Wrapping up the Week That Was Reviewed

Hola.  How are things?  Yesterday was a difficult day.  We spent a couple of hours trying to download a photograph of a document from a patient portal, and then upload it to another patient portal.  We had a paper copy of the document, which we photographed, and downloaded, and we could see it on the hard drive, but when we went to attach it in an email on the other portal, it was not visible.  I even dragged it out to Jim's desktop where it was clearly visible, and the portal still refused to see it.  It was the most frustrating, demoralizing thing; we knew it should work, but it wouldn't.  This morning, I took the screen shot, copied it on to a thumb drive, and the wretched second portal would acknowledge its presence on the drive.  It just should not be that difficult. 

The refrigerator guy called early on Friday to tell us that the part to fix the water dispenser in the door of the freezer was no longer available.  He has no data on the ice chute yet.  We are to call him for status.  Why doesn't he just call us when it arrives?  He has an office staff, they could call.  Anyway, off to Target to buy a Brita filter.  We had one in the park model, but left it there thinking we were done with it.  Anyway, got it home, and the water dispenser started working again.  I guess we'll show the dispenser the Brita periodically, and perhaps it will keep working.

The trip to the hand surgeon was a mixed bag.  The good is that they immediately identified Jim's finger issue as "trigger finger."  Go here for the Mayo explanation of the situation.  Sometimes, cortisone injections will fix it.  Jim got one, they'll do it two more times, and then if there is no improvement, they cut the tendon.  It's not a big deal, recovery time is about two weeks.  Then things went off the rails.  I brought a copy of a journal article on Suture Suspension Arthroplasty.  He glanced at the title and proceeded to tell me another term for the procedure is "tightrope surgery."  It isn't, he's wrong.  Tight rope requires two incisions, leaves two metal buttons in your hand, with a cable tied to both of them to support the thumb.  Suture suspension requires one incision, and zero hardware is left in the hand.  He only likes to do the procedure that's been around since 1972, and has a six month recovery.  So, he's off the table for the thumbs.  In addition to telling us stuff that was wrong, he talked over both of us, and I really hate that.  Jim reports that since the injection, the finger has not locked up, so that's good.

We got an art hung yesterday.  It was a giant pain in the butt.  They put the things that the wire attaches to too high on the sides so we had to keep the wire taut while tying it on.  That took three tries.  They also used massive staples to hold the corner protectors on which had to be pried off with screw drivers.  It took two tries to get it positioned on the wall to cover the wretched TV mount which they glued on as well as using lag bolts when it was installed.  Said mount is 29.5 inches wide, so the art had to be large. The frame is deep enough that it is flat against the wall with the mount under it.  Eventually we will get a less tall TV table and it will be better there.

The entry way rug arrived.  I really like it.  I wanted a 5 x 9, but couldn't find one, so we settled for a 5 x 8.  It will give us a landing place to shed the outdoor shoes and put on the indoor shoes.

The top photo is more accurate on the color.  It's not as orange as the bottom photo shows.  It's from Wayfair, polyester.

Does a coyote poop in the desert?  No, he comes in to my back yard, jumps up on the wall and does it there.  It's always interesting trying to figure out what they have been eating.  This sort of looks like corn.

I'd decided not to speak of the orange devil, but really, Seb Gorka for head of counter-terrorism?  He's a life member of the Nazi party in Hungary.  Please.

Sorry for the long boring post, but I'm preserving the ebb and flow of life in a new to us empty house, so that if we ever do this again, we'll remember what it was like and to have reasonable expectations of the experience. Perhaps piling a bunch of medical appointments in November was not the best choice.  When we're in Spokane, we basically do not have medical care, so there's a backlog upon arrival.

That's it, I have nothing else to say.