24Apr24: Andy’s ‘nipped…

He’s got the blank look of a ‘nip user, and he stayed there like this, immobile for several minutes.

He’s really twitchy now, my next clue.

He moved over to the lapboard and slept it off. Good ‘niip!

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I couldn’t access the Internet on my laptop yesterday. It looked pretty grim because Spectrum tech support’s Jaimie wasn’t able to come up with a solution. I decided it was a good time to stand away from the problem and come back the next day. I have exactly no idea what I did differently today, but I have WiFi again. I hate computers! And I love them to death.

01Aug20: What’s up, Doug?

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Andy’s curious. Why won’t I let him come around to the other side?

Maybe it’s because he has “Itchy Paws” and all I need to start hyperventilating again is Andy to wipe out what little hard won progress I’ve made on the nightmare configuration issues on my new laptop and photo sharing from my smart phone.

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Seems like I resolve one issue and bring up twelve more. I’m not kidding about hyperventilation! ( I hope the person who cuts my beard and hair is operating again soon or I might be tempted to do it myself. >self to myself< “Don’t do it, Doug!”)

Post 1896: The kitty boys are back!

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We’ve had a grumpy few days, thanks to a laptop giving up the ghost, but my new laptop means the kitty boys and I can return to regular posting.

What’s going to fall apart next? I suspect it’s time for the smart phone to go belly up. I mean, don’t expensive things always fail close to expensive holidays like Christmas? And it’s about the only bit of technology I use that’s left to croak!

07Apr26: getting used to it…

Andy’s having no problem with the night to daytime shift I recently had for dialysis.

Treats come regardless of the time, eh?!

Chin and chest “scritches” are the same…and really enjoyed!

A 14-year-old cat on the coming 1st of July, yet Andy jumped at least six feet from the lapboard to the recliner footrest rest. Incredible!

Poops! Andy got bored waiting for me to freshen the treats!

06Apr26: Don’t pout, Andrew!

“I know music to.my ears isn’t comprehensible to how you hear it.”

I enjoyed this Rossini opera again. Lots of what I enjoy most in the time frame, earlyto mid-19th Century, with bombastic duets and choruses that rock your socks off.

The Italians invented the opera in 1600. Claudio Monteverdi was first – and they took it to the top in no time! It was so popular composers as diverse as Haydn and Rameau had to try their hand at it, too!

It’s Vivaldi all afternoon, and you prefer Greenies.

Some very lively, beautiful ensemble pieces in this one. It’s playing now, my cat.

Vivaldi wrote operas, too, a fact people don’t realize. I have several of them, but two operas already today…even I need space between them.

Andy, on the other hand, is ready all the time for his treats!

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I doubt the albums showm are in publication any longer. I went through my Vivaldi phase 35 or 40 years ago. Music of any genre is personal. You know what you like, and that makes it good, even if others don’t get the music, what’s “good.” Personally, I like most music, even stuff that might surprise you…and me! I listen to it. Something appeals – bassist work, singer’s voice, the message of the song, the melody, the skill of the players on their instruments. The biggest clue to do I like some music is, though, do I want to listen to anything they put out more than once?

How about you?

05Apr26

..I’m an old guy. What if I needed to get to the bathroom quickly? Would you let me have my wheelchair?

I don’t think Andy’s listening, nor will he let me have my wheelchair!

NOT a good idea, kitty.

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Andy expect me to turn on the television…

…but I’m checking out my new CD player. Looking through my opera drawers, I came across an old 20th Century favorite – not many of that period are –

Puccini!’s.

“La Boheme”

My late friendRalph W. once told me that the apartment he lived in at the time was the setting for this opera. Could be a fine story, though it was in the Latin District. One point.

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I tried and tried to get the CD player turned on.

“Good grief!! What did I do to turn it on yesterday…

… Oh! Plug it in!”

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Andy doesn’t know what to think of this noisy box or why it’s on his sleeping spot.

(I assembled a stout, little table. As soon as I figure out where to set it so I can listen to music, Andy will get his spot back.)

04April26: mornings are busy…

Open doors in preparation for morning bird song.

American robins might be in song, but I sure as heck am not!

This is his choice for breakfast, but he still has his ears tuned in for that absent bitdsong….

Finally, I get to fix and eat my breakfast- with kitty boy drooling and watching me take each bite.

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I tried call-in grocery shopping this week. The total was about $176. I was expecting the bill to be between $250-300!

How could I be so far off? Happily?

Well, I skipped the candy aisle, the cookies and crackers aisle, and the frozen treats aisle!

It wasn’t planned that way, yet it gave me a start to realize where I spend money at the grocery store.

Also, I skipped the salty snacks and pop aisle, though I always limit myself on the former, just buy the small cans of pop since I waste most of the larger sized ones. I tend to go for mineral water, an extravagance, I know, but one gets the bubbles without the unneeded calories.

Next week, the shopping list will probably include tea, coffee beans, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (I can’t resist) a lemon cookie from Canada (“Soarry,” but they are really lemony and good!), and maybe those frozen lime fruit bars. Ritz crackers. Yeah!

03Apr26: there are challenges living with a cat…and dosage…

It is worrisome. Andy eats so much of his wet food, then stops. Since dosing it with taurine, it is concerning he’s getting more than in regular food, but not enough. Today I tried making his wet food more a slurry, reduced the zap time so it didn’t get too hot, added the taurine in the whole (unappetizing) mess, presented it to Andy for his approval, then waited. As expected, he drank the liquid, ate some of the solids, left most of it before he wandered off for a kitty bath.

Success looks like this? For an Andy-cat, yes, perhaps a close third or fourth place in the race to get Andy to the top in kitty class eating.

Andy saw me and stopped by. I was going through mail, most of it having to do with Veterans Administration appointments and my recent Scottsbluff hospital stay.

One, though, was a letter from a class of 1966 classmate.

He noted he enjoyed my photos taken at our monthly luncheon get togethers.

He missed them, but realized I’d had health issues recently. (Like the whole first quarter of 2026!)

He hoped I could do it again, take the photos. Me, too!

Our hostess had an excellent craftsman build a ramp up her front stairs, making it possible to get in the door much easier. I got his name and number from her. Though Ben, the apartment complex maintenance guy, made a very workable ramp for me, the inside bump over the door frame requires going out the door backwards…down a sloped ramp, onto a sloped sidewalk, into hell on earth on the sloped lane if I don’t have someone pulling me over the bump. Excellent wheelchair brakes are a good thing, too. Too much drama, as noted, otherwise!!

That pretty much ended it. Eventually, I photographed the note and sent it to my friend who coordinates class of 1966 news and events.

I edited the message out of the photo to the point you get the gist of what else was included against my will

02Apr26: domesticticity is exhausting..! Part 2

I’m still working through the mess on my table.

I worked out a slow but safe way to shower, which I took to wash away morning cobwebs. Knowing what I was coming back to … a washer load and the table… I made sure the warm, soothing, wetness pouring out of the hand shower continued for a very, very long, slow, and safe time! Luxury, thy name is Warm Water! But, it had to end. Ugh!

Yes, call in day for home grocery delivery. Don’t forget! I made my list. (Remember our president marveling over that new word, gro’-cer-ee. Gro-sir-ee’. Grow-sur’-ey. Never had to shop for ’em in his life, is my guess! Lucky duck!)

It’s call-in day for oxygen supplies, too. That’s been messed up since my dialysis days were switched. Delivery day landed on a dialysis day, and the rest is a nightmare!

It turns out Chris spends his day in Alliance taking care of our needs. Of course, dialysis on days is a very different animal than my old shift. It’s a catch-all of patients who require short sessions up to regular four hours ones.

You get put on a machine when it’s cleaned and ready after someone who might have had a short, medium, or long run starting whenever the machine was free.

Consequently, my sessions get done early or later. Telling Chris, the oxygen delivery guy, when to come by on Friday, then, is highly problematic. I think we will have to set up a telephone system to let each other know when to do deliveries, pick up empties, etc.

Getting Andy to lick up his taurine. He tends to lick the water and skip most of the food. Dissolving the taurine in the fluid on his wet food plate, I hope to improve his life by assuring him an established level of this vital kitty cat stuff, but without zapping in his wet food – I add it after – or having commercially baked kitty food sourcing a diminished level of taurine.

In the olden days, butchers gave people liver and other offal to feed your cats. Gave! Or they ate table scraps and supplemented their food with wild mousies, grasshoppers, and the like since they mostly lived outdoors.

Andy’s glad he’s just a kitty. He sees me fluttering around like a bee to flowers. “Slow but safe, Douglas!”

(Is my cat allowed to use that tone of voice on me? Hmmm. I must check it out on Google!)

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I need a nap.

But…

…you can take lessons from your pets. Slow but safe. Safe but slowzzzzzz.

02Apr26:

Andy had early money snacks, then had a drink at his fountain.

After dialysis, I signed my tax papers, then gave thought to food. I continued to feel that fatigue wall crushing in early. I hope it shifts to later when my body adjusts to the daytime dialysis schedule.

Why? Look at my table! I was so exhausted, several different things ended up there, some should have been returned to the refrigerator. Some just needed to be rounded up to avoid losing them. Others were notices of appointment changes, including the notorious pulmonologist’s appointment that has been changed three times…once for being too late in the day for public transportation I’d use since I don’t drive at night (lots of deer crossing roads at night). Another was on a time and date suitable for my old dialysis schedule. Finally! One that works for my new di a lysis schedule. And more that I have to sort through after a halfway decec3bt night’s sleep where it happened – my chair, sleeping to the drone of the television news I didn’t stay awake to see. Oh, and nestled on my wheelchair a partially eaten pizza I settled on for food after dialysis yesterday.

01Apr26:waiting to sign tax papers…

People on dialysis have a fatigue wall set in that is so intense, uncomfortable,
that the only “cure” is to find a bed and sleep it off.

While waiting for my tax preparer to bring my2025 tax paperwork over to sign, I accidentally snapped a photo of me going over to the fatigue wall. That started around 3:15 yesterday afternoon. I fought it several hours, all afternoon till the papers arrived at…never.

Did I take this? Must have. No one else here. 6:36 pm.

Where’s my kitty? We need kitty “stuff” in here

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I set my cup of ice water on the floor so I could reattach some oxygen lines.

I was going to take some extra strength Tylenol with that water.

Geez! Still waiting. Tylenol. Need it bad.

Tax preparers!! I tried Tylenol, ice, opening a window on the door enough to let in icey air. I’m starting to have visual disturbances. I think it’s time to call this off and make an appointment at their shop. I’d hate to be the one pushing a total of a 117 kilo man plus wheelchair up their entrance, but I can’t die waiting for someone who comes over, if at all, so long after the fatigue wall sets it. If you haven’t experienced it, you can’t appreciate how much it takes to try to stay awake hours after it sets in.
Not fun. Not fun. Five hours

31Mar26: confusion..

I’m having some issues keeping up with all of the appointments. Too many doctors and too many pieces of paper changing medications of so aspect of my care!

“Doug! My highway tends to end here! I used to have a great one past the window. It was over the desk. I could run over it or stop to enjoy the window show. Hey!”

Yeah. We need to see about that, Andy. The 80’s girl bear toy can go somewhere else. I don’t know if the books will be a good landing spot for you, yet scrinching them closer together might work. Then you can hop onto the secretaire, which is plenty solid. The secretaire chair is a potential landing spot, too.

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This week, my almost 36 years in quality came back to haunt me. I kept seeing parallels between making hydraulic hose to given tolerances and a chore given me to measure and record amounts of drainage from my cancer surgery wound….

Henry Ford – yes, that one! – used to say that if you need a tool to do a job and don’t buy it, you still pay for it.

He meant you had more scrap, higher reworks, more employee injuries, more customer returns for off dimension or crap quality, and more with the worn tool needing replacement than the proper new one

The cup I had to measure my drainage was marked ambigously. Below 30ml, there were marks that were in lines in English units (no clue which…) AND metric, also not clearly marked. I mistook the scrambled lines for being for the metric.

My measurements, consequently became blended! And meaningless! And impossible to sort because I don’t know which lines I referenced in my notes. I became frustrated because I used to work in English units, clearly marked on precision tools that were calibrated to reference tools 10 times that precise and accuract. Those tools, in turn, were verified by master tools maintaine⁹d and used by Bell Aerospace’s calibration services. THOSE tools were traceable to the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) master references. I mean, anal obsessive level temperature, humidity, cleanliness, moon suit level master maintenance to an atomic level. They have the atomic clock in Colorado, too, so all time changezzzzzz ! Sorry. I’m endlessly fascinated by the topic, but we were talking about my experiences with more precise and accurate ways to get data compared with the poorly marked measuring cup a Henry Ford might spit tobacco juice into, then toss.

I used to have a quote under my desk cover. My job included a lot of data analysis, crushing those data to learn what they showed about a given product process, etc. (My mind went through each of these uses, intruding on sleep, food, quiet times, and more. I’m sparing a lot of reading here with that simple “etc.!”) That quote help focus me when I sat in front of my computer with a spreadsheet or apps capable of doing lots of statistical mischief to data: “Torture numbers and they’ll confess to anything.”

The data on my drainage…meh! Torture them or not, they won’t tell anyone squat. I’m ashamed to have my name attached to them! Give me a graduated beaker, a bit of scientific glasswork, and you’ll have numbers you can make sense of!

“Go back to sleep, Andy. My readers are joining you, too!”

The right tool in the worker’s hand is the start to the result you need in industry. It seems that applies to your temporary “employee” measuring drainage from a wound,too.

The nature of variation. Now there’s a topic you DON’T want me to get started on. Oh, come on! You know maths are fun! Then we can talk standard deviations; probability theory; design experiments; statistical process control; how Shewhart at ATT developed simple statistical tools (process data collection) methodologies) that Juran, then Deming further developed and taught to the Japanese after WWII; and that’s why you may be driving a Toyota or Honda today! Yeppers! “My world, not that plastic cup one.