Update — I guess I cross posted with Barbara, please see her post.
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Based on Barbara’s last post, I’m guessing both she and Bob will be busy this am, so I’ll get things started.
From her last update on Sunday:
“Things with Bob are one step forward to two steps back. Last night things were looking rather grim with the doctors deciding it was too much of a risk to him surviving the bypass to try to do it.
I talked with him this morning. The plan as of now, which could change at any time, is to put in the cath pump tomorrow and do a procedure on Tuesday. Not sure if it will be bypass or stint. ”
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Whatever the situation is today, our continued hopes and prayers are with you, for what good they do (and they certainly can’t hurt.)
nick
Here in Houston we have another fine fall day, with 65F and a bit of humidity– 91%RH.
I’m still assimilating the pile-o-ham gear. I got the main HF radio on a makeshift antenna last night and tuned around the bands. Either conditions were better last night than they’ve been in a while, or this radio is nice and sensitive with good noise rejection (Kenwood TS-440S). Not great listening conditions, but more than I’ve heard in the last week or two.
Worked thru some of the stuff in the driveway, getting some ready for listing, and a load to the scrapper. Only about 200 pounds this trip, but mostly good aluminum and some transformers and motors.
Did some electronics repair in between, and some minor home maintenance.
Caught another rat in my garage, didn’t want to deal with it last night, so I’ve got THAT to look forward to this am… without the glue traps, I’m not sure what I’d be doing. Maybe one of the ‘tip ’em into a bucket and drown them’ homemade traps? I think I better test the dollar store glue traps, and if they work, I better add some to the inventory.
Just another day, another dollar ($1.25 actually, King Dollar has gone up 25c in the last 9 years) in the life…
n
The FEMA brief has some good summary info on PR and USVI, and it seems they’ve gotten some real ‘power point rangers’ to up their graphics game.
https://content.govdelivery.com/attachments/USDHSFEMA/2017/11/14/file_attachments/912947/FEMA%2BDaily%2BOps%2BBriefing%2B11-14-2017.pdf
Worth a look to see a detailed and widespread summary of the situation.
From a prepping standpoint, look at the amount of time that has passed, and consider your own preps and readiness…… and your “I’m not leaving here except feet first” bugout plan.
n
Barbara has talked about a “pump”. This may be what Robert is having installed:
https://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/tc/intra-aortic-balloon-pump-topic-overview
Mid-forties, gusty wind, and leaves all over my yard. Damn neighbors, get your leaves off my yard.
It hasn’t been said recently, so thanks, Nick, for putting the daily posts in.
No problem. I must say, I’m a bit surprised that if I open a thread, I feel compelled to check it more often, and ‘nurture’ it more than a regular post. There is a bit more sense of being ‘responsible’ than I expected.
n
@lynn,
Maybe time to upgrade:
https://www.slapsale.com/1-2010-ford-expedition-xlt-4-door-136991#jump_to_description
Here in Houston, not a municipal agency selling, looks pretty clean. Will need normal maintenance and probably has a variety of small issues.
Some people will say STAY AWAY!!!! but I had good luck with my ’08. Any used vehicle will have issues. One other benefit, if bought at auction, I believe registration uses the purchase price, not the Blue Book value, which if it sells for the right price can be a significant savings.
nick
Looks clean and good mileage, BUT that engine compartment shows a lot of neglect with problems “cleaned up” with a steam wand, but they are still there. I sense a lot of oil leaks, a failing water pump, and all hoses need to be replaced. Wiring not in good shape. Battery top shows signs of boil-over.
But on the other hand, it won’t COST like a cream puff either. I’ve got oil leaks, I just add oil every once in a while. Batteries are expendable, as are hoses and belts.
Wiring is a different story, and if there is evidence of flooding that’ll never be right, but I don’t see it.
I see a ton of dust in the engine compartment.
But interior wear looks pretty light for a cop car. no third row seat, and no center console, but consoles are available on ebay. I got a third row seat at the junk yard, but have never used it. It has the ‘blood package’ of vinyl floor and back seats, which is a plus for Lynn.
Lynn and I are both low mileage drivers. Mine had 107k on it when I bought it, and still only has 134k four or five years later.
The only thing I see that really gives me pause is the rust on the nerf bar. What made it rust thru? (and the steps are replaceable if it comes to that.)
Not saying it wouldn’t need some stuff, but I fixed and upgraded for a couple of grand, and was still about 5-7k under blue book.
n
Best of luck to Bob and the pump* and surgery.
*Not that kind of “pump”, Mr. SteveF
Best wishes and prayers for Bob and Barbara today; and thanks much, Mr. Nick for filling in; fine job.
Day Six of acute rehab; probably gonna go another week or so and miss T-Day. Slept in the bed last night, much better here. And got a new “tall boy” wheelchair; they’ve had to adjust everything for me so far.
New PT woman today, , from Woostah, MA, and her young aide, from Westborough. We had some laffs talking Central MA lingo.
Glad to have you check in OFD. Don’t let those young girls work you too hard 🙂
Sounds like progress is happening, keep up the hard work.
Since your BP is probably too high already, I won’t ask about Princess … oops.
Anyway, hope you continue to get better…
n
@lynn,
Maybe time to upgrade:
https://www.slapsale.com/1-2010-ford-expedition-xlt-4-door-136991#jump_to_description
Thanks but no thanks. I wonder how much water got in it ? I would not buy a used car from the Houston area for the next year or three. There needs to be time to shake out all of the electrical problems from flooding. And the engines that sucked up water.
My neighbor lost her four year old Mercedes E550 coupe in Harvey since it sucked water in the intake and blew her piston rings. She had water in the dash and two blown cylinders but it still kinda ran. Kinda. The insurance totaled it.
My truck is going strong. 187K miles and no major problems (only burns a quart of oil every 2,000 miles or so). When it comes time, I am going to buy the cheapest NEW Ford F-150 crew cab long bed 4WD in white that I can find. $35K.
I am kinda thinking about buying this house at the moment to get us away from the river. This house is way above the 500 year flood plain.
http://www.har.com/6002-blackberry-cove-ln/sale_54078496
But the house is closed concept. We like open concept. I can make it more open concept by moving the den wall to include the back patio (most of it). And then I will add an apartment in the back for the daughter with a game room for yours truly. Probably about $200K in additions. Plus another supersized two car XXX truck garage behind the new apartment and game room. See the neighbor two doors down for what I mean.
Lynn and I are both low mileage drivers. Mine had 107k on it when I bought it, and still only has 134k four or five years later.
Nope, I drive 15K+ miles per year. I bought my 2005 Expedition in 2005 with 20 miles on it. It now has 187K miles on it.
Hmm, thought you just drove to work… and that was short. My bad.
FWIW I don’t think the Expy got wet, it just got close to 100k which is when they sell their vehicles, give or take.
You must have linked to that house before, it showed as visited when I clicked on it.
It certainly feels dark and cramped with that floorplan, very old school, with a dark and cramped patio. For the kind of money the changes would take, you should be able to find something already nice…
n
“‘Multiple People Dead’ After Shooting at California Elementary School — 100 Police Officers Rush To 5 Different Scenes”
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/11/breaking-multiple-people-dead-shooting-california-elementary-school-100-police-officers-rush-5-different-scenes/
with one of the most bizarrely worded sentences ever: ““At this point the suspected shooter is deceased by law enforcement bullets,” Tehama County Assistant Sheriff Phil Johnston told reporters. “”
n
“At this point the suspected shooter is deceased by law enforcement bullets,”
lol! ‘Cause “law enforcement bullets” are so much better than civvie bullets.
It certainly feels dark and cramped with that floorplan, very old school, with a dark and cramped patio. For the kind of money the changes would take, you should be able to find something already nice…
That house has a great location bonus, it is high, very high and away from the floods. The road behind it is four ft lower. The lake down the road from it is eight ft lower (at the moment but I have seen the lake five ft higher and covering the road).
In the ideal situation, I would buy a lot and build a house that meets our needs. It will cost about $600K to do so. But the good lots (non flood area) are few and far between.
What about *new* cars in sales lots? If they are flooded are they automatically totalled or might the dealers try to clean and sell?
What about *new* cars in sales lots? If they are flooded are they automatically totalled or might the dealers try to clean and sell?
Six Group 1 dealers got hammered in Harvey. Based on my past experience with them at their Austin Ford outlet, I’d say that company is large enough and possesses sufficiently flexible ethics to try and sneak iffy cars onto their used lots elsewhere across the country. Be aware over the next year, no matter where you live.
““At this point the suspected shooter is deceased by law enforcement bullets,” Tehama County Assistant Sheriff Phil Johnston told reporters. “”
I’d guess they really want to make the point that this was not prevented/stopped by a legal-carry citizen. Shape the narrative.
Oh yeah, always shaping The Narrative.
Our MSM must have gotten their highest grades from assiduous study of the Soviets, Chicoms, NORKs, and of course, the late Herr Goebbels.
OFD has had a tough day today after a fairly decent night of sleep on a bed. But various basic functions and tasks wore my tired old dilapidated ass out, as did the PT and the post-blister pain on my left foot, which is driving me batshit and interfering with the rest of the program. So I will consult with the nurse and doc tomorrow AM.
I also have a tentative discharge date of 11/28, two weeks from today. I sure hope I’m well enough to function at home, and they won’t kick me out unless I am. Will so inform wife later, as I believe she’s gonna be gone that week to beeyooteeful Orlando. And last I knew, still had plans for the trip to NZ next month. Meanwhile she’s still hurting herself, and her 90-year-old mom is taking care of her 92-yeaer-old big sister after the latter’s recent surgery. So I dunno….
Meanwhile we’ll end up doing the best we can, but far less than I’d planned for this coming winter; let that be a lesson to somebody somewhere; you can think all your ducks lined up and still get ambushed by some injury, sickness, or some other big event. And what do you do if your main partner is also very nearly incapacitated?
Also: how would this all pan out if it was SHTF and no big med center full of docs, nurses, janitors, security and food service? Injured wife would be caring for half-paralyzed husband and have to leave me alone and crawling around while she went out to make the revenue to keep us going, plus everything else. I doubt we’d last long without Princess moving back in with us. Imagine that.
You must have linked to that house before, it showed as visited when I clicked on it.
Probably. The seller dropped the asking price from from $440K to $400K the other day which has me a little interested again. If I move the den wall to encompass the back patio (which is part of the foundation pour and the roof) then that will make the house somewhat more open. The kitchen needs to be updated also and quite possibly reconfigured (equals big money).
I am very worried about getting 8 ft of water in our present house and 12 ft of water in the street if the Brazos river comes over our levee. That is not just a bad condition for our house but I see it as life threatening for us. We were flooded in for two days during Harvey before the river crested. We could have walked out on top of the levee (after wading through three ft of water) but the daughter can not walk further than 100 ft. It is two miles to the front or back of our subdivision from our house. I just don’t feel safe here anymore with the river having three 100+ year floods in the last two years.
The wife wants me to buy a inflatable boat for us to get out in if needful. I have been trying to explain how CO2 inflation cartridges last until the day before you need them. I don’t think that I want to be inflating a boat while the water is rapidly rising. So she wants me to get a john boat with paddles. So I had to explain to her that the river moves at 8 mph when it comes up like that and one cannot paddle against an 8 mph current. She now wants me to buy a small bass boat with a 50 hp motor. Sigh.
Time to move to high ground. We’ve been living in levees alongside the river for 28 years (1990) and these last two years have me spooked. The river has only come up like this once in 1999 and then three times in 2016 and 2017.
Plus that house in Bridlewood is five miles further away from Houston and that cannot be bad. It is outside the Grand Parkway (99).
Probably a dumbass question, but are there two November 14 threads running today?
@OFD said: “Probably a dumbass question, but are there two November 14 threads running today?”
Yes, this one by Nick and another shorter one by Barbara. The main action appears to be here.
Hey OFD. Just wanted to say I’m rooting for you. Nothing sucks more than being in the hospital. Hope they get you back on your feet quickly and you can get back to your old life.
There was a warp in the space-time continuum, but Nick managed to stitch it back together with only minor overlap.
“with one of the most bizarrely worded sentences ever…”
You haven’t considered that bureaucratic language has been adversely impacted by the paradigm of self important donkeys of idiocracy. 🙂
Continued best wishes for OFD and RBT, stuck in the luxurious hotels of the body shop.
Thanks all, still plugging along; some days suck worse than others, but I’m making slow and steady progress.
Hope to hear soon that Bob will be OK.
Ditto on Dr. Bob and you too Mr. OFD.
NOT like us…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5082749/Illegal-immigrant-impregnated-teenage-stepdaughter.html
“Illegal immigrant, 32, impregnated his 15-year-old stepdaughter in a misguided bid to stay in the US and is accused of ‘raping her repeatedly over four years'”
“She told authorities Alvarado raped her on average three times a week from when she was 14 until she was 18 years old. The alleged abuse continued even after she gave birth to his child. ”
Note that 5 years have passed and the rapist is still here.
So which part of Trump’s statement about mexicans was false?
n
or this one:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5083061/MS-13-member-sentenced-33-years-prison-murder.html
“MS-13 gang member sentenced to 33 years in prison after being found guilty in the brutal death of 15-year-old girl whose heinous torture murder was videotaped and played for the jury as the victim’s family wept”
Counter that with the heroic and effective efforts of the ER dept in Vegas–
http://epmonthly.com/article/not-heroes-wear-capes-one-las-vegas-ed-saved-hundreds-lives-worst-mass-shooting-u-s-history/
“The surgery team performed an unprecedented feat that night. The numbers speak for themselves. In six hours, they did 28 damage control surgeries and 67 surgeries in the first 24 hours. We had dispositioned almost all 215 patients by about 5 o’clock in the morning, just a little more than seven hours after the ordeal began. That’s about 30 GSWs per hour. I couldn’t believe that we saved that many people in that short amount of time. It’s a testament to how amazingly well the hospital team worked together that night. We did everything we could.”
”
8 GSWs to the chest
10 GSWs to the head
13 GSWs to the abdomen
17 Ortho GSWs
33 GSWs to the neck or major extremities
”
nick
God bless EMS. And ER. And nurses, doctors, paramedics, etc, everywhere.
And to Hell with our politicians and other criminal scum who allowed and enabled all these Stone Age shitbags into our country.
They never suffer the consequences, at least not in this life.
@OFD said: “They never suffer the consequences, at least not in this life.”
And therein lies a problem. Way too many people feel that they can do whatever they want because they have been taught that the Pearly Gates will open for everyone, all is forgiven. Bull Shit.
Look around on Sunday. Most of those folks feel that they have filled their Holy Requirements by attending “church” and robotically mouthing the words. These hypocrites then feel they have permission to go forth and sin some more. The Creator needs to get with some bolts of lightening, not just in the pews but in the pulpit too. And if D.C. becomes a smoldering mass all the better.
And yes I am being judgemental.
Surely you don’t want your old buddy Hillary Rodham to fry…
Hillary has been fried since freshman year in high school. She is the walking dead just taking a long time to rot.
That was one of the things that turned me away from religion. If the hypocrisy is thick enough that an oblivious eight-year-old can see it, then there’s a big problem.
If Hillary had been baked since high school, she’d be more mellow.
I didn’t say Hillary was “baked”, she was and is “fried”. Fried is a lot stronger as in nose candy and meth. Hillary was never mellow, she tried to look it but never succeeded.
That was one of the things that turned me away from religion. If the hypocrisy is thick enough that an oblivious eight-year-old can see it, then there’s a big problem.
I am sorry to hear that. I am a perpetual sinner who is a firm believer in God’s Grace. Ain’t no one good enough by their works.
EDIT: I have really changed my faith since I read “The Shack”. Very interesting concepts about organized religion and the real God.
https://www.amazon.com/Shack-Where-Tragedy-Confronts-Eternity/dp/0964729237/
One of the things I look for in a public “servant” is self-control. If you can’t control your temper over little things, I don’t want you to have your finger on ‘the button’. That opinion, and telling it to a candidate that was an old friend, cost me that friendship. Fortunately, he lost the election.
DadCooks wrote:
“Hillary was never mellow, she tried to look it but never succeeded.”
I bet she looked okay when you turned off the lights… 🙂
Only if he was baked.
And she’s wearing a sheep costume.
That’s a baaaaaaad joke….
n