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| 2000 Monaco Knight 36Z |
A couple of notes to help make sense of these mad ramblings:
Steve writes the log so think of "I" and Steve as synonymous
Nobody reads this, not even Marnie, so I don't get any feedback - ever
The text and pictures line up nicely on my computer at my resolution only because it would be a little more work to create a seperate table per picture. If it bothers you email me and complain.
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2010 August - Concord, CA.
8 Aug: Steve's Pulmonologist had Steve do another sleep study. 14 Aug: We had a movie & cocktail party at a friend's home. We watched The Hangover again and then tried to sit through the original Ocean's 11 movie (Rat Pack). It is not even worthy of a review. After what seemed like four hours they still hadn't started planning anything so we switched to the new Ocean's 11. It is one of Marnie's favorites but not Steve's kind of movie. We also stopped by the Pleasant Hill Relay for Life briefly.
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2010 July - Concord, CA.
4 Jul: Happy 4th everyone! Steve frightened some steak by threatening it with the grill, we both like it rare if it is good steak. These were fillets from Walmart for around $5. Believe it or not, the quality is great and they are pre-wrapped with bacon. We used the long weekend to put trim in the RV. We never got to it after we put the new floor in (before Steve's surgeries in 2008). Still have more to do. 10-11 Jul: This weekend was the annual Cancer Association's Relay for Life walk and campout at the local High School. There was live music all weekend, the first band, Azure Moon, played a bunch of classic rock. The lead singer, Jessica, made it a point to give Steve a business card with her number on it. She must have thought Steve was part of the event because of the Cancer Center shirt? The next group, MPG thrilled Steve by playing some Zeppelin and Rush plus some of their original material. Marnie walked ten miles (40 laps) on her 4-6AM relay! Steve walked one lap with her. Sunday morning opened with a "screamo" band that was a little too loud. You have to be in the mood to listen to that stuff. The police came and pretty much shut them down. Probably called by one of the local homeowners. Marnie personally thanked the officer. 17 Jul: We made a trip up to Cline Winery in Sonoma again. We are members and pick up our wine once a quarter. This time it was a couple of nice Zinfandels. We had a picnic at Jacuzzi (this is getting to be a tradition).
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MPG played covers of Led Zep, Rush, Dio and some original material. 
2010 July 10 Concord, CA, Relay for Life 
Steve met this guy in the parking lot. 
An absolute perfect cover of a bunch of James Taylor songs. |
2010 April 8 Concord, CA 
V. Sattui Winery, Napa, CA |
2010 June - Concord, CA.
4 Jun: Anytime the Stock Market Indexes move more than 3% in one day Steve gets real interested. We don't have enough invested in Stocks to be anything more than a hobby, but, any hobby that can make money is a good one. 12-13 Jun: Steve and his friend Sachin went into the city to have lunch at Pier 23 and a couple of beers at Hooters while Marnie is away on a business trip in Minneapolis. On Sunday it got up to 95 and it took running both air conditioners to keep the temperature low enough to protect the computers. 15 Jun: Steve watched the 2008 Hall & Oats concert at the Troubadour on PBS. Steve's best friend at the time, Doug might remember when we watched the Stepmothers perform at the Troubadour while we were still in High School. A lot of famous bands got their start at the Troubadour, speaking of which, Steve ran into (literally) Joan Jett in the foyer of the club. Her body guard didn't kill him and Steve didn't realize who it was until a few minutes later. A short "brush" with fame... 18 Jun: Marnie made it home, safe and sound at about 3AM. We were still up and at 'em at 6ish. Steve has been working on consolidating our wedding video from 1999 into one short movie. Some of our friends and family were unable to attend so if you want a copy of the video let us know. 19 Jun: We had a nice dinner and wine night with our neighbors. They have the cutest Abyssinian Cat. 26 Jun: We spent the afternoon in Napa and tasted wine at Goosecrossing, Beaulieu and V. Sattui. The picture of the cheese section of the deli is from V. Sattui Winery. We met Wayne & Karen, a nice couple living in a 5th wheel in the park.
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2010 May - Concord, CA.
1 May: Steve's wound dressing filled up with blood to the point that the plastic cover was hard to the touch like a blood blister! Marnie freaked out and made Steve call the doctor. That is what the written instructions said to do anyway. The doctor sounded like he was out partying but we think he said it was no big deal but if it got worse go to an urgent care clinic or the ER to get it re-dressed, or wait until Monday and he would re-dress the wound. The next morning it looked like part of the dressing was falling off and the blood was gone. Wierd. We didn't want to have to deal with another post-surgical infection so we are being extra careful. Sunday morning we decided to pop into an urgent care center, get the dressing changed and then go have breakfast at PJ PHaire. We couldn't find an urgent care center! We tried searching for "urgent care", "walk-in", "24hrs" and nothing. We finally decided it was worth the $500 and 10-hour trip to the ER. Here is a tip, if you have to go to the ER plan for early morning. The place was empty. We were in and out in time to go have breakfast. If you are ever at PJ Phaire go for the Rueben Omlette! After we got done with breakfast and errands Marnie started washing the bedding, there in the bed was the missing blood - soaking the gauze packing that must have fallen out. That means the wound was exposed to air. Only time will tell if it gets infected. The bed was not soaked as we had the insight from previous experience to put a thick towel down. 7-9 May: We got the opportunity to check in on our friends' Boston Terrier over the weekend. Brandy is just a bundle of energy and since all animals just love Steve (except birds) we spent most of the time trying to keep her from hurting Steve. Animals are a good judge of character you know (except birds). 14-16 May: We spent Marnie's b-day weekend in Yosemite. It was Steve's first visit We did a small bus tour on Saturday with Saul the driver acting as guide, and then spent Sunday driving through the park on our own. We saw this big black bear right before the Hetch Hetchy turn off. You can't tell a bear by the color but one of the other photos shows the long sloping forehead and longer snout of a black bear. That and, sadly, there aren't any other kind of bear left in the park. 18 May: Steve came down with a head cold. Thank God at least the surgical wounds are closed so it is probably no big deal. It must be viral because he is still on antibiotics from the surgery. 29-31 May: Memorial day weekend, thanks to all who served and gave the ultimate sacrifice! Thanks to all of their families! Steve went to a real sleep doctor and got a second opinion on the sleep study. The doc prescribed an automatic CPAP machine through the original SleepMed rep. He had one in stock and we had it the next day. According to the machine Steve is sleeping better but time will tell if Steve thinks he is sleeping better. We went into SF for the day on Saturday and did a wedge of the city including Union Square, Lefty O'Douls to share a Reuben and The Stinking Rose. The picture shows the signature dish, Bagna Calda or "Garlic in a Hot Tub" which is simply cooked garlic cloves in oil with anchovies. We had that and their steamed clams in a pesto and oil soup. Both the Pinot Grigio and the Stella went quite well with the garlic dishes. Well fed and watered we made our way back to the BART and home. Sunday, after watching a few sermons on TBN we went to the Apple Store. Microsoft slit their own throat with Vista and they don't even know they are bleeding. Marnie is now a Mac and Steve may not be too far behind. We enjoyed a nice lunch at La Fogata, splitting their "Nothing but meat" burrito. For dinner Marnie made chicken roll-ups, cream cheese & chives wrapped with pounded chicken wrapped in bacon!
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For all of you that secretly wanted a glimpse of Steve's arse, here is some of the bruising. Tunnelers are brutal! 
We were rewarded by this great sight on Sunday Morning. Happy birthday Marnie! 
The Stinking Rose |
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2010 April 8 Concord, CA |
2010 April - Concord, CA.
7 Apr. Wednesday is datenight, after mailing off our tax docs we went to Kang Sushi in Lafayette. Since we got home at sunset we went up to the hiking trail to see Venus and Mercury. Some people never see Mercury because it is so close to the sun. One astronomer even bragged about living his entire life without ever seeing it. Right after the sun set our marine layer of light clouds started to obscure the sky. After a while we could see Venus and I thought for a moment I might have seen Mercury but the clouds soon obscured it. My 'droid with Google Sky helped a lot! We realized we might be able to see it from our RV and we were being eaten alive by mosquitoes so we agreed to give up. We went back to the RV and Marnie grabbed my astronomical Binoculars. She tried it first but no joy. I looked through them and Mercury was a little further to the right of Venus than we thought. Marnie tried again and I am thrilled to report that we both saw it quite well! To bad I can't drag my telescope out any more 
8 Apr. The park had us sign a lease this time. Use of "HAM" or "CB" radios is prohibited. Bummer. 9 Apr. We are repeating the allergy test ourselves because we did not have confidence that it was performed properly. If the materials test is negative we can reschedule the neurostimulator implant. 11 Apr. Steve went up to Sonoma with his friend Sachin. We did a tasting at Cline and Jacuzzi with a picnic lunch in the courtyard at Jacuzzi. 13 Apr. The allergy test is negative and surgery is scheduled for the 29th. Wish us luck! 14 Apr. Steve's doc diagnosed him with hypertension (high blood pressure) so one more med to add to the daily meal. 23-26 Apr. Marnie is visiting Phoenix with some old ex-workers with whom she still has close friendships. 27 Apr. Marnie got back okay on Monday. She ran a 5K with her friend Sara from back East. Steve went over his lab results with the doc today and the 75g 2-hour glucose test proved diabetes. Bummer. The disability attorney has called a couple times and said they are "almost done". He has been saying two weeks since last year, so, yeah, right. 30 Apr. The neurostimulator is in and working! The surgery went quickly and uneventfully. We got home and ate a late dinner. Steve caught the second showing of Mad Money at 8PM and then went to join Marnie in bed. She freaked out. The upper surgical wound had soaked the packing gauze to saturation. Of course the paperwork says this is an emergency. I thought it could wait until next week but she brought up the risk of infection. When the doc called us back he said there is nothing to worry about and that he could change the dressings Monday. If we need it changed before then he said to go to the ER or Urgent Care.
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2010 March - Concord, CA.
Steve deactivated his Facebook account so if you were using that to keep in touch use this website, email or cell instead. There are many things we didn't like about Facebook, too many to mention, including a viral infection from an 'invitation' FB application sent from one of our friends. 5 Mar. Steve had his sleep study last night. The Tech. came in the room at 4AM to ask, "Why aren't you sleeping, can you tell me what is making you uncomfortable?" Steve points to the giant plastic mask blowing air into his nose until his cheeks swell up enough to make a trombone player jealous, nestled in a wiring nest of sensors and says, (picture Kenny from South Park), "Hmmf, hmm hmm hm hm-hm." Please tell us that not all medical professionals are this stupid... well, Marnie isn't anyway. Steve is exhausted and drinkin' rum! Marnie's computer picked up a virus through the hole that KB977165 patches (BSOD and patch keeps trying to install). Steve has been working with kahdah at MalwareBytes day and night trying to fix this. 6 Mar. Marnie and Steve went to Berkeley for sushi and then attended The Banff Mountain International Film Festival. Azazel was the best film, hilarious! Sitting through 3hrs of movies was a living hell on Steve's back even with intermissions and loaded up on pain killers and whiskey. The sushi at Man Puku was really good too, and cheap $3-$4 a roll. We briefly looked at real estate in the area. Ha Ha, real funny. I think the minimum price we saw was still over $1M. 7 Mar. kahdah has pronounced Marnie's PC clean. The infection theoretically would have sent password information to the thief. This infection walked right through and disabled Windows Defender so we both switched to Avira. It also defeated scans from Trend Micro, MalwareBytes and a few others which is why we don't waste money on buying an anti-malware software. They can not recognize a new attack for which they don't have a definition yet. Steve is scheduled for the permanent neurostim implant early next month. He is still hurting from the film adventure in Berkeley so it would have been nice to have at least that much relief. 13 Mar. Another trip up to Sonoma with one of our friends. We only visited Cline and Jacuzzi but it was a beautiful day for our picnic at Jacuzzi! 15 Mar. Steve is undergoing yet another allergy test over the next few days. 20-22 Mar. It finally dried out enough to try and level the RV. Marnie also started a deep cleaning with bleach water. On Monday they started yet another patch test for the components of the permanent neurostimulator for allergies. 23-25 Mar. One more allergy test for Steve. When they read the results on Thursday there were two positives to the materials used in the stimulator. The implant surgery has been cancelled. 28 Mar. We have a family member in Emeryville so we went and spent lunch at Trader Vic's until he had to catch a flight. Steve finally upgraded his old phone to the new 'droid. If you haven't checked out this phone it changes the industry. The built-in GPS and navigation will put Garmin out of business. Download a few applications and it streams FM radio, has a live sky chart for astronomy, can translate English to most other languages via voice input and output, ("Una cerveza por favor."), freakin' awesome!
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Steve looks like a real trader. I like green pie, and I can not lie! |
Medtronic Neurostimulator Trial Unit Leads 
No shower for a week! 
It is very wet here. And foggy. 
Crikey! This was actually last month, right after we got "home" from our anniversary dinner. This millipede really is as big as it looks, about 4 inches! 
The Harbor Seal "Pull-out" 
Same shot with mechanical zoom. This area is well protected from people. 
All the mechanical and digital zoom the Nikon Coolpix S7c can offer. Look at that face! 
Poor Marnie had to deal with the mud either eating or breaking everything she put under the front jack. |
2010 February - Concord & Monterey, CA.
4 Feb. Today they implanted the temporary, trial neurostimulator. In a nutshell, the two electrodes send electrical pulses into the sympathetic nerves of the spinal chord to the brain and it overrides the pain in Steve's right leg and cheek (the Southern cheek). Marnie treated Steve to Thai food but He couldn't eat very much and just wanted to go to bed. They prescribed good drugs so there isn't much pain, just a small backache from the surgery. 5 Feb. A bit more of a back ache but it is early yet, about 3AM PST. Hard to sleep with it on until Steve gets more used to it. For those of you that did not see the link in October, here is the link to more information on the Medtronic Neurostimulation Therapy. 6 Feb. While we have the unit we want to test it for interference. Supposedly electric motors interfere with it so Steve already tackled the HAM frequencies he likes to use and today we went on a little adventure to try exposure to some very big electric motors. We used the escalator up to the BART platform, rode the elevator at the Rockridge platform. We walked the shops and picked up a man-purse for Steve to carry all the electronics in and clip the receiver/amplifier to. We stopped for crispy carne tacos and then came back to the RV. None of the things we did caused Steve to go into a seizure so we are good that way. The foot is still ice cold though. 8 Feb. Steve's foot is body temperature after using the stimulator all night. That was a critical goal for us. Both feet have a rash that looks like blood blisters and the heels are black & blue. Something to ask the doctor about. With the relief of some of the pins & needles plus the temperature affect we have decided we want the permanent unit. 9 Feb. The trial is completed and the doctor removed the leads. We now await insurance approval for the permanent unit. 12-16 Feb. Monterey Bay on vacation! Everything on Cannery Row was in walking distance even for Steve. Here is some of the stuff we did: Fish Hopper Restaurant Great Sea Food! Attentive staff. S&M 8 of 10 stars Archie’s American Diner Across the street from the aquarium Breakfast S&M give it a 8 of 10 Sea Harvest Okay Fish & Chips. Very fresh crabs and lobsters, they catch them themselves. S&M give it 4 of 10 but we didn’t try anything but the fish & chips. A Taste of Monterey Wine tasting, find it at the end of the water side mall on cannery row. Great view and atmosphere, light rock music. Cheese sucked, wine okay. S&M give it a 7 of 10 for the view and music Schreid Vineyards Wine tasting, all the reds were good, free corkage at most of the restaurants. S&M give it a 7 of 10 for the wine Gianni’s Pizza Up on 725 Lighthouse Ave. Great Pizza, wine by the half carafe. S&M give it a 8 & 10 out of 10 for the pizza Louie Linguini’s Pizza was terrible, salad okay. S&M give it a 3 of 10 Otter Inn Great location, clean but sloppy bedding, thin walls & floors, no balcony, no view, no ventilation S&M 2 of 10 Monterey Bay Aquarium 886 Cannery Row Monterey, CA 93940-1085 (831) 648-4888 9:30 – 6:00 PM Must see! Otters are great, make sure to go outside and look at the otters and harbor seals in the wild bay. Get the Reuben Sandwich! Red wine is over on the cold sandwich counter. S&M 10 of 10 To see a harbor seal pull-out area walk down just past the institute building next to the aquarium. Please be quite as to not disturb these wonderful animals and their pups. Just a little further and sit on a bench and watch the surf for a while. S&M give it a 10 of 10 Fisherman’s Wharf Shops (lame) and Restaurants Launch area for whale watching. Rappa’s Fisherman’s Wharf, great views – we saw a mother and baby otter, sorry, the picture through the window didn't resolve the baby. The food was not so great. S&M give it a 4 of 10 17 Feb. Steve had an appointment with an Allergist due to a minor reaction to the neurostimulation unit. The doctor scheduled an allergy test the next day. The doctor also set Steve up for a sleep study and a weight-loss seminar, both of which the same doctor also runs. Way to give yourself referrals, what a scam! That is also a co-pay out of my pocket for each visit. We may have words before the end of it. 18 Feb. The allergy test is all for environmental allergies. Steve had no response to any local triggers until they injected dust into his arm subcutaneous. The doctor boldly proclaimed Steve allergic to dust and asked, "What do you do when you are around dust?" "I don't know, I sneeze I guess.", replied Steve. The doctor then reviewed the list of materials and drugs used in the trial and said that he could not test for metals because they are controlled substances. What? Stainless steel and epoxy are controlled? We could buy samples at the local hardware store ourselves. He then sent a referral to a doctor in SF, the "Best in the World." So not only did this butt-head not perform anything Steve's referring doctor requested, he did not discover the cause of Steve's environmental allergies (which we can assure you he has), and he didn't admit that he was not competent in this area until scheduling a bunch of other unrelated testing. So why does Steve put up with all this? One, he is too nice and two, there are strict rules in disability that you must follow any instructions the doctors give or risk loosing the benefit. Today we also got the dreaded notice to move out. There is some stupid civil law that requires the tenants in RV parks to move out for 24 hours every six months or something. The manager was able to give us a pass last time (we think) because we changed spaces so we really can't complain. But where do we go? This is the only park with any spaces and the next closest possibility is the county fairgrounds. So Saturday will be a mission to turn this negative into something positive. Somehow. 20 Feb. Our agenda consists of removing the spiders from the kayaks so we can handle them safely. We either need to put them on Steve's Jeep when we get it back from the mechanic (electrical problems), sell them or donate them to Goodwill. Then we need to find and reserve a place to park for 24 hours. Then we will try earnestly to do something with the kayaks. Sounds like a plan. Normally Steve does not like to kill outside spiders but deliberation revealed a spider-bomb to be our best choice. We bought a spray that "seeks them out where they hide" and applied it early morning to give it time to work while we scouted out the location of the fair grounds. It was an hour drive or so to Antioch and we had to drive through the gun show (there were no guns there of course) to see the RV spaces. The entire area does not appear safe and the RV spaces were a non-possibility for us. Steve thought about two more options. Napa has a park that looked like it had room but Livermore might be easier and Steve remembered seeing RV's at one of the wineries. How cool would that be? Marnie said she thought it was Wente and it turned out she was right. At this point we had been on the road for two hours, way beyond Steve's tolerance for riding. Wente was not a possibility. If we couldn't think of anything else we could check out Napa tomorrow. Marnie thought of something. Why not just stay at a hotel if they had room for the RV? We did it before in Denver. So we decided to scout two hotels before we called them. The Hilton had room for an RV but the Hyatt did not. We gave them a call and set it up. 23-24 Feb. The next burden of the move-out is the two 100lb propane tanks. Steve called the propane company and asked if they would come disconnect them, store them, bring them back and reconnect them. It is a pain (literally and figuratively) being crippled! They seemed like they never had to do this before so it has us wondering why, when there are a bunch of their customers here. That is where we got their number. Hmmm. Theory and conjecture could probably solve the puzzle. 26-28 Feb. The move out went well, we are just a little out of practice and Marnie has to do a lot of the tasks Steve used to do and gets frustrated with the difficulty of some things. On top of that, she had to go back to work after we checked in. Once on the road the HAM radios are invaluable. Marnie used the Jeep to give Steve room for lane changes and to scout out the path. The Hotel is only a couple of miles so we only had a 15-20 Minute drive. It started downpouring! We got out just in time but couldn't avoid getting wet once we got there. The hotel said we could bring the RV and when we got there we found a couple areas roped off. They said they were expecting a couple busses but we could move the ropes if we had to. They treated us very well. This Hilton gets high marks from us! Except the restaurant, Grissini's, isn't that great. We had a datenight there last year. Anyway, Marnie made a mad dash back to work and Steve went down, in the soaking rain, to check on Guinness a few times. He seemed okay, better than he used to be when we moved the rig. When Marnie finally got off work Steve still hadn't eaten. The Widow-maker at Claim Jumper never tasted soooo good! That and a bottle of wine between us turned it into a pretty good day. The next morning we checked on Guinness and he was moving pretty slow (he's getting up there in years) and the rig got much colder than we expected. We made him an afghan nest and passed the time until we could move back into the park. When we got back the space was nothing but mud. We would line the rig up but the mud would cause it to slide sideways out of where we needed to be. We got very frustrated. When we tried to level it everything we put on the ground sank into the mud! We did the best we could and figure we can fix it if we need to when it drys out.
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2010 January - Concord, CA.
1 Jan. Marnie was up at Midnight but Steve was getting some sleep due to his cold. What an exciting couple! At least niether of us had to worry about a hangover 
2 Jan. An old commrade from the 607 TCTS (US Air Force squadron) contacted me via Facebook. We were stationed at Luke AFB back in the mid 1980's. That was last century! It was great to update each other briefly on how our lives went from there, so long ago. One individual, a mentor that I had been searching for died about ten years ago according to Brian. Not unexpected, Dennis "smoked like a fish and drank like a chimney." My thoughts are proof that he is missed. 7 Jan. Happy Birthday Caleb! 9 Jan. Happy Anniversary us! We had a nice, pampered dinner at Ruth's Chris. 11 years of marital bliss! 19 Jan. We were up at 3 AM as Marnie started out for a trip to N. Carolina for a technical class. The airlines were running late so she almost missed her connecting flight. It was a long, exhausting day! Her luggage showed up the next morning. 24 Jan. Marnie made it back safely late Sunday night, luggage and everything. Guinness and Steve mauled her they were so happy to have her home!
Let's try something new. Friday afternoons, after 1 or 2PM PST until Marnie gets home around 5:30PM PST Stephen can be reached to chat about the trading week or anything else: email: snmdurbin@earthlink.net Cell phone: If you have my number you are always welcome to call. Skype: sdurbin64 HF: 3.830Mhz (don't be rude to the local net that starts at 4:30ish) VHF/UHF are tied up with commuters this time of the day. Everything but Skype & email gets shut off when Marnie walks in the door! |
Lots of Rain! |
Link to 2009 weblog
Link to 2008 weblog
Link to 2007 weblog
Link to 2006 and earlier weblog
Stay tuned for more.
if you have any question or comments send us an email at:
snmdurbin@earthlink.net
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