Well, it's been two weeks since I busted my ankle and it's been a lot less than easy going in spite of my wonderful friends Sandy and Dean and their constant help. I would quite simply be totally screwed without them. They have literally rearranged their house and their lives to take care of me see me through this mess. Not only did they take me in but they took in Sugar my now 9 week old Lab puppy who is great fun but a puppy nonetheless who still is learning and has a long way to go toward being totally civilized. They used to have a living room too but Sugar now has a play room. Fortunately they are dog lovers and recently lost their Yorkie Poo to congestive heart failure so Sugar is providing her own brand of therapy. Though used to smaller dogs they both love Sugar to death and put up with her antics knowing that puppies is just puppies!

I see the orthopedic surgeon next Tuesday and get a post op to see where we are and what the prognosis is. This visit should shed some light on what type of cast goes on next, for how long, and what will come after that. Up front they said it would be 3 months before I could drive, so I'm hoping for some improvement in that diagnosis. I'm going to be interested to see what kind of hardware store I am carrying around. They said a plate, 5 screws, and a lag bolt, so it should make for an interesting x-ray or two!

With any luck they can at least help the pain situation and I can stop eating so many pain pills. I have learned that in most instances I prefer a walker to crutches and some stores have really bad electric carts for people like me. I've ridden on some nice ones and some real clunkers! Some places don't even clean them, much less maintain them . My perspective on disabilities is being heightened and if nothing else, I'll come out of this with a better understanding of what a lot of people face every day of their lives.

Craaaaaaak!

Wilsonville, Or. shall remain imprinted in my mind forever. It's on I-5 just south of Portland and there is a very nice rest area there where I stopped to let Sugar stretch her legs. Her legs came out fine but mine didn't do so well! I was standing on nice level, flat ground and in the process of turning to look another direction I guess my foot hung up and down I went, breaking my ankle in the process. I yelled for help and not one of the 3 dozen or so folks around there paid any attention. Fortunately my cell phone was on my belt so I called 911 and they sent a fire crew and ambulance to the rescue.

As we prepared to head out for the hospital I realized that Sugar probably wasn't going to be welcome in the ER. Both the firemen and the EMT's had been playing with her and one of he firemen quickly volunteered that they would take her to the station and we could pick her up after I got out of the hospital. So, Sugar got t ride in a firetruck! I guess she had a great time being a fireman for a day and was none the worse for the wear from the whole thing. I, on the other hand, have a broken tibia and .am off today to see an orthopedist. There's a whole lot more to the story but it will have to wait a bit because I have to hobble to the bathroom and clean myself up for the Dr.'s visit.

Stay tuned and I'll tell how I met my daughters fiance's family through this mishap and how wonderful they all are!

Sometimes you do something crazy and figure it will go away in a day or two. Other times you get a little wild and it takes a lot longer to live it down. Then there are the times you totally loose your mind and get into something that will take years to "come out in the wash". Last week I did one of those kind of things.

Actually I didn't figure I'd live this long so I have toughed it out on my own as a solo act. Recently my favorite oncologist has been more encouraging and I decided "what the heck, I'm gonna get a traveling companion." I once had a chocolate lab who was the best friend and companion I ever had. When I decided to get another dog there was no question it would be a Lab and in my mind no question it would be a chocolate. As you can see from the picture it turned out to be White Chocolate.

I was searching the web for breeders near by with some chocolate girls and I saw a picture of a perfectly sweet white girl in a pink scarf. It's like that woman you see walking down the street that is nothing like anything you've ever thought you'd care for but you suddenly just have to have. Fortunately, this girl was easier to come by and I'm sure will be much lower maintenance in the long run!

Sugar is about 8 weeks old and just starting to become a "person" in her own right. There were ten in the litter, 5 white and 5 black thrown from a Yellow mom of about 70# and a Black daddy of about 110#. So, this girl could run into the 80# category in a year or so. Right now she's just a good handful or two of the softest fur you can imagine and a mouth full of razor blades! My hands look like I lost a fight with a meat grinder. Boy, those puppy teeth are sharp little dudes. I'm not sure what mother nature figures these little guys are going to eat but anything up to reinforced concrete seems possible.

It's been fun to watch over the past 5 days how much her personality has developed. She's become a lot more confident and playful and doesn't mind straying a little farther from "daddy". I gave her a real test today and put her in the shopping cart and shopped at the Super Wal Mart! She was nervous at first but then became more interested in all the mayhem around her. Of course there were plenty of admirers who had to give a pet or two and the two little kids in the toy department who were just tickled to see a puppy. I may have been a bit early but there is a method in my madness. My plan is to train Sugar as a Service Dog. I know that my own health will begin to decline in a way that will leave me incapable of doing everything for myself. What you need then is your best friend to take care of you. When that time comes I'm sure Sugar will be that friend. Not that I don't have some fabulous two legged friends I know I can count on, it's just that I know the Labrador loyalty and love. She will do whatever she is trained for, and likely more, because she loves me.

Training as a service dog isn't as stringent as training as a "Therapy Dog". I'm thinking about that too if she proves capable. I'd like to be able to go into various institutions in my travels and give some sick kids some joy, or give a chemo patient a soft head to pet. Maybe she and I can give back some of the joy I've known in my life before I can't do that anymore.

I guess I'm not a good blogger. I keep forgetting to do this and when I think of it I often think I don't have much to say, or I don't have good pictures or something like that.

I've been sitting in one spot too long. Oh, I've made a couple of interesting side trips, but I'd prefer to be back on the road poking my nose into places I haven't been before. The problem with all that is doctors. Well, not really doctors, but health. Or health problems, or questions, or curiosities. My oncologist is amazed that I am doing so well so that isn't a big issue right now. I'll see him again in early September for another look at the lung to see if I can get back on the road. My energy level has been sucky but we've determined it has nothing to do with the cancer. So I went to my MD and had a flock of blood tests including testosterone level and all is well. Hmmm. Then why no energy? I've also been having a helluva time getting to sleep at night and often spend up to 2 hours starring at the inside of my eyelids before nodding off. My restless leg syndrome has come back with a vengeance and helps keep me awake and irritated.

Obviously, poor sleep is going to make a difference in the energy level, but it definitely goes beyond that. Ponder, ponder, ponder. You know how sometimes you worry so hard about what to do that you overlook the obvious? Seven years ago I had a sleep study and found that I have a very severe case of apnea. (most apnea sufferers wake 25-30 times an hour. In my test I was up to 80!) While my CPAP machine serves me well and I seem to sleep fine once I get there, I thought that the logical person to see is my "sleep doctor". Dr. S is a psychiatrist who later got his certification as a sleep therapist. He's one sharp guy and a great pharmacologist. I saw him this week and we're working on the theory that one of my main medications may be a major culprit in all this sleep malfunction. Already we've dropped the dose by a third and he gave me something to help keep my legs in the bed with me at night! But, the main thing is that we are going to repeat the sleep study and see what gives there.

If you haven't had a sleep study or talked with someone who has, it is quite an interesting thing. You spend the night in a strange bed being watched by TV cameras (infrared so they can turn off the lights!) with about 50 sensors connected from head to toe feeding info into a computer in the next room. Yep, they wire you like a home theatre system and then tell you to go to sleep! I was happy to find out that David, the technician who did my last study is still doing them and will be doing this one. David is a super guy who really knows his computer and software so he gets the info and cranks out good data. All this will happen mid month and in the meantime we wait for a couple more blood tests to identify or eliminate possible culprits.

Not wanting to leave anyone out, I'm also getting my teeth cleaned and a dental check up too. This is what happens when you have "issues" and leave town for 6 months or more at a time. Oh yeah, I went to a new audiologist--she's a Dr. of audiology, and got my hearing aids tuned up too. What a crazy gal! We just had way too much fun and I can't even disclose some of the things that we talked about!

I feel kind of bad that I don't need to see my neurologist. He's a swell guy and I'd hate for him to think I'm neglecting him but he took care of my double vision problem so well that I just don't need go.

This isn't much of a blog. More of a "oh my gawd grampa is off about his ailments again" session. Oh well, I guess you talk about what's on your mind and I wasn't sure you'd want to hear about how the trenching contractor cut the Bresnan Cable 6 times in a week, in 3 blocks of digging! For all you excavators out there, I have a feeling there may be a contract open.

Anybody Know Where the Fish Are?

This past weekend friends Sandy and Dean and I met friends Lori and Rick at Hauser lake where Lori recently caught a 5# trout---from the bank! We were all pretty excited about the fishing prospects as well as trying out our new rafts on the lake. Sandy and Dean had made a frame with seats for their new boat and I had made a couple of small frames to better distribute my delicate 255 lbs plus a 12 volt battery and trolling motor.

We drove over about noon Thursday to give ourselves a nice long weekend in order to really get in a lot fishing. As it turned out the fishing wasn't so great but the rest of the weekend was pretty much perfect although a bit hot. But, it's Montana in July so we expected that! Lori and Sandy had enough food for a 2 week trip and I think we tried to eat all of it. Two nieces came up Friday after work and brought more food and drinks! It looked for awhile like we would have to open a salad bar. Since the campground was really full we couldn't get spaces together and I got the last space in the place on Thursday. We congregated at Sandy and Dean's new 25' Jayco G2 and gave it a workout with a lot of cooking and dish washing. Their site had a nice "back yard" and good water access and was great for sitting, game playing and fire watching as well as bank fishing.

Our neighbors had a motorhome and a large 5th wheel full of family, boyfriends, and dogs. They were an active group with a boat, kayaks and a couple of 4 wheelers. The mom told us her youngest daughter had just been chosen as a University of Montana Grizzly cheerleader. What makes that special is she's the first Freshman ever chosen. I saw her goofing around doing some handstands and she sure seems nimble enough for the job! One of the grandsons, about 4 I'd guess saw us playing a goofy game called "Balls and Ladders" (I think) and was pretty interested. He stood and watched for quite awhile and one of his aunties boyfriends came over to check on him. I asked him if they wanted to play and of course the little guy was more than ready. It took him awhile but when he scored he was pretty darn proud of himeself!

He told us that on Sunday he was going to ride a sheep which is a pretty common "little guy" rodeo event around here.

But, my favorite part of the family was this big yellow fella who, being a lab, loves to retrieve his green tennis balls from the lake. I don't think I've ever seen any animal as happy as a lab retrieving from the water. After all, it's what they were bred for for generations. All in all it was a great weekend with only one casualty--Dean tripped and fell and scratched his leg and hand but he's a tough guy and shrugged it off! Next trip is Yellowstone Park the first of August. Daughter Nicole and her fiance Jim will be joining us and we should be able to get into a lot of trouble!

I have never been a great photographer. Like most folks I have had my lucky shots and even a few that I planned turned out right. I've been taking pictures for over 50 years and started with a Kodak Brownie "point and shoot" camera that gave you no choice in what you did. Gradually I made my way through Instamatics, Polaroid instant cameras and finally in about 1971 bought a "real" camera, a Minolta SRT 101, 35 mm camera. I added a couple of lenses and some filters and such and had a good time with it for many years before moving into a Minolta Maxuum. Then the digital age dawned.

My first foray into digital photography came with a HP 2mp camera I paid about $100 for. It took really great pictures and for only 2 mp it was amazing. I killed it in Alaska when a very steep river bank gave way and I fell quite a distance into the bottom of an overturned tree. The camera was in a fabric case, clipped to my belt, and the combination of sand, impact, and who knows what else caused the LCD to give up the ghost. The possibility of this kind of event is precisely why the camera was with me and not my new 10 mp FujiFilm SK8100. I bought the Fugi before going to Alaska because the HP had gotten me hooked on the idea of digital photography and I wanted to upgrade before the trip. Jumping from 2 mp to 10 mp is kind of like going from a hot dog to a T-bone steak! The Fuji is a phenomenal camera with lots of bells and whistles and a very good zoom lens yet it didn't cost an arm and a leg. It is excellent in low light and has macro capability.

The sea otter above was captured on a wildlife cruise I took with my daughter Nicole and her (now) fiance Jim out of Seward, AK. They flew up to help me celebrate my 60th birthday and this was part of our day. Jim is a follower of everything electronic and anything that contains a microchip! He was more than eager to check out the new camera and since he knew more about it before seeing it than I did after having used it for several weeks, I was glad to let him have at it. We came back from the cruise with something on the order of 240 frames of pictures. That's like shooting 10 rolls of 24 exposure film. Of course they weren't all good, but that's the beauty of digital--you can shoot till the memory card is full and put in another card. When you get back to your computer you download the pictures and simply delete the bad ones. No cost. No wasted film. No guilt! I presently have about 2200 pictures on my laptop that have been taken on the Fuji. I have thrown away two or three hundred I suppose.

"Been there, done that" pretty well describes my work life. I've done a little bit of everything in the realm of building things and making things but this is my first power pole. I guess everyone should have a good pole raising in his life and today should be mine. This one is to get power to the pad for the RV's in our lives and a little power for other backyard necessities.

All we lack is the hole. Sitting at the base of the Bitterroot Mountains, holes are not easy to come by. Mother nature saw fit to put a few rocks in those holes and only the brave and/or slightly demented try to locate holes here. Northwestern Electric says the hole needs to be 5 feet deep to boot! Fortunately we have a young feller in the family who is coming with a backhoe to dig the hole. He's in his 20's now and started, right in this very yard, to operate backhoes when he was 5. (no misprint, that's 5) Glen's pop was putting in a septic system and had a bobcat with a backhoe on it. Glen watched for a bit and declared that he wanted to dig. Dad say "OK, dig a trench from there to there" and got off the machine. Glen started to dig and to the amazement of all present it looked like he had 20 years experience! The 5 year old and the backhoe were one! He's been doing his share of digging ever since and I think he still likes it as much as when he was 5.

One of the things I've learned over the years is to be careful about telling a kid "No, you can't do that". You're not old enough or you're not big enough aren't always the right parameters to set. We've all seen kids do some pretty amazing things when they had the opportunity. My dad was always good about letting me try things and help with projects and a lot of neighbors contributed too. Dwaine next door was really kind and patient about showing me things and letting me help him when he really didn't need the "help". The moral of the story is that we shouldn't say no without first saying "let's give it a try".

Now if that darn kid would just show up to dig the hole.