Friday: blood donation

I gave blood today.  It was a bit of an ordeal.  I've been having problems lately and keep thinking I should stop, but at the same time I have time and willingness to do it.

Anyway, my iron was fine.  This has been a problem in the past but the iron supplements help.

I also have small veins.  I tried to drink plenty of water ahead of time to make the process better.  The initial poke went fine so I was optimistic.  However, my blood kept stopped coming out.  They finally got the needle in the right place and it started flowing again.  It happened one more time but I was almost done so they just held the needle *just so* and filled the bag.  Then they started filling the tubes that they need for the testing and it stopped again.  As they were fiddling with it the needle popped out.  (This didn't hurt at all.)  But I started pooling blood.  One nurse (I had two by me at the time) clamped down on my arm so fast.  I didn't get any blood on my clothes, we didn't get any on the blood pressure cuff, it was surprisingly clean.

They had to put another needle in the other arm, but it was a smaller needle so my small veins didn't matter as much.  They just barely got the minimum amount (two tubes) and the blood started flowing better so they were able to get all five tubes in the end.

Wednesday: Operation: Clean the House

Well, after a summer pause I need to get started with Operation: Clean the House again.  But.

I have so many things on my to-do list.  I was about 30 items higher than normal at the beginning of the day, although I'll be the first to admit that several of those items are 15minutes or less.  Sometimes I need to do something small and it's just not a good time to do it.

Anyway, I got rid of most of my "try to do these today" items, which surprised me a bit as there were a whole bunch.  I'm going to spend next week trying to knock out a bunch more.  (This is really only two more days because of Labor Day, so we'll see how this goes.)

After that the plan is to spend just a little bit of time on all the rooms that I cleaned last year.  Not a ton, but enough to get them back organized again.

Then I'm going to start the master bathroom.  It's not super small, but not super big either, so it'll be a good way to get back in the swing of things.  I'd love to start it by the beginning of October, but I might be optimistic.  I still need to do things like get groceries after all.

Monday: back to school

 School started for the kids today!  Isaac's in 5th, Joshua's in 2nd.

The day seemed to go fine for them.  Then it was about time for pick-up, and the sky was rapidly getting dark.  I knew it was supposed to rain this afternoon, but I was hoping it'd hold off until pick-up was finished.  Well, I decided to go a bit early so that I could grab Joshua first if it was raining.  (He comes out about 5-10 minutes before Isaac.)  The rain caught up with me on the way to school, but it wasn't too bad.  It was a light rain when I got Joshua and then sat in the car a few minutes before going back up to get Isaac.  I did a poor job on the timing though, and it started to rain hard.  It was too windy for an umbrella, so the parents all got soaked.  To be fair, the kids all got soaked too.  But at least we were going home and could change.

I was looking through Joshua's homework and found this gem.  It's supposed to be "noisy".  "Nosey", while it would fit the writing prompt, is not what I saw either.  And once I saw it, as two words, there was no un-seeing it.  I had to get Joshua to read it to me so that I could understand.

Sunday: back to church

We finally went back to church today.  We've been joining a live-stream for the past 2.5 years and we've been in the church for assorted things, but have stayed away from big gatherings.  We know COVID is still a thing and will probably worship from home again in the future, but it was nice being at church.  Although let's face it, it is also nice to worship from home.

vacation Tuesday (Aug 16): Ketchikan

We woke up pulling into Ketchikan. Alaska was pretty much just as I pictured it: mountains with pine

trees. It was beautiful, although foggy with a light rain.

Our tour was Totem Bring State Park and a lumberjack show. If I remember correctly, we booked this

tour as one of our smaller tours and as something to do to get off the boat. It started with a short bus

ride around the city. There are a lot of staircase houses, where there are massive staircases to either

get to the house or to get to the front door. These are here just because it is a very steep area and it’s

easier to climb stairs than hills. There was also a salmon ladder that we didn’t get to see but probably

could have walked to…if we ever come back I’d like to see it.

We went on to Totem Bright state park, where there are a bunch of recreated totem poles from the

area. While neither Ben or I are really into totem poles, and still aren’t after the tour, it was still

interesting. The time and effort it would take to even make a small totem pole was rather amazing. We

also got to walk in a little forest…there’s not much top soil so there ends up being a lot of exposed roots

due to rain over 200 days per year. There was a light rain while we were there, but nothing too bad.

We put up our umbrellas for a bit, but it was mostly super light rain or no rain.

After the state park we went to a lumber jack show. It was fun. It’s amazing how quickly they can chop

and saw through a thick piece of wood. There was a bit too much crowd participation for my taste, but

oh well. We needed to walk back to the boat after this and it would have been nice if they could have

communicated this better. There was a half hour between the end of the show and all-aboard time.

Ben and I could do it no problem, but it probably took about ten minutes. Most of the people with us

were pretty mobile, but I could see that being a small problem for some of the people.

After dinner we went to see the comedian. He was pretty funny and did a nice job. We then played a

game of cribbage (I finally won a game) and went to sleep. 

vacation Monday (Aug 15): day at sea

 Today was a day at sea. We didn’t think any of the planned activities were all that interesting, so we just
took it easy. We did a lot of reading, played some games, watched a movie, and ate a lot of food. The
food was all good today. The best thing was a special dark chocolate and lime dessert. There were also
some hazelnuts for crunch.

The weather was foggy. The captain said the fog would leave by noon, but it came and went all day. I
also thought I saw a whale spout and perhaps a flick of a tale, but my guess is that it’s only a 30% chance
that I actually saw it. I’ll give it a strong maybe, and there was a lot of excitement on my end.

These signs kept showing up on the smart screens, but dinner tonight was the first time I was actually able to get a picture with one.  Usually I just saw them out of the corner of my eye or they didn't come up when I was ready to get a picture.

Saturday: lazy

It was a lazy day today.  We all did stuff in the basement for a while in the morning.  (Isaac brought his game down to join us; I wasn't sure he would.)

I read a lot.  I wasn't feeling bad, but I also wasn't feeling quite right.  There were a lot of things I should have been doing, but I got a few things crossed off the list, several things added to the list, and decided that it was fine to chill more than normal.