My Daily Activities and Bond, James Bond!

Over the weekend, I lost a crown. I was chewing on a very hard Milk Dud when there was a sudden loud crunch. I had a pretty good idea of what happened and I pulled the mostly chewed up Dud out of my mouth, and managed to recover the crown…or what was left of it.

I had to do some intense rinsing to remove all the chocolate from the crown.

I’m not suffering any ill effects from losing the crown. I have a slight sensitivity to heat and cold in the back of my lower left jaw, but I was kind of feeling that before I lost the crown.

So I called my Dentist this morning and they are going to get me in tomorrow at 1PM.

My other big accomplishment of the day was completing our taxes for 2025. I went on line and found a website that seemed to indicate I could do my taxes for free on it.

I filled out all the information it requested and for the most part, it was pretty easy. I seemed to get everything completed according to the website’s satisfaction and it indicated we would be getting a nice refund.

I hit the submit button, which seemed to work, and it said I would be receiving an email within hours to let me know if the IRS accepted the return.

Then a window popped up that said the advanced version of the program costs $29.95 and how would I like to pay?! The advantage was my return would be saved on their server for three years with easy access if I ever needed it. 

One of the options was to deduct $29.95 from my refund. But that also included, in much smaller type, a $39.95 additional processing fee.

There was no option on the screen to just continue with the free version, so I opted to pay the 30 bucks with my debit card and screw you for the processing fee.

I have just now checked my email and I have indeed received a message from the tax site saying the IRS has accepted my form.

I’m going to go upstairs to my large mainframe computing device and print out my return for my files.

The rest of day belongs to me. I’m going out on some errands and then I foresee a nap in my future.

Either that, or I will continue watching the whole James Bond series on Netflix. I have just finished “Thunderball” and the next one up is “On Her Majesties Secret Service”.

I have special place in my heart for this particular movie because it was the first James Bond film I ever saw in a theater.

I fondly remember the scene where the bad guys are chasing Bond on skies and he jumps a train track where an engine with a big snow blower on it is approaching. One of the bad guys misses the jump and falls into the auger blades of the snow blower. The ejection chute blowing out all the snow suddenly turns bright red.

So cool for a 12 year old!

Bike Ride Day

It was warm enough today for a bike ride. I think the temperature hit 50. I called Mark to see if he wanted to go and he thought it sounded like a great idea.

I had a little problem with my bike not wanting to power up. But I put it on the charger for a few minutes and that coaxed it into turning on.

We rode down to the park, down along the river through Peaceful Valley, across the Sandifur Bridge and back to the park along the Centennial Trail. It was a 7.5 mile trip and we were out for about an hour. 

Even though we were on e-bikes, I still felt like I got a pretty good workout. I was definitely feeling the burn in my legs when doing the big hill climb up from the Sandifur Bridge.

I guess this is one of the benefits of the mild winter we’ve been having.

CT Scan

I have just returned from Inland Imaging near Sacred Heart Hospital for a CT Scan with contrast of my abdominal region.

I assume this is a follow up of the scan they did last summer trying to get information on a lesion they found on my pancreas. This all happened during testing to see if I qualified for a heart transplant through Stanford Medical. It turned out to be nothing, or at the very least, non cancerous. Despite that, you may recall that Stanford turned me down for the transplant.

I left the house at 8:00AM for an 8:15 appointment. I was home shortly after nine. So it was very quick.

The interesting part is the contrast feature. They hooked me up to an IV and at one point after several scans, they announced, “Here comes the contrast.”

Starting slow and then speeding up, my body was flooded by this warming feeling that felt very weird. 

I have an appointment with the Pancreas Doctor scheduled in about a week. At that point, I’ll have another update.

Ski Day Number Two

My friend Geoff invited me for a ski day at Schweitzer today. I generally don’t ski Schweitzer because they have priced me out of the market.

I went today because I was able to get a half priced ticket due to Geoff’s Icon Pass. Even at half price, the ticket cost $67.00. That’s more than any of the other areas are charging. The half price cost is MORE than the regular price being charged by any of the other ski resorts in the area. 

To make matters worse, this has been a horrible ski season for all the resorts. There has been a major lack of snow. Lots of Schweitzer is not even open.

They have pretty good coverage but you have to watch where you’re going in many places on the hill. Rocks and weeds are abundant.

The snow was wet and sloppy, the kind of snow you would expect in the Spring.

The weather was the best part. Clear with high clouds, and occasional sunniness.

The bad part of the day was the way I responded to the activity of skiing. As always, the walk from the car to the lift is the worst part of my day. It felt particularly bad today. It took a while to recover.

We got in seven runs, the last three I skied with my oxygen generator. I can’t say it made a huge difference. Perhaps my stamina improved a bit but by that time, I was pretty skied out and ready to end the day. The last run in particular was rough on me. It was a very long run and I stopped a lot on the way down to catch my breath.

This is my first time skiing where I am seriously wondering how much more I can ski. It was a rough day and I am dead tired right now. I can barely type this post.

January BP

 

Bike Ride

It managed to warm up into almost the 40’s today which gave me the opportunity to try and go for a bike ride. I rode downtown and down along the south side of the river to the Sandifur bridge. I crossed there and headed back, stopped at the Falls briefly to take in the roar of 2,000 cfs of water rolling downstream, and then a stop at the Warming Hut.

The Warming Hut is really called David’s Pizza and I wrapped my fingers around a nice hot chocolate. I was quite chilled. The Rumple Minze in the cocoa helped as well.

I did 7.7 miles in about 45 minutes. That does not include the half hour pit stop at David’s.

Morning Drugs

I pulled out my morning medication today, looked at the hand full of pills and decided, I should have a picture of this to document my morning pill intake.

So there we are.

And there’s another post for the year!