It has been a nice, quiet evening at home. These don’t happen very often lately it seems. I’ve been able to catch up on a few things that needed to get done, such as mail off some dues and donations, fix a nagging boot-up problem on my Windows PC, get the second hard drive for my iMac cleaned up, and package up the eStarling digital picture frame to be returned. That last was a purchase that I hoped would work for mother and dad for folks to email pictures to them. Well, it just doesn’t quite work. First, it had to be within about 20 feet of the wireless access point. eStarling thought that the power supply shipped with the device might be the problem, but that turned out not to fix the issue. Secondly, it would quite often hang while displaying a picture. Then from that point onward, it would hang on that picture until the picture was deleted. Unfortunately, there’s no way to delete the picture directly on the digital picture frame! It has to be deleted on the web site and then wait until the update has been sent to the frame. Only then can it be turned off and back on again and start working. Finally, the screen resolution was pretty poor. My iPod has better resolution! It was just too high-maintenance for it to be anything that mother and dad would be able to use. The final straw was that Kodak announced a new line of digital picture frames at the Consumer Electronics Show which seems to be pretty state of the art. I think that Kodak might get this right. The Kodak device will ship sometime in March or so, and I’ll buy one of those to check it out. I still think that being able to set up a wireless display device that can receive email pictures would be pretty cool! Further, the Kodak device is supposed to also be able to play short videos. So, the eStarling devices goes back and I’ll try to trade up.

Dad continues to make progress, but not nearly as fast as mother would like! He goes to bed pretty early (around 7:30 or so) and wakes up pretty early (around 5:00 or so). Sometimes he’ll call mother at that hour of the morning because he’s lonely. Yesterday it was because he was lonely and he was out of Diet Caffeine Free Coke…. He moves around quite well with his walker but hasn’t yet been able to tackle going up and down steps. That’s pretty important as he has to go up and down steps to go in and out of the house. Until he can easily find his center of balance, steps will have to wait. He’s getting pretty vigorous physical therapy twice a day and that’s working quite well.

I watched about 5 minutes of American Idol tonight and had all of that I could stand. Out came the iPod, the Bose Quiet Comfort 2 noise cancelling headsets, and I’ve been listening to the music I want to hear tonight. First it was a delightful album titled Chilling With Beethoven and then a big switch to Jewel’s Goodbye Alice In Wonderland which I also enjoy. One of my recent favorite quotes comes from this album: “Everything’s temporary, given enough time.” Only problem is, the bed will call me much sooner than I’ll be done listening to music. Maybe another night!

Dad is making excellent progress and we had a very nice visit with him and mother today. We drove over to Soda Springs in the late morning and stayed through most of the afternoon. I’ve made another video — this is a bit better than the last one. I’ll never become a professional (I’ll leave that to Jared), but it does show the kind of progress that dad is making in his recovery from the stroke.

It has been very cold here and the cold weather seems to be making its way eastward. At least seven people in the great plains have died as a result of this unusually cold weather. It certainly does curtail outdoor activities for most people, that’s for sure. We went downtown to pick up a couple of items before driving to Soda Springs and there was literally no traffic in town!

The past week seems to all blend together. I had very early morning meetings four days this week — and by early, I mean 6:30 a.m. be at work, being human kind of meetings. This morning when the alarm went off, I groaned and started to get up before I realized that it was Saturday and I could push the snooze button! That elicited a sigh of relief. Nina has also been swamped this week and we’re both kind of worn out. It’s nice to have a quiet weekend to recharge.

My trip to Belgium is also firming up. It’ll be a short trip this time, leaving on Saturday February 3rd and returning on Friday, February 9th. Hopefully the weather will cooperate. It has been unseasonably warm in western Europe the past week. I’ll not complain if that continues.

On a political note, I’m increasingly unhappy with what is happening in Iraq. It seems to me that there is nothing we can do there as those folks can simply wait us out, all the while picking off our military men a small group at a time. Whenever we leave, an all-out civil war will certainly erupt. I’m becoming of the opinion to let them kill each other off. It’s certainly better than them killing our troops! Somehow we have to put a stop to this kind of an action where we go in with guns blazing and then have no idea what to do next. I wish that the Democrats had a better plan, but nothing is emerging there, either.

On a happier note, it’s Girl Scout Cookie time. I think the only Girl Scout among the grandchildren is in Pennsylvania, so I’m working on how many boxes of cookies I will be buying. I think at least eight … but I had dinner a while ago so I’m not very hungry right now. Maybe I need to think about this again before dinner…!!

A brief note about the video. This time I’ve put it out only in Windows Media format. Of the sixteen people who viewed the video last week, fourteen downloaded the Windows Media format and one of the others downloaded both. If I only do one format it goes in about half the time. So, unless I hear anything else, that’s the only format I’ll be doing for the next while. There are bloopers plenty … starting with saying there were four video clips when in reality there are five. Someday I’ll learn to count (not).

It took most of the day, but I’ve finally gotten the video from dad uploaded to the website. I’ve made it in two versions … one in QuickTime format and the other in Windows Media Player format. I’ve learned a lot from this process. As long as I don’t have to do any editing, the video comes together quite quickly. If I need to do any editing, then it gets very complicated. However, it is some good video of dad and his present condition. The next video should go much better.

Nina and I went to Soda Springs yesterday to visit with dad and mother. The weather was pretty miserable with high winds, snow, and cold temperatures. A couple of times on the drive over the wind was blowing so hard that it was impossible to see to drive. However, the trip went well. Dad is showing some improvement although his short-term memory is quite impaired. He was supposed to get up and walk the corridor twice a day on Saturday and Sunday as part of his therapy. The rooms in the Caribou Memoria Hospital are arranged in a triangle. There are about twelve rooms in the hospital, each capable of one or two beds. So the walk goes out the hospital room door and a left turn. Three right turns later and then left back into the room. It takes three people to assist in this walk. One person walking on the right side holds a belt strapped around dad’s waist to hold him up if he looses his balance. A second person pulls the oxygen tank and helps on the left side. The third person brings up the rear pushing a wheel chair so that when dad gets tired he can sit down. He usually pauses for a rest twice on the walk. The entire procedure takes about twenty minutes. There were only three of us there … Nina, mother, and me. It would have been fun to have taken some video of this parade! Alas, there were no photographers available.

I took a couple of other short video clips with my little Sony point-and-shoot digital camera. Then when I took mother home, we stopped at the post office so she could check the mail. I inadvertently took another short video clip at the post office (I had forgotten to switch the camera from video mode back to picture mode). This morning I recorded four more short clips of explanation and have put it all together into one file. The file is now being compressed and the program says it’ll be another 50 minutes before it’s done. This isn’t a fast process!! I’ve got some other pictures, so I’ll put this all on the Picture Album sometime today. I think I’ll put the video out at two compression levels because that really affects how large the file is and how long it takes to download.

Last night Nina and I attended a special Stake meeting where the Stake Presidency outlined the new ward boundaries in the Pocatello Stake. Before yesterday evening there were seven wards and two branches in the stake. Now there are nine wards and two branches. It’s a pretty exciting change brought about by the growth of the Church in Pocatello. There are several other stakes in the city and over the next year all of them will be adjusting ward boundaries. We’re still in the same ward: Juniper Hills. Our meeting time for the coming year will start at 1 p.m. That’s also nice because I can use the mornings to do things like writing the blog and putting together video clips!

Finally, I bought mother and dad a digital picture frame from eStarling. The device works pretty well. One of the features is that people can email pictures to the digital picture frame! There is a special email address. I’m sending the email address out to the family. Anyone can send me an email and I’ll send along the email address. Mother is quite excited about it and watches often to see if any new picures have arrived. The system has a pretty large capacity. When the memory gets full, then the oldest picture is deleted to make room for the newest picture.

Even though it’s already the 3rd of January, it doesn’t feel like it. In fact, I’ve been so preoccupied with dad’s condition that the time has really flown by. He’s had a good day today according to mother. He spent a lot of time with the physical therapist. He was up and walking with a walker and doing some exercises. This afternoon the speech therapist came in and they had a good session as well. He’s still having a lot of issues with eating. The diet he’s on is probably pretty bland and he’s refusing to eat very much of it. So, they’re also giving him a can of Ensure three times a day as well. He’s got to start building up his strength.

The way that the holiday calendar is put together where I work, we have two holidays in the first six months of the year: New Year’s Day and Memorial Day. The second half of the year is loaded: Fourth of July, Labor Day, two days at Thanksgiving, and Christmas Day. We also have three floating days that we can use as we wish. I think, however, that there needs to be another standard holiday in the first half of the year!

Some of the travel schedule is beginning to shape up. It looks like I’ll be going to Belgium for ten days at the beginning of February and will be back in the Philippines sometime in the summer. I’ll also make a couple of trips to California along the way. I haven’t made a business trip since last June. That’s the longest that I’ve been home without business travel in many years. It’s been nice, but I’m looking forward to going again.

So, the new year has started. I’ve decided to do something different and make a few resolutions:

1. I resolve to spend time most every day at my desk in our home office. I’m sure that I can find enough to do to occupy this time.
2. I resolve to not go to medical school. It’ll take too much time and then I wouldn’t be able to spend enough time at my desk in our home office.
3. I resolve to play with more technology on the internet. Gadgets and stuff like that are what makes life interesting.
4. I resolve to spend at least five full nights in the motorhome when we don’t have to run the furnace.

And I’ll consider it a good year if I can keep two out of four of them! There’s some new pictures in the Picture Album. Happy New Year!

The doctors agreed that he can move into a “swing bed” at the Soda Springs Caribou Memorial Hospital. They also decided that he didn’t have to go by ambulance unless mother wanted. When they further told her that Medicare wouldn’t pay for the ambulance, that pretty well sealed the deal. About 3 p.m. this afternoon all the paperwork was done and the portable oxygen needed for the drive had been delivered, so we loaded dad into the front seat of our car and off we went to Soda Springs.

A “swing bed” is a government definition and has nothing to do with whether or not the bed moves. It refers to a bed in a rural hospital (defined as a Skilled Nursing Facility — another government definition) that can be either used for rehabilitation or for acute care. That is, it can be “swung” between these two uses. If a medicaide patient has been in the hospital for at least three days for acute care, and if rehabilitation is needed, then the patient can be moved to a “swing bed” in a rural skilled nursing facility for a period of twenty-one days and Medicare pays the bill. Medicaide pays for the acute care and medicare pays for the rehabilitation care, as I understand it. After twenty-one days, then medicaide will only subsidize rehabilitation in a nursing home facility.

So, dad’s in a “swing bed”. It’s a nice private room with an easy chair and a table with four chairs. He’ll be busy doing physical and occupational therapy for the next few weeks. The paperwork from the hospital here in Pocatello indicates that he has a good prognosis for near complete recovery. The therapist will start with him tomorrow morning.

His heart is very weak. The doctor in Soda Springs explained that normally the heart should pump out 70-80% of the volume of blood in the heart chambers out with each heart beat. Dad is functioning at about 25%. Below 40% is considered to be a very weak heart. That’s a potent opportunity for blood clots to form. His coumadin levels have become “theraputic”, so that should prevent clot formation.

Tonight it’s a quiet night at home watching the Orange Bow. I missed Boise State’s comeback last night to win in overtime! College football is almost over once again. Heavy sigh.

We’re home from the hospital and mother is spending the night here at our house rather than at the hospital. She’s very tired and this is a good thing. The physical therapist made another visit this afternoon with dad. Since this one was actual therapy and not an evaluation, it went much better for dad. He’s getting right tired of being in the hospital. He’ll get a partial fix either tomorrow or Wednesday. The current plan is to transfer him to Soda Springs (probably the nursing home there) for physical therapy. He needs to regain some strength and be able to move himself around the house. When that happens he’ll be able to go home.

Mother’s taking a short nap and I’ll take her back up to the hospital in a few minutes. My sister Terry is staying with dad right now. She’ll then be able to go back home. The Internist told us this morning that they were working on getting him in a position to go into physical therapy so he can relearn what he has lost and get enough strength to be able to care for himself.

The physical therapist also came over this morning to do an assessment. After that dad was pretty down. He wasn’t able to do very much that the therapist was asking. The doctor said that being depressed is common following a stroke. The brain has suffered some damage and the chemistry up there is not normal. They’ll give him some medication for that as well. As things currently look, I expect that by the end of the week he’ll be released to the nursing home in Soda Springs for physical therapy until he can walk reasonably well and can get around without falling. Then he’ll be able to go home. For him right now the future looks pretty bleak. I don’t think so … and hopefully as therapy progresses he’ll figure that out as well.