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! 

Adventures of Retired Guy

Have you checked out my website? 

It's www.adventuresofretiredguy.com. 

I've been doing it for two years now.  It may be the one New Year's Resolution I have actually kept in my lifetime. 

I post a cartoon every day during the week and then write a little commentary blog on Saturday. Sunday belongs to the Lord, so I get a day of rest.

Here is today's cartoon.

I decided to do this because I was no longer drawing since retiring. I didn't care for that. I have realized I have lost a lot of my computer skills I used when I worked. I struggle when I use Adobe Illustrator. I have simply forgotten how to do things. 

So, I decided to keep my hand in it by forcing myself to draw. It's mostly a cutsie little comic strip I do for my own pleasure. It does not appear to draw a large audience. I wish I could generate some income from it, if nothing else than to pay for the website. It costs about $450.00 a year.

At one point, I had built up a two-month backlog of cartoons. Today, I'm down to about a three-week backlog.

I have decided to take the month of March off and publish "Best of" cartoons for that month. That will, in theory, give me time to build up my backlog. In practice, I probably won't do a very good job of building up and just coast for the month. I hope that is not the case, but I know me.

Ski Day Number One

The ski season has begun for me.

I skied at Silver Mountain today. It turned out to be a great day. They still need snow but the coverage was pretty good. No rocks. There was a high light overcast with portions of sunshine.

My neighbor Fred invited me the other day. His family has a house in Kellogg and they regularly ski at Silver.

I don’t think I have skied at Silver in maybe 15 years. I’ve always complained that the runs at Silver are too short. Now that I have issues with my stamina, they didn’t seem that bad.

And the one thing I’ve always liked about Silver is they have chairlifts with footrests. That really saves your legs over a long day of skiing.

Although, since today was my first day up this season, my legs are pretty wiped out.

As to the cost of skiing in 2026 at Silver Mountain, it cost $20.00 in gas to get to Kellogg and back. I spent $9.25 on a small bowl of chili and a hot cocoa. It cost $66.78 for my ski pass for a grand total of $96.03. With nine runs for the day, that comes down to $7.42 per run. If I include lunch and the gas, which I generally don’t, the total is $10.67 per run. 

I am not including the beer I had when I stopped at the Snake Pit on my way home.