Every day. Her weight never fluctuates more than a pound at a time. Me however, I’m all over the map. On the morning of the Indy 500 weekend I weighed 165 pounds. By the end of the weekend (with homemade chili and flour tortillas, chips and dip, and pizza), I weighed 173! Three days later, after eating normally again, my weight was right back to normal too. I guess I’m just not as stable as Judy.
Sunday
The plan was to travel 30 miles to go visit brother Tom for lunch. Judy’s back hurt for some reason, but not enough to stop us from going. By the time I moved around enough to get everything in the car and ready to go though, I had already done too much and had wakened the green monster. We called to cancel so I could go sit in a hot bath instead. Turns out the night before, Kathy had tripped and fallen down. They spent the evening at the emergency room trying to find out if her shoulder was broken. They weren’t going to cancel lunch because we’ve missed several recent attempts to get together (my fault). So Tom was tired because they spent a good deal of the night awake at the emergency room, Kathy might have a broken shoulder, I’m busy entertaining the Hulk, and Judy’s back hurts. Other than that, we’re all relishing the Golden Years.
Our friend Sue
…is the gourd lady. She collects gourds, dries them, carves, and paints them. Crummy old dried up gourds end up looking like this!
She’s a really good gourd lady.
She’s a really good gourd lady. Solar gain
It’s not that we can’t just block out the sun. We have everything we need. We have an external sun shade that snaps across the windshield of the bus and the adjacent windows on both sides.
The sunscreen diffuse the light and cuts way down on the solar gain. If that’s not enough, we just close the drapes.
They have a white backing and reflect the light right back out. We can close them all the way across. We have air-conditioning. The question I was asking about the sunshades; it was just about whether black interior sunshades would make it hotter or cooler inside compared to just letting the sun shine in onto the lighter colored fabric of the interior. I thought maybe we could determine the best configuration theoretically. The results were inconclusive. I decided to experiment: I put the black sun visors down. In the morning sun the outside air temperature was 85 degrees. I measured the air temperature in the windshield. 105 degrees. I measured the surface temperature of the black sun visors. 118 degrees. I measured the surface temperature of the tan dashboard leather. 118 degrees. The black sun visor wasn’t any hotter than the lighter colored dashboard! That’s not what I expected. So, given that the black sun visors only heat up at the same rate as the upholstery inside the bus, it probably doesn’t make much difference whether I put them down or leave them up. I’ll say maybe it makes sense to cut the sun off with the sun visors and keep that heat up by the windshield instead of letting the sun shine all the way in the coach onto the floor and heat up the front room. (Unless of course I just close the drapes and block the sun out entirely.)
The sunscreen diffuse the light and cuts way down on the solar gain. If that’s not enough, we just close the drapes. They have a white backing and reflect the light right back out. We can close them all the way across. We have air-conditioning. The question I was asking about the sunshades; it was just about whether black interior sunshades would make it hotter or cooler inside compared to just letting the sun shine in onto the lighter colored fabric of the interior. I thought maybe we could determine the best configuration theoretically. The results were inconclusive. I decided to experiment: I put the black sun visors down. In the morning sun the outside air temperature was 85 degrees. I measured the air temperature in the windshield. 105 degrees. I measured the surface temperature of the black sun visors. 118 degrees. I measured the surface temperature of the tan dashboard leather. 118 degrees. The black sun visor wasn’t any hotter than the lighter colored dashboard! That’s not what I expected. So, given that the black sun visors only heat up at the same rate as the upholstery inside the bus, it probably doesn’t make much difference whether I put them down or leave them up. I’ll say maybe it makes sense to cut the sun off with the sun visors and keep that heat up by the windshield instead of letting the sun shine all the way in the coach onto the floor and heat up the front room. (Unless of course I just close the drapes and block the sun out entirely.) Just one more.
Just one more procedure to go and I’ll be all through with the great kidney stone adventure. The stone is gone. All the hard work is done. All that remains is to remove the stent from my ureter next Thursday. I asked the doctor about it. He said “No big deal. We just do it in the office. We do it all the time.” No big deal. Yeah. Right. Maybe no big deal for him. Me, I’ve having a little trouble with the prospect. I can only think of one way to get to the ureter without making an incision somewhere on my body, and they’re not planning on making any incisions. I know how they have been getting to my ureter for the previous procedures, but I’ve been anesthetized for them. I’ve gone to sleep with my private parts intact and woken up with them still somewhat intact, even if a little beat up. The thought of being conscious and having to hold still while the doctor goes looking for that stent he left the last time he was in there is freaking me out. I told the doctor. He said “No problem. I’ll prescribe a Valium for you.” A Valium. That sounds like a nice start, but I’m not sure there is enough Valium on the planet to get me in the mood for this.