.  That was pretty cool.  There are tons of high end shops so there are lots of opportunities for leaving behind a small fortune.  Dillards, Macys, Nieman Marcus, Saks, Nordstrom, even some place called Forever 21; if you have a dollar they would love to relieve you of it!  Of course there are probably 100 smaller stores; I think there were three from Victoria's Secret!  We had a good time looking at all the stuff and as good a time people watching.  There were some amazing folks wandering around and I mean that is both a good way and a bad way.  The Eastern Europeans are especially obvious; guys just don't wear lime green jeans in this country.  But everyone likes the tourist dollar so Welcome to Las Vegas!  One gal was wearing some kind of lycra pants that were at least a size too small and her hip measurement had to be well over 40".  It was just wrong.

There is an art gallery, Centaur Galleries that is the only place I've ever seen work by Dali, Picasso and the like for sale.  They seem to specialize in LeRoy Neiman having paintings from $3000 to close to $1 million.  They were running a special on some small Dali's; usually $2,500 each you could select three for $6,000.  Not my kind of place but they had a big space so someone is buying that stuff. 

Anyway we made it to the restaurant; the bar first.  It is a U-shaped bar with one side where the floor is two steps higher than the other two.  As a result the people on side A have lounge chairs while the people on sides B and C have high chairs that aren't high enough.  Really a weird design and uncomfortable for all of us.  So we had lunch; $15 entrees and $14 a glass wine.  The food and wine was ok but really not special.  So we blew through $110 for lunch making it a "definitely a won't go there again" place.  To ice the cake, our waiter seems to have taken a break during service, he was just gone.  My wife and daughter eventually went back to the bar to get another drink; I was hoping he might notice his diners leaving and come to see about us.  It still took him a while to bring the check.  Lousy service is putting it mildly! The wine in the bar, now that it was happy hour, were only $5 each but it is still an uncomfortable place to sit.

So we came home.  We had a lovely sunset with great color but by the time we made it into Pahrump it was dark.  We were driving past one of the local watering holes and nearly got T-boned by someone leaving the place.  What happened I think was this.  We have two lanes going each direction and a turn lane in the middle.  I was in the left lane; there was someone in the right lane signaling to go into the parking lot.  I think this guy just didn't see me coming because of the car that was turning it.  As it was I jerked the car into the turn lane and I think the other guy must have turned away from us but we sure didn't escape by more than a foot or so.  It was all over in a second.  There was no honking or squealing brakes or anything; I was just glad there wasn't a big 'CRUNCH' when the guy took the back end off the car.  My wife was happy that she didn't have a truck sitting in her lap!  Anyway, it was exciting in all the wrong ways.  It did make the last 4 miles home rather quiet by comparison. 

Today we made up for all the excitement yesterday by ordering a new closet arrangement for our master bedroom closet from EasyCloset.  The closet is a walk-in design.  The existing 'design' is just a hanging bar with a shelf above it going around all three sides of the room. We have light colored wook throughout our house and they have something that looks pretty much like a match.  One thing we like about their system is that it hangs from a bracket attached to the wall and doesn't touch the floor.  This way we can vacuum under everything without any hassle.  We'll have drawers, a clothes hamper and lots of hanging space.  They claim they will ship it tomorrow so we'll have it pretty soon.  Looks like we'd better get busy taking the old stuff down, filling holes and painting.  Now I just need to remember to take some before and after photos! 

Gotta go.  Thanks for checking in.  Have a good one!