Traveling with a disability

In a few weeks, Carolyn and I will be leaving for a couple of weeks in Hawai'i, Kaua'i to be more specific.  It will be the first time I have flown since becoming unable to walk solely with a cane and I'll have to admit that it has me worried.  Not only is there the concern of determining what official policies are but also the concern that sometimes companies don't know or won't follow their own policies.

For example, here is the United Airlines policy on transporting medical equipment needed by a passenger:

If I am medically disabled and need to check my wheelchair and/or other medical or assistive devices in addition to my suitcase, do I have to pay any fees in addition to the first bag service fee? A wheelchair may be checked at no charge and will not count as a checked bag if it is strictly for mobility purposes or is required in order to make a living. Other medical and assistive devices are also exempt from service fees. The only fee that will apply is the first checked bag fee for your suitcase. Additional checked baggage fees may apply if you check additional bags.

That sounds fairly straightforward but will an airline official interpret it to apply only to my transport chair or to that and my rolling walker as well?  Should I even take both?


According to the price schedule of at least one rental company on Kaua'i it would cost us as much to rent a transport chair for two weeks as it would to buy one and check it through as luggage.  Has anyone had experience with this question?

Throwaway Society

I've once again been reminded that our society fixes fewer and fewer machines.  For example my walker (Matilda - as in Walking Matilda, walking Matilda, you'll come a walking,Matilda,with me) is beginning to show some wear on the rear wheels.  Not serious yet but it appears the wheels will go before the rest of the system.  So I decided to try to find replacement wheels.

The first place was where we purchased the walker - Big Lots!  Of course they carry no spare parts and don't even have the walker in stock.  Next, medical equipment stores.  They expressed surprise at seeing the walker because they had never seen one like it before.  One dealer even thought it was illegal for Big Lots! to be selling such equipment.  I was clearly not going to get help there.

In the meantime I had been surfing the web and finding out that COSCO is more of a generic brand than a manufacturer.  And there are layers and layers to this company.  But I couldn't nail down a real bricks and mortar address or someone to call. Finally, I retrieved the "warrantee" that came with the walker (which the instructions called a "rollator" but gave no other identifying information such as a model number or parts supplier.  It did, however, give the phone number to call if the rollator was somehow defective.

I called the company, asked for the parts department, and ended up speaking with a nice, patient, eager-to-help woman who sounded like she really wanted to find some wheels for me.  But, like my searches, her efforts were fruitless even after she convinced the two of us that she had found the right model number.  She confirmed what I already was convinced of -- there were no spare parts anywhere for this walker.  Her only suggestion was to buy another walker like this one and use this one for spare parts for the new one.  And according to her records the only retailer still carrying this walker was ... Big Lots!!  I had come full circle!

Cookie experiments

Once again I tried to bake "out of the box" with results that remind me why I really should follow the recipe in the book.  You see, we had some Dove dark chocolate candies lying around the house being much to big a temptation for me.  I figured that if I found a way to include them in cookies, I would be able to get other people to help me make them disappear.

Once of my ideas was to cut the Dove chocolate into 4 pieces and sandwich it between two sugar cookies.  The chocolate would melt and you'd have a sort of "reverse Oreo" cookie.  Result:  Doves don't melt.  The cookies are so hard they HAVE to be dunked in milk or coffee or other dunkin' drink of your choice.  When you get to the center of the cookie, there is a little chocolate reward for you.  Yayyyyyyy!

The other idea was to put say a teaspoon of Nutella inside the sugar cookie sandwich.  Result: Nutella doesn't melt much. The cookies are still hard and the Nutella is still in a lump.

My recollection is that sugar cookies take up moisture overnight so they're softer and easier to eat the 2nd or 3rd day after baking.  We'll see.

Homework on the green

It was fun pulling up to Ed and Tiff's house to see the boys out front doing their homework and practicing the clarinet. Fun because it's actually looking like Spring and fun because the boys looked like they were enjoying both the activity and the environment.

Tasteful labels

Once our piano music bookcase was assembled and installed and all the music sorted and transferred, I wanted to label the shelves so that music would get put back where it should go.  But looking at library supplies it appeared that I had three ways to go: (1) expensive and permanent metal label holders; (2) less expensive but rather institutional looking plastic movable label holders about 6 inches wide; or (3) least expensive and really tacky looking address labels about 3 inches wide.  I chose a fourth option.

Looking around our computer room I discovered that we had some laser printable overhead projection sheets.  Perfectly clear, they went through our laser printer with no problems.  We used the address label template to give us labels no larger than approximately 1" x 2/5".  Using a 28 point Arial Narrow font I was able to get all the shelf labels to fit onto 1 or 2 lines of a label.  I then cut each label apart and used rubber cement to glue them onto the shelves.  The result - clear, easily read labels that don't detract from the beautiful wood of the book case.

What's in a name - topic 2

The past several month's when I attended the two Parkinson's support groups that I go to, I was frustrated at not remembering anybody's name.  Instead of complaining about it, I volunteered to make name plates (little tent-like name placards) for each group on an ongoing basis.  You would have thought I had announced a $10,000 donation from the reaction of the two facilitators.  They both readily provided me with several names of consistent attendees.  But I think they really wondered if I would follow through on my offer.

Today was the meeting of the first support group and this time the enthusiasm came from the group participants as well as the facilitators.  We've all been suffering from name amnesia.  And with the names in big, bold 100 & 48 point fonts, people could see them from across the room.

I haven't pointed out yet, although some have noticed, that these are new and improved name cards.  (1) The name is printed  on both sides of the tent so that people on the same side of the table can see your name as well as those on the other side of the room; (2) the last name and names of both spouses is on the card so you can match up the pairs; and (3) there is a little half circle notch in the third side of the folded triangle that serves as a stopper so the tent doesn't go flat in the middle of the meeting.

Keeping up with the name cards may be more trouble than I counted on as I had to do almost as many new cards for new group members today as I had previously done.  But I feel like I'm useful and people certainly know my name.

What's in a name?

I believe this question has been asked since man (or woman) started naming things but it's as applicable today as it ever has been.  I was reminded of that when I received an invitation a few days ago to attend a "boot camp" for volunteers who wanted to be actively involved in neighborhood canvasing for the general election this fall and possibly the primary this summer.

Now for many of us that have attended an army boot camp those two words have a distinctly negative connotation.  If I never attend another boot camp it will be too soon.  Others must have felt the way I did and gave that feedback to the camp organizers because I just received another invitation - this time to the "Sacramento Camp".  Made a whole lot of difference in my perception of the event.

Entertaining Grandpa

Due to California's budget problems Carolyn's job has entailed much less travel this past year than the three years before that when she might spend 3 to 4 days a week on the road.  But some things just have to be taken care of face to face so this week and the next she is down in Tulare County (Visalia area).

To make sure Grandpa doesn't die of boredom or hunger, Ed and Tiff and the boys have invited me to spend some evenings at their place.  Tonight Tiffany prepared some excellent spaghetti and side dishes while the boys taught me to play Mario Cars and Wii Ski.  Grandpa's a lot of fun to play with because you can always beat him.

New Home for my Music

This morning as on most Sunday mornings, our ward choir gathered at our house for weekly practice.  Instead of looking like the photo above, our living room looked like this:

Instead of a 2-drawer 48" lateral file cabinet we now have a 6 shelf 63" wide bookcase which has about 50% more storage space than all the other cabinets and cases where I've been keeping my music.  And it's all so much closer to the piano.

We got the new unit (actually 3 units standing side by side) at Scandinavian Designs, the same place where we purchased our computer room floor furniture.  To save $60 we picked up the "kits" rather than having them delivered.  With the 4 x 8 capacity of our van it was no trouble at all carrying the five packages home.  The wooden doors for the bottom unit are on backorder so technically the shelves are still a work in progress.

It got rather tricky unloading the heavy boxes even with the piano dolly and flatbed hand truck.  I'm not much of a lifter these days but between Carolyn and me we managed to move everything into our entry.

Carolyn would use the flat bed truck to sort of guide each box to the front door and inside while I placed the piano dolly under the back end and

pushed the whole package with my walker.  Little unconventional but it worked.  Carolyn and I had about enough energy to put together one of the units Friday evening.

Saturday morning Carolyn was attending a temple sealing and I had started opening the second package when Edward and his two older boys dropped in to help.

It turned out that these kits were designed so that I could actually use the help of Jake

Tim

and Edward.  They were all really helpful, too.  I don't know that I could have finished that morning without them.

When Carolyn returned, she, Edward, and I placed the cases next to each other, fastened them securely to the wall (we're earthquake conditioned, remember), and installed the glass doors on the left and right cases.

Now it was my turn again.  Box by box, and using my walker as a dolly, I hauled all the books I had in the far corner of the family room into the living room and sorted them as I placed them in their new home.  I was a little surprised that I don't have as much extra room as I had hoped.  Of course I still have three of 18 cells almost empty and two taken over by a new centerpiece - a clock we found at Big Lots!

Shondra's blog

About a month ago my niece Shondra started a blog at www.shondrasblog.blogspot.com called "Crazy Beautiful Life.  I was waiting for her second post to add her to the list of other family members.  Then on March 22nd when she did, I missed it.  Let's all encourage her to keep the blog going by visiting and leaving a comment.

Thanks

Baking with Nutella

Nutella is a spread that is made primarily of sugar and hazelnuts.  It has been popular in Europe for decades but it somehow has never gotten a serious foothold in America.  It's possible that our love of peanuts and relative indifference toward hazelnuts has prevented Nutella from getting a larger market share. Or it may be that spreading Nutella on a piece of bread is more like spreading frosting than spreading peanut butter.

In any case, we recently purchased a 2-pack of Nutella at Costco and had enjoyed spreading on toasted bred and English muffins when I got the bright idea to make Nutella cookies.  For a recipe I first looked at the Nutella website www.nutellausa.com.  They were not helpful.  Their idea of using Nutella in a recipe was "spread Nutella on your favorite bakery product".  Talk about reinforcing the "frosting" image.

I had more luck Googling "Nutella cookies".  

I selected a recipe called Nutella Oatmeal Cookies from dogismysouschef.blogspot.com .  I doubled the recipe, reduced the sugar, and added a cup of chocolate chips.  As I placed the scooped balls of dough on the cookie sheet it looked like I might have a winner.

Ten minutes later as I removed the baked cookies from the oven, I was disappointed.  So disappointed that I'm not going to be citing the recipe here at this time.  Maybe after I get it "fixed".  As up can see, the cookies spread out as far as they could almost making one big cookie.  That also made them as thin as could be so they were more like wafers than cookies.  The taste was yummy which somewhat offset the fact that they also fell to pieces if they were only slightly warm.  When cool they were easily broken.

Tea Party poll

I suspect the Tea Party started out trying to relate to the Boston Tea Party of the American Revolutionary War which was a protest against taxation without representation.  But it has ended up more like the Mad Hatter's Tea Party in Alice in Wonderland in which everyone was a little crazier than the next person.

Many of us have been curious as to who they are and what they believe.  With the Democrats and Republicans we can at least look at the party platforms that are revised and approved at the national conventions every four years but with the Tea Party it seems to be who can get the biggest audience and make the biggest headlines.  Their platform is they have no platform.

So CBS News and the New York Times set out to solve this mystery by interviewing several hundred people.  Of course no one has officially registered as a member of the Tea Party so they had to define a class of people as "Tea Party supporters".  And what a class it is!  Their responses to the poll seem to indicate that they prefer getting their answers from Fox News rather than thinking things through.  An example is blaming Obama for the current economic depression but saying the reason they don't like Obama is that they just don't like him.  Likewise their main complaint seems to be the growth of the Federal Government but they think very highly of Bush during whose administration the government grew by leaps and bounds.  They blame congress and indeed all politicians for inconsistencies yet can't seem to see their own.

I'm not going to rehash the whole poll.  It would make a wonderful homework assignment for a critical thinking class. But I did want to make it easy for you to find the poll and the CBS article on it.

CBS article  http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20002529-503544.html?tag=stack
Who They Are: http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/poll_tea_party_who_they_are_041410.pdf?tag=contentMain;contentBody
What They Think:  http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/poll_tea_party_041410.pdf?tag=contentMain;contentBody

Our little lint picker upper

I don't really recommend this but at his age Camdan just can't seem to keep out of trouble.  Tiffany says he especially likes to climb in the dryer because it's so nice and warm.  I wonder if there's some sort of safety catch so that he could push his way out if someone should happen to shut the door.

Happy Birthday, Carolyn

Carolyn celebrated another birthday this week.  She's still going strong and there's no sign that this year will bring another operation and hospital stay like she has had for the past three years.  She could use a little break from that routine.  We celebrated the occasion at Ed and Tiff's home with a delicious meal and strawberry/chocolate chip cupcakes.

CPAP - Medical treatment compliance

Among the many things that makes it difficult to classify medicine as a science is the fact that many, if not most, medical treatments rely on patient compliance and have no trustworthy method for determining compliance level let alone enforcing compliance. Certainly there is the assumption that the patient will comply to achieve the maximum benefit or at least "get their money's worth".  But compliance is also affected by unpleasantness  of the treatment, loss of instructions or lack of understanding, embarrassment, non-belief or non-acceptance of the treatment, past experience or even hostility toward the practitioner, and just plain orneriness.

An example might be the respirator or CPAP machine I am currently using since I apparently have a severe case of sleep apnea.  Although I'm supposed to use the CPAP every night from the time I go to sleep until I get out of bed in the morning.  But I might take off the mask to go to the bathroom and forget to put it back on.  In the morning it might not remember anything about the incident.

My CPAP takes care of such problems and maintains a record of several key measurements allowing me or my treatment team to chart my progress or decline.  The simple top of machine readout gives an average for the past 7 days and past 25 days of the following: Therapy Hours; Days when therapy has exceeded 4 hours; Large leakage in the system; AHI (Apnea-Hypnopnea Index); Periodic breathing percentage; and 90% Pressure level.  There is a program costing $150 which will download data from the machine and produce reports like a real scientist would need. I feel that just tracking the read-out numbers would give a great amount of data.

The data is not only available in the readout window but also on an SD memory chip.  I would have appreciated having some instruction about logging this data or taking the memory chip in to the hospital for some analysis.  I'm concerned about whether I'm making any progress on the machine or even if I'm really using it right.

 

What is a computer year?

The common wisdom says a dog lives to about age 10 while the human lifespan is around 72 which is how someone arrived at the notion that a "dog year" is equal to 7 human years.  So I got to wondering the other day what a "computer year" might be.  It doesn't do any good to look at individual computers any more than it does to look at individual dogs or people.  It's the aggregate average that makes most sense.

I Googled "How long should a computer last" and then checked out several of the suggested web sites and saw answers anywhere from 3 to 10 years.  The sites that justified their answers usually indicates that it makes a great difference how your life is impacted if the computer goes down - temporarily or permanently.  If it's a minor inconvenience because you rarely use the computer or have a second computer available then you can wait longer than somebody whose livelihood depends on 100% computer availability.  But that still leaves us with needing to look at the aggregate.

Therefore, I was delighted to see at http://www.geeksugar.com/How-Long-Have-You-Had-Your-Computer-663253 the following graph:

How long have you had your computer?

Less than 1 year

21%(152)

1-3 years

47%(340)

4-5 years

20%(147)

5-10 years

9%(67)

Too long to remember

2%(15)

Total votes: 721

I'm told that a polling size of 3,000 would be the lowest number to be really representative but this isn't bad.   And what do we see in this graph?  An almost perfect bell curve indicating that the most likely age of a computer is 1 to 3 years. So the expected life of a computer is around 2 years even if many, many computers last for 5, 10 and even more years.  If you want to keep up with the latest software and hardware, you need to replace your computer sometime between 2 and 3 years.

Special "grandchildren"

When our youngest son Steven and his wife Lisa come for a visit they don't bring any of their children because they don't have any.  However, they do often bring their well taken care of bunny rabbits, especially if one or two of them need extra care.  It's one thing to leave healthy rabbits home with enough water and food to survive for 48 hours but quite another when a rabbit needs medication or special attention.

This past weekend Demetri was our visitor.  Demetri has apparently lived longer than anyone ever suspected. Blind in one eye and somewhat deaf, he still manages to express his opinion of life by showing off his bright pink sweater or by scattering everything in his cage.  In this photo he's being a little shy so you can just barely see his right eye poking out from under his right ear which is covering most of his face.

Thanks, Lisa and Steven, for sharing your bunnies with us.

Ward Dine Out

One of the important functions of a church is providing social functions to allow people to get to know others who share their interests or live in the same area. The ward Activities Committee are charged with putting together very structured events several times a year.  However, there is also a need for less structured events.

A tradition we have in our ward for dining out on the first Tuesday of each month has proven to be a low-key way for members and non-members alike to get to know each other better. The restaurant provides the locale and the food and each person or couple pays their own way so the planning is minimal.  That is NOT that the planning is unimportant or simple because church members have a habit of translating RSVP as "reply if you feel like it and get around to it sometime before the actual event".  They also have a habit of wishing we'd picked the OTHER choice.  But we do appreciate you Sara-Beth.

Chewy Chocolate Crackles

These cookies almost beg to be experimented with.  Maybe chocolate chips or nuts or both. Maybe larger scoops and flattened more.  You get my drift?   Just as they are they are tasty cookies, though, so don't think you have to change anything.  I find them a little labor intensive and the recipe in Martha Stewart's "Cookies" is certainly more trouble than it needs to be.  Here is my version:

Ingredients
8 oz bittersweet chocolate
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter (soft)
1 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup milk
granulated sugar and powdered sugar for rolling dough

Instructions
Melt chocolate in microwave.  Let cool.  With an electric mixer beat butter and brown sugar 2 to 3 minutes.  Mix in eggs, vanilla, and melted chocolate.  At reduced speed mix in flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt.  Add milk.  Add nuts, chips, or other optional ingredients.  Divide dough into 3 or 4 parts and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.  Working with one piece of dough at a time, form 1" balls.  Roll first in granulated sugar then in powdered sugar.  Place 2 to 3 inches apart on cookie sheet.  Bake at 350 degrees for 14 minutes.

Surewest Advanced Digital TV

Almost a month ago in this blog I did a preview of Surewest's latest promotion - the Advanced Digital TV (see http://too-old-to-know-better.blogspot.com/2010/03/too-good-to-be-true.html)  With all the promised discounts and savings it looked like a definite win-win situation.  Our installation was 10 days ago on March 25.

Installation
A very knowledgeable, friendly installer, work order in hand and ID in his pocket,  rang our doorbell less than an hour into the 4-hour block arranged for the install.  He asked for a quick orientation as to where the cabled TV's were located and how I would like him to enter the house.  I tailed him like a puppy asking questions all the time.  He accepted that with good humor.  His enthusiasm for Surewest was evident.

He quickly gathered up all the old equipment including the now worthless remotes but offered  us the batteries in case we had just put in new ones.  Installing the new hardware would have been a no-brainer except that a new power supply had to be wired for one of the cable outlet boxes.  With the new DVR/STB (set top box) taking the place of the old STB and the old TIVO wiring was greatly simplified.  The only slight glitch was installing the DVR in the family room where before we had our TIVO in the bedroom.  That was quickly rectified.

Although the installer thought another Surewest representative would be coming to demonstrate the programming, he never showed.  So the installer spent additional time going over the basics with me.  He also said our phone system was being changed to VOIP with this order, something we hadn't been told.

Advanced Digital TV
Surewest has made great strides in their DVR programming, catching up with TIVO in most areas and surpassing them in a couple. Since I just got a notice that TIVO is upgrading their systems, I need to disclose that this comparison is with the old TIVO software.

Being able to record four programs at once and all in HD is the biggest difference over our old TIVO.  Continuing to see and hear your program in progress while you make other, non-related menu selections is also a great feature as is the picture in picture while selecting a new show to watch.  Buttons to skip ahead 29 seconds or back 7 seconds in recorded programs are wonderful additions  to the remote.

Things I will miss from the TIVO  programming are (1) the ability to search for shows by category; (2) random recommendations that use user preferences to improve the recommendations; (3) Special selections such as 100 Favorite Movies; (4) Search by keyword in name or description; (5) better 1-line program descriptions on recorded shows; and (6) less screen interruption on fast forward or reverse.  None of these are deal breakers but all together they do take the edge off an otherwise fine product.  Since Surewest has made such strides in this generation of DVRs I look forward to even more capabilities in the future.

Squirrels here, too!

My daughter Jessica recently posted on her blog that they had killed their first squirrel of the season and that her husband Jon was thinking of cooking the critter (see http://whenmomgetsbored.blogspot.com/2010/04/squirrel.html)  In case anyone out there is interested in making something useful out of their pesky rodents here are instructions for skinning and cooking squirrels from the 1980 edition of "The Joy of Cooking"

Happy hunting and bon appetit!!

Volunteering

As much as I can remember I've been volunteering all my life, at least in the sense of working for no money compensation.  Of course being involved with a volunteer run church increases the opportunities for such volunteer work.

But volunteering in the sense of taking on duties and responsibilities that you could easily avoid is something that I haven't been very good at.  In fact there have been times when I think I was downright skilled in the art of avoiding such volunteering.  And that's not exactly something I'm proud of.  With retirement I've begun to turn that around and actually take on new responsibilities.  I find many of my peers doing the same and we seem to be the happiest retirees.

This week I discovered the extra influence that voluntarily offering to do something gives you.  I belong to two different Parkinson's support groups - a men's group and a geographically oriented group.  Because each group meets only once a month and somewhat different people attend each month, I'm having trouble getting to know people's names, let alone much about them.  So instead of just complaining or even just suggesting to each group leader, I volunteered to produce and maintain nameplates.  It turns out that both group leaders wanted to do that but found themselves too busy to keep up with the constant change in group membership.  They were both very grateful for my offer.  And I, in turn, will get to know everyone better and get to decide how the nameplates will look.  Also, although I'm a relatively new member of each group suddenly I'm a player, someone who will help the group leader when needed.  I recommend volunteering as a way to get better known.