Loft Beds

I have agreed to make loft beds for Sophie and Lucy. 

  Sophie wants one with a built-in curved desk.  This is similar to what I will make:

Lucy wants a fire truck bed. It looks like this:

I've purchased lumber and have cut out all the major pieces.  The last 2 days have been filled with work on the plywood portion of Lucy's bed - cutting out and sanding the major pieces.  The next step will be to prime and paint all the wood.

Two challenges for this task are  1.)the beds will be built here but must be transported to Jax and assembled there and 2.) storing all the cut pieces while leaving sufficient work space to do the work.

So far the task is going well.  Next blog I'll have some pictures.

Busy Week

It was busy time at the end of last week so I took some time off working on the beds. 

On Thursday I got my flu shot and shingles shot in the morning at CVS.  Penny had a drs appointment in Mobile in the afternoon so we took advantage of the trip to eat Hawaiian for lunch and visit A&E Fabrics.  The trip to Mobile went fine.  On the return trip we got caught in rush time traffic at the Mobile tunnel. We had a nice dinner of turkey and dressing at Cracker Barrel. That was Thursday.

Friday was the start of Columbus Day weekend and we decided to go to the outlets to see if we could catch any sales.  We started the day by "visiting Suzi", that is, breakfast at Mother Earths.  Then we visited the rookery for some pictures.  We found half a dozen herons just standing in the foggy field when we arrived.  Here are some pictures from our visit:

We did find some good buys at the outlets.

Saturday and Sunday except for church and lawn mowing were dedicated to finalizing the loft bed.  Here is what it looks like all together.  So all the pieces are cut and fit.  There is still a lot of work to do sanding and painting - but at least the completed bed looks good and is encouraging.

The weather is supposed to be bad and hamper Mon and Tue but the next step is the finishing of the loft bed painting and then go through the same process on the fire truck bed.

Week in Review

It has been a busy week.  We were in Jacksonville a week ago resting up for the Gate River Run.  Karen and I awoke at 6:15 and headed to the race at 6:45.  Karen’s work is walking distance from the race start so we went there and also walked along the river to watch the sunrise.  The weather was great and in addition to the nice sunrise we had a pod of dolphin swim by. Karen took this great picture. That’s the bridge we cross at the end of the run in the background.

I didn’t not how long it took us to walk the 9.3 miles.  I made the walk with no real issues and then had sore legs for 4 days afterward.

The drive back home was quite hazardous with driving rain, wind and poor visibility.

We had a marriage prep couple in on Monday.  On Tuesday we went to Destin to run and errand take pictures at Destin Harbor and have a partial “Us” day with lunch at Harbordocks.

Wednesday I began work on this years garden.  It’s now set up and ready for soil and plants in the pots.

Thursday we kayaked in the morning.  We saw lots of osprey, a couple bald eagles and a porpoise.

Today (Friday) we went out to breakfast and then out to Destin and the Columbia Outlet.

Tomorrow morning we go to Waffle House.

Another Visit to the ER

Well it happened again.  Chest pain over several days leading up to a combination of chest pain, upset stomach, dizziness and a cold sweat- the combination all happening in church in Jacksonville.  It was sufficiently worrisome for me to check in to the Emergency Room at the Mayo Clinic .

Several EKGs, blood works, chest x-rays and an echo  cardiogram  stress test later the doctors found nothing wrong with my heart. 

So I spent about 24 hours in the ER.  I did receive good service while there.  I got right in with no wait.  All the Mayo people were friendly and competent. (they all loved living in Jacksonville, too).  I did experience chest pain once while there and within 2 minutes there were 5 people in the room to take care of me.

I was visited by the whole family while there.

The best I can figure is that I had a combination of an upset tummy from taking my pills on an empty stomach – sore chest muscles from moving around a big ladder when putting in Karen’s surveillance cameras and a flare-up of a chronic soreness in my rib cage.  Everything just came together to present me with 4 or 5 symptoms that could be a heart attack – and that all the advice out there says you should not ignore.

This is the 3rd or 4th time I’ve gone to the ER with Chest pain.  Each time my body does just enough different that I can’t discount the symptoms. At least this time I got a clean bill of health from the stress test.  It actually provides video of the heart muscles in action and should show any lack of blood flow to the heart.  I thought it was neat to see my heart beating.

Today, Thursday, I am still having periodic chest pain but it is easily identifiable as those sore ribs.  The pain is not accompanied by any other symptoms of dizziness or upset stomach.   So I think I’m OK.  But all those stories of men getting told they were OK and then suffering a heart attack  are out there to haunt me.

There’s nothing like the feeling of waking up at 3 AM with chest pain and wondering if it is significant or not. 

I don’t feel silly for getting things checked out and no one in the hospital made me feel that way.  I just didn’t like spending 24 hours in bed hooked up to an IV and blood pressure cuff. 

Hopefully I won’t have this issue again.

A Crummy Winter

The big difference is that the cold has come and stayed for days with little relief.  Usually it gets cold for a day or two and then warms up for a week or two.

My winter started with that 5-week-long cold.  Just before Christmas I began painting the house.  It got to cold to paint and has stayed that way since.  The cold weather is supposed to persist  this year – maybe until March.

It’s been too cold or windy to go kayaking.  There have been very few good sunset days so I haven’t been to the beach taking any pictures this winter.  The cold temperature even affected the garage door opener.  It would open 1/3 of the way and just stop.  I had to adjust the opening force setting to make it open.  The cold also discourages being outside too long.

We had sleet here on Friday.  The prediction currently has some snow falling on Tuesday.  We haven’t had snow since Christmas 2001.

I have a feeling the groundhog will see his shadow this year.

My Winter Cold.

I am now in the 4th week of a winter cold.  It started on Saturday night (Dec 14).  I was feverish for a short time at church and the when I awoke on Sunday morning the back of my throat was sore as if I had been snoring strongly for hours.  It soon developed into a runny nose, sore throat and a cough – which is still with me.

The cold proceeded to fluctuate.  One day I felt better, the next things got worse again.  I figured it would last a couple weeks but now in week 4 it appears to be waning.  I’m hoping that’s true.

I’ve had no fever beyond that brief period on the first Saturday.  Yesterday I had nausea and could feel my lungs aching.  I had to lie down.  I’m thinking that was the colds last stand.

We’ve had record-breaking cold these last 2 days.  I had to cover the Sago Palms.  That was not fun to do when I was feeling bad.

I was hoping to get more done at home this week after spending 10 days in Jax.  I have not been that productive.  To make things worse I have broken my regular exercise routine.  I tried keeping it up in week 1 but found it made my cold worse.  Now I’ve got to backtrack some and start at an earlier level than I had reached.

Maybe tomorrow the coughing will end.

Christmas and the New Year

Santa Spent the week before Christmas refurbishing a Barbie Power Wheels electric car.  The results were very satisfactory.  I took some before pictures but not any after – except for the car in use.  Here are some before shots:

 

I’ll have to get some after shots next time I’m over there.  Santa learned a lot about repairing plastic.

We went over to Jax for Christmas and  stayed through the new year because we had a wedding to go to on the 1st down in Sanford and a play set to build during the week after Christmas.

We had purchased all the hardware for the play set and had it shipped to C&C’s.  Then on the 26th we bought the lumber.  I cut all the lumber on Friday(27th) and we all went to work on Saturday to build it.  We had to dodge some rainy weather  and we finished up on the 30th.  The kids were with Tim while we built it and they came back on the 30th to see it and try it out.

The instructions said the job could be done in 5 hours – that was a standing joke while we spent 4 days building it.

watching the kids play on it made it all worthwhile.

 

On New Years Day  we went down to Terri and Vinnie’s wedding.  It was held at a stable.  The McClure clan was in attendance and we got to see our friends for the first time in over 2 years.