©Ian Coristine/1000IslandsPhotoArt.com
What is an Island like?
Well, it's kinda like a castle, but with a bigger moat
Well, it's kinda like a castle, but with a bigger moat
The Cancer thing.
OK, here is the update. After all the tests were completed, it was decided to perform the surgery first as they were concerned that after chemo, the tumor could be reduced enough that it would be hard to find. So, the surgeon decided to go ahead and excise it and clean up any residual tissue with chemo later.The surgery was performed on May 6th, Janice went home 2 days later and has been recuperating since. She received her first chemo on May 14th.
Her doctors are a trip. My age is definitely showing as the first time we meet them I believed it was ‘career day’ at the hospital. They walked into the examination room and I thought “How cute, these kids are dressed like real doctors” as they looked like they were about 12 years old. They introduced themselves and then I thought “Well, the class of 2010 has to start somewhere!” It was only later that we were told these two were the heads of their respective departments at this teaching hospital and Janice had actually been assigned to the A team.
From here on out it will be rather routine with chemo or other drugs administered every week and radiation to start some time down the road. We have not left each others side since we arrived so there has been no thought to returning to the hangar to work on the plane. That might change in a few weeks if she does well enough to be left on her own during the day. We will see.
Meanwhile, since she was down for the count, I have been brushing up on my cooking skills. It has been a while since I won her over with my culinary prowess so this seemed like a good time to make an impression.
All I needed was a little refresher, so she would give directions from the sofa and I would prepare the 5 star courses. We got off to a slow start when on our first day she instructed me to "saute" the meat. A half hour later I admitted that I couldn't find the "saute' in either a can or jar anywhere.
My cooking must have been pretty good because she said that she got well in no time and was up for taking over.
Ahhhhh! Isn't retirement great?
The goal was to insulate under the cabin floor and cover it with wire mesh to keep mice and other animals out. This meant working overhead with insulation raining down on my face the whole time. [I am not whining, I am merely describing the revolting working conditions that I heroically endured! ] This proved useful as we arrived two months earlier than usual and the temperatures really dropped at night. Further, it is our intention to install a heat pump & A/C combo in the future so I got all the ducting in place at the same time.
As long as I was acting like a mole, I thought it a good time to dig some footings. You see, as the cabin gets closer to being finished on the inside, we are growing less and less happy with the look on the outside. The logs look fine but the porch is way overdo for a complete re-do, as well as the shake siding and the need to enclose the open area outside between the ground and the floor. I know! Let’s make it a project!!!
Seriously, we will get to all of that eventually but the time has come to deal with some serious infrastructure issues. This cabin is well over 100 years old and was only intended to be a fishing cabin, not a real residence. So, it is not surprising that the logs rest on a foundation that is little more than piled rocks, albeit some pretty big ones. Nothing has budged in all that time so I am sure that it is fine. However, we have invested too much time, effort and money for it to be OK for the house simply resting on piles of rocks and calling that a foundation.
You're kidding, right?
To that end, I crawled back under and dug footings at all proper locations and poured structural concrete in Sono tubes to create proper pilings and bolted them to structural Simpson ties. This is not required for any building permit so no inspection is necessary. This is just something I am doing out of an abundance of caution.
Old apple press, now floor lamp
Wanting a break from such nasty tasks and having way too much free time on her hands, Janice got another great idea for something for me to do. Years ago, I had made an Oak apple press to make juice. I used it a few times but like you, concluded that at .79c a bottle the effort was not worth it. Regardless, it was great fun with the kids. Meanwhile, this cool looking but somewhat useless item was taking space. So last summer when we were traveling through the Adirondacks, we bought a lamp shade that was made of Birch bark. This month I finished the project and turned the whole shebang into a floor lamp.
Then, to give my favorite patient a safer place to walk around the island, I carved out an extension to our path with pick and shovel and covered it in cedar wood chips.
This time we flew to NY State directly for Janice’s treatment and my current registration was still at my mother in laws… and she was stuck in Prague as she was one of the thousands who could not fly due to the volcano ash sweeping across Europe. The border agent then asked for my insurance card. I began to panic as I realized that it was still in my briefcase at the island. Finally, the agent pointed out that my license plate was one digit off from my registration card and my plate was showing up in her computer as belonging to some Asian man's Honda.
Crap!
I was beginning to look and sound more like a convict by the minute, stammering with excuses and explanations that even I would have had trouble believing. Finally the inevitable happened when they asked me to hand them the car keys, get out of the vehicle keeping my hands in plain sight and go inside the office while they searched the car and dragged me over the coals to sort out my sordid tale. I had visions of being shipped off to Guantanamo dancing in my head.
Having found no contraband, illegal aliens in the trunk or any sign of shenanigans, I was released a couple of hours later. The problem was that I still had a mismatched registration card and license plates (a simple typo at the department of motor vehicles) that proved to be an absolute nightmare to resolve from 3000 miles away (5,000km) When I called California to ask what to do, their solution I was told, was simple... "just bring the car back to California".
Yea, right.
The real solution, as always, was knowing people. My ex boss found out some of the forms I would need. Then a friend of a friend who worked for the DMV coached us through the process. I had to mail my license plates back to California and wait for new ones to be issued. Meanwhile we were unable to enter Canada by car or drive our car until this was resolved which proved to be very awkward as our shore dock is in Canada and it is where we park. I have mentioned in these pages before how easy it is for us to get around by boat and that virtually everything we need (groceries, post office, pharmacy, church, etc) is within a short boat ride. Everything of course, except the Cancer center 90 miles away.
The process to complete this assignment required an unconventional, unsanctioned, back channel approach that prevents me from identifying the participants. Suffice it to say that had they been caught or captured, the secretary would have disavowed their actions.
Her doctors are a trip. My age is definitely showing as the first time we meet them I believed it was ‘career day’ at the hospital. They walked into the examination room and I thought “How cute, these kids are dressed like real doctors” as they looked like they were about 12 years old. They introduced themselves and then I thought “Well, the class of 2010 has to start somewhere!” It was only later that we were told these two were the heads of their respective departments at this teaching hospital and Janice had actually been assigned to the A team.
From here on out it will be rather routine with chemo or other drugs administered every week and radiation to start some time down the road. We have not left each others side since we arrived so there has been no thought to returning to the hangar to work on the plane. That might change in a few weeks if she does well enough to be left on her own during the day. We will see.
Meanwhile, since she was down for the count, I have been brushing up on my cooking skills. It has been a while since I won her over with my culinary prowess so this seemed like a good time to make an impression.
All I needed was a little refresher, so she would give directions from the sofa and I would prepare the 5 star courses. We got off to a slow start when on our first day she instructed me to "saute" the meat. A half hour later I admitted that I couldn't find the "saute' in either a can or jar anywhere.
My cooking must have been pretty good because she said that she got well in no time and was up for taking over.
So, what is there to do around here?
Just because I am playing nurse maid doesn’t mean we are all dawdling. One of us has been taking advantage of our time to move ahead with a project that had been put on hold last summer due to the more important item at the top of the list. (Make airplane noises here) As much as I despised doing it, I spent many days last month crawling on my back over dirt and stones (there was not enough space to roll over) under the entire cabin with less than 3 inches (5 cm) of working space over my nose. In fact, in some areas I had to take the nails out of my shirt pocket to be able to crawl by.
Ahhhhh! Isn't retirement great?The goal was to insulate under the cabin floor and cover it with wire mesh to keep mice and other animals out. This meant working overhead with insulation raining down on my face the whole time. [I am not whining, I am merely describing the revolting working conditions that I heroically endured! ] This proved useful as we arrived two months earlier than usual and the temperatures really dropped at night. Further, it is our intention to install a heat pump & A/C combo in the future so I got all the ducting in place at the same time.
As long as I was acting like a mole, I thought it a good time to dig some footings. You see, as the cabin gets closer to being finished on the inside, we are growing less and less happy with the look on the outside. The logs look fine but the porch is way overdo for a complete re-do, as well as the shake siding and the need to enclose the open area outside between the ground and the floor. I know! Let’s make it a project!!!
Seriously, we will get to all of that eventually but the time has come to deal with some serious infrastructure issues. This cabin is well over 100 years old and was only intended to be a fishing cabin, not a real residence. So, it is not surprising that the logs rest on a foundation that is little more than piled rocks, albeit some pretty big ones. Nothing has budged in all that time so I am sure that it is fine. However, we have invested too much time, effort and money for it to be OK for the house simply resting on piles of rocks and calling that a foundation.
You're kidding, right?To that end, I crawled back under and dug footings at all proper locations and poured structural concrete in Sono tubes to create proper pilings and bolted them to structural Simpson ties. This is not required for any building permit so no inspection is necessary. This is just something I am doing out of an abundance of caution.
Old apple press, now floor lampWanting a break from such nasty tasks and having way too much free time on her hands, Janice got another great idea for something for me to do. Years ago, I had made an Oak apple press to make juice. I used it a few times but like you, concluded that at .79c a bottle the effort was not worth it. Regardless, it was great fun with the kids. Meanwhile, this cool looking but somewhat useless item was taking space. So last summer when we were traveling through the Adirondacks, we bought a lamp shade that was made of Birch bark. This month I finished the project and turned the whole shebang into a floor lamp.
Then, to give my favorite patient a safer place to walk around the island, I carved out an extension to our path with pick and shovel and covered it in cedar wood chips.
Officer wait, I can explain!
A funny thing happened on the way back from Canada. Within days of our arrival here, I was returning from Canada to the US in our car when I stopped for the usual border inspection. The officer asked me whose car I was driving and I told her that, of course, it was mine. She asked me for my registration and I realized that all I had in that car with me was my outdated year old registration. You see, usually, we fly from Europe to California first where we pick up our updated current registration to have with us when we arrive at the island.This time we flew to NY State directly for Janice’s treatment and my current registration was still at my mother in laws… and she was stuck in Prague as she was one of the thousands who could not fly due to the volcano ash sweeping across Europe. The border agent then asked for my insurance card. I began to panic as I realized that it was still in my briefcase at the island. Finally, the agent pointed out that my license plate was one digit off from my registration card and my plate was showing up in her computer as belonging to some Asian man's Honda.
Crap!
I was beginning to look and sound more like a convict by the minute, stammering with excuses and explanations that even I would have had trouble believing. Finally the inevitable happened when they asked me to hand them the car keys, get out of the vehicle keeping my hands in plain sight and go inside the office while they searched the car and dragged me over the coals to sort out my sordid tale. I had visions of being shipped off to Guantanamo dancing in my head.
Having found no contraband, illegal aliens in the trunk or any sign of shenanigans, I was released a couple of hours later. The problem was that I still had a mismatched registration card and license plates (a simple typo at the department of motor vehicles) that proved to be an absolute nightmare to resolve from 3000 miles away (5,000km) When I called California to ask what to do, their solution I was told, was simple... "just bring the car back to California".
Yea, right.
The real solution, as always, was knowing people. My ex boss found out some of the forms I would need. Then a friend of a friend who worked for the DMV coached us through the process. I had to mail my license plates back to California and wait for new ones to be issued. Meanwhile we were unable to enter Canada by car or drive our car until this was resolved which proved to be very awkward as our shore dock is in Canada and it is where we park. I have mentioned in these pages before how easy it is for us to get around by boat and that virtually everything we need (groceries, post office, pharmacy, church, etc) is within a short boat ride. Everything of course, except the Cancer center 90 miles away.
The process to complete this assignment required an unconventional, unsanctioned, back channel approach that prevents me from identifying the participants. Suffice it to say that had they been caught or captured, the secretary would have disavowed their actions.
