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| 2000 Monaco Knight 36Z |
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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! |
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