Walk on the Platte

I took Mandy for a walk in the snow, while K was in her special Saturday evening dialysis session. We started at Aspen Grove at the Starbucks, and got a hot chocolate "for the road", then wandered along the Platte River for aways. We ended up at the Apple store for a half hour, ogling the 24 inch iMac and 17 inch MacBook, and learning about the clever 3-finger touchpad swipe.

K's home nurses, who are coming morning and evening to change her bandages, all seem to be in agreement that her foot wounds are looking better than they were.

Snow!

We got a pretty decent dump of Spring snow today. They closed the plant at 1pm. Thinking I'd beat the traffic, I jumped in my car at 12:30 and headed down the hill. I got about 100 feet, then sat in my car for a hour, not moving an inch, as the entire plant (apparently) spilled out of the parking lots into the main road, and slowly made their way over the slippery roads, and out the gate. I should've just stayed and worked late! K's dialysis center called to say they were canceling all Friday sessions, because there's more snow forecast, and she should expect to come in on Saturday at 5pm.

Scooter Outing

We got K out on a scooter outing around Littleton on Sunday! Our intended goal was the Old Littleton Deli, but they were closed on Sunday. We didn't have to settle much, by having a Mediterranean lunch at Damascus Grill. Mandy lounged around in the sun, peering in the glass doors from her perch just outside the front door. The scooter put forth an awesome performance (especially considering that we didn't think to charge the batteries the night before), covering the 4.5 miles over hill and dale with no difficulty. K was enthusiastic about getting out and feeling the wind on her face. The pic is on the trail around the Littleton Natural History Museum.

Week of 3/13

I spent much of St Paddy's Day trying to get AV-016 launched, without success. We're supposed to try again late next week. In the meantime, we have a Delta II launch scheduled for Monday night / Tuesday morning.

Dad told me on Saturday, that he'd taken a spill on the tennis court, and suffered a badly torn up left arm. He was going to see the doc on Monday, but I haven't heard how that went.

We had Sunday breakfast at IHOP with our friends Ken and Freddie. The adjacent pet store was closing, so after breakfast, we loaded up on a bunch of things for Mandy, like food and a reflective leash for night walks. Then we went up to Bel Mar for some shopping at Whole Foods. Ken and I took Mandy for a walk around the Bel Mar Mall, and I ended up getting some long overdue replacement walking shoes and boots at DSW. K picked up some great corned beef, and has been making me tasty sandwiches for lunch all week!

Kepler Launched!

We successfully launched the Kepler planet-finder satellite on a Delta II rocket tonight! Its mission is to search a nearby region of our galaxy for Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zone surrounding stars like our Sun. The habitable zone is the region around a star where the temperature permits water to be liquid on a planet’s surface. Liquid water is considered essential for the existence of life.

K's had major stomach problems this week, worse than ever. Could be a virus, or maybe a reaction to all the antibiotics she's been taking for her foot wounds over the past few months. Regardless of the reason, she's been really miserable. The good news is that her foot wounds, which are still quite serious, are continuing to heal.

Nice day

It's BEAUTIFUL here today! Went for a nice walk down to Blueberry's with Ken and Mandy this morning. Mandy had a tooth exam yesterday, and they pulled one, and she's still recovering from the anesthesia and trauma. We hurried home so I could take K to Dialysis - she was too nauseous all day yesterday, to go last night. On the way home from dropping her off, I stopped to check out the big empty building our local police dept is considering moving to. It's the Southbridge building, the same place the ground software folks were located back in the 1997 time frame. I remember going to a few meetings there. Judging from the looks of their telcom closet on the 1st floor, their existing Internet connection is awful, but hopefully they'll get something better, if they do move in there.

Clean Garage!

OMG... I can't believe the garage is cleared out and rearranged enough to accommodate K's car!

Thanks to Ken and Freddie -- it couldn't have been done without their help! Here are the before and after pictures. Actually, the before pile was even higher than the picture shows, since that one was taken many months ago.

TGIF

We got another half inch of snow last night, and it's been coming down very lightly all day. K seems quite a bit better today. She says several people at dialysis have been complaining about feeling particularly poorly the past few weeks. Maybe she picked up something and has been fighting it off over the past week. Mandy seems to have tuned into it, since she's perked up a bit in the past day or so.

Not the greatest day

K had a bad day today. She's severely nauseous for days on end. She didn't have the energy, or a stable enough stomach, to go to dialysis Monday night, so she called and found a slot available this morning. I dropped her off at just before 7, and picked up a latte and coffee cake on the way to work. It was weird not having Mandy in the car when leaving the dialysis center. Everything felt off kilter. When I got home after work, K was having a monster low blood sugar, down to 44 and feeling like she was dying. I got her some OJ, which she doesn't particularly like, but was the only juice available. We started watching that John Cusak movie, "1408" but the visiting nurse arrived to change her bandage, so I put the movie on hold for awhile, and finally just flipped to a regular channel when I started fixing dinner, chicken tiki masala and naan. Then here we are, hours later, just waking up on the couch, and realizing we're way late for bed. I was going to take Mandy out and head for bed, but realized we have an inch of snow, so first I went out to shovel the driveway, and uncover her special area on the neighbor's lawn. After I took her out, we had a cute moment, when I was trying to get all the blankets on the couch folded and put away, and she settled down on each one after I'd folded it, thinking I was setting up a soft spot just for her. I'd shoo her off, and pick up the next one, fold it and put it down, and then plop, there she was on top of the pile again.

Snow Coming

We had a really nice weekend, relatively warm and sunny. The last piece of ice at the bottom of the driveway disappeared today. Mandy and I got out for "destination" walks (to lunch) every day. The latest forecast calls for the possibility of snow today and the next few days. It was cooler and overcast today, but we didn't see any precipitation.

K's new scooter appears to be helping a lot with the wounds on the bottom of her feet. Unfortunately, there's a wound on the top of her right foot that's almost quadrupled in size over the past few weeks, so they're watching that one carefully. It seems like the new custom boot caused it, and probably exacerbates the problem every time she wears it, but it really helps with the bottom of her foot, so she's still trying to figure out how to make it work.

Successful launch!

We just finished launching MV338, a Delta II rocket carrying an NOAA weather satellite. See the writeup on spaceflightnow.com for details. We struggled to get this one launched, and finally got it off the ground on the third attempt. Since it was a 3:30am Mountain Time launch, the multiple retries made for an interesting week. I'm looking forward to sleeping in this morning! After I take out the trash, that is...

Candy Apple Red

And in this corner... a candy apple red electric scooter! We have a new sense of freedom for K, while attempting to move about the house. We've been struggling for so long, trying to find a way for her to move around, without putting any weight on her foot. We finally took a deep breath, and went out looking for an electric scooter. There were so many choices, we were somewhat overwhelmed at first, but this one has a very slow "turtle" speed, which we think will help her to avoid all the corners and other obstacles around the house. It's a big commitment, and it brings a whole new set of challenges with it (note the oxygen tube in the picture), but we're hoping this new gadget will help her foot to heal. Mandy seems fine around it, which is both a good and scary thing. K will have to stay on the lookout, to avoid running her over!

Shopping for a Scooter

We've been talking about getting K one of those little motorized scooters, so she can get around the house without the huge temptation to use her wounded foot. She test drove one model last year, while looking at other handicap paraphernalia, and thought it could be pretty handy. Tonight we had a visit from a salesman who demonstrated one low end model. He didn't have any units immediately available, so we're heading out tomorrow, to visit a distributor up in Arvada that has some in stock.

Walk

We really enjoyed our beautiful 70 degree warm spell this week, sitting out on the deck and soaking up the experience. It didn't last very long, though. We had another little poof of snow last night, that started just as we were heading out to take K to the dialysis center. It ended almost as quickly as it started, before it was time to pick her up, and only deposited a fraction of an inch, mostly on the grassy areas, and pretty much nothing on the streets.

Ken and I took Mandy for a walk down to Abe's Cafe for lunch. We were glad to have our jackets, as it was just a bit chilly at 31 degrees. We stopped to marvel at the large equipment they're using to repair the light rail track, after the freight train derailing last week. They have a little self-sufficient train with its own digging shovel, and several cars to receive or dispense dirt. The shovel moves on tracks at the top of the cars, so the operator can select which car the shovel is accessing. They're digging pretty deep, but it's understandable, after looking at the pictures of the wrecked cars all dominoed up - they took out a long section of the retaining wall below the light rail track.

As we passed Sterne Park, we noticed the geese on the Lake looking pretty cool, casually lounging around on the ice. With the surface ice partially melted into puddles, some of the ones standing appeared to be walking on water.

K has a new wound on her right foot, on top of the arch, caused by pressure from the new boot. This is very disappointing, especially since the boot is supposed to protect her foot, and it seemed to be helping the original wound on the bottom of her foot to heal. The good news is that wounds on the top of her feet tend to heal fairly quickly.

Successful Launch!

After a few false starts during the week, we successfully launched DV337, a Delta IV Heavy carrying an NRO payload, last night. So much for my Saturday! They're not saying much about it, but SpaceFlightNow seems to have some good information. It was the longest mission I can remember supporting, with a 9 hour countdown and a pretty long flight too. I went home after the rocket was safely on its way, and handed off the support of the flight to my very capable coworker. I'm not positive whether or not the entire mission was completely successful, since they invoked a news blackout immediately after liftoff, and I don't want to bother my coworker, who was at work into the wee hours of this morning. But the liftoff sure looked good, and when I left several hours later, everything was going fine.

The wound on the middle of K's right foot appears to be responding to the new treatment approach. Not so sure about the heel wound, which isn't necessarily getting any worse, either. The new boot arrived last week, and she's trying to be careful using it, to avoid having it cause problems instead of helping. There does appear to be a bruise on the top of her foot that was probably caused by the pressure from it, and she's watching that closely. She's still experiencing severe nausea pretty much daily, and is looking at alternative medication that might help, with no success yet.

Miles & Monk

Ken and I took a chilly walk with Mandy, down to Blueberry's for an egg croissant, then to Savers looking for gloves to replace the nice knitted ones I've worn out, then stopped at the library and checked out some music CDs, before heading home. The snow promised for today never really arrived, except for a few flurries that never stuck to anything.

While K was at dialysis, I dedicated this evening to learning how to use the new turntable we bought last Spring during the remodel. It has a USB output, so supposedly we should be able to play one of our many records, and capture the output into the computer, convert each track to an MP3 file, and then be able to play the album with our new Sonos player in any room of the house. If that all works, then we should also be able to burn the music files to a CD and play it in the car. So goes the theory anyway. Naturally, my first stumbling block was that I couldn't find the user manual for the turntable, and for awhile it went downhill from there. As soon as I plugged in the turntable USB cable, my computer speakers went dead. Then I couldn't capture anything until I discovered the neat freeware audio editing application named Audacity. Then I could only record mono sound, left channel only. Then I could only generate one huge MP3 file with the entire album on it, until I learned how to label the quiet spaces between songs and export to multiple MP3 files. Sheesh. Eventually, I learned how to do everything I needed, and as I write this, I've just finished capturing the "Miles & Monk at Newport" album and have been listening to it through the computer speakers for the past few minutes. Nothing like success to cheer me up a little, before heading to bed!

Eagle Eye

We woke up to a gorgeous 25 degree morning, with the sun shining, and a medium thick layer of white frosting on everything, including the local foothills. Later in the morning, the deck furniture looked like someone had scattered a thick layer of diamonds on it, as the snow melted and the sun caught the beaded water drops. The temp never left the 25 degree mark all day, until night fell. Now it's a nice chilly 12 degrees out there. We watched Eagle Eye tonight with K&F - a thrill a minute! K says her foot wounds look about the same - no miraculous healing (at least yet) from the new treatment.

New Foot Regime

The two wounds on K's right foot are still serious, and have kept her off the Kidney/Pancreas transplant list throughout 2008. This week we visited the vascular surgeon who performed her Fistula surgery last year, this time to hear him report on the ultrasound scan that was taken recently on her feet. We hoped he might be able to surgically augment the arteries in her legs to improve the foot circulation. The good news is that there's still healthy circulation in the large vessels, and the not so good news is that the problem must therefore be in the smaller vessels, which means there's not much he can do to help with it. However, he did have some new ideas about how to treat her wounds, and she's now onto his new program. Wish her luck!

My cold symptoms are doing their usual drag-on thing, mostly just a runny nose, and an occasional sinus headache, but they're not keeping me from doing anything important.

Mandy feels so soft and fuzzy after her bath yesterday, very pettable. On our walk today, I was always on the lookout for her to lunge for the grass, and try to grab a quick roll. I'm hoping we'll get through a month without any more of that.

The weather's been just awesome the past several days, sunny and in the 50-60 range. I see the forecast calling for much colder tomorrow, and maybe even a couple of inches of snow.

Happy New Year!

We're wishing everyone a really different and wonderful year in 2009! We had an awesome New Year's Eve dinner at The Melting Pot, with our neighbors Ken and Freddie. K had her regular evening dialysis at 5:15 (no special schedule for New Year's), so we went to the 2:30pm dinner. Mmm! A beer-cheddar fondue with bread and veggies to dip, followed by a bubbling broth fondue with Filet Mignon, Teriyaki steak, Chicken, Shrimp, and Salmon, followed by a decadently delightful Cherries Jubilee chocolate fondue with strawberries, marshmallows, and various cakes. We used the convenient handicap parking and lower entrance, so K didn't have to climb any stairs. It was dark enough inside, to need a flashlight to order, and coincidentally I had brought my LED key chain light, a handy contraption I got for Christmas. We finished just in time to get K to her dialysis. We reconvened after dialysis, to watch the Dog Whisperer and the New Year's Eve countdown, and exchange Christmas gifts.

I slept in late enough this morning, that I only caught the last half of the Rose Parade, but I did see the Cal Poly float, which was a very cool little amusement park this year, complete with a roller coaster. Ken and I took Mandy for a late morning walk, in search of brunch, but everything was closed except Starbucks, so they got our business. Mandy took advantage of an off-leash exercise, to roll in some fresh goose poop, yet another first in our lives, and only a week after her first bath in practically forever. (Coincidence? I wonder...) Ugh. She's been such a wonder, I was hoping we could skip that little doggie trait. Of course that called for a bath after we got home, and it was nice to get through it smoothly, after our initial home bath experience that didn't go so well. After all that excitement, I went down and relaxed for awhile in our new basement steam shower.

Cold Snap

And the cold and snow just keep on coming! Lately, when I'm wheeling K out to the car at 10pm on MWF, we're definitely re-thinking the advantages of having her dialysis scheduled so late. By the time I'm going to pick her up, my metabolism is slowing down, and the cold just sinks into the bone.

Doesn't it figure, the hint of a sore throat this weekend turned into a cold with all the symptoms today. Nuts. Just in time for the holidays. So we stopped at Rite Aid on the way home from dialysis, to get me some day/night Comtrex.

K got a ride from Freddie to wound care today, for her regular Monday morning checkup. She also had an ultrasound appointment to check out her leg circulation, which turns out to be quite good. So they don't think they can blame her slow healing wounds on that. They took Mandy in the car with them, but maybe didn't quite keep her as warm as I do, and now K is thinking she'll never take her out on a day like this again. She said Mandy appeared to be enthralled by the Cherry Creek Mall, which she got to experience from K's lap in the wheelchair. Her eyes were very big, and she was checking out everything and everyone they passed.

Brr!

OK, now it's getting to be just plain cold around here. We woke up to a beautiful clear, cold, minus 8 degree day. The Denver airport set a new record low for today, at -18 degrees. I tried to snap a sunrise picture out the deck door, but the outer door window fogged up the second I opened the inner door. At work we're wondering what brainiac decided that the men's bathroom, which is on an outside wall, didn't need to be heated.

Snow

It was a cheery 5 degrees F this morning! There were a couple of inches of snow on the ground when I took Mandy out for her morning ritual. She really hopped to it, and was ready to come back inside in about 10 seconds. Don't blame her. It was cold enough to sting my cheeks as I stood out there and waited for her. The snow has started up again, a very holiday-ish light curtain of white drifting down.

K told me yesterday afternoon that her foot is doing pretty well.

Cold Snowy Day

We woke up to a beautiful snowy morning! A nice brisk day for a trip to the dentist. K had a lousy night, and didn't get to bed until I was getting up this morning. Mandy wasn't too excited about going out in the snow this morning, but jumped at the chance to go for a short walk, this cold clear evening.

Lights

Mandy and I went for a walk around the neighborhoods, and enjoyed the Christmas lights that are starting to pop up everywhere. I thought it was kind of funny that she showed up in this picture. I didn't notice her silhouette until I got home and pulled it off the camera. Sorry for the blur. It's tough getting a decent night picture with any kind of hand held camera, much less the primitive one in my cell phone.

Mandy and the Fox

She's been so good most of the time, and then... I took her out to the side yard near midnight, for her pre-bedtime relief break. On this rare occasion, I didn't have any shoes on, and was shifting my weight from one sore foot to the other on the cold hard concrete, while admiring our neighbor's Christmas tree, and waiting for her. Then I heard a quiet little "rrr" and the rapid patter of little feet, and looked over to see her disappearing across the street, between our neighbors' houses. I could only presume that she'd seen a fox on a yard over there, and that the fox was leading her into the shadows behind the houses. I nervously watched for a few seconds, and sure enough, out from the other side of the house came a fox at full run, big fluffy tail floating in the breeze, with Mandy a few feet behind. I called for her to stop and come back, but of course she was pretty well fixated. They flew across the street, and disappeared into the space on the other side of our house. I guessed they were heading down the hill toward the fox's den under the juniper bushes. I went into the house and put on my boots, then went out on the deck with a flashlight, hoping I could see or hear them down there. I heard a jingle that I thought was Mandy's collar tags, and whistled and called for her to come home. No response. I ran down the stairs and went out on the patio to see if I could see her. Nothing. I realized the neighbor's dogs were out, and the jingle was probably them. I was losing hope every second, that she'd survived her midnight encounter with this fox. Then I thought hopefully that maybe the jingle *was* her, coming back up the hill, and went back upstairs and out the side door where we'd been, to see if she had returned there. Nope. I wandered around to the front of the house, and right then, here comes Mandy, trotting proudly back from around the front of the house and up the driveway in the dark. At first I thought she was limping, but then I realized she was having a hard time walking, because she was so busy strutting her stuff. She's such a lucky, lucky, lucky, dog.

Racine's

After watching a half dozen sappy holiday movies yesterday and last night, we slept (way) in this morning. It's snowing again today, not much, but enough to set a cheery scene outside the windows, and leave a thin layer on the roads. Mandy wasn't very excited about going for a walk, after a minute of tromping about in the slush, so we stopped in at our neighbors and visited for a little while, before heading back home. After missing breakfast and lunch, we had a relaxed early dinner at Racine's. Nice strong hot coffee!

Snow!

Our day started off early, with shoveling a few inches of snow off the driveway, coaxing Mandy to venture out in the snow for her morning ritual, then an (invigorating) drive on slippery roads, to drop K at dialysis for the 6am slot. She couldn't make her regular time last night, having gotten really nauseous just when we were packing her up to leave. I stopped for a nice hot latte on the way home, and have been popping my head out of the front and back doors, snapping pictures of our first real snow accumulation this season.

Lights Up

Man, am I sore. I did a few sets of pull-down exercises at Buck Center on Thursday, and I guess I haven't used those muscles in too long. I can barely lift my arms above my head today.

John and Michelle headed off in their rental car for the airport at noon. They missed out on the forecast snow, which just never showed up, and got to enjoy some beautiful sunny days instead. Michelle said the security line was quick and easy, a welcome change from their past experiences at DIA.

The afternoon turned out really nice, and while walking Mandy, I noticed several neighbors putting up their Christmas lights. That was just the little incentive I needed, to steel myself for the task. I wasn't looking forward to hunting for our lights in the crawl space, after all the frantic shuffling of boxes that occurred, as the remodel was finishing up this year. Miracle of miracles, we had already pulled out the box of lights, and it was waiting for me on the shelf in the furnace room. I was very happy to find everything I needed in the one box, to put up all the outside lights. This year we're trying those new LED lights that aside from being pretty, should also save a little energy every season.

Oops, I guess I spoke too soon about the snow never showing up. We looked outside before going to bed, and the lights on the deck railing looked a little funny. That's because they were under a layer of soft fluffy snow.

Thanksgiving

We had a pretty full day! I was up early. The temperature was at 30, then 32, then hovering at 29, as the weather tried to decide whether or not to honor the forecast for snow. I took Mandy for a chilly but relatively short walk, maybe a mile. John and Michelle arrived at 10. While John relaxed around the house, Michelle and I went for a short workout and a dip in the pool at the Buck Center. The jacuzzi felt really good on my tweaky back. We made a quick stop at Starbucks on the way back to the house. Next, we were off to the Brown Palace, for the Thanksgiving buffet at Ellyngton's, with lots of choices of very delightful food. It was over almost before we knew it. Mandy spent the afternoon snuggled up all nice and warm in her bed on the back seat of the car. When we got home, I treated her to half a can of "Thanksgiving Dinner" dog food - the ingredients sounded healthy - with turkey and a bunch of vegetables. She (amazingly) scarfed it down in seconds, which is pretty rare for her. The funny thing is, she's the only one that will have Thanksgiving leftovers tomorrow morning! We settled into Big Red and watched a fairly dark Philip Seymour Hoffman movie called "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead." We never did get any snow. During the one last walk around the neighborhood with Mandy this evening, I thought I felt a few bits of cold precipitation hit my face, but I never saw anything. Happy Thanksgiving to all, and to all a good night!

Mandy and the Geese

This morning much was nicer at 47F than yesterday's 22F. Mandy and I walked to downtown Littleton. I let her chase a few geese off the grass in Sterne Park. This time I was ready with the camera, and caught this video to share. Too fun. K says, "No wonder she loves to go on walks with you!" I had a tasty Gyro and Latte lunch at Abe's Cafe. She was so good. I invited her up on one of their patio chairs to wait while I went inside, and for the first time, she laid down on command on the seat of the chair, and waited there quietly, the entire time I was inside ordering.