Snow Day 10-10-08

The weather changed with a vengeance today! We woke up to snow falling out of the sky and coating everything! We were wearing shorts a week ago. I doubt the high will get much beyond what our low has been, 41-42 degrees. WE should be heading somewhere warmer, but we are in a traveling holding pattern because we haven’t decided what we want to do or where we want to be during the holidays. After the holidays…if not before…we will be heading south for most of the winter, Arizona and New Mexico and the So Calif. Desert to visit friends and to escape the cold and snow.

On Wednesday we had to go over to California and we left Fallon before 6:30. As we hit the top before heading into the eastern Truckee area there was an interesting fog bank lying above the area. I saw part of the river steaming…I thought maybe it was a hot spring, but then I looked at the outside temperature and it was only 34. The water in the river was warmer than the air temperature and the entire river in that very cold valley was steaming. We haven’t seen that through there before. I didn’t get any pictures, they would have been cool.

Here is an update; California is repaving those horrible stretches of highway 80 over the mountains that I complained about last year! You still get the sound and feel of driving over train tracks, thunk, thunking, but the ruts are gone and the road over all is smoother. There are a few sections it doesn’t appear that they will get to this season, but they are getting to the worst. That road would rattle your fillings out of your teeth and if the ruts had gotten any deeper some cars with low undercarriages might have been scraping…unless they rode the edges of the ruts!

Larry has gotten his tooth that was broken all repaired. He has to go in for another minor adjustment but the experience was good. The crown was $824 to the dentist, Larry saw the receipt for just the crown alone from its maker and it cost the dentist $175. Interesting isn’t it? Larry had a crown done in Mexico a couple of years ago and the entire experience cost $180. The dentist was educated in the states and the crown was made right down the street and it was all done in a day.

I am still plugging along slowly…I hate figuring out new programs, trying to find a photo program that works on Vista. I’m thinking I may just go to the old computer to edit and upload photos until I find something that works easily on this one. All of it is a royal pain in the rear!

See you don’t hear from me for awhile and now I don’t quit!

I had blood work done on Wednesday, just routine. First a little background: I hate having my blood drawn, when I was in my early teens I had someone who wasn’t very good at it poke my arm 4 times trying to get blood and I passed out. I have hard to find veins, it takes awhile for people to find my pulse in my wrist, and even when the nurse took my blood pressure this time she couldn’t hear it and had me squeeze my fist a few times…110 over 70 by the way!

So…I always make a point of telling the tech so they can make adjustments…some might choose to use a smaller needle, some take the time to really slap my shy little veins until they engorge enough that they can find them. Some have been sooo good that I have hardly felt anything.

Well, I should have run when the tech asked me which arm do I use. Huh? I said both of them…well come on, I do. He didn’t ask if I was right or left handed. Then I told him my veins were hard to find. He said, a lot of people tell me that…I’ll be the judge of that!

I try to give people the benefit of the doubt…he might be really good, so I didn’t walk out. So he ties the rubber thingy on my arm, pushes around on my arm, finds my vein and shoves in the needle, two seconds go by and he moves the needle, nope nothing, moves it again, (he isn’t taking the needle out of my arm, just scraping around in there looking) I’m getting woozy and cranky and about the time I’m ready to say forget it he pushes again, then again and the blood starts flowing. My mouth is dry and my arm hurts and I don’t feel so good. He pulls the needle out and I say “That was the worst, ever!” To which he says, look at your arms, you have no veins. I wanted to give him a swift kick, but the table was in the way.

As I get older I am getting more able to speak up on my own behalf…I have always been non confrontational, so for me to tell him I thought that was really bad was more than I would have done in the past, but next time I will do as Larry said I should have done, I will speak to his supervisor. He may be that bad with a lot of people and by not speaking up no one knows his weaknesses. A lesson learned.

Ah, how nice, it is 12:45 p.m. and it is snowing again…yuck! “They” say it hardly every snows in Fallon….yeah, right.