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| I spent some more time working on the cooler duct, and came near finishing it. It is now totally enclosed, and lacks only installation of the corner flashing. It seem that I am less and less able to accomplish what should be relatively simple tasks. I sit, look, and think instead of doing. I didn't waste any sheets of siding in this project, and that was the one redeeming feature of my new work ethic. I did accomplish one thing of note. Barbara was "indisposed" and by myself I put up a second eight foot sheet of siding above the first--without any help. It took about three hours and roughly 80% of my stamina for the day, but I did it. I was about to explain the process, but if I tell you, one of you might try it without exercising due diligence and end up getting hurt... |
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The Allen Family Reunion came and went another time. I attended (without Barbara), arriving Saturday Morning circa 11 am. There wasn't much unusual that transpired. We visited, ate, and visited some more. Why fix something that isn't broken?
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One item of note, Calvert Shumway told me that his divorce had become final on that date. I feel sad about that, both for him and is wife, but more especially for their children. He gets custody on weekends and holidays, and had them there with him. They all have a hard row to hoe in front of them. |
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Mark (like me) has displayed some antisocial characteristics, so I was a bit surprised at his behavior at this reunion. He actually played with his grandkids, crawling on all fours and growling at them. While it was entirely appropriate, I didn't expect to see that behavior from him. Perhaps grandkids affect even grouchy old men. I wonder, though, where all the white in his beard came from so suddenly...
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Barbara didn't attend the reunion, but had me return with a couple of grandkids. Ethan and Kyle stayed at our home for a few days, and it was hard to tell who enjoyed it more, them or Barbara. At the same time, kids are a handful for those of us who are no longer in practice, so they made her happy twice--once by coming and once by going. Barbara arrange for a horse and buggy ride, but failed to document the event photographically. |
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Susan LeFevre did not attend the reunion, being involved in Girls Camp. She is not doing well, still suffering from an injury to her shoulder. Apparently, she passed out from some undetermined cause and fell to the floor at work. The fall broke the ball off the humerus and shattered the socket. The hospital in Winslow x-rayed it and diagnosed it as a dislocated shoulder.
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When it was not improved in the least and still hurting 5 weeks later, she went to a specialist and immediately upon examination of the x-rays, this gentleman diagnosed the fractures. By then, healing had progressed to the point that it required surgery, along with a titanium joint to remedy the situation. Then, while undergoing post-surgical physical therapy her other shoulder slipped out of joint. Some how, the ball in that joint acquired a groove, and if the arm is move just right, the shoulder will dislocate, suggesting that it is time for more surgery. It doesn't sound like fun to me. |
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Here in Oracle, summer has finally arrived, with 100 degree temperatures yesterday, today and forecast for the remainder of the week. I have yet to finish the AC installation--but it is a task I have to complete soon.
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To this point, Barbara isn't complaining to vociferously. It is dry and the swamp cooler seems (at least to me) to be adequately functional. (Whoops! Maybe I spoke too soon...) |
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A week ago Thursday, I attended a training session in Casa Grande where we were instructed in the finer points of maintenance and operation of the Cell-Dyne 1700 (the hematology machine [counts red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets] that I operate in the Sun Life lab). Perhaps I am becoming hyper-critical as I age, but I was disappointed that the instructor was unable to answer some of my questions. She had been a Medical Technologist for 30 some years, had managed a medical laboratory, and had worked for Abbott (the company that manufactures the instrument) for about 15 years, including ten years answering the phones as a member of their technical service (when you have a problem, you call tech service and they solve it for you [a process that usually takes several hours and often results in a visits by a "service engineer"]) and five years setting up new installations and training techs in using them. She was definitely well qualified, but amazingly (at least in my humble opinion) knowledge deficient.
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The machine is a complex concatenation of tubes, sensors, and servo motors that takes a sample of whole blood and makes a dilution. This dilution is sampled and a second dilution is made from which the red blood cells and platelets are counted. The remainder of the first dilution is then subjected to a process that lyses the red blood cells, allowing the white blood cells to be counted and the hemoglobin quantified. My first question was, "Why do the red cells lyse (break apart) while the white cells remain intact?" Her look was what I would have expected had I inquired about the texture and mouth feel of lizard liver pate; she basically had no clue. |
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The machine counts cells by measuring changes in an electrical field as the cells move down a pressure gradient through a microscopic aperture. Somehow, it also determines the cell size, and when I asked how that was accomplished, again she was speechless. Perhaps I am out of step with the rest of the world, but when I am tasked with using, maintaining, and trouble shooting an instrument, the first thing I need to know is the process theory, and questions like those are basic to understanding the magic transpiring in the instrument. Somehow, the explanation that, "You have a black box, you put the sample in here, and the results come out there..." just doesn't work for me.
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AJ sent the memory card from his camera and it contained some interesting photos. I do not plan on posting this set on grandmasweb (other than selections that I put put at the beginning of each of his letters). |
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Looking at this set, I am again impressed with the incongruity of work force maturity and the tremendous work being accomplished. A saying in my mission went as follows: This church has to be true. Otherwise the missionaries would have destroyed it long ago. I suspect that, in retrospect, AJ may come to feel the same.
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| And speaking of what a man's gotta do, I am particularly grateful for the gift of the ipod. It came as the result of a misunderstanding, but has worked out quite well. As a child and adolescent, one of my favorite fantasies concerned my role as a parent. My hopes and aspirations were not only high, they were (at least in the light of hindsight and the vernacular of now grown teens) outrageous. Looking back, there are many thing on which I could improve if I were to do it over. At the time, I seemed besieged by a plethora of problems for which I had no solutions (or even time to properly evaluate the causative factors). One area in which I experienced a complete failure was daily scripture study. In retrospect, a simple solution might be to provide each family member with an ipod and have them listen to an assigned passage sometime during their day (transit times would probably work well) and then hold a short discussion (yeah, I know ipods post date the majority of my family). |
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| At any rate, I am becoming much more conversant with the New Testament as the result of my ipod. I have been asked to speak in church the last Sunday of this month. My assigned subject was, "Church History." Being given to liberal interpretations, I have chosen to discuss the problems facing the early church in the years immediately following the death of Christ. The first church members were Jewish followers of the Mosaic Law, and traditions that had grown up around that law forbade interactions between them and non-jews (or gentiles). When Paul started converting relatively large numbers of these gentiles, problems followed. It is all there in the New Testament, but I have rarely (never, I think) heard it discussed. Does that sound like fun? Wish me luck... |