Hitch em' Up! - Molly Style

It's obvious that Molly's been watching Opa and Oma hitch up their horses. This is the harness she worked up alone in the dog room for 30 minutes. When she came out with Jessie I was impressed at the collection of items strung together and the fact the key elements of a proper harness seemed to be represented.

What a little teamster.

It's a little better then we thought

So KJ and I walked into the hospital expecting a PICC line and we walked out with a 3 day home IV. I had some training and we did the first injection at the hospital. Kelly did have a reaction and almost passed out, but after 15 minutes of lying down she was back on her feet and only a little dozey.

With a big brown bag of new pills and syringes we headed for home. Kelly is back in bed and we'll have a VERY quiet weekend at home with daily injections. KJ's back into the doctor Monday morning for followup and the next phase of treatment.

Kelly goes for a PICC Line Today

Kelly's infection from her recent surgery is not going away. Today our GP and her surgeon decided to escalate the treatment with the insertion of a PICC Line.

Some of you are aware this is the treatment that Pat her dad had when his knee infection got out of control a few years ago. He was on the PICC Line for months and it was not a fun experience for him or Darlene.

Essentially a PICC Line is a catheter inserted into your arm and fed through a large vein to a location near your heart. It's then sutured in place and bandaged so it won't move or come loose. Then you get a very stylish fanny pack that contains a battery operated pump and an IV bag.

In Kelly's case the IV bag will contain an even stronger antibiotic that will now be fed directly into her blood stream and not a pill that needs to be injested and absorbed.

It's a bit scary that it's gone this far, but it reassuring that the Doctors are united on the decision and treating it more seriously than over the last 4-5 weeks.

I'm heading up to the hospital with her in about 30 minutes for the insertion and training.


On a happy note Molly and her nana Darlene left for Calgary today. They are visiting Karon and family until the middle of next week. Darlene had a bit of excitement at the airport early this morning when she discovered that her 8:30 flight was scheduled for PM and not AM. WestJet was nice and moved her onto a mid morning flight (no charge) and they should be landing in Calgary around noon.

A New Floor and Two Cripples

Vanessa's husband Rick and his brother Bob came last weekend and did a hardwood flooring blitz. We had purchased the wood a few months ago and were eager to get it installed. Now that the work is done KJ and I are really pleased with the change in appearance but not without it's side effects. Kelly got a staf infection from her recent surgery and needed all of last week to stay home and recover. I'm still healing from my rotator cuff injury and seem to always re-strain it the moment I feel better. For me this injury is going on months now. It sucks in the busy spring season to feel so useless and have to endure the ongoing discomfort.

Super duper thanks to Rick, Van, & Bob for their incredible quality of work. Also thanks to all our friends who showed up to help on Sunday as we tore up the floors and prepped everything for Rick and Bob.

Lino! We pulled up the carpet and underlay to find a lovely layer of lino as well? Apparently at one time our whole house must have been lino.
Thank goodness the lino wasn't glued down very well. It came up pretty easy and only took a few hours to completely remove.
Molly of course found a house free of furniture to be a wonderful new playground.
Doug and I doing what we could to help. Yes, I can sort boards...
And Molly can line up screws for Bob. Yippe no more squeeks in the floor.
Doesn't it look nice!

Kelly's Surgery

For those of you who are "out of the loop" Kelly has been waiting five years for a surgery to eliminate back, neck, and shoulder pain. The surgery is performed by a plastic surgeon and reduces some weight off of her chest. Those hints should be enough to make your own educated guess.

We went to Kamloops last week for the surgery and here are some pictures of the event. Kelly is home for the next two weeks recovering and healing.

The first waiting room. Time to put on the headphones and watch a movie.

The second waiting area complete with the backless gown.
Is my ass showing?

"Ok Kelly... the surgeon is ready for you now"

Post-Op - the recovery room is good!

We've been back home since Friday and Kelly is doing great. She is very pleased with the look and feel and her pain is less than she expected (thanks pharmaceuticals). She is trying to keep moving around and help the healing process. Today she went shopping for a few new tank tops, it seems her old ones don't fit as well anymore. :)

AJ's Arcade - Nintendo's R-Type 1987

I just spent the evening clean and reprogramming another arcade machine I purchased for my home arcade.

Manufacturer: Nintendo
Year: 1987
Genre: Space

Monitor:

• Orientation: Horizontal
• Type: Raster: Standard Resolution
• CRT: Color

Number of Simultaneous Players: 1
Maximum number of Players: 2
Gameplay: Alternating
Control Panel Layout: Single Player
Controls:

• Joystick: 8-way
• Buttons: 2

Sound: Amplified Mono (one channel)

This is a fun side scroller with a good degree of difficulty. I reprogrammed it for Free Play, 5 Lives, Bonus Lives, and Normal Difficulty. I serviced and repaired the joystick and two buttons that were sticky, they are working fine now. I may still order some replacement buttons as the current buttons don't all match and a few of the colors are not correct for this game. That aside it's working great and that's all that matters when it's the new game :)

Tonight Molly offered her toy room (which is more like a storage room) for me to turn into an arcade room. I might take her up on her offer if she doesn't change her mind. She likes playing these old games as much as I do so it's not like she won't be able to play in that room anymore, it's just the "toys" that are different.

AJ's daily Twitter updates.

• 08:09 Early day, started at at 5am. We went into V ernon to help with the People Place garage sale. A nice family event we all participated in.
• 08:10 Now it's breakfast at Denny's with free Wi-Fi. Another awesome netbook moment.

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My First Dell

You would think that after about 20 years of computing I would have owned a Dell before now. Well I'm starting to think I should have waited a little longer.

About a month ago I got excited about ordering a netbook. The Dell Mini 9 was the lone netbook on the market that had a few of my "must have" features so I decided to bite the bullet and order my first Dell.

I would love to rant and go into a long funny story of everthing that has happened since that fateful day, but instead I'll keep it short form.

• Ordered a Dell Mini 9 tweaked for my purposes including a carrying case.
• Got notice the next day that my order had shipped.
• One week later my package arrived, it contained the carrying case?
• After much digging around their website and clicking on every link related to my order I discovered the order had been broken into two shipments. The case shipped the day after the order was placed and the actual netbook would ship in 3-4 weeks.
• One month later the 2nd Dell package with the custom built netbook arrived. I plugged it in and turned it on and heard two beeps. Nothing else, just two beeps.
• 30 minute tech call to India and I've confirmed the memory is bad. A replacement chip will ship overnight. To my salvation I happen to have an older 512mb memory chip from another laptop so I can actually start playing with the netbook, however it's slow.
• Next day the new 2GB memory chip arrived, it's faulty.
• 40 minutes on the phone with India and they will ship another memory chip.
• A weekend of waiting and the next box from Dell arrives and I open it up. It's empty... no memory chip in the box!!!!!
• 30 minute tech call with India and they agree to attempt a 3rd shipment of a replacement memory chip. To prove the box is empty I need to send them a digital photo of the box?

Tune in tomorrow for the continuing saga of "Aaren Versus Dell"

AJ's daily Twitter updates.

• 18:28 First Tweet from my new Dell Mini 9 NetBook
• 13:15 First Tweet from my hackintosh'd Dell Mini 9 running Apples OSX 10.5.6 Yipee!!!

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The Winter Benz

An overnight charge of the battery and the 88' 560SEL purred to life Sunday morning. Molly and I checked the fluids and went a quick little drive down the road and back. I took some new pictures and re-listed the car on a few online classifieds. I hate to part with the old girl but I need the room and just can't keep her anymore. Molly might miss her more than I do.

AJ's daily Twitter updates.

• 06:54 Back at work, time to try and get back to normal.
• 15:14 Sounds like Jessie our long standing guest dog is becoming a permanent resident of the Jensen household.

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AJ's daily Twitter updates.

• 07:29 Pat's funeral mass is this morning starting at 11am at St. James Roman Catholic Church. Thanks to everyone for their condolences.

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Sad Family News

Kelly's dad, Pat Heaney passed away Friday morning at the Vernon Jubilee Hospital. Pat had been battling lung cancer for almost a year and a half and had gone into the hospital the previous morning with a fever and a low white blood cell count.

His doctor was preparing his release papers Friday morning and Pat had already gotten up and shaved and dressed to go home. A nurse entered the room a few minutes later and he had passed on. It was a shock for everyone. We have been through many ups and downs related to his illness and everyone thought this was just another bump in the road.

Pat was a very well known person. With family, friends, and people met through his faith and professional life he was popular and liked by everyone. His funeral service will be held at the St. James Catholic church in Vernon this Wednesday at 11am.

Kelly and I have been with her family as much as possible over the last few days and will continue to do so for the rest of this week. Molly has taken the news well and has spent some time with us and the rest with my parents (a gesture we both have been very thankful for).

We miss you Pat, but there has been a lot of laughter as we reminisce about your time spent with us.