When it Rains, it Pours, or When it Showers it Leaks

 Several years ago we noticed a water stain appearing on the ceiling of the bedroom below our master bathroom.  We obviously had a leak.  When I noticed it getting the carpet wet on the floor in the hallway adjacent to the shower I decided I better do something.  The grout around the floor of the shower was cracked and I supposed that was where the water was getting through, but how it was escaping from the shower pan I had no idea.

I removed all the grout that was cracked and replaced it with new, and that solved the problem for a while.  A few years later we noticed the water mark on the ceiling below getting bigger and decided something more permanent needed to be done.

I knew it was going to be a costly repair so I contacted our insurance company and found we had a $7000.00 deductible and they wouldn't cover it because it had been leaking more than two weeks.  I am going to change insurance companies.

To the insurance companies credit they did agree to send out a plumber to diagnose the problem, and he tore into the ceiling and told me what I already suspected which was that the shower pan was leaking. The plumber told me he knew a real good tile guy and would have him call me.

                               Watermarks on ceiling                                                                  Removing the shower floor

                           Removing the shower pan                                                              Pan, damaged floor  and seat removed

The tile guy came and looked it over and gave me a bid of $2700 plus tile if I remove the old tile and pan and repair the damaged wood. I agreed to and we set a date to get started. 

I tore out the old stuff and made my repairs to the floor.  While I was at it I discovered the drain was full of junk.  At first I thought it was mortar from the original job, but on further inspection I believe it was lime/calcium build-up from hard water.  There have been periods of time when our water softener wasn't working properly and the only thing I can figure is that over the years it has built up in the shower drain.  It took quite a bit of digging but I think I got it pretty well cleaned out.  I am going to make sure I use cleaner in the drain periodically from now on.

The tile guys put their start off a couple of days but they finally got at it.  I think they did a good job but they were really undependable. They would tell me they would be here at 10:00am and show up at 3:00.  We timed it so they would be finished before we left for Salt Lake on Monday the 22nd, but they weren't even near to being finished. I had to make arrangements for Tony to come and let them in while we were gone and they finally did get it finished.  Tony said once when he came and checked on them they had their big pit bull in the house.  He told them he was sure that wouldn't make me very happy.  He was right.  good thing I didn't know about it before I paid them.

Overall I am pleased with the job that was done but I couldn't give them a good recommendation based on their being so undependable.  They've got to learn to organize better so they can be on time if they are going to build a successful company.  And don't take your big dog in someone's house just because they aren't there.

                   The finished product

Buzzards in Waiting

Looking out the window one morning I noticed some visitors.  I am not sure what, or who, they are waiting for but I found it a little ominous.  If they were waiting for me they were disappointed, I'm still alive so far and not quite ready for the dung heap.  After several hours they left and I dared go outside again. I guess they found some other prospect a little more ready to be eaten. 

                                                                    Buzzards in line on the fence, looking for an easy meal?

Make Asphalt Great Again

We finally got asphalt on our road.  We have been fighting the dust and mud now for almost 14 years.  I have wanted to asphalt our road for quite some time now but Elma Lynne has been dragging her feet, thinking that we could probably put the money to better use elsewhere, but she finally relented and we got the job done.

Last year when Garth was having the main road seal-coated I talked to one of the workers there about giving me a bid to do my road.  He gave me a bid of $33,000 and  said it would be be good through next summer, giving me the winter to getting Elma Lynne to agree to the project.

They started the project on June 2nd and only took a couple of days to complete it.  It turned out really nice and I am very pleased.  They put down and compacted three inches of road base and then about three inches of asphalt about twelve feet wide.

They came back in September and put on a sealcoat so now it should be ready for winter.  In fact several winters, I am hoping for five or more before it needs to be sealed again.

2020, a year from where?

2020, What a year this has been!

In January Elma Lynne was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer, adenocarcinoma, the bad kind.  Fortunately it was caught quickly.  They discovered a tumor the size of a marble in the head of the pancreas.  Usually Pancreatic Cancer doesn't have many recognizable symptoms until it is well progressed.  Fortunately this cancer grew right next to the bile duct and closed it off, causing very light colored, nearly white, stools, which was a cause for concern.  A CT Scan revealed the bile duct blockage and small growth. A procedure opened the bile duct with a stent, then a biopsy confirmed the tumor was cancer.

Surgery was scheduled in Salt Lake at the IHC Murray Campus for the end of February.  Doctor Mark J. Ott was the surgeon and he is fabulous.  Surgery went well and Dr. Ott was confident he had removed all the cancer and also removed a bunch of nearby lymph nodes and biopsy showed the cancer had not spread there.  He visited every day for the entire length of the stay in the hospital, often twice a day.

Recovery was a long slow process,  I stayed right at the hospital, crashing every night on the couch in the room which made into a small bed.  The hospital staff was wonderful but after a while it got very tiresome.  Elma Lynne's digestive system had a hard time getting re-started and it was hard seeing her go through all the procedures and tests over and over again. 

About mid March the Covid 19 pandemic started to be a real concern at the hospital.  I didn't leave the hospital much but when I did I had to take precautions and they threatened to make me find other accommodations but decided since I had been there all along and it was almost release time they let me stay.    Just a few days before release we were walking the halls of the tenth floor where our room was when an earthquake hit.  It really shook the building and we could feel it swaying for quite a while after. Finally after 21 days Elma Lynne was released to go home.

Of course there was much more recovery once home. Things went along pretty well for a few weeks and then chemotherapy started. The first round went well until time for the third infusion and Elma Lynne was so sick there was no way .  She had diarrhea so bad that everything was going right through her.  They finally sent a home health nurse to take a blood sample which revealed her potassium was dangerously low so she spent four more days in the hospital, this time in Saint George.  We learned a lot about how to control the diarrhea and they cut the chemo treatments by 20% and after that things went much better.

Chemo lasted for six months with the last treatment being November 11th. It was great to see her ring the bell at the chemo lab, and great to get the results of the latest scan showing no cancer.  She was officially in remission. Dr. Gilbert will continue to monitor her condition about every three months for the next while to make sure the cancer doesn't return.

                                                  Elma Lynne ringing the bell at the end of Chemo

Through all this the pandemic was ravaging the world and the presidential race and a movement called Black Lives Matter (BLM) among other things were causing a lot of ugly contention and division in the nation.  There were race riots in many large cities, including Salt Lake, supposedly triggered by the death of a black man while being arrested by white police somewhere in the Midwest. As in many protests, things turn violent and many just use the excuse to vent their anger and loot and burn. Things seemed pretty grim for a while but after the election things calmed down and things seem to be at a simmering truce for now.

Because of the pandemic and our "high risk" status we haven't seen much of the family this year.  We did attend Ashlyn's wedding in Rexburg in July, and Jillyn's family came during the summer for a few days and then again at Thanksgiving.  They have all had the Covid-19 virus so we figured they probably wouldn't spread it to us once they were over it.  Joel came for the deer hunt and we enjoyed a few days chasing around in the hills without ever chambering a round. We did see some bucks we could have taken but we were looking for that monster trophy and he wasn't around this year.

                   Ashlynn & Mason's Wedding                                                       Caden mastering the lawnmower

In addition I got a bit of a scare when my doctor did my wellness check in September he sent me for lab work and diagnosed dome irregularities in my blood.  When I looked it up I found out that I had symptoms that could indicate Multiple Myeloma, a rare cancer of the blood.  I saw the same oncologist that Elma Lynne was seeing, Dr. Heather Gilbert, and after more tests she determined that I have a condition called MGUS, which stands for Monoclonal Gammopathy of Undetermined Significance. It is considered to not be serious and very rarely leads to MM, so that was a relief to get past that.

As we approach the Christmas season we are sick and tired of the isolation, mask-wearing and restrictions brought on by the pandemic, but are dutifully doing our best to keep from contacting the virus and staying as healthy as possible.  A few weeks ago President Russell M. Nelson encouraged everyone to show our gratitude which I think was an inspired message in the mist of all the turmoil. We are truly grateful to our God and our Savior for all the blessings we have seen, and continue to see, while going through the trials and problems of this crazy year.

I become a Ham

At 71 years old I have taken up the hobby of HAM radio!  A while ago I was called to the position of Assistant Emergency Preparedness Coordinator for our ward with the specific responsibility of communications.  I was given a dozen handy-talkie radios and told to distribute them to our districts and to train people on how to use them. The radios have a wide range of capabilities including public service channels, emergency channels, and Ham Radio channels.  I decided that if I was to be training on these radios I needed to have a Ham license, even though those in our districts without a license would not be using those frequencies.

I learned that the local amateur radio club was having training on getting the license so I joined the club and started attending.  The training was really boring and after just one session I decided to study on my own.  There are several websites available with practice tests which have the exact same questions as the FCC exam so I studied that way. I took the basic test and passed and so was able to take the general test the same night and I passed it as well.  I few days later I got my Ham License in the mail.

I bought a 50 watt mobile radio and a hi-gain antenna for the roof and started communicating with club members , mostly on the daily nets.  The Nets are in the 2-Meter band which is in the VHF(very high frequency) range, and is primarily used for point-to-point local communications, though through a system of repeaters you can communicate throughout the intermountain region. The Breakfast Net meets on the Iron Mountain repeater (146.760 MHz) every day but Sunday at 7:00am and the Friendship Net meets daily at 9:00pm on the same repeater.

I got with Don Blanchard, whom I consider the father of Ham Radio in Southern Utah, and who was also my electronics instructor in college back in the 60's, and we worked with the BLM to get a repeater installed on Harmony Mountain which gives us coverage for the entire Harmony Valley and over the mountain to a majority of Iron County.

 

Harmony Mountain Repeater site                                  My new HF radio, an ICOM 7300

I got into HF (High Frequency) communications when I purchased some used gear from Katherine Pons whose husband had been a HAM operator but died a while back.  The HF radio was really old and hard to use but I did make a few contacts across the country.  More recently I purchased a newer radio that is a lot easier to use and have started making more contacts.  My HF antenna is a parallel dipole wire antenna about 60 feet long strung between trees in the back yard.  I would like to find a used antenna tower, somewhere in the 40 foot range so that I can get my antenna up higher in the air and get better signals.

I am not a rebid radio fan but am enjoying the technical aspects of the hobby as well as making contacts far and wide. I think it is a hobby that I can continue to enjoy even when I am too old to do much else.