Manatí, Puerto Rico, 2017. In the wake of Hurricane Maria, I was fortunate to be able to volunteer to be deployed for 14 days as a DEMPS worker through the VA coordination with NDMS and FEMA in outreach relief efforts.

I spent a weekend reading news articles and attempting to find some sort of accurate information reflecting the situation in Puerto Rico. Perhaps because of my research, I was not expecting the situation in which we found Puerto Rico, which was vastly different than most of the publicized, politicized, and inaccurate reports available to me in the US. 

We worked in a makeshift hospital in the Coliseo Bincito, an enormous covered stadium. The gym floor was littered with enough camp cots to house 250 patients, empty on my arrival and full by the time I left. Two tents, one for Red and another for Yellow/Green triaged patients, handled the 24-hr influx of outpatients that was at over 200 per day when I left.

The main area kept getting patients with scabies and bedbugs, and I was a little paranoid that I would get exposed to the infestations. I named a few different rats I kept seeing running amok amongst the stacks of MREs that constituted our food. There was no power or running water in the area, weeks after Hurricane Maria. Patients came in for everything, as the local hospitals were either closed or at maximum capacity. One of the FEMA operators told me they had gone into the local hospital and they measured the temperature as greater than 115 degrees inside on the medical-surgical ward; the ICUs were full again, following a massive death toll during the initial power outage when the hospitals realized their unmaintained generators did not work. 

I saw some interesting conditions, such as rat bites on people's feet from when they were sleeping. Also leptospirosis. Most memorably was an intracranial hemorrhage I recognized in a four-year-old girl. She had fallen to the concrete floor of the shelter where she and her siblings were staying with their single mother; the FEMA pediatrician had completely missed her massive focal deficits, stating the girl was just "tired." 

I had just come on the night shift as the charge nurse, and when I heard about this patient I decided to go take a look. The mother recounted the story to me (I was thanking God that I spoke Spanish, as we didn't have an interpreter available at the moment). As soon as I saw the girl, I realized something was off. She was four years old and yet couldn't communicate with me. I picked her up and set her on the floor; she immediately buckled on the right side. I lifted up one arm after the other, again with catastrophic unilateral weakness. 

I told the mother to wait and I alerted the military personnel that we needed a helicopter to get their child to the nearest neuro trauma center. The physician working my shift (a native Puerto Rican and amazing doctor) assessed the child and immediately agreed. 

The pediatrician was an arrogant, bullish woman who was livid that we had sent her patient out without consulting her (we couldn't find her). She refused to see that the child was critically ill. Personally, I have never been so angry in my entire life with any provider. 

It was a difficult couple of weeks, but certainly memorable. We finally got some degree of air conditioning after the first couple of days. Our rooms of cots were crowded, but I was able to use an extension cord to plug into a generator to power my CPAP so that I could sleep better (I had assumed I wouldn't be able to use it while I was there). ICE and DEA agents guarded our gated campus, but every day I was able to sneak off and jump the back fence, where I did long jogs to explore the local areas. It was like the city had been bombed by an angry, celestial force of nature. 

I kept some local newspapers. Maybe I will be able to scan them into the computer somehow?

Dried Out

Our dryer attempted retirement/went on strike/broke last week. Stephanie states she was on her period at the time, and coupled with the fact that "there has been ZERO CHOCOLATE in this house for WEEKS!!" (-Stephanie) made for a difficult several days for her (she's the laundry guru in our house).

I tried to buy a used dryer off of craigslist, but the only acceptable dryer for sale happened to be blue, which of course is not even an option because blue is the same color that blueberries are and it's not even summer anymore. However, I did accidentally talk to a dryer repair-man for as long as he would keep me on the phone, attempting to squeeze as much free consultation out of him as possible. The result was nothing concrete, just a newfound sense of "this can't be that hard to just fix myself" and "I love DIY appliance repair anyway."

Well, I went through the odious task of replacing two parts in the dryer in a real-life version of Battleship; unfortunately, I didn't get a hit and the dryer was still broken until last night, when I figured out how to do a strange something called a "continuity test" with that magical item we refer to as a "voltimeter." Turns out a fuse was blown, which interrupts power and the electricity monkeys can't swing around their cages and blah blah blah. I ordered the new part on Amazon and I hope it works tomorrow.

I forced my family to go camping on Friday night; this makes 16 nights of forced family camping this summer. To sum up this trip, Braeden enjoyed riding his new bicycle while Emerson made 14,000 attempts at riding his new hand-me-down bicycle without training wheels. To be completely fair, Emerson has rarely had the opportunity to ride with training wheels during his lifetime (we live on a large hill and our driveway is steeper than the side of the St. Louis Arch), even though he's 6 years old now and in my mind is long overdue for the ability to simply roll along a straight stretch without falling over. *sigh* Eliana loved riding her bicycle with training wheels, but is still completely oblivious to the connection between the handlebars and her trajectory.

At any rate, we spent good time together this weekend and I'm glad for it.

I AM A SAILOR

Yes, you read that correctly. Yesterday, I braved the depths of the high seas with only my biceps, pocket-bible, and a large boat that happened to have two diesel engines and a competent captain (though I'm sure I would have been great at it if the need had arisen).

While there, we saw something close to 47 Great Blue Whales that were actually hump-back whales (I wonder if their species is offended by that name). They were amazing. Braeden, Emerson, and I shared the glory of catching four shark-like fish (two lingcod and two sea bass) that I later filleted with a dull knife and lots of willpower.

We also caught lots of crabs. So now I have crabs.

Now I'm sorry for being crude.

Actually, not really.

Braeden and Emerson enjoyed our trip, especially the part where we rode our mountain bicycles on a slow-motion adventure down a paved path to the sea. Emerson still has his training wheels on his bicycle that was designed for someone half his height; as a result, he can only poke along at a rate similar to that of erosion on the edge of Alaska.

Regardless, we finally made it to the beach and we caught hundreds of sand crabs with a little net; these little crabs would later be inadvertently murdered by lack of oxygen in the lidded container where they were housed as bait.

Jerry's Concerns

Last night, I again had the intensely terrifying pleasure of working with the very in famous and very classy person we'll call Jerry. Jerry is a very old seasoned, well-experienced nurse who is ridiculously picky with very specific tastes and a tendency to harass everybody err on the side of perfection in his leadership style.

As soon as he walked back from triage nearing the end of a very busy day, he unloaded all of his commentary and advice that he'd been bottling in his bottling factory. I immediately started scribbling to record his concerns for the benefit of fellow staff members:

Jerry's Concerns

August 23rd, 2017

6-7:00pm

1. The candy is junk. Who put all this junk candy in [the community candy drawer]? Why does nobody ever fill this candy drawer except for Jerry? 

2. There are misspelled words in the rolladex (sp?). Specifically, "psychiatrist" is spelled "physiotrist." He says it was probably LaQuita. 

3. These pencils [here in the department] are all wrong. 

4. The staff schedule has catastrophic errors. 

5. Dr. Okasinski is slob and doesn't wear any socks and that's gross. 

6. Everyone else is hateful. 

7. This drawer is dangerous. 

8. Jerry's name is too far down the schedule; it should be listed alphabetically by last name. 

9. LaQuita is too bossy when she's in charge (LaQuita is not even here today). 

10. Jerry is scheduled to be charge nurse three times this month. 

11. Nobody thinks he does anything around here. 

12. 15-minute detailed schedule problems verbalization, too many issues to count. 

13. Items 1-6 actually occurred between 6:00-6:03pm. 

14. Jerry insists that the previous statement is incorrect; it was between 6:00-6:05pm. 

The list is now posted at the nurse's station. Jerry appreciated it enormously.

Look Down

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t2MvIak8Sc

We need to look down. 

Look down to survive the waves. 

Look down to see those who may be on the ground. 

Look down to see others' dreams shattered, see the potential of your life flit next to you like a shadow until the sun sets. 

Look down at a city beneath your feet, as you pray for the proverbial Valjean to be imprisoned while you flaunt your freedom with self-righteousness. 

Look down with the change of the tide, recognizing that the irony of duty when viewed as the highest morale is a force as destructive as death itself. 

Look down the barrel of anger caused by hunger; look down at the love of your life as she deals with your distractions. 

Look down, and realize you too will always be a slave to something. 

Smokey

Oregon has basically turned into a large fire pit. Over 7,000 acres of charred landscape have been left smoking as the wildfires rage around Crater Lake, insensitively devastating our plans to enjoy the pristine park views.


Instead, we went to Tokatee Lake, where the boys practiced their paddling skills ("We know how to do it! We learned it from the Wii! We're Junior Paddlers!") while I was rudely marooned on sand bar after sand bar formed by the highest reaches of the North Umpqua river.


Rachel and Drue camped with us, which was a blast. Emerson attempted to boil his butt by spilling hot water. Braeden corralled all the kids and practiced his bossing skills. Eliana Kate found a new friend in Alex, and they spent most of the time running around yelling the same phrase over and over and over.


Stephanie basically fell madly in love with me again due to my incredible camping skills. I fell a little in love with myself for the same reasons.


The campground was terrific, although there seemed to be an understanding amongst several of our seedier neighbors that there was a no-pants, no-problem policy. Stephanie wouldn't let me walk around the campground with no pants though, so WHAT EVEN WAS THE POINT.

Motor-Boating, Baby

I'm not sure when my life got twisted into this beautiful piece of artistic redneck bliss, but I embrace it now. We returned home from the Land of Mordor (read: The Desert) sporting a beautiful 1964 5.5hp Johnson Sea Horse outboard on the back of our car (what can I say, I found a good deal at a yard sale).

Now it's back-to-work, back-to-the-grind, shoulder-to-the-wheel style. But let's not talk about that!

4th of July was fun, the most memorable part being the celebration of American Trout Terrorism through something called a "Fish Grab." This means that 3,000,000,298 children surround several man-made plastic ponds filled with trout, and on the word "Go!" they jump in and catch fish after fish after fish with their bare hands, eventually wearing down the terrified trout to an emotional nub resulting in certain death. I think Emerson caught a fish 20 times before he was finally able to hold onto one for longer than 3 seconds, and we ended up asking some people for their tin-foil BBQ garbage (but we asked in a classy way) so that we could wrap the fish with ice from my water bottle and cook them up for lunch when we got home.

This is real, people:

Note to self: after the 4th of July fireworks, don't try to get through airport security. Apparently, my shoes were giving off enormous evidence of explosive ordinance, so I ended up getting molested 19 times during the cavity search.

After the drawn-out and conspicuously suspicious process of being released from security in the tiny Mid-American airport, we arrived at our gate, where it was determined that our seats had become completely discombobulated due to an airport error. This resulted in an airport couple (whose sum age was probably over 150 years) parading us in front of all the other passengers with much circumstance, demanding volunteers to give up their seats so that one parent could be with the kids on the plane.

In closing, Eliana is refusing to get off of the couch because of a worrisome-looking brownie that was found on the floor; she is calling it a "poop-shark." Her assumption is somewhat flawed, but who can argue with this face?

Spouting About

I thought it was clever, the title, because we saw humpback whales last week from our amazing campsite on the beach in Olympic National Park. We got the campsite by accident, possibly because it was the very last one and I had inadvertently reserved our actual campsite on a random date in August.

Later, we meandered our way through the Hoh Rainforest; Braeden was shocked at the Hoh river, which he says is amazing because “it dries up so much faster [from my hands] than other rivers, like in a minute instead of an hour!” I decided that self-correction on the physics of this fallacy is something that he can address someday as a young adult, and just went with it.

The next day, we saw no such luck as the beach campsite. Instead, we drove into the middle of nowhere trying to find an off-the-beaten track campground that the locals use. We found it, along with two bear sightings within skin-crawling distance of our site. I was a good Boy Scout and snobbishly expounded my wisdom to my family while hanging up our garbage in a nearby tree (on the trunk, hooked to a piece of bark, within my reach….I’m not perfect).

Then we drove 9,000 miles through Washington state until we got back to the good part of the country, where we then drove another 9,000 miles through traffic crawling at 25mph because every festival for the last 10 years happened to be scheduled on THAT DAY in every coastal town in Oregon. But we went swimming at the beach, which was fun except my feet hurt so gosh-awful after about three seconds in the water, which is only in liquid form because the freezing point has been lowered by the salt content. But I caught a bunch of sand crabs during those 3-second intervals.

We got home and went to work the next day (okay, it was actually church) and then tried to create diabetic comas for ourselves by lying around and eating junk food until it was time to pack again for our sojourn to The East. I decided that camping was again in order, so I crammed everything we needed into our car and then attached a large bin to the hitch carrier.

Fast-forward to our trail to Reno, Nevada where the landscape gradually transformed from beautiful to tolerable to the Pits of Despair. You guys, even the lakes looked like sand!  Our campsite was located in the craggy cliffs of a rock formation right in the center of said Pits of Despair, where every single jackrabbit alive has relatives and mountain goats think that they are so gentrified they pay taxes. The nearest town was 10 miles away, strategically located within easy sniffing distance of the largest landfill imaginable (I feel like, out of literally thousands of acres of empty land, this was poor planning of population placement). Once inside our 1-minute popup tent, Emerson proceeded to tell us several stories about 5 people who bore remarkable resemblance to us, which stories all ended with the characters getting eaten by bears or attacked by a scary man with a hook who was “right outside the tent!” Stephanie and I were officially scared out of our wits by the end of it, even though he’s only 5 years old and his tales are nothing if not predictable.

The next day, we didn’t die from dehydration because (being the Boy Scout that I am, once again) I had brought a gallon of water; Stephanie said I was smart because of it, so I rode that high for as long as possible while we drove through Death Valley. We arrived to Last Vegas, the crispiest section of terrain in the United States. We discovered the Hoover Dam, next to the first national park ever founded (#whyhere) and found our hotel. It was 116 degrees outside and I was questioning Humanity’s reasoning of attempting to survive somewhere that looked like it had been inside of a giant broiler, but my questions were answered once I realized that Humanity needed a place where strippers could walk around mostly naked all of the time and not get cold.

I learned a few things: in Vegas, if she looks like an exotic princess, she’s probably an escort. Also, if she looks like an escort she’s probably an escort. Also, Stephanie does not like escorts, nor does she like people who forget to wear pants and shirts out in public (I’m still on the fence about that one). Stephanie, I’m kidding! Also, M&M’s can be sold by the pound at more than the price of fancy fudge in Bandon. Also, it’s too hot and Humanity is a moron for setting up a giant city here.

Regardless, we finally found an economically priced buffet, which was delicious until two hours later when three of us started having diarrhea and nausea and vomiting. I’ll tell you, nothing beats the excitement of having your kids and wife throwing up all night right before you are supposed to board a plane to cross the country; Emerson threw up twice while we were standing in line to check our baggage (with me loudly proclaiming to Stephanie “I wonder when he’ll get over that bad chicken he had last night!” for the benefit of understandably-apprehensive bystanders) and then had diarrhea in his pants before we got to our gate, 1 hour and 45 minutes after arriving. Also, I accidentally attempted to get a tiny keychain pocketknife through security, but their damn machines caught it and it got confiscated. At least I didn’t get confiscated, though, so in the end we won out.

Now, I’m on a plane and nobody is throwing up and Eliana is asleep and Stephanie keeps going back to the restrooms but she looks like she’s still a few hours out from kicking the bucket. Let’s wax poetic:

Some trips are doomed to be sickly and sorry,

Others are built off of somebody’s folly.

But all of the memories, the ones that don’t fade,

Are usually ‘cause of adventures we made.

Emerson’s looking a little bit green,

Eliana is yelling and causing a scene.
Braeden is glued to the window so far,

And Stephanie’s been feeling the plague from the start.

I’m on my laptop, typing this rhyme

So that someday we’ll remember this time.

Actually, this trip reminds me of the last time we all had the stomach bug. It happened to be four of the five of us, feverishly throwing up our immortal souls during a 9-hour drive through blizzarding conditions last Christmas. I’m beginning to think we have a spot of bad luck with these things….

An Eternity of Terminal Creeping

Yesterday went down as the most boring, most tedious, and most uncomfortable day in the history of people ever getting stuck in airports. I spent 19.5 hours traveling, 12 of which consisted of me staring at people walking by in the Atlanta airport while I exploited every seating arrangement possible between gates T1-T17. I didn't get arrested for it, but I did confer on myself The Creepiest Fidgeter award. I was in the airport for so long that my birth certificate actually changed itself to say "Tom Hanks" because the Universe starting blurring the lines between the movie The Terminal and my life. 



By the end of they day, I was too brain-damaged by the boredom to drive home from Eugene without making 97 wrong turns and then nearly missing my own driveway. I also suspect I had a dead-fish funk by the time I arrived, mostly because several cats gave me hungry looks as I drove by.




True to form as a thoughtful gift-giver, I brought Stephanie a t-shirt from the CDP that states "I Am Naked." It's magnificent, normally used for actors in the mass casualty event training, who apparently don't want to actually be naked when going through decontamination (if you had seen the volunteers, you would have not wanted them to be naked either).

Center for Disaster Preparedness

This week has been awesome. For one thing, I'm in Alabama, and have been able to jog past where every single scene from The Walking Dead was filmed (my assumption based off of the condition of the roads). Also, taxi drivers that smoke in their mini-van taxis with the windows up and admitting to having just "burnt one [marijuana joint]" right before picking up his passengers.

My primary instructor looks exactly like Willie Robertson. The other primary instructor is a real-life Mater from Cars. They both have personalities as big as their look-alikes, and have taught me many things including statements that I'm going to somehow fit into this blog entry. If you want to find pictures of them, look up Willie Robertson and Uncle Si.

We've been doing HERT (hospital emergency response training) including decontamination in Level C PPE. I sweat so bad in this Alabama heat it's like "a redneck trying to read" (-CDP Mater) and I end up literally POURING the sweat out of my rubber gloves into the trash can every time I take a break from the summer sauna.

Our group members have to help each other don/doff all their gear when we go in and out of our PPE; I have renamed it The Donner Party. This is what we look like when we get out of our PPE:
 

I met a terrific guy named Aymon who has had to pay multiple ransoms to free family members kidnapped by ISIS. On a final note, I also had an extensive discussion with a group of RNs from Grant's Pass about a coworker of theirs who has breast implants and doesn't wear a bra; I'm not sure how to provide better context for that discussion, so I'm just going to leave it there and hope you can cook something up with it. 

Stabber Girl

Eliana has earned herself the name "Stabber." This is because she stabbed Stephanie in the bottom with a surgical knife, right after Stephanie had gotten out of the shower.


There is no evidence to suggest that I was the one who inadvertently left the sterile blade in a reachable position for my two-year old to grab and activate.


At any rate, I stopped the bleeding (sorry, rug) and steri-stripped the laceration. Poor Steph had to sit weird for 3 days.


But Eli-babes is precious, even though she stabbed her mother; remind me to hold this over her head for the next 45 years. Also remind me to stop letting Eliana watch Hell on Wheels with us.




Look at that innocent face!

What Big Brothers Need

Braeden brought a book up to Stephanie and directed her to the Afterward for Parents section, which extensively discussed the psychological needs of an older sibling after a baby is born. He told her, "Mom, this is what I need. I didn't even know I needed all this!"


She wasn't sure what to say.

Remembering the Dismemberment

So, yesterday we had a guy in the ED who was dragging around his one-wheeled cart full of dismembered, scalped, and decapitated sex doll body parts wrapped in saran wrap and littered with wet lacy underwear and long socks. Honorable mention would be for the swastikas drawn all over the well-worn boobies, which confused me. Ashley (another RN) had the pleasure of dragging it clear across campus, only to have to drag it back when she couldn't find a place to store it. The body parts kept rolling out of the cart, and I'm not sure if anybody gave her weird looks about why she was transporting such...goods.


The humor award still goes to the poor blighter who came in after scalding his entire torso while making doughnuts shirtless; he did lots of things right to stop the burning, but that probably doesn't include slathering his entire upper body with yellow mustard to stop the pain. He thought the vinegar in the mustard would help, and maybe the vinegar would have, but he didn't think about the picante aspect of mustard. Ruth told him he smelled like a giant hot dog.


Also, I've decided to braid my beard. It's going to be amazing.

On Another Note....

I once compared the gospel of Jesus Christ during the time I was a missionary to a mother having a newborn child; the gospel affected how I viewed everything. It affected what I ate, when I slept, what I spent my time doing, how I was viewed by others, and caused many painfully sleepless nights with feelings of inadequacy during significant periods of personal growth. I remember with fondness, but acknowledge how difficult that time was for me and how it changed me, and not always in ways I would consider to be positive.

Since then, my relationship with the gospel has changed. My view of it has grown. I still love it, the same way I love my children as they get older, but the relationship is different somehow. It isn't as innocent, doesn't control me in the same way it once did. I view it as a living, breathing part of my life that still requires time, devotion, and a lot of patience. My son will always be my child, no matter what, and my faith will always be a part of my life, no matter how my relationship may evolve.

In the end, I am in a period of my life when I choose to have faith that there is more than the paltry number of years until our bodies fail us. All of the arguments, all of reasoning, and all of the doubts must eventually be addressed in this way for me: I either choose to embrace the vacuum of disbelief, or I welcome the opportunity to recognize the spiritual light in my life.

I read a discourse yesterday comparing personal revelation to light: sometimes it's bright, and sudden, and full; light that illuminates with a burst of electricity flowing from the center of a room. Usually, however, revelation is more like the dawn; it approaches slowly, with hints that it's coming, gradually opening up the details of the world. Some days the sun is beautiful, and warm, and obvious; other days, clouds interfere, and it is difficult to even discern when the sun has risen above the horizon.

It's been a lot of cloudy days. I can still see God in the life around me, but I need the sunny warmth of His obvious presence again, to boost me. I wonder how I can achieve that, or if it's even within my control.

My question for today is how can Jesus Christ have all-encompassing empathy for us, if he never sinned to the point of losing hope of redemption? I think of the alcoholic, who attempts for the hundredth time to free himself from his vice, and fails. I think of the person who leaves her last circle of friendship in ruins, hopelessly feeling the weight of self-inflicted loneliness.

Either way, maybe today I can show better understanding for somebody. Let's go with that.

I am trying to decide if it is necessary to build a casket in which to bury my old lawnmower motor, which by all evidence experienced an ascending aortic dissection from which was spewing geyser-worthy amounts of oil that should have been changed 642 times more than it actually was during the 9-year life span of the mower.


I probably won't build a casket. The mower only cost me $50 to begin with, and since I'm too cheap to even buy another used mower I've just bought an engine from Harbor Freight to jimmy-rig onto the old deck. This has proved to be more challenging than originally thought, though it's nothing a box-cutter and foil tape and Ebay parts couldn't remedy.


Except I haven't run the newly-built lawnmower yet, so it might explode.


On another note, my oldest son was writing notes to his friend in class that he can't wait to go swimming, "mostly because we'll be able to see Lexi in her swimming suit." I'm not sure how to talk to an 8-year old about why this concerns me.


Eliana turned 2 years old, which was both depressing and happy at the same time, and I am growing my beard out ever since I started watched Hell on Wheels because the main character has an amazing beard that looks like a lion's mane.


I received a certificate from the VA director for amazing customer service. I also was reported to the Oregon State Board of Nursing by a psychotic patient who basically is saying I tried to murder him by removing his IV. So there's that.

My tooth hurts. It kind of reminds of me of this patient my friend had who got terrible whiplash by attempting to pull a tooth by tying a giant frying pan to it and throwing the pan as hard as he could (the tooth didn't budge).


Except I can't go the dentist, because Blue Cross Blue Shield and GEHA have been secretly conspiring SPEFICALLY AGAINST ME to make sure I pay all of the fees that GEHA is supposed to pay for my dental visits. Thanks a lot, Trump. So basically, I am equivocally being tortured with frying pans by BCBS and GEHA.


Eliana has been obsessed with playing outside recently, but it's very traumatic for us to allow it because every time we make her come back INSIDE she has a complete mental, physical, and emotional collapse and makes Stephanie and me feel like we are going to have an automatically-triggered CPS investigation launched against us.


Emerson hides every time I come in the room. I'm not sure if this should worry me or not.


Braeden is old enough that he could start working soon in a factory if we lived in China, mostly because he does a better job than I do when he cleans the house and follows instructions.


Stephanie is amazing, but it's really difficult for me to get anything done because all she wants to do is make out when I'm at home, and I'm like "Honey we can't just make out all the time like dolphins in the ocean" and she's like "But whyyyyyyyyyy" and then we fight about it.


That's all for today.

I Should Probably Be Embarrassed

So I peed in front of a trail camera. It wasn't on purpose, well, actually I did pee on purpose but I didn't realize the trail camera existed at the time, even though I was only about 3 feet in front of it (waist level, unfortunately for whomever reviews the footage). Hey, when you're on a country trail jog and you've gotta go, you've gotta go. On another note, I did a public service because now (3 months later) there is a brand-spanking-new porta-potty at the trail entrance.

There are lots of other stories in which I should be embarrassed, because I'm really good at that sort of thing. But I digress at this time.

Been a long while since I've written anything here, I'm thinking of restarting my old habit of entering stuff. I enjoyed my trail jog yesterday, with the expanse of my Oregon world stretching itself as far as I could see, the North Umpqua river snaking along its shiny pathway towards the ocean. It was near the place where I went for a jog with Dad not long before he had his second (disabling) stroke. The trail is so steep I keep saying that I should start jogging with an AED in my pack. I'll include a photo:

The jog was completely invigorating, and sorely needed after weeks of a lot of work and very little personal relaxation. 

In other news, I installed a new head unit on my truck with a rear-view camera, as well as finishing a bunch of other home projects. The head unit should have been simple, but like most first-timers I successfully made it a bit of a long and redundant process until I got it right. 

Also, my first brush with doing a brush-fire. It was exciting and burned for like 3 days. 

I still can't figure out why my front yard is completely soggy all the time. It's a mystery.

Our microwave finally has the fan hooked up, after only a year of me getting around to it. I deserve a medal. 

We love the beach and exploring Oregon together...that's how we do.