It's Been A While

I realize it has been almost two months since my last blog post. It was just a few days ago I almost deleted the blog completely and having a recent backup I could have deleted then rebuilt it later if I wanted. So why delete it like I have a few times over the 15 years of blogging here and then return? These first few photos were taken early this morning right after I let the hounds inside as they run to their bowls of breakfast kibble.

When taking them I had a impulse feeling that I wanted to blog publicly again so where I am.

We have been in a heat wave lately where it is close to 80° at 6am and high 90s by the afternoon. You can almost feel the humidity in this photo as the light fog hangs over the soybean field. 

Are those colored leaves the first sign of fall? College football starts in a couple of weeks so fall is right around the corner. 

It doesn't look like it but I water my backyard about every 3 days unless it rains. We have had some good heavy rains in the past two months so the yard is hanging in there during the heat wave. A friend of mine and I were discussing the damage the heat does to our yards along with the urine from Cletus and Walter. I started sending her photos of the yard this time last year ... it looked just as bad but by May with no additional grass seed or topsoil ... the yard regrew itself and looked great. It's just this time of year with crappy hard clay soil that I have this. Drives me insane actually every time I look at it.

My neighbors storage barn has been there for at least 40 years. Her dad built it and on the second floor is his old piano. Don't ask me how they got it up there. She offered me her small chainsaw two years ago and told me I could go in there to get it. ... it is packed to the gills with stuff as I could barely walk through there in my search.

That lump seemed to come out of nowhere. A trip to the vet to have it checked out. Watson's blood work looked normal. They took a sample and it came back negative. So like all the other lumps some of my bloodhounds have had over 30 years the same suggestion ... leave it, monitor it and no need to remove it. At least not yet.

During these two months of high heat here in the River City, Henry never seems to care. He would stay outside all day and night if I would let him ... it must be that Arizona blood he was born with.

A 160' of wild growth berm and I see these yellow flowers one morning peeking out behind the fence. The berm's growth gets thicker it seems every year. After the leaves are all gone I will cut it down to the ground. This year I am going to talk to my local fire department and see if they need some training on this type of fire or would they stop by and watch while I burn the whole berm this winter. 

I have been sticking to my dinners of a source of protein, usually beef or salmon along with steamed vegetables topped with grass fed butter. I am scheduled for more blood work, at my request, in December to see if my food discipline has paid off. I will talk later of my interesting doctors appointment this week with a cardiology NP ... it's just amazing.

Of course you cannot have a summer around here without the attack from the yard moles. They dug that up even past the surface. I knew something was up when I moved in. A clean empty shed as I brought my own stuff in from the moving truck, but three boxes standing together on the shelf ... three mole guillotine traps.

Why is this photo from my iPhone 13.4Mb large? I did trim the front of the berm all the way along that fence line. I came up with a system where it didn't take that long to cut it, collect it and have a clean route for my mower. 

What makes this photo so large at 11.9Mb ???  That is my water sprinkler. I do the backyard in about 4 sections 1 hour per section and still cannot even fill the empty 1" tuna can with water ... 1 hour of watering is about 1/3 of an inch. I start the watering early in the morning right after all the hounds and dogs are back inside after their post breakfast trips outside.

 

 

July 4th I was pretty bored and it was really hot ... I decided to take a trip to Best Buy to look around and drove the 8 miles east with my windows down in the FJ. I always drive with the windows down no matter how hot it is. I did the same thing when I lived in Arizona. 

 

I was not in the mood to buy anything as my 6 year old iMac continues to work like new and is used a lot. But I wanted to take a look at their new Apple iMacs that now come with only 24" monitors ... I still have not decided if I really want to go from a 27" monitor back to a 24".

 

 

They did have the 24" iMac on the other side of this display, one that caught my eye because of a couple of things ... it has a 27" Apple monitor and it was using the Apple Mini hard drive. A hard drive that I have kept my eye on for my next computer once my current iMac is no longer working.

 

A very nice set up but more than I wanted to pay, ~$2,400. Apple has changed their pricing where each thing you see there was priced individually right down to the mouse, and the keyboard ... hard to believe. Still it was very nice ... but I resisted and ended up just like I had planned on ... walking out of the store with nothing bought.

 

I did walk over to the PC section to see what the "Apple Competition" was offering ... I didn't see anything there that would make me move back to PCs after 16 years of using Apple computers. 

You have probably noticed there has not been a lot of hounds and dogs photos. We haven't done much this summer. The house "to do" list keeps me busy along with the time I walk, cut nails and brush the hounds and dogs ... four of them get individual walks while six years later Walter still flat out refuses to walk anytime except when he escorts me out to get the mail. He will go no further than the driveway as I walk across the street to the mail box or to see his friend, our mailman that always pulls into the driveway to talk to Walter and give him a treat or two or three. 

When I got back from Best Buy that day for some reason I decided I could get my 2015 MacBook working again. I cannot remember the details but last year I could not log into the computer and it was not working like it always did. It acted as if the hard drive was corrupted so I put it back in the original box, put it on the shelf in my closet waiting for the annual April city electronics recycling day.

I came close of taking it downtown in April but for whatever reason I didn't. Well I open the computer and hit the power button. Off to a good start. It asked for my user name and password. I put in the same as I did last year and it booted up with no issues !!!!

After a few tests to prove it was working normal I charged it up and it has worked normal every since. Weird. 

Nothing extreme but my iMac had been acting strange. It was becoming consistently strange ... the air vents of the iMac are on the bottom of the monitor. A new $8 can of air blew out a lot of dust in each of those small slots and it is like new. That is what it was, the fan kept kicking on, something that never happened before. After the dust was blown out it is so quiet you cannot tell if it is on. The fan has never come on since that cleaning. 

I got a letter in the mail from Medtronic, the manufacturer of my pacemaker, last month. Luckily I did not toss it into the recycling bin before opening it. They had been hacked !!! Sometime between April 13-16 they had seen strange activity and come to the conclusion these hackers had access or grabbed not only our names, social security numbers, addresses, phone number ... but also our health data. Yeah, I know.

Of course I called after I read the three pages of information. They gave me free ID protection etc. I loaded all the information they required to set up an account and after they scanned my data I get this screen. That July 20th date is the date of the scan not the date of activity. All of those were phone number related between 2021 and 2024 ... using my old Arizona phone number.

I did ask them over the phone in July and my doctor at my first annual pacemaker review on Thursday if the hackers had access where they could remotely manipulate my pacemaker. Both people said that was not possible. In fact the doctor told me the hackers would have be sitting with us in that room next to the device on her desk that was downloading data from my pacemaker.

I found out Thursday, the devise has worked 67% of the time and only in the upper chamber of the heart. That is perfect she said and proves my new valve replacement last summer is working as it should. Personally I think the pacemaker works only when I sleep since I never have a heart rate lower than 60 during the day ... It will go to 62 or 60 during the day depending what I am doing and the pacemaker keeps the heart at that level. 

Since my echocardiogram and blood work in June my main focus on diet has been around insulin resistance. Basically what they suggest in food is the way I have been eating for years. My ratio of triglycerides / HDL is below their threshold for healthy insulin resistance. Yet my current cardiologist and the NP I talked to on Thursday knew anything about that when I mentioned it. 

This is the latest book a couple of weeks old by Dr Philip Ovadia that explains how our bodies absorb the food we eat. His first book is called Stay Off My Operating Table. He follows a low carb high fat/protein diet.

After my blood work and consultation with my cardiologist in June, this med unexpectedly showed up in my mailbox. He had prescribed Ezetimibe after our visit but did not tell me. The word "cholesterol" is the key because of what it shows here and what his NP told me just last Thursday at my appointment.

She literally told me "our department does not really focus nor care about total cholesterol or your HDL. We watch and focus on your LDL number."

Really ... she said that.

So if that is their department philosophy, a department that my cardiologist is in charge of ... why does he want to give me this med? Because they want me to lower my LDL from what it is (middle of the healthy range) to 50mg/dl.

I told her based on my research last winter after my December appointment getting it down to 50 was not possible. Medication could lower it 15-18% and a diet discipline would lower it another 10-13% ... she stared at me and was speechless.

She offered me statins again and like I have told every NP and cardiologist I will never take those, nor do i have a need to take those. My bloodwork is great they say. My blood pressure averages 120/68 and taken every morning before my coffee. She let me know she had to ask me because it was part of her protocol. 

You don't know how close I am to just ignoring any more annual doctor appointments ... but they need to send in annual data about my valve that they can only get from an echocardiogram. And I personally would like to get blood labwork done at least every 12 months. So I guess I continue to attend "the medical circus" ... something I never wanted to be a part of. 

She did order me blood draw in December at my request. I want to see if my new food discipline makes a difference and makes them happy with my numbers. BTW, they tell me my blood work numbers are great!!! Then why push meds on me?

I asked her "if your focus is LDL why don't you test for small and large particle LDL in my bloodwork because that number for the small particle LDL would give all, the answers we need." .... she talked around that question and I doubt I will see that in my December results.  

I could not resist posting this information.

 

 

A perfect example of why I don't have a lot of photos of the hounds and dogs outside. This is the normal routine most mornings after they have had their breakfast and its already hot outside. The wall vent not seen but in front of Cletus at the top of the photo blows out ice cold air. LOL 

Whether I am watching a movie at night or a baseball game, this is Henry's nightly position until I turn off the lights, the tv, lock the patio door and head to bed. 

I walked by these the other day at Costco and made it out of the store without one of them in my shopping cart but I must admit ... extremely hard to do. Part of my new "food discipline" that is self imposed. 

I need to clean my patio deck and did once with my high pressure washer, at a low setting. Only to read later high pressure washers should not be used on composite deck material. Anyone know why? It makes it so easy to clean that way. Juan has been sitting in that same position since April 2021, in snow storms, ice, rain or high winds.

I cannot seem to keep away from all the news on X with things that are not only unbelievable but very concerning to me. Bottom line is the American people had better wake up or within 10 years you will not recognize your own country. "that would never happen here" is an old thought process but IT IS HAPPENING HERE right now!!! 

So that is about all I have for updating you. 

Two more days of high heat then we drop back down into the normal temp ranges.

The weather is still beautiful though here in "the tropics" of Southern Indiana.