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SIX

I took the risk and did it.

Looked really sketchy this morning and I was second guessing myself the first few hours, but I got that topcoat down and it looks like 29 hours with a 0% chance of rain now and early Tuesday morning we raise to 1% chance and top out at about 7% all day. Hopefully we stay dry until Friday at least.

It looks fantastic!




Hope it's dry for you too, Brenda.



Oh... and I hope you have better health insurance than HMO insurance down here.



Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Right now I would say anything is possible with the wacky weather this year.

But for right now I will take dry over wet. Maybe we'll get a nice, dry and sunny September this year. That would be welcome.

I hope you can get all that work done on your drive Jack.

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I took the risk and did it.

Looked really sketchy this morning and I was second guessing myself the first few hours, but I got that topcoat down and it looks like 29 hours with a 0% chance of rain now and early Tuesday morning we raise to 1% chance and top out at about 7% all day. Hopefully we stay dry until Friday at least.

It looks fantastic!




Hope it's dry for you too, Brenda.



Oh... and I hope you have better health insurance than HMO insurance down here.



Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Originally posted by SignyM:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Back at my doc's today to get the results of the second bit of blood work she wanted done. She was pretty happy. My liver function is now back to normal. It was my seizure meds causing the problem. The level I should be at is 2,700mg but I am actually under that at 2,540mg. So all is rosy. She wants to do a recheck in three months.

SIGNYM: IS she planning on testing for the possible breakthrought seizures that you may be having? Did she even address them? Or is she content to stick her head in the sand?

Sorry if I sound a little pissed, but I am. This sounds like the half-assed treatment my other Canadian friend (in Ontario) is getting, and like the half-assed treatment WE used to get from our half-assed HMO. (He has prostate cancer but they refuse to operate.)

Yeah, I know... properly diagnosing and treating people sometimes takes more than the average amount of money. About 30% of the time the first drug that a doctor tries DOESN'T WORK. (That is the sad reality of pharmacology!) Sometimes it requires ... what is that word ... thinking ... on the part of the doctor. They need to have a very well-grounded understanding of what is happening, not just a lookup table of possible diagnoses and treatments, with one eye on the lookup table and one eye on the bottom line.

Anyway. I hope that what you had was just your body's temporary adjustment to lower seizure meds, not the beginning of a trend. (But in my experience once you lose control of seizures it's hard to get it back again, and things tend to go from bad to worse until you find something that really works.) IF the breakthrough seizures ... or whatever they are ... continue, does the doctor ... OR YOU ... have a threshold beyond which something will be done? It's important that your doctor, and you, have established a "line in the sand" that -once crossed- will precipitate further action

BRENDA: Truthfully, I didn't mention what happened in the store because looking back I am now not sure. I know I was heading for a yawn at that time and that could have been another reason that I stopped, and my eyes may have just closed. I did mention the dizzy spells and she thought I had had a seizure, so if I had said yes then the route would have been the neurologist.

I will keep a close eye on things and if I have any more episodes like that, I will go back in before November and tell her as well as keep a list of what happened and where.

If anything else does happen most likely I will be sent back to a neurologist at the office I was going to and they will run an EEG. Then there will be the discussion about most likely a different medication.

So for right now it is just wait and see.

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Great! It sounds like you have a plan! I like the idea of keeping a diary. I'm trying to get dear daughter to do that so we can address her IBS or wherever the heck she has, but it's too much trouble for her.


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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

#WEARAMASK

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I think I'll mow the lawn today even though it probably doesn't need it since we haven't had any rain in almost 3 weeks. It looks ragged though. Maybe I'll edge the front walkway since the driveway got edged and everything looks sweet on that side of the house now.

Not much more to do outside on the yard right now with summer winding down. No ants around the house at all. Zero weeds.

Gotta figure out what I'm doing with those columns and start wrapping that all up so I can get the gutters up. Not sure if it's my imagination or not, but it seems like a lot of the "creaking and cracking" has died down. Especially telling is the difference in behavior of the stairs leading up to the attic. They barely creak at all right now and that was the worst spot in the house back when my brother was visiting here.


I'm going to spend some time updating my TO-DO and DONE list today and try to make a game plan. Lot's of things still need to be done before the weather turns. And when it does, I've already bought most of the stuff I need to work on inside to remodel the kitchen and livingroom.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Glad it's cooling down by you finally Sigs. We had a little heat wave ourselves this week with the real feel over 100 degrees today.

Got the lawn mowed and remaining debris picked up. I decided against edging today. It's been so long without any rain I don't want to be causing any damage to the lawn by doing that now. Everything is looking pretty brown.



The driveway looks amazing today. I was a little unhappy that anywhere where I patched things it didn't seem to be blending in, but looks like it just needed an extra day of baking in the sun. It's almost completely uniform right now and will probably look even better in a few days.

My neighbor across the street yelled for me when I turned off the mower to empty a bag to tell me how great it looks and that I should go into business for myself.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Originally posted by Brenda:
That's some reaction Sig.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Glad to hear it's finally cooling off by you, Sigs.

Yesterday was perfect. Had my grams and my aunt over. The first time I've seen either of them since Christmas, and they got to see all of the work I've been up to since then. Spent the afternoon on the front porch and had lunch.

I usually don't eat that early and didn't feel like starting any work for the day at 3PM so I just relaxed the rest of the day.



Today was a little hotter, but hoooooo boy, did it feel MUCH hotter than any other day I spent working on the driveway now that it's actually black. I used up my last 3 gallons of crack sealer and hit all the bigger cracks a 2nd time. Overall I'm very pleased with how it turned out so far.


I'm going to give it quite a few days now to all dry before putting the 2nd topcoat on. It's another coinflip for rain on Tuesday, but beyond that no rain until early next week. So finger's crossed.


Since I'm done early, I'm going to go food shopping and pick up an extra two 5 gallon buckets of the topcoat. (At full price..... grrrrrrrrrr).

Hopefully I won't need both of them since it should spread a lot better than the first coat, but I don't think there's any way I'm getting away without using at least one of them, and since this is the final coat I don't want to have to break for 30 minutes to pick up more because it is somewhat obvious (at least to me) where I had to do that for the 1st coat.



Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
That's some reaction Sig.

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It's so unusual that I didn't credit it at first, but I've sort of noticed at about a dozen times by now. That day was so extreme that it really confirmed my earlier observations.

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

#WEARAMASK

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Originally posted by SignyM:
I hope you have a nice weekend!

Our upcoming weekend will also be warning up, predicted high of 93, but looks to cool down right after that.

*****

Yes, tomatoes. Or at least ketchup, so there may be something in the ketchup.

Did you know that the secret spice in ketchup is mace??

*****

I planted sunflowers just for looks, bc they're hubby's favorite flower. Who'd have thought they would see so much pollinator action?!?!

I've seen honeybees, green headed bees, sweat bees, and other native bees I don't even know the names of! California skippers (small golden-brown butterflies) and best of all, a bumblebee. I know that bumblebee populations are crashing even worse than bee populations, so it was very gratifying to know that I planted something that bumblebee like!

Next year, we'll replant the beautiful lemon-yellow sunflowers, but also plant pink and rose-madder too, and it will look fabulous!

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

#WEARAMASK

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Geez. That sucks. Mostly 70's and 80's here, but the down side is that winter isn't too far behind it.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Made the effort to get some shredding done today. And for some reason I had stuck my music books in a pile of material to be shredded. Good thing I check everything before I shred it or it could have been adios to my music books.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Made the effort to get some shredding done today. And for some reason I had stuck my music books in a pile of material to be shredded. Good thing I check everything before I shred it or it could have been adios to my music books.

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*****

It is SUCH a pleasure accomplishing something that you know you won't have to do again in a day/week/month!



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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

#WEARAMASK

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Hey Signy - they used 'black iron' pipe for gas lines.

Call DigAlert @ 811 for any underground utilities including cable and electrical. 811 or 800-422-4133.
This seems to indicate that if you call SoCalGas they'll just refer you to the 811 number:
https://www.socalgas.com/stay-safe/safety-and-prevention/digging-and-y
ard-safety
Contact 811 Before You Dig

They'll come by and put flags over the utilities.


It may not tell you what that line IS, but it'll be somewhat reassuring to know what it ISN'T.


I ran across old gas pipe which was replaced with newer gas pipe in my yard, which was then later replaced about 12 years ago by a semi-flexible polymer tube (it was coiled on a large drum), as well as buried romex cable, and what may have been a phone line buried inside a garden hose. I STILL have buried romex, but fortunately it's been disconnected at both ends so there's no live wires about. And when I dug out a tree stump in the front yard I found my galvanized iron water main (which I had replaced with copper). What one finds digging in the yard!! Fwiw I called DigAlert so many times over the years they put paint on the curb instead of the little flags marking the water and gas lines locations where they enter the property.

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Got a bit more shredding done today. Now, I just got to take what I did and some other paper and boxes down to recycling.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Got a bit more shredding done today. Now, I just got to take what I did and some other paper and boxes down to recycling.

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Ah, one more thing to do on my "list of things to do"!
Glad you're getting it out of the way, BRENDA!



-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

#WEARAMASK

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