More bureaucracy at work
As luck would have it, when I went to the police station to explain what was going on, the other notorious publican who worked at the police station said he could notarize the other woman's signature since he did not see her sign the original police clearance letter. After several minutes of screwing around with the deal, he finally called the other woman at home, and finally notarized the damn document. Of course, by the time that was all sorted out on a Saturday afternoon, there was no place open that I could make arrangements for sending the clearance certification to Houston. Long story not quite so long, I ended up waiting to send the document until Monday morning, but it has arrived today so hopefully, some time soon I will have the new Brazilian visa.
Sunday I got my kayak out and went fishing. I went to Keystone Lake and put the kayak in at Washington Irving Cove. I was amazed at how much debris there was in the lake, especially since Hurricane Ike did not have much impact in northern Oklahoma, but there was all kinds of logs and stuff all over the place and the lake was quite high. I managed to catch one striped bass for my efforts, but there is some humor in how all of that worked out. As I was trying to practice catch and release, the fish flopped as I was going to remove the lure from its mouth. I ended up getting a dorsal fin spin stabbed into the palm of my left hand and as I jerked my hand back, the fish managed to break the line and flopped once on my kayak and then into the water taking my lure with him. I suppose it was only fair, I hurt him catching him, so he hurt me as I was releasing him. But I would rather he hadn't taken my lure with him. That was the only fish I managed to get to the boat. I think I had some other strikes during the outing but because of the debris, the fish managed to get away using debris to help them get off the line. The debris also didn't do a lot of good things to my kayak either. When I called it a day, I noticed lost of places on the hull had been gouged a bit by running over the semi submerged logs and stuff.
When I got home from fishing I found my wife was on the telephone talking to our daughter-in-law. The daughter-in-law was suffering a bit of anxiety over the upcoming deal with going to court to get permission to take her daughter with her when Erik gets posted to Italy. A side note to that is that Katie (my step granddaughter) has told her teachers at school that she wishes Erik was her father instead of her real dad. (Kind of makes a dad proud to hear that she prefers his son to her own father, but also makes one wonder what is up with her dad and the teenage step siblings.) Anyway, Lisa, Katie and Lisa's dad are all going to Hawaii next month as kind of an anniversary gift for Erik and Lisa and because he can afford to make the trip. Hawaii sounds like a pretty good compromise too rather than going all of the way to Korea. I am sure part of it too, is that Lisa's (daughter-in-law for those keeping score at home) dad wanted an excuse to go to Hawaii anyway.
Yesterday, besides sending off the police clearance letter, I got to have my annual trip to the cardiologist for my bio impedance scan, ekg and echo grams of both my heart and carotid arteries. I also got the results from last week's blood tests and my cholesterol was impressively improved. LDL was down to 39 and HDL was 47 which was considerably better than a few years ago. The results from yesterday were all pretty good, heart showed good flow, ekg was good, blood pressure was 110 over 65. The only fly in the oatmeal was that my carotid arteries still show a little bit of blockage (10% on one side and 20% on the other). The cardiologist was not concerned about those numbers though as they were the same as last year and are natural enough with aging. He said that it would take a couple of years to start seeing improvement and the numbers had not gone up, which could have been up by an additional 30% if the diet, medications and exercise had not been working. He was so pleased with my results he even told me that I could halve the zetia prescription and probably in 6 months we could cut the crestor prescription in half as well.
This morning, I had planned to do this update, but it kind of got put on hold because while I was online, the emails started coming fast and furious. I submitted my travel request for the course in Houston that I am supposed to attend. (Anybody besides me find it odd that I have to submit a travel request for a course the company wants me to take?) I also got the preliminary flights for the trip to Houston and back. (I decided not to drive as after Ike, it might not be a very good time to take my kayak down to the Gulf.) I also spent the time doing a couple of online questionnaires for the course and another one survey for the office about how they are doing with helping employees to have job satisfaction, etc. Then there were several rounds of email about the upcoming project in Brazil, but I won't bore you to death with any of those details. Fortunately, they are not things I have to deal with just yet.
And as I was writing this post, another email came with my flight details I think, so I will sign off now and check that out.
Sunday I got my kayak out and went fishing. I went to Keystone Lake and put the kayak in at Washington Irving Cove. I was amazed at how much debris there was in the lake, especially since Hurricane Ike did not have much impact in northern Oklahoma, but there was all kinds of logs and stuff all over the place and the lake was quite high. I managed to catch one striped bass for my efforts, but there is some humor in how all of that worked out. As I was trying to practice catch and release, the fish flopped as I was going to remove the lure from its mouth. I ended up getting a dorsal fin spin stabbed into the palm of my left hand and as I jerked my hand back, the fish managed to break the line and flopped once on my kayak and then into the water taking my lure with him. I suppose it was only fair, I hurt him catching him, so he hurt me as I was releasing him. But I would rather he hadn't taken my lure with him. That was the only fish I managed to get to the boat. I think I had some other strikes during the outing but because of the debris, the fish managed to get away using debris to help them get off the line. The debris also didn't do a lot of good things to my kayak either. When I called it a day, I noticed lost of places on the hull had been gouged a bit by running over the semi submerged logs and stuff.
When I got home from fishing I found my wife was on the telephone talking to our daughter-in-law. The daughter-in-law was suffering a bit of anxiety over the upcoming deal with going to court to get permission to take her daughter with her when Erik gets posted to Italy. A side note to that is that Katie (my step granddaughter) has told her teachers at school that she wishes Erik was her father instead of her real dad. (Kind of makes a dad proud to hear that she prefers his son to her own father, but also makes one wonder what is up with her dad and the teenage step siblings.) Anyway, Lisa, Katie and Lisa's dad are all going to Hawaii next month as kind of an anniversary gift for Erik and Lisa and because he can afford to make the trip. Hawaii sounds like a pretty good compromise too rather than going all of the way to Korea. I am sure part of it too, is that Lisa's (daughter-in-law for those keeping score at home) dad wanted an excuse to go to Hawaii anyway.
Yesterday, besides sending off the police clearance letter, I got to have my annual trip to the cardiologist for my bio impedance scan, ekg and echo grams of both my heart and carotid arteries. I also got the results from last week's blood tests and my cholesterol was impressively improved. LDL was down to 39 and HDL was 47 which was considerably better than a few years ago. The results from yesterday were all pretty good, heart showed good flow, ekg was good, blood pressure was 110 over 65. The only fly in the oatmeal was that my carotid arteries still show a little bit of blockage (10% on one side and 20% on the other). The cardiologist was not concerned about those numbers though as they were the same as last year and are natural enough with aging. He said that it would take a couple of years to start seeing improvement and the numbers had not gone up, which could have been up by an additional 30% if the diet, medications and exercise had not been working. He was so pleased with my results he even told me that I could halve the zetia prescription and probably in 6 months we could cut the crestor prescription in half as well.
This morning, I had planned to do this update, but it kind of got put on hold because while I was online, the emails started coming fast and furious. I submitted my travel request for the course in Houston that I am supposed to attend. (Anybody besides me find it odd that I have to submit a travel request for a course the company wants me to take?) I also got the preliminary flights for the trip to Houston and back. (I decided not to drive as after Ike, it might not be a very good time to take my kayak down to the Gulf.) I also spent the time doing a couple of online questionnaires for the course and another one survey for the office about how they are doing with helping employees to have job satisfaction, etc. Then there were several rounds of email about the upcoming project in Brazil, but I won't bore you to death with any of those details. Fortunately, they are not things I have to deal with just yet.
And as I was writing this post, another email came with my flight details I think, so I will sign off now and check that out.