I'm right here between the Kleenex and the cold medicine. Somehow I've caught a nasty cold. Spent most of yesterday in bed re-reading the "Wheel of Time" series by Robert Jordan. Today I got up thinking I felt better, so I gave myself a haircut, took a shower and went to the post office to mail off the LTD appeal letter and get some wiring stuff to rewire the turn signals and parking lights in the Nova. When I got home I was as miserable as ever. But it's just a cold. Thank God it isn't something worse. And I even did some of the wiring for the Nova while sitting on my bed. It just needs to be installed.
The heart medications seem to be working ok. BP is 129/74. The Coreg and Cozaar seem to be doin their job. I'm tryin to keep the Imdur down to one a day....just so the body can flush it out and it'll work the next time. And I've found a little trick on the Niaspan. I take one 500 mg tab when I go to bed (along with the Advil and benadryl) and I'm usually asleep before the flushing hits. I've done it the last coupla nights and it seems to have worked. Then, since I have a coupla noisy ducks outside my bedroom window that are as bad as chickens for greeting the rising sun,...well, they've been waking me up about every morning about 5:00 to 5:30. So I get up and take the Advil, benadryl and Naispan. I lie back down to read for a while and usually fall asleep about the time the ducks shut up. That way I get to sleep thru the Niaspan effects. Prolly ain't a perfect solution for everybody, but so far, it's workin for me.
In other news, I had my lawyer look over the appeal letter I wrote for the long term disability denial that I'd received back in March. He made a couple of suggestions that I thought were wise...so I implemented them into my letter and bundled it and all the backup documentation I could put together and sent it off to the Hartford's main office in Connecticut. It's outta my hands now. But it appears that the latest I'll be getting the disability benefits would be September. It would be tight, but I think we could hang on until then. Anyway, I've got a Camaro, a Nova and an El Camino I can sell if I have to. Plus I've had numerous friends offer support in the manner of loans or gifts of cash. I guess I'm getting a chance to look at my pride and see if it's a good thing or a bad thing. I'll have to do some meditation on that.
Tomorrow morning, I go in for the second half of the neuro-psych evaluation. Gayle (me darlin bride) will be going with me for the interview portion...then I still have about 2 to 3 hours of testing to do. I think all they're doing is establishing a baseline so that they can test me again in a year or two (at $2500 a pop) and see if there's any deterioration that might be attributed to Alzheimer's Disease. For those who don't know, both my father and my aunt on that side has Alzheimer's. And I saw something happening to my father when he was about my age. Of course he was still drinking alcoholically, so who knows how much that played into it. He said there was no connection, but by that time he was forgetting what to do with the car keys in his hands. Hell, I hope that don't never happen to me....I've got too many sets of keys. :)
Tomorrow is me darlin bride's birthday...so we're going out to the Olive Garden with my oldest son and his wife. We'd drag the other boy and his wife, but they're on tour in Europe with the University of Utah Singers. Kid's got talent...big time.
Then on Friday, I'll be going down to a little town in central Utah called Manti. They're holding the 4th annual Rat Fink Reunion there...I made it last year and I'd really like to go back this year...assuming I'm feeling semi-humanoid. Fer those whut doesn't know what a Rat Fink is (or who Big Daddy Ed Roth) was) you can check here:
Rat Fink Reunion And here's a pic of my "Ugly Truck" getting some pinstripes last year:
RFR 2004 My truck is the old Chevy with the black and red front end. All of the red has been replaced by chrome now. I'd love to have a few more stripes on it and something very unique for the brand new tailgate that I just installed.
Well, That's all the news from Happy Valley (Taylorsville, Utah) except that I'm picking up another pickup truck on Sunday...or the following weekend so that I can dismantle it and put power steering and power disk brakes in my Ugly Truck....which ain't nearly as ugly as it used to be.
So in spite of no income, health insurance I have to pay for outta my own pocket and a very indefinite time frame for when I will start receiving any benefits....well, I'm in pretty good spirits. Especially for an old geezer with a nasty head cold.
Ohhh....one last thing. I mentioned something about the electric car that was supposed to blow away the class record on a public highway in Nevada? Well, they got it started once, made one trial run and then had electrical gremlins for the rest of their attempts. They blamed the cold and humidity for their problems. Jeeze...if a buncha hot-shot Brtitish engineers can't deal with a little London Fog now and again, they're not gonna make it very far complaining about the sudden rain showers that come up in the west desert. :)
Hugs and blessings to all....