Author: Steve

Got the walnut tree done too.

The weather cooperated. It was a productive weekend. All the high lights
are up. The roof line is done. The maple trees are done. The top branches
of the walnut are done. No more extension ladder. Well, I haven’t done the
cottonwood yet, but maybe I can do that with just the step ladder. No hurry on the rest. We can do the rest from the ground. Christmas is saved.

Apparently there is a lot we don’t know about cholesterol. There is a
correlation with heart disease, but it doesn’t work well as a predictor.
You know, lots of people with high cholesterol and healthy hearts. Low
cholesterol people with bad hearts. Then they discovered high density and
low density. That helps, but it doesn’t complete the picture. I read they added another piece. Another two kinds of cholesterol; small
dense particles, and larger fluffy particles. Regular exercise does not
affect the total cholesterol at all, but people who exercise have healthier
hearts. Exercise promotes larger fluffier particles. Larger fluffier
particles don’t accumulate as much as the smaller dense particles. The discoveries are coming fast and furious. I’ll bet in another fifty or a
hundred years we’ll really understand a lot about how cholesterol affects
cardiac health.

We went off on a medical adventure Friday night. I took Judy in to National
Jewish Hospital for an overnight sleep study. Judy got all the attention. I got a cot. But Judy can be a little
claustrophobic. Actually she has to be claustrophobic. She doesn’t have
any control over it. She was supposed to get an MRI before her shoulder
surgery but even with the sedative beforehand, freaked out from inside the
machine. Friday night they hooked up electrodes to her legs, to her head, and to her
face. Then they put straps around her abdomen and chest. Know that look a
cat gets just before it erupts in a giant furry explosion? I could see it
in her eyes. They still had stuff to put over her nose and mouth and
something heavy to put on her chest when she called the whole thing off. We
checked out by midnight, drove home, and got to sleep in our own bed. Guess we’re sleeping well enough.

The weather report just announced that we went 132 consecutive hours
sub-freezing. We spent four hours above freezing today. The forecast is for sixty degrees by the end of next week. Sounds like good
decorating weather to me.