Week of September 3, 2001
Monday
Tuesday Wednesday
Thursday Friday
Saturday Sunday
Most Recent Update
LABOR DAY. Laboring on call!
Yes, I was one of the people who had to work on Labor Day yesterday. Luckily, I only needed to see two people in the hospital yesterday morning then I came home to take everything out of and off the Jeep. Why, you ask? Because we ended up completing a deal that we started on Saturday and continued on Sunday.
But first I did work in the clinic yesterday afternoon seeing patients. We had a full schedule and I admitted one from the clinic. She should have gone home today. Everything else was pretty simple.
After I got finished in the office yesterday afternoon Delanae and I went to complete the deal we started on Saturday. After more than an hour of looking at paperwork, waiting, looking at more paperwork, waiting again, and finally signing a mountain of paperwork we took delivery of two new vehicles. One is a 1987 Mazda B2600 extended cab pickup for Stephen who is very excited about having his very own vehicle. We like it because he does have his own vehicle, it is paid for, and it has just enough power to get him up and down the hill. The other vehicle is for Delanae and I. We traded in the Jeep to get both. Delanae loves the new Bravada as it rides more comfortably than the Jeep. She now drives it primarily and I have the Focus to go back and forth to work. It is so nice that now Stephen can drive himself to and from football practice and also drive Stacey places and we still have two cars at home.
We got a pleasant surprise today when Delanae went to get both new vehicles officially insured. It turns out that our total auto insurance bill will be less with these three vehicles than it was with just the Jeep and Focus. It helps that we are only carrying liability coverage on the pickup but it is still unreal that three vehicles can cost less to insure than two. I guess the replacement cost of the Jeep was higher than the Bravada. Whatever the reason I will take it.
Call last night was its usual busy self. I ended up admitting two patients but had a lot of calls which kept me up very late. Today was also very busy at the office with stacks of refill and messages even though we did a lot of them yesterday. I did get to run before I came home tonight. Delanae and Stephen are out in his pickup putting gas in it and getting last minute supplies for him to start school tomorrow. We plan to provide him with two tankfuls of gas a month and he is responsible for any more than that himself. We need to fill it up to see how much gasoline it holds.
Tomorrow morning will be busy for me. I have to finish my charts in medical records, send one patient to the nursing home, and meet a family at a nursing home. Also, I need to go by the dealer and get duplicate keys for the Bravada and pickup and make another copy of each. There is also work that needs to be done at home tomorrow afternoon so I will be busy on my day off.
Today was my day off as are most Wednesdays. I spent the morning, however, at the office and hospital. Also I went to one nursing home to talk to a patient and family. That was a difficult situation, telling a patient and his wife that he could not go back home without 24 hours live-in help. He is too frail to stand and walk by himself, even to get out of bed to walk with a walker or get in a wheelchair. The wife kept asking him if he would rather go home and of course he said yes. She is going to try and get live-in help but doesn't realize how expensive that is going to be. Not a good position to be put in.
I also had several charts to sign at the hospital and a couple to dictate discharge summaries on. Ordinarily, I dictate discharge summaries at the time I discharge the patient but these were two who were discharged by telephone.
Delanae and I also rearranged a garage today. We have two garages and she did most of the attached one with me helping after I got back home. We threw away a lot of stuff but there is more to haul to the landfill or give to Goodwill. We still have to do the larger garage after she finishes this one tomorrow. She now is able to do these things without the kids interrupting her for something since they are at school. Their first day of school went well; Stephen got himself and his sister to school on time. I did get up this morning and made sure they were up on time but tomorrow I will be gone before they have to get up. That means they will have to get up all on their own. We will see tomorrow morning.
Happy Birthday to my brother Richard!
High school football tonight.
The Arkansas Razorbacks played Tennessee tonight on ESPN2. Unfortunately, they lost 13-3. It was a great defensive battle played in the rain in Fayetteville, Arkansas before 72,000 fans. This game inaugurated the newly expanded stadium there. Arkansas had no offense again, although the rain had something to do with that. They have three quality tailbacks but have to find one to run straight ahead and follow his blocks. Cedric Cobbs has the most talent but did not do that tonight. Brandon Holmes must have been injured as he did not play any at tailback or fullback. Fred Talley, who is the third tailback and coming off ACL repair, was seen only for a couple of plays so his knee must have been bothering him. The defense played great and held Tennessee to only 13 points which should have been enough for Arkansas to win but was not. Where is the offense?
I missed posting Thursday night because we had to have a long talk with Stephen again. He was caught chewing tobacco while at school and is now suspended from the football team until October 5th. He can practice but now go to the games as a member of the team. He is also grounded by us until that time and will be able to only drive to school and home. He can't give us any good reasons why, only that he enjoys doing it. He obviously enjoys it more than playing football and being on the team. I did go to his team's football game Friday night and took him and a friend with me. His team lost 34-7 partly because they had to play a lot of sophmores because a lot of their upperclassmen were either injured or suspended like Stephen for various offenses. It will be a long year for his team unless they get some of those upperclassmen back quickly.
Friday I saw my usual number of patients but got out of the office by 5:30. Don't ask how. I am not sure I know how we did it. I don't think we left anything undone as I checked before I left. It meant that I got to the high school football game only a little late, mainly because we had a hard time finding the stadium in Rochester, Washington. We drove past it the first time and had to go back and find it.
Today was spent cleaning out the other garage. It is now cleaned out and a pickup load of trash hauled to the landfill. I put up some new shelving as well so we can store everything up off the floor. It is now ready for winter. We still need to level off the back yard some more before we try and plant grass seed. One of our new plants is blooming in the front yard. We weren't sure it would even live when it was planted.
I have an office to clean up sometime in the next couple of weeks. My mother is coming to visit us October 2nd and I have set a goal to have it cleaned up before then. It sounds like I have a lot of time but I know that is not true. I guess it will need to be a weekend day when it is raining and we cannot work outside. It will probably take most of a day to do. We are also giving the kids new household chores beginning tomorrow. We will see how that goes.
Where did today go? I am sitting here wondering what we did today. We went to church this morning which lasted until 12:15. Then, we came home and ate lunch. After that, Delanae watered the trees and plants while I watched about thirty minutes of football and tennis. I then came downstairs and worked on my computer for about an hour paying bills and doing other tasks with Quicken. Running was next and then it was time to get ready to go back for evening church services. We are now home from church and I have to start getting ready to go back to work tomorrow as soon as I finish with this update. That is what I did today; exciting isn't it!?
I did find some cool skins for my iPaq here. I am currently alternating between the Dallas Cowboys skin and the ice cold skin. The Dallas Cowboys one for obvious reasons but the ice cold one because I really enjoy penguins. I did try to download the Pocket Win2000 skin but there is no zip file at the location given. I haven't found an e-mail link to bring it to their attention yet but I will keep trying. I am enjoying playing with the skins. One caveat, Dashboard has locked up my iPaq a couple of times forcing me to do a soft reboot. That is my only complaint about the program.
