Our RV Adventures

Jan and I were on the road for the Clear Lake area about 8:15, allowing 2 hours for the 1 hour and 10 minute trip for Jan’s 10:15 doctor appointment.. Well, 1 hour and 10 minutes with no traffic slowdowns.

That’s why I always allow 2 hours. And there’s been a couple of trips where we used almost all of the two hours.

But today was very different, I guess due to Good Friday. We not only didn’t need the two hours, we actually picked up 5 minutes, and made the trip in an hour and 5 minutes.

A New Record!

But the appointment was kind of a letdown because it turned out to just be a blood draw for another test that Jan probably doesn’t need. Both her GP and her Oncologist alerted on the fact that her blood calcium was slightly too high, 10.8 rather than a max of 10.5. So both doctors have been running extra tests looking for the cause, with no luck so far.

The level was fine last year, so Jan and I wondered what changed. The first thing that came to mind was the fact that last year she started taking the Viactiv Calcium Chews, which of course may have added to the problem. But thinking further, Jan realized that one other major change had occurred.

In August 2014, after having a very bad reaction to the Tamoxifen that she was taking as a follow-up treatment for her breast cancer in January 2014, she had to switch to something else. By August she felt she was crawling out of her skin. So the doctor switched her over to Anastrozole. And for the last 18 months she’s had no problems. Maybe this was also a change.

So I Googled “Anastrozole and high blood calcium” . . .  and BINGO!

Three papers on the NIH government website connecting Anastrozole and high blood calcium, including one that details taking a female breast cancer survivor off and back on Anastrozole, and the calcium levels followed.

In Jan’s case, her calcium level is less than 3% above normal, and it may just be that stopping the calcium chews will get it back under control.

We’ll see.

Leaving the doctor’s, we drove over to the Friendswood Supercuts so Jan could get her hair done, and I guess because of Good Friday, she had a much longer wait than usual.

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And then it was off to our favorite King Food for lunch. We had checked in with Chris, Linda, and Piper to see if they could join us. But Piper was still asleep since she had 12 hour shift in the UTMB ER, starting at 7pm, and Chris and Linda were on the way  to Galveston, taking some stuff down to Piper’s new apartment.

We both had our usual Chicken in Hot Garlic Sauce with Jalapenos, our goto dish for years

And of course, I load mine up with hot pepper flakes as usual.

After we finished I dropped Jan off at Chris’ while I checked in on a couple of clients. The first one was pretty straight forward, just going over a possible upcoming project. But the second one was a little more interesting.

They had a number of small problems,  but the main one was that the three laptops had trouble consistently connecting wirelessly to their HP printer. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn’t

So first off I looked at the printer, printing out the Wireless Configuration Page so I could check all the settings. I found that the printer was on the house DSL Wi-Fi network, which was correct.

Then noting the printer’s IP address and host name, I checked out the printer driver settings on one of the laptops, which also were correct. But the driver showed the printer off-line and would not print.

So after futzing around for a little bit, I checked the Wi-Fi connection on the laptop itself.

And BAZINGA!

The laptop was on some other Wi-Fi network, not the house one. At first I thought they were hooked up to a neighbor’s network,  but the connection was passworded, so how did they get their neighbor’s password.

Then the client realized that the Wi-Fi name was the one for her husband’s Mi-Fi which was on the other side of the room. Checking it out , I found that the Mi-Fi was actually attached to the laptop via USB cable,  but the Wi-Fi was turned on anyway.

Then with a little more questioning I found out there were THREE Mi-Fi’s in the household, sometimes on, sometimes not. So sometimes the three laptops were connected to the household DSL, and sometimes they were connected with one of the various Mi-Fi’s at random.

Putting the client’s laptop back on the home network, I again tried to print, but with no luck. So I killed the printer driver and then re-installed it.

And now it worked.

After telling the client that if they wanted to print, they had to be connected to the house DSL, I finished up by fixing some of her Windows 10 upgrade teething problems, and then I was on my way to meet Jan and Chris at the Webster Hooter’s

Jan and I both agreed that Hooter’s seems to have wimped out on their hot sauces, at least the one we usually order. In the past ‘911’ was their hottest ‘on-the-menu’ sauce, with ‘Elvis’ available ‘off-the-menu. And ‘911’ was the equivalent of the hottest of the Buffalo Wild Wings’ sauces.

But having just had BBW a couple of nights ago, the comparison is nowhere near the same. Now that may be because ‘911’ is not longer their hottest, but 3th behind ‘Spicy Garlic’ and ‘If You Dare’. Maybe they downrated it.

So I guess next time at Hooter’s we’re just going to have to take the ‘Dare’.

Heading home we found more traffic, probably due to a wreck at 59 and I-45, but it was mostly smooth sailing. We did make a “drank too much Iced Tea at Hooter’s” stop at the north Houston Flying J, and then at the Wal-Mart before getting back home to a lonely, needy cat.

Thought for the Day:

It was when you found out you could make mistakes that you knew you were onto something.

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Another quiet morning in the White household. But whatever, it was nice. For most of the morning, we both goofed with reading and Internet stuff. We didn’t walk, feeling that we had made up for it with yesterday’s 2.05 miles walking/shopping at Wal-Mart.

For some reason we can walk a lot farther, a lot easier, in Wal-Mart that around the park. But hey, 2 miles is 2 miles.

About 2pm Jan started working on the batch of Funeral Potatoes she was taking to Dennis and Carol’s this afternoon. Pretty easy to put together, and then just pop it in the convection oven.

Jan and I headed out for Livingston, and Dennis and Carol Hill’s at the Escapees Park there. On our way out of the park,l I stopped off at the clubhouse/activity center to drop off my last full bundle of  Gypsy Journal RV Newspapers. This, of course, is the much-fabled 100th Issue Collector’s Edition, the last one on paper.

From now on, it’s all digital, all the time.

We got to Dennis and Carol’s about 4:45, and soon after, the other guests show up.

From left to right: Dennis, Jim, Carol, in back of Mark, my Jan, Kim, the other Jan. It appears that other Jan’s husband, Dave, has wandered off.

Lucky for us, Dennis’ ‘Smoking A Butt’ did involved pork, and boy, was it good. Along with Kim’s Grilled Beans with Bacon and Cheese Bacon Biscuits, Carol’s Cole Slaw, and my Jan’s Funeral Potatoes, it was a really great meal.

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As far as liquid refreshment, Dennis had a nice selection of adult libations, so I decided to try a Redd’s Green Apple Ale. And now I have a new favorite grownup beverage. In addition, when I gave Jan a taste, I had trouble getting the bottle back. Now we want to try their other flavors, Apple Ale and Strawberry Ale.

After a really nice evening, and saying our goodbyes, we headed back to Conroe, taking with us Dennis’ lovely parting gifts of his delicious smoked pork.

We got back to Lake Conroe a little before 9:30,  wrapping up a very nice day.

Tomorrow we head out for the Clear Lake area for Jan’s final wrap-up doctor appointment. Then I’ve got a couple of clients to visit to take care of some computer problems they’re having.

Thought for the Day:

How to root for your favorite NFL team . . . our felons are better than your felons!

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