How high is the water, Mama?

It's 3' high, and rising!  Since Friday night/Saturday morning, we have had over a measured 6" rain here at the casa.  The storms have been freight-training over us.  The intermittent creek out back is running high.  The ponds along our road out of the neighborhood are overflowing.  We've had to kick on the pool filter early to keep the main pool from overflowing twice now.  If it overflows, it will run off to the back of the house, which needless to say is less than optimal!

The weather up here along the Red, is just different, than that to which we were accustomed in the Metromess.  The storms track in along a different path, and there is a lot more lightning.  Normally I love a good lightning show, having been known to go up to Malott Hall late at night, on the KU campus to watch storms from up on the 7th floor.

Local radar from this morning, tracking west to east right over us.

But here, out in the county, it is normally very quiet, if you overlook the guinea who screams at the sky, and the blueberry bushes, and anything else that he takes a fancy to...  Except during storms, and the 4th of July when he screams at everything.  More folks out here do bigger fireworks than some small towns!  It's a lot of fun!  There's a huge retailer 5 mi. down the road, and they have reasonable prices.  Our local veterinarian even opened up his parking lot to clients and the animal shelter volunteers, brought out a big stereo system, and hired the snowcone van to park there and sell goodies to the kids.  This way we all had a nice place to park, and sit on concrete and watch the fireworks that Paris put on, July 3rd.

Unfortunately, Indy hates both storms and fireworks.  Up here, both of these are loud!  We have a Thundershirt for him.  It helps a little bit, but not a lot.  We think when he was running stray in his former life, he got shot at by someone, because of how he reacts to anything that sounds vaguely like a gun shot.  For him, it leads to a panic attack.  We've even gotten Frankincense oil to apply.  It seems to calm him down a little too.  But neither gets him to totally chill.  Last night, I put him in our bedroom, the furthest from the fireworks noise.  He still spent the time in there pacing, drooling copiously, and, well, that's probably enough description of the flood in our room.  Just another reason to love tile and laminate flooring!  And just to add to the mix, Bullet gets a bit antsy when Indy is stressed, so he will pace the floor, click clack, click clack, click clack, with those big ol' Ridgeback claws, all night as long as Indy is stressed.

Bookend Ridgebacks.  Bullet on the left, Indy on the right.

The 4th of July weekend may be over, but the rain continues.  I'm hoping  the weather will begin to spread the storms out a little, to one a week, instead of every other day!

Eagle Rare Life Character Awards

Eagle Rare Bourbon sponsors an annual award of significant dollar value for the honored recipient.  Many are nominated in a variety of categories, and one is chosen per category.  The voting runs for a long time, to give more people the opportunity to participate.

This year, a good friend of mine, is in the running for the Character Award.  He is Roy Hughes, founder of Texas Independent Rhodesian Ridgeback rescue, aka TIRR Rescue.  I know of no one, more dedicated to the dogs he has contact with, than Roy.  I know first hand, the energy and resources he pours into TIRR, his life's work.

Roy saying goodbye to my Charlie.  Roy drove 2hrs to be with us, on Charlie's last day.  He also took him afterwards, to Brother Ben for cremation.

I know this, if Roy were so fortunate as to receive this award and the funds it comes with, that money would all go to the dogs care and housing.  I know it would be well spent.

If you would be willing, follow the link below to the voting.  You can vote daily, from any device you have, for the duration of the voting (which is long).  Once there, you can bookmark it on your devices, or just refer back here to get the link again.

Eagle Rare Life Character Award Voting link

Busy week ahead

Looks like I will have a busy week next week, what with MonkeyBoy's birthday, and DH's impending hand surgery, plus our foster dog Sarge came up lame this morning for some reason.  I'm currently waiting on the vet telling me what time they have time open to see him today.

So yes, it will be busy next week.  MonkeyBoy is growing up fast.  He finally hit a growth spurt, and got longer rather than wider.  He's still not quite as tall as me, or his younger sister, but I seem to have to keep buying him longer and longer pants!  He is also maturing nicely, though at times he needs to rein in his temper.

Stenosing Tenosynovitis is the official name for what is wrong with DH's hand.  Two fingers on his dominant hand are currently affected.  For some reason, this problem is overly common amongst diabetics.  I can't learn of a good reason why this is so, only that it IS a common complaint.  Also according to our favorite Orthopedic Surgeon, diabetics just do not respond well to non-surgical treatment (aka cortisone shots).  He says every single diabetic who received a cortisone shot was not fixed.  Yet only one surgical treatment that he has done had the problem recur in the treated finger.  We are well aware of how cortisone affects blood glucose (badly!), so we did not consider that a viable option anyway.

His surgery is late next week, so if you are so inclined, I would appreciate any prayers you care to utter for DH, and those involved in his care and treatment.  I trust his doc, lord knows I have enough scars to prove that!  And though it is a minor surgery, it still carries risks, especially as a diabetic.

And then there is poor Sarge, our local foster pup.  He came up very lame this morning.  Bad enough that he clearly does not want to bear weight on that front leg.  I don't know exactly what he did to it either...he seemed normal last night when I crated him for bed.  At least he will get to see a vet today or tomorrow I think.  The local shelter has approved a voucher for his treatment.

Then there is the normal household stuff to do, plus planned lifting M-W-F, plus maybe a short bike ride or two...I expect next week I will feel like I'm running around like a chicken with its head cut off!

UPDATE from Saturday:  So today we tackled replacing the main pump motor for the pool.  Thank God for Youtube!  It wasn't technically difficult, really, but there are some parts you DON'T want to break!  (Can you say impeller?)  Plus the videos were not an exact match to our system, but we managed, and once done, we got to do the leak check.  Powered up the motor, and voila!  No leaks, no howling bearings, and a whole lot more water flow through the system than before.  Yay!

Then it was time to chainsaw more logs to size, and split and stack them all.  At this point, we need to gravel in the remaining wood pad if we are going to split more wood.  We got about two hours of work done on the wood pile before we were willing to call it quits for the day.

Wordless Wednesday

EuropaDallas 2017 and Inzer gear

Saturday, DH and I decided to go all the way back into the Metromess (my 3rd trip in the week!) to go to the KBH Convention center for the EuropaDallas 2017 Fitness Expo.  Neither of us had been to this sort of convention, though we have been to numerous other conventions in our lives.

None however, were quite as noisy as the Europa!  OMG, was it LOUD in there!  Between the annoying Rap Music blasting out of vendor booths, the dance stage music trying to be loud enough for the dance crowd to hear, and several thousand people having to yell across tables just to converse, it was a darned good thing DH didn't wear his 'ears', or what little hearing he has left, would've been gone! (His 'ears' are mainly amplifiers, without the ability to cancel out unwanted noise.)  Seriously, it was so loud, you could've fired a pistol in there, and no one would've been the wiser!

The vendors were mostly well represented, with lots of protein/food/clothing sellers.  The glaring gap in vendors was the hardware sellers.  Only Troy Barbell and Inzer showed up.  We had hoped Rogue, and Texas Barbell would show, but no joy.  There were some other sellers of wraps/sleeves/belts, but none I had heard of before the Expo except Inzer.

I had been looking for a set of knee sleeves or wraps, as my right knee is no longer 100%.  My doc says I can have a new knee in another 12 years, as I am approaching a bone-on-bone situation on the medial side.  After seeing a Rippetoe video on using wraps, I decided I would try those instead of sleeves.  Sleeves are faster to put on, but the wraps are infinitely adjustable.

I found the Inzer booth at the Expo, and opted for a set of their Gripper wraps, so there would be less slippage of the wraps in use.  I was hoping for some improved support for my knee during squats.  

I got to use them last night, during our lifting session.  All I can say is "WOW!"  I did not expect the amount of support I got from a medium tight wrap!  At first it was sort of like walking around with what I called 'robot legs'.  It felt strange, not bad, just odd.  Then it was time to squat.  It made a huge difference in my stability!  I was sold on them after the first set!

DH thought he would try them too, just to see,  He doesn't have any big knee problems, his issue is a very cranky hip.  So when it was time for his squats, we got him wrapped up.

The Bees Knees!

He started his warmup squats, and lo and behold, the Heavens opened, the light shone down on him, and there was only joy, not pain in his hip!  Don't ask me why, but wrapping his knees made his hip WAY less painful!  Honestly, I suspect it is controlling some sort of internal/external rotation of the hip, but whatever it did, it was great!   Thank you Inzer!  Needless to say, we will be ordering him a set of wraps too!