Kit Kat Leaves Us

Yesterday afternoon, Kit Kat printed out her boarding pass for her flight today. She was at the end of the A section. That is good enough to get any seat she wants in the back of the plane. This morning we got up and went to lunch together as a family like normal. Kit Kat had her suitcase in the back of the car because we would take her to the airport right after lunch.

At the restaurant, the host tried to seat us in between two tight tables. I asked if he could put us in the corner where we like it. He made a note to sit us there in the future (we go to the same restaurant every Saturday). At lunch, I asked Kit Kat is she had any cash. She said she found a few dollars. Doh! You should always have a bit of cash while on travel. So right after lunch we walked to my bank, and I got a bunch of Andrew Jacksons out of the ATM.

Little Kat had to drive Momoko's car today. His car is in the shop getting some axle work done. Little Kat drove us to lunch, but wanted someone else to drive to the airport. I took the wheel. We confirmed that hourly parking charges a maximum of $22 per day. That is good because when Kit Kat returns, we plan to just leave the car in hourly parking for her to pick up.

The lines at SouthWest were really long. Luckily Kit Kat had printed her boarding pass already. So we got in the fast moving line. Kit Kat checked her one bag. Little Kat liked that suitcase because it has four wheels and moves easily. We all watched as Kit Kat waited in a short line to pass security. When she got through and I could no longer see her, we left the airport.

This evening we tried out a new steakhouse close to our home. But that's a story for another time.

Vehicle Maintenance

Little Kat drove to pick up his friend the other day. Kit Kat had to come with him since he is not allowed to drive friends alone (that's the rule of the law, not my rule). As they were coming home with Little Kat's friend, a lady waved them down and informed them that they lost a hubcap.

Not a problem. It happened to me before. I just order a new one online. It came in a few days. Little Kat and I put it on the car. Little Kat exclaimed that it looked different than the others. It was shiny and had no scuffs. That will not last long.

I had been spying something hanging from Little Kat's car. It was visible from the back underneath the bumper. Today I drove his car into our carport. I put down a blanket and looked under the car. Yep. Some duct tape that was holding the plastic bumper cover in place was coming undone.

I showed Little Kat what was happening. Told him I have a few band aids keeping the cosmetic pieces of the car intact. I secured the piece with more duct tape and some rope. That will hold for a few years. Next up - the family says that Little Kat's car makes some noise when it turns. Time to take this thing into the shop to get it checked out.

CT Scan Time

I have been having some pains in my chest. My doctor schedule me for a CT scan. This is also known as a CAT scan. I had to go to my insurance company's medical facility to get the scan done. I left early from work to get through all the traffic. My dad and brother's house is on the way to the facility, so I stopped by.

When I eventually arrived at the facility, I went through the main entrance. I was expecting some sort of reception area. Nothing of the sort was there. I asked a security guard about CAT scans. She told me to go to radiology. Umm yeah. I had to get directions.

Luckily I brought my Amazon Kindle along with a new book loaded up. I waited after filling out some paperwork. Another patient who went in right after me told me he got a flu shot three months ago, and was still suffering from the after effects. Ouch.

A male nurse put an IV in my arm. The dude kept working on my arm as he stood directly in front of me. Wrong positioning. My fist kept being in contact with his private area. Dude! Another nurse comes to bring me in. There I saw this big ring that reminded me of Stargate SG-1.

I lay down on a bed. The nurse tells me to raise my feet and arms in a certain position. Then the whole bed lifts up and I got through the big circle. A computer voice tells me to take a breath, hold it, then breathe normally a couple times.

Initially my eyes were closed. Then I opened them and saw green lit up icons that represented whether I should breath or hold in my breath. I also felt a gust of cold air. WTF? I took my jacket off. Maybe I should have kept it on? Nope. The cold air must have been to prepare me for the heat that emanated from the CT machine. It must be some radiation zapping me.

It was over quick. They let me out of the room where the scanner was. I had to wander around a bit to find my way out of the facility. I raced home to eat some pizza cooked by Kit Kat in the oven/

Spring Break Plans

I was waiting to finalize our spring break plans this year because of family health problems. But I decided to move forward because you only live once. It is too cold for us to go to Canada to try out our new passports. So we are doing the next best thing - visiting grandma.

Kit Kat has a spring break vacation that is one week earlier than Momoko and Little Kat. So she shall travel alone one week early. I bought her plane ticket yesterday. Ouch. I guess the price was high because her vacation is really soon. Kit Kat said she was fine traveling alone. Momoko said we could drop her off at the airport. I want to go in and at least see her through security.

Momoko wanted to maximize her time at grandma's. She lined up somebody to watch our gerbils. However there are some development at school which might require he to work on spring break. We compromised and decided to start our vacation one day earlier than we originally planned. I bought plane tickets for Momoko, Little Kat, and myself today.

The price for our trip was not too high. Just about what I had budgeted. Now it is time to get a rental car. Normally we like an SUV because it is cool. However I am contemplating getting a minivan so we can carry more relatives around. I looked up the rental car company we used the last time we visited grandma. Tomorrow I will make a final decision on SUV versus minivan.

Memorial

Momoko's friend from work took off the rest of the school year to care for her sick sister. The sister had been sick for a while. They recently found out she had cancer of the lungs. Reminded me of my own mom's condition. The care did not last for long. Momoko's friend's sister passed away.

The whole family is close to Momoko's friend. We always see her at school. We decided that all of us would attend the memorial service. To plan ahead, we had Little Kat put on the clothes her was going to wear the night before. It was a big snug. But Little Kat said it would work. The next day Little Kat said the clothes were too tight. Too bad.

I drove up to the memorial service. It was in the town where Kit Kat want to attend a four year college. I drove up past the big city to our North. There was a lot of traffic on the road for a Saturday. There were a lot of family and friends at the service. It was a sad time but I was glad that we went to show support. Momoko had sprung for a nice arrangement of flowers to be sent. They looked good.

Afterwards Momoko wanted to eat dinner at Sonic since we were close to one. I had different plans. I used Momoko's car's GPS to navigate us to a fancy Italian restaurant in the big city to the north. We had a valet park our car. The best part of the meal was an appetizer salad that had shrimp, salami, cheese and a delicious house dressing.

Kit Kat had calamari as her meal. Momoko ordered some appetizer sampler as her meal. I had a meatball platter and Little Kat had a pasta. Momoko wanted to try cannoli for the first time. It actually tasted really good. We also splurged and got Kit Kat a pistachio flavored ice cream dessert. I think we might be back to this restaurant whenever we visit Kit Kat at her future college.

Day Two at the Hospital

The night shift nurse told me she was going to have me moved to a room with a more comfortable bed. The room I was in had a bed that was permanently in an upright position. It also only had a curtain that acted as the front door. I was able to sleep in the bed. It was not comfortable. The next shift nurse can and wheel chaired me to a room with a door.

The nurse showed me how to recline the bed. That was nice. However I got hooked up to a machine. The machine beeped a lot during the night. It was hit and miss for sleeping. Eventually I got cold and put the blanket they gave me on. Nurses kept checking on me through the morning. One nurse can and took me to the stress test room.

Before I got on this industrial strength treadmill, they wanted me to sign some legal consent forms. I was like WTF are they going to do to me. I have heard horror stories about the stress tests. So I talked with the chief doctor in the room to make sure I was allowed to quick the treadmill if I wanted to.

There turned out to be no need for alarm. They made the treadmill go fast. And they made it incline sharply. But it was nothing I had not done myself exercising in my basement. I told the doctor that my chest actually hurt less when I was running on the treadmill. It was over quick. Doc told me he just needed my heart working a little harder for him to monitor my vitals. Whew.

They prescribed some drugs for me. The first dose was shot into my arm. It is supposed to relax something in my body. I picked up the rest of the pills in the pharmacy they had in the hospital. They scheduled a follow up appointment with my primary care specialist. Let's hope these drugs do the trick. They are not sure if they will. They were just confident that my heart was okay.

Heart Trouble?

I had been having some pains in my chest that would not go away. It took a while, but I finally called my doctor. They got back to me late in the day. There was no time to fit me in to see them today. However they were concerned I might be having a heart attack. They directed me to their Urgent Care Center. Unfortunately I could not get a check in time until 11:00pm at night.

Mapquest told me their center was 30 minutes away. I left an hour early. Good thing I did. They closed three of four lanes on the highway. So even though it was the middle of the night, it took a while to get there. Once there I headed to the main entrance. It was locked. WTF? I pressed the call button and waited a long time. The guard came and told me to go around to the urgent care entrance.

A nurse saw me pretty quickly. She took my blood pressure. She ran an EKG. Then she sent me to get my blood drawn. The only problem was that the doors were locked to the hall that leads to the blood lab. A nasty security guard helped me get past that door. Luckily there was a nice guard at the end of the hall who went to find a nurse to draw my blood. I got one of these bands to put on my wrist to identify who I was.

Eventually I got called into a private room. I waited for an hour until a doctor came to see me. He said my EKG looked good. He was cautiously optimistic that I was not having a heart attack. He told me to sit tight because I was not going anywhere anytime soon. Luckily I had downloaded a new book "Eternal Service" to my Kindle to prepare for such delays.

I stayed awake until around 3:00am. That's when I figured I could go to sleep because like the doctor said, I was going nowhere.

Hidden Treasure

I had thought I did well by purchasing five bags of rock salt earlier this year. With all the bad weather this season, we went through the bags quickly. We have a huge driveway that gets iced up all the time. I got lucky and loaded up again with another five bags of rock salt. We are now on our last bag.

There really is only one store in town that actually stocks the stuff. They are now out of rock salt. They do sell ice melter. I don't like the ice melter as much as the rock salt. Here is the kicker. They charge a lot more for the ice melter. Feels like price gouging to me.

The people in the area must not care. I went to the store twice and found it empty. The sales guy there said they got a couple pallets of ice melter. It was gone in no time. There is a silver lining to my story. Previously I had bought some ice melter but did not like it. Instead of throwing it out, I stashed it in the back of my shed and forgot about it.

Today I marked over the snow in the back yard. Went to the shed and found a few bags of ice melter in the back. We are saved. I don't have to fight the crowds to buy overpriced ice melter now. The moral of the story? Back the truck up when they have rock salt on sale. I learned my lesson/

Missed Hackathon

I have been trying to learn this popular programming language called Python for a few years. My college used to teach a course on it. However I have not seen it offered in a long while. This winter break I decided to take matters into my own hands. I got a book, and read up on the language.

Then I went back and wrote a bunch of small programs in Python. Things were looking up. Then my company decided to sponsor a Python hackathon last Friday. Perfect timing. They were planning to meet after work, buy sodas and pizza, and code the night away.

There was just one problem. I had a lot of work to do last week. It seems I was getting unlucky left and right. I took off a week from work. Somebody forgot to do their job. A computer program run got missed. Then somebody botched the delivery that was supposed to recover. The testers did not know what to test. And so on.

Turns out I was working until almost midnight last Friday, trying to finish everything that was due. On top of that, I had to work on the weekend too. No chance to attend the hackathon. Bad luck I tell ya. Just bad luck. Guess I got to power through the setback. Maybe write some more programs using Python?