Happy Friday...

I saw my primary care doctor this week for my annual "Wellness Check" and he is as happy with my health status as I am. First of all, I am still totally surprised that the doctors here go into the computer and read my chart before they come into the exam room!  I always felt that my PCP doctor in Tucson didn't have a clue about my issues when he came into the room and had to refer back to my chart if anything came up. This guy walks in, is familiar with all my labs, what the other doctors have had to say, what my ongoing health issues are,  know's I'm retired, live alone, move here to be near family, etc when he sees me. His discussion this time was that "yes I have some medical issues that I can't do anything about such as the plaque in the heart, one kidney, etc so I need to focus on what I can do something about such as eating properly, continuing to loose weight, exercise and stay busy since I'm retired."  According to him, that is the key to a quality life when birthdays accumulate. He was telling me about a 90 year old patient who still plays tennis weekly and his 86 year old father who still farms but is now selective about what he does on the farm every day but getting on the tractor and plowing fields is one of the things he still does. So with that said....here is a sign I saw in a store last week:

Another Monday....Another day of 90+ degree weather

O.K. I have been here for 1 1/2 winters and 1 1/2 summers - I will take the winter!  I can always put another layer on and go outside. I'm tired of not being able to get out an do stuff.  Yesterday and today I had to resort to walking on a treadmill at the gym here in the apt complex!!!!!  I hate treadmills but it was just too hot to even walk at 8 a.m. in the morning with the humidity. Actually the gym is really nice with a big variety of equipment but I always feel like a hamster when I'm on a treadmill. Hopefully tomorrow I can get back outside... According to the Weather Channel on Facebook, only 57 more days until fall.

On Sunday I got my "Penguin March Badge" from my FitBit which I didn't even know such things existed.

I think the little guy is cute!  The smaller print says: "With 70 lifetime miles, you just matched the distance of the March of the Penguins - the annual trip emperor penguins make to their breeding grounds. You're doing swimmingly well!"  I wonder what the next one will be? I gotta admit that the FitBit has made a big difference in me exercising.  I see it on my wrist and it is a reminder.

I'm becoming one of those people who take a sweater or shirt along when I go into restaurants.  They could save a lot of money by not having it so cold in there. That NEVER used to bother me but it sure has this summer. It feels good to go outside and stand there a minute in 90 degrees to thaw out.

6 weeks from this coming Wednesday,  2 friends and I will be heading out on our road trip! Can't wait... However, before that happens, I have to get the September Quarterly to the printers....

Monday Misc for July 20, 2015

Another day, another thunderstorm!  The storm woke me up at 4:30 a.m. this morning with lightening, thunder, high wind and a downpour of rain. It looked like a hurricane outside! The storm went on for about 30 minutes and then started letting up. The ground is beyond soggy.... We got a rain yesterday morning but that was just a light, steady rain for awhile. And....the weather man says we are in for another storm later today but a very small chance of severe weather.

Birds and squirrels: I quit feeding them on the patio since the birds found the feeder and there were too many of them.  So, I just put the feed on the ground under a tree outside the office window where I can watch them. They are soooooo entertaining! However, that entertainment can get expensive.... I looked out yesterday and counted 23 birds plus many, many more I couldn't count due to them moving around.  There was big black birds (cackles), little brown birds that I don't know what they were, 2 cardinals and 1 blue jay plus a couple of squirrels. Quite an assortment! They will hear a noise and all scatter.  The guy at the bird store tells me that the black birds go south in the winter so that will help.  In the winter, I will probably go back to feeding the squirrels on the patio because of the snow, etc.

FitBit: Still walking..... 8-) I got an alert on my phone yesterday afternoon that I needed 6 more steps to reach my goal so that one was easy - back and forth to the kitchen did it... When I reach my daily goal of 5,000 steps, the FitBit on my wrist vibrates and I get an alert on my phone.  The vibration always scares me.... I have seen NOOOOO difference in weight loss but my knees definitely are better plus I have more energy overall. I feel pretty silly when I get up at 6:30 a.m. to walk before it gets too hot but that is the way it is during the hot days when it is still too hot to walk in the evening.  This morning I was on the trail, came around a corner and the trail was covered with about 6" of water so had to backtrack and take another route.

Trips: I'm finally getting around to editing the pictures from the June St Louis trip and then doing the book for that trip.  I still have to mark the maps and print out addresses for the Sept trip to plug into the GPS gadget.  Plus...I have started working on the "Snowbird" trip to the southwest in December.  Fun times.....

Monday Misc for July 13th

 Heat: I laid in bed this morning, listening to the radio and decided I wasn't going to walk this morning based on the weather at 7 a.m. It isn't that it is just so hot but based on the heat index it is too hot for me!  Yesterday morning I rolled out at 7 a.m. and went for a 1.25 mile walk but the heat index wasn't so high and I chose a route that was mostly in the shade. Maybe tonight after the sun goes down.... It is supposed to be up to around 99 today with a heat index of 110-115. Summer has arrived! The humidity is so high due to all the rain we have had. Yesterday I walked across the grass to feed the squirrels and noticed that the ground is still soggy and squishy 2 days after the last rain. At least it gets back down into the upper 80's later this week....

Storms: Well I made it through my first Tornado Warning last Monday since I moved back here. I still can't keep Tornado Watch and Tornado Warning straight so have them in my cell phone notes. I know that one is "conditions are ripe" and one is "take cover". Here is what I was seeing on TV and the street going up the center is the street I live on. As the storm went on, the sky was totally dark navy.

Back when I lived here before,  you would hear the sirens go off but you really didn't know what was happening. Now, it is non-stop TV coverage with 2-3 weathermen in the studio, the guy in the helicopter and several spotters on the ground. One of the guys in the studio is forecasting, one is glued to the radar screens and another one is in communication with the people out in the field. They go back and forth between showing the radar on the full screen and the helicopter picture being the small picture like below.  The one below is NE of me before the one near me flared up.

. What really amazed me was at 4 p.m. there was no storms in the area and yet they were in full force an hour later. I was surprised that they could form that quickly.

Liver Doctor:  I saw my liver doc last Wednesday and he discharged me... I have had perfect liver function labs for 18 months.  Either the auto-immune hepatitis is in remission or I didn't have it in the first place which is what the doctor things.  He is 100% convinced that it was simply my liver being sensitive to Tylenol. I had switched to Tylenol from Ibuprophen at the insistance of my kidney docs after the transplant.  Apparently studies have show that some people's liver is sensitive to Tylenol and will show the same abnormal labs as someone with liver disease. We'll never know for sure since the doctors in Tucson only went by the blood test and didn't do a liver biopsy which would have been an accurate confirming test. So i get my labs done every 3-6 months, follow up with my primary care doc and call the liver doc if they show up abnormal again and we will do the biopsy. About 30% of the people with auto-immune hepatitis do go into remission so we will never know which it was.

Another Monday.....

Another holiday over with..... I'm not sure why I have no interest in most holidays.  Maybe it is because my parents didn't make a big deal of them when I was growing up, maybe it was because for so many years when I was by myself and didn't have people to celebrate with or because both of the above coupled by Larry not being big on holidays so we usually didn't do anything special for them. When I was plant manager, we rarely shut down for holidays and sometimes worked Christmas.  If I was home and the plant was working, then I always made it a point to go to the plant and work in my office for awhile plus go out on the floor and say "hi" to the guys working. Anyway, I'm always glad when they are over. Overland Park has a ban on all fireworks except the displays put on by the town.  The ban includes sparklers.  It was nice to not hear any fireworks going off......

Me and my Fit Bit: We are getting along just fine and the little guy hasn't had cause to smirk at me anymore. I have walked at least 1.5 miles every day and most days it is 2.5+ miles. Last evening I checked it and was only at .75 miles so went out after the sun set to get in a mile walk even though it was around 80 degrees. The longest walk I have done at one time is 1.5 miles which is a long way from when Larry and I would do 4 miles to the McDonalds and back home. My back does bother me some at times when I'm walking but my knees are feeling much better and not as stiff. I've been noticing a lot of baby bunnies on the trail and they are so cute!  However, when they are on the trail in front of me they don't seem to be afraid so I walk 2-3' by them and they just set there and watch me. 

Weekend with no rain:  I wrote a few weeks ago that we hadn't had an official Sat and Sun weekend without rain since March 21-22nd.  Well this weekend we finally made it and there was NO rain. Now in the meantime there have been weekends when we didn't have rain in Overland Park but that isn't the official weather for KC which is measured at the KCI airport. Everything is sooooooo green! 

Farmer's Market:  The market is getting into full gear.  Last Saturday I got tomatoes, new potatoes, early peaches and corn.  The corn was REALLY good. 

Sept Trip:  My 2 friends from Tucson and I are working on the driving trip we are doing in September. We got the itinerary set and are now working on hotels/motels to stay at. Places we are staying overnight are in order: Bentonville, AR; Little Rock, AR; Memphis, TN; Nashville, TN; Gatlinburg, TN; Ashville, NC; Cookeville, TN; Paducah, KY; St Louis, MO; Boonville, MO and back to my house. They are flying out to KC from Tucson and we leave from my place. It is really hard to pick places to stay! Prices have also really gone up since we did a driving trip on the east coast 3 years ago. We are really looking forward to the trip!