Tuesday, April 5, 2016

April 5, 2016

March turned out to be a pretty interesting month.  To kick off the month I ended up in Silver Cross Hospital for a couple days.  I went home from work on Monday March 1st and did not feel well.  Later that night I got fever, chills and just felt blah.  Tuesday morning being my day off, I felt lousy and nausea set in all day.  I never got out of bed really and hoped I would be better by morning to go to work.  Wednesday morning, I could not make it to work.  I think I can count the times on one hand that has happened on probably 30 years.  So, I stayed home and figured if I didn't feel better by Thursday morning, then I needed to get to a doctor.  Thursday I could not make it to work and barely had the energy to go to the Minute Clinic at Walgreens.  They said I was too sick for them to treat and I should go by ambulance to the emergency room at Silver Cross.  I opted for going to an urgent care nearby...they said the same thing.  I drove myself to Silver Cross emergency room and got admitted.  Where I felt lousy, I didn't feel "in-patient" bad.  To make a long story short, I ended up staying at Silver Cross from Thursday morning till Friday night with complications of the flu.  The oxygen level in my blood was too low to support function of my body.  I basically got 2 days of oxygen and a started on Tamiflu.  They didn't want to release me unless I took home an oxygen tank and set the house up for oxygen.  I declined and drove myself home and picked up a prescription for 3 more Tamiflu pills.  By Saturday morning, I went to the store and purchased an Oximeter so I could see how my blood oxygen levels were doing, they were bad but coming up.  By Saturday night I felt much better and my oxygen levels were also stabilizing.  I went in to work on that Sunday for over 10 hours as my desk was starting to look like a bomb hit it and as the week went on, I started to feel better and more often, better than I have felt in quite some time.  To be honest, I have felt like crap for 3 years now after a similar bout.  I don't feel like I ever truly got better. 

March was a very busy month.  I did several restoration workdays and a couple projects for the Master Naturalists.  It took about two weeks, but I put together a large information board on the Monarch project.  I don't know what or how they are going to use it, but I made it. 

I also signed on to a invasive plant phenology project.  The project entails going out between the 8th and 14th of each month and looking/reporting on the status of invasive species growth.  March's report showed honeysuckle starting to leaf out, autumn olive and buckthorn with bud swell and reed canary grass coming out of the ground.  Those reports are then sent to the Extension Forestry Dept to be added to a monthly report. 







I also did a few Star Wars events.  On Saturday, March 19th I headed to C2E2 at McCormick Place in my Hoth costume.  The focus of the day was to get a photo autographed by John Ratzenberger (of Cheers fame) who was a cast member for the Hoth scenes in "The Empire Strikes Back". 



Not only did I get a photo I had of him already signed by him, Kathy VanBueningen, Steve Mamman and I (All dressed in Hoth costumes) also took a special photo with him.  I don't have much of a budget and I said that day I spent all of my money on John Ratzenberger.  Autographs and photos of celebrities cost a bit of money.  Thankfully, I am not normally a "celebrity" person and don't generally bother with autographs.  I am also generally not a "Con" person, but had some interesting times through the course of the day.






The next day (March 20), I attended a Blue and Gold Cub Scout banquet in my X-Wing costume and brought Artoo along. 
The event was for the son of one of the Stormtroopers that lives in New Lenox.  I was very grateful that he came to the event for Mark and Sally Wieclaw and the New Lenox Relay for Life and thought it important to support those that supported me.  It was also a very interesting day. 



Spring is trying to break through, but the weather is all over the place.  We have had days in the upper 60's to low 70's and right now it is only in the upper 20's.  I have been taking plants in and out for the last two weeks.  It has also been WINDY!!  Some days the winds hit 60 mph.  A possible storm was headed our way so I decided to see if my generator worked.  I could not get it started and there seemed to be something else wrong with it so I had to call the local repair shop to pick it up.  After about 10 days, they brought it back (over $100.00) and I hope it works.  I have to get out there this week and try to get it started.  I have also transplanted some seedlings and moved other seedlings like the tomatoes to a bigger pot.  I hope the weather straightens out a bit so I can leave the plants out for longer periods of time.

I also continued work on the display piece for the Joliet Library Star Wars Day event.  I started that in February making the curtain panels and the pvc stands for the panels. 


I got that all done and painted and now have moved on to making the new graphics to replace the sheet of plexi in the current Hoth Vidscreen.  I got the new plexi cut and masked and painted the lines that will divide the display into 3 parts.  I have my ideas on what to put in the 3 panels, but am not too clear on exact layout.  Working on this project made me haul out the Cricut machine. 



Where I was not too happy working with the machine on the Hoth project, new graphics purchased on line have made some of this job easier as purchasing the real deal is easier than trying to create your own graphics to use.  Today I am going to try to get some of the layout on the plexi and more of it cut.  Getting the stuff laid out will be a pain. 





And, since I have not gotten to the movies in quite some time, I want to get out to see "Divergent-Allegiant" which is the last of the Divergent series of books.  It has been so long since I read the book, I don't remember much other than "Tris" gets killed at the end...let's see if the movie follows the book.  I suspect that it will as the previous movies in the series followed the books pretty close.