Been a while

since either one of us updated this blog. I spent last weekend trying to make a dent in the huge load of work that my parents were given during the flooding that occurred recently. I helped trim up the drywall in one room so that Dad can replace it, since North River decided to take an uninvited mini-vacation in their house. We also were able to make a few dump runs. I was glad to find out that the county is giving people affected by the flooding vouchers so that they can get rid of all the stuff that was ruined. Better that than illegal dumping, which I am positive would have been rampant otherwise.

The place looks really weird with no carpets and one third of the walls gone, but eventually things will be put back to normal again. I hope to get down there again very soon and lend my back some more. Jami wanted to trailer down the horses, but I was concerned with the state of the graze that would be available, given that not only did the river flood the field, but also any septic tanks and neighboring pastureland that was briefly turned into river bottom. Not sure the horses' stomachs, being rather touchy to begin with, would handle that too well. I did take some pictures while I was there, but didn't want to post them. Maybe when all is put back together, I can post an entry in this blog that shows before and after. We will see.wow gold

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Oh what a lie! Well maybe I am a little enthusiastic with the punctuation...

I'm supposed to tell you all about the mead

And it is going to be tasty. Despite what the picture looks like, I am not drunk. Just tired after a long day. The carboy next to me holds 3-gallons, and right now it is in its second fermentation stage. During the first stage, all that liquid was in a bucket with some raisins and yeast. We stirred the bucket a couple of times every day for two days (to give the yeast plenty of oxygen), then after two days racked the lot. There is one smaller container on our kitchen counter that holds what we could not fit into this carboy. The thing at the top is an air-lock. The purpose of the air-lock is to allow carbon dioxide to escape without letting any contamination back into the carboy. Initially, there was little bubbling action, but as of this morning it is starting to really go. We will let it continue until the bubbling stops, which means that the fermentation stops. Then we let it age for a while (from what I have read, it takes about a year to get a really good batch of mead).

To update anyone interested in my health, I am continuing to recover from my MS attack from a couple weeks ago. I still have some numbness in the left side, but it gets better every day. I am very glad I decided to go on the course of steroids. While the steroid treatment will not affect the ultimate outcome of the attack, it really speeds up the healing process. Last time, I didn't get then steroids for a month after the attack, and I still have some lingering numbness in my right side, although not much of that.

I noticed that Jami has ended almost all of her blog entries with an exclamation point, so I suppose I should do the same, for consistency. !

Yesterday, we started our first batch of mead. Most of the honey in the batch was collected from the uncapping tank. When you extract honey, you cut the thin layer of wax that the bees cover the honey with from the honey comb. This layer is called the “capping” and can contain a lot of honey. We added the remainder of last year’s crop (about a pound) and a pound from this year’s crop to start the three gallon batch of mead (also called a must). The must bucket smelled yummy as we stirred in the hot water to dissolve the honey. We added the yeast this afternoon after we were sure that the wild yeasts had been killed and used a dry wine yeast. The mead must will sit in a 5-gallon bucket for the next couple of days to give the yeast time to grow a large population. We’ll stir it a few times a day to provide the yeast with a lot of oxygen. When it looks pretty fizzy and frothy, we’ll rack it to the 3-gallon carboy and stick an air lock on it.
In preparation for racking the must to the glass carboy, we bottled the watermelon wine that we’ve been aging since February. The wine was begun as a single must, but I separated it into three different 1-gallon carboys and added a few tablespoons of additional sugar to two of the jugs. It was amazing how different the three wines tasted. One was very dry, one was sweet, and one was right in the middle. The wine is a really pretty amber color and does have a watermelon flavor.

We also got the wax rendered yesterday. To clean the beeswax, we heated a pot of water that’s about half full. We added the wax to the water and let it melt. Since beeswax is an oil, it floats after it melts, allowing the heavier impurities to fall to the bottom of the pot. After the mixture was boiling, we ladled it into a jelly strainer to separate out the lighter impurities. The cleaned wax was captured in a silicone bread pan and allowed to cool. From the cappings and burr comb removal, we ended up with about a pound of gorgeous yellow wax.

We made the most of a Friday night by playing a game of Trivial Pursuit followed by a game of Monopoly. I actually beat Eric at Trivial Pursuit (!!) but then he creamed me in Monopoly. Be careful y’all, that guy is heartless when it comes to collecting his rents.

Tesla's surgery yesterday went well. When we got to the veterinary clinic to pick up the dogs, the vet told us that the lump did not have deep roots and was confined to the skin layers. Her teeth cleaning went well (no extractions necessary) and she had her nails trimmed. She has some stitches that will need to come out in a couple of weeks, but otherwise is in good shape the vet techs told us that she cried all day after she woke up.

Sam did not get his teeth cleaned. The vet takes blood work prior to putting a dog under general anesthesia, and Sam's blood work indicated that something is up with his kidneys and liver. They took a urine sample and we'll know more in three days. The vet agreed that there doesn't appear to anything overtly wrong with him so she's fairly confident that its nothing serious.

Poor Sam. He sat all day with nothing to eat because we had to fast him for the anticipated anaesthesia. And, because Tesla was so upset after she woke up, they put Sam in the kennel with her and he had to put up with her crying all day. When the vet brought the dogs out to us, Tesla calmed down and stopped crying and Sam started wiggling and couldn't stop crying. The vets had a laugh at the behavior swap.

Painting, cleaning, and more painting! On Sunday, Eric went back to Issaquah and did a BUNCH of work. He cleaned off the roof (which took the entire Seahawk’s game!), scraped off several more layers of Justin-related grime, cleaned floors, cleaned out the fireplace, and trimmed back all of the vegetation touching the house. He also spackled some holes in the bathroom.

Last night, we went back to the house after work. I finished painting the bathroom and repaired some molding while Eric re-hung the bathroom door in the master bedroom, cleaned out cabinets, polished the glass stove top, and bleached the toilets. We didn’t leave until a little after 9:30 pm, so it was another late night for us. I think there will be one more marathon day of reattaching hardware, wiping everything down, putting another coat of polish on the floors, and running the vacuum, and then the house will be ready to list.

We didn’t get the expected rain yesterday, so our place has had a little extra time to dry out and the roads to work are all open again.

Thesis news: I'm almost 60% of the way with the first draft for my thesis. I've had a pretty good response from the state-level agencies I've contacted, but need to start chasing the federal agency contacts. As part of my literature review, I'm reading a book called "Wildlife and Recreationists: Coexistence Through Management And Research", edited by Richard Knight and Kevin Gutzwiller. While its a compilation of journal articles discussing the impacts of recreation on wildlife and wildlife recreation ecology, I'm ridiculously enthralled by it and actually find it hard to put down. I guess that's when you've discovered what you're meant to do- when you can read a book on a work-related topic and you can't get enough LOL!

My turn to say something...

So far Jami has been the sole poster to our blog, but no more! For those of you who have been following this thing, you know about our leg issue. Seems everyone is having a leg problem at our place lately, including me. For the record, I wasn't all that disappointed that my bruise (or lack thereof) was all that colorful, it was more like I was surprised. Wally did pop me a good one that day, and all I could do was gimp around a bit, although I wanted to give as good as I got. By then, Wally was all the way across to our arena (or the spot where an arena will go, when we finally get one built), and, since he didn't intentionally kick me (I hope), I had no right to get mad it him. He was just being a horse, and as far as I know, that is what he does best.

So I have meandered away from my current leg issue (although it is fading rapidly). As most of you probably already know, I was diagnosed with MS almost 10 years ago (has it been that long?). Well, last Friday my immune system worked with my central nervous system to help remind me that I still have the stupid disease, because I tend to forget.

About 4ish Friday, I noticed an all too familiar numb feeling creep into my left hand and foot (and eventually my left leg). This is something that I have expected to happen eventually, so I was not too surprised. This is what happened back in March 1999, but then I didn't know what was happening, so I did nothing for about a month. By then, the entire right side of my body was wither partially or fully "numb", and starting to get very weak. I was weak enough that I limped when I walked, as well as staggered about like a drunken sailor on the slippery deck of a ship in a nasty storm. Ok, maybe not that bad, but it was not good. By the time I finally saw someone, my first MS attack was started, finished and crawling back into its hole (which, apparently, is located on my brain, I got pictures to prove it). If it was not for a sharp nurse in a clinic on the CWU campus, who by just asking me to walk about 10 feet knew something bad was going on, I would not have been sent to the hospital in Ellensburg, carted to the hospital at UW, and finally (3 months later) diagnosed with MS. Keep in mind that everything that had happened to me that was MS related had happened on my right side, but, like I said, I was expecting that something would eventually happen on the other side, although I was prepared to wait as long as it did.

To make a long story short (too late), I had the worst MS attack I have had since it all started last century. However, this was not even half as bad as the first time. I have had no problems at all with my vision or speech, which some of you might remember were both very affected by that first attack. Also, the only weakness I have experienced has been due to the steroids that I have been on the for last couple days. That was the big mistake I made that first time, not getting help for a month. I waited just through the weekend to be sure I knew exactly what was going on before I called someone, but I know exactly who to call, what to say and ask, and , most importantly, what was happening. I started a three day course of Methylprednisolone Monday about 2 hours after I called the MS clinic (which, luckily, is only about a 10-15 minute drive from where I work). I expected to start the steroid treatment on Tuesday, so it was a nice surprise to find out that I could get started to fast. The steroids are not meant to stop an attack, I don't think much can stop it. What the steroids do is accelerate the healing process, which is exactly what they have done.

I have had two of three treatments (third one is this afternoon), and my "numbness" is down by, I would guess, 80% or more. I use quotes for numb and numbness, because it is only partial. I lost most of the feeling in my left side extremities. I could not at all sense hot and cold, but I would feel pressure. That allowed me to be able to walk and use my hand to utilize tools and pick up things, but if they were hot or cold, I would not have been able to tell. I could tell if something was extremely hot or cold. It wasn't much, but I could sense a strange tingle that told me to stop touching the hot/cold thing. As an example, I canned some beets this weekend. Normally, right after you take the jar out of the pressure cooker, it is too hot to pick up. I was able to pick up a hot jar and hold it for a couple seconds before getting that tingle, but as soon as I realized that the tingle meant (skin damage about to occur) I put down the jar. So I knew I had to be very careful for a while when using sharp things or when cooking. All I have is one small nick from a knife I was using to cut up an apple for lunch on Monday. No other damage has occurred. Jami wanted me to include a picture of the nifty IV thing in my hand, which will be gone after today. Not sure why she wanted me to include it, but here it is:






I wrote all this to explain to you, the avid reader, that you should not worry too much about what has happened. It is what happens when someone has this disease. I an extremely lucky that I did not get saddled with the nasty form of the disease, primary-progressive MS. I will soon be back to my ?normal? self, and by the time I see some of you next Thursday, it will be impossible to tell that anything happened.

On a final note, the pictures you see of me below messing with my bees were taken after the attack, but before any treatment. As you can see, I never lost the ability to function normally, I just had to put up with the hassle of an odd feeling one half of my body.