Healthy and unhealthy

I changed my primary health care provider recently and it will be 12 May before I am able to go visit him for the first time and yet I was not feeling well at all yesterday and so I called to make a same day appointment, seems one must do this first thing in the morning and not wait till noon so I did not get an appointment. After talking to the in charge RN it was determined that my case needed to be handled with utmost care and concern as my case obviously needed delicate care so I was asked if there was someone who could take me to the hospital to which I said my wife would not be at home till 5:30 PM so this nurse said she would call 911 for me and was the address correct? My opinion of ambulance people is very low, sorry Alex but in Washington it is critical they get an IV started before they start transporting a person. Anyway I asked if this nurse, Diana later found her name to be Stephanie, would allow me to try to get in touch with my wife before she called 911 to which she agreed. Before this I asked if she thought I could go to the Kaiser office just a few blocks from our house to where they were and was told the Keyto-acidosus they suspected I was sufferring with was life threatening and the once a year sun we had would not be good for me. So I called Diana and told her what they had said and would she come take me to the hospital. I don’t know how it works that it takes her twenty minutes or more to get to work and she was home yesterday in ten minutes and I didn’t even hear any squealing of tires.
Anyway, back to the story. We got to the hospital and waited a very short time before we were taken back to a room where they would be able to strip me to see how I worked; normally it takes three to four hours of waiting. I guess everyone was being real careful not to spoil their one day in the sun. After I was stripped and strapped to the table they drove spikes in me and we left 5 hours later with a result of no keytones but a slight rise in the abc’s of my chf or something heart failure. Anyway I felt like a new man with all the new things they had added, some bands around my wrist and a band aid or two. I also felt like a newborn as I was extremely hungry. And at last I have decided to leave my leggs to science.
All the way from home Diana said that I had almost made it a whole year without going to the hospital. When we got to the hospital she told the same thing to each nurse and doctor we saw. Diana started telling people that we had been to the hospital at least once a year since 1987 and I just let her say what she was going to say.
Before we left I was out at the nurses station to ask something or other and the doctor taking care of me started reading my health history and thought it was so funny she looked up and saw me and asked if I had written it. After I had gone back into the room this same doctor came in and asked if she could share it around. We said ok but I have since thought I should have asked for copyright rights.
Finally I was supposed to be unhealthy but actually we can still make it more than a year between hospitalizations and therefore I am still healthy

Working again (I wish)

Along the northeastern border of Ohio was a small town about thirty miles west of the border of Pennsylvania right next to lake Erie is a small town Redbird. Anyway I was sent there to help move the computer to Raleigh, NC where this British based company had decided to reestablish their headquarters. I went there to get to know the people of the company and to take over for the head of the data processing department as the previous head had said that she would not leave Ohio for any reason. How narrow minded I believe as I have been in several locations around the US.

I remember the trip up there was like a visit to a third world country. I flew to Pittsburg, Pennsylvania rented a car and drove to this small town. Pittsburg was the last bit of a US that I saw and it was not that great. While traveling west north west from Pittsburg I was shocked at the number of toll roads I had to go through. I probably spent twenty dollars just on tolls! And Pennsylvania was probably the most strict state with speed limits I have seen. I was warned and didn’t get any tickets, but almost as I was two miles from Ohio when I sped up. I should have waited for the half mile point. And to answer your questions I was stopped and lectured as I had a NC drivers license, if it had been from Pennsylvania or Ohio I definitely would have received a ticket. I was told that my name and license number would alert any future Pennsylvania police

There were a young couple who moved with the company who were not married though they had marital relations and I could never understand this as both were in their early twenties and he was an alcoholic and she looked like a two legged bull dog. After getting back to Raliegh I worked with this guy, she worked in a different department, for several months before I was called into the comptrollers office and told to fire him by this totally British guy who had no idea that I was at the end of my rope, so when I refused to fire him he wanted my resignation then and there so I called my bosses and told them, it was no more than twenty minutes when I was called back to the comptrollers office again and begged to stay. The drunkard was an ingenious person with programming but it was only a little time longer before they fired him

I guess that is my story for today. See you tomorrow.

Taxes

That is taxes not Texas Alex. Diana and I paid all of our meager savings to the IRS for taxes that we owed so Alex could go to Texas to start his life. You see we paid the government as much as the government paid Alex to move to Texas. I guess one might say we are still supporting our children. Well this is not my story, I just thought I would give Alex a hard time.

Since we paid so much on taxes – Diana and I have been left this week as broke as scrooge was mean. We have been waiting all week for the disability check to get here from the insurance company. I thought it would have been here on Monday – then Tuesday – then Wednesday – then today and it finally got here today. I was going stir crazy in that I couldn’t have even gone to Wal-Mart for some water as we were that poor. Finally I was going out of my mind and remembered Diana’s little basket of loose change that we never seem to use except for times like today. So I took about 1/4th of it and put it in a little sandwich bag so I would have some money for lunch as I just wanted out of the house after all the waiting. The check came after lunch today bye the way. While I was at the mall getting ready to eat a burrito I sat at one of the tables and dumped the cash out on the table to count how much money I actually had and while counting I dropped several nickels to the floor. I knew where they were so I left them while I finished counting. Well, some lady came over and picked them up for me and I said “Thank You, I am just counting the money to see what I can afford”. I can imagine now what it must have looked like (A little old man with no legs and no money trying to get something to eat).

Well, I went over to "Taco Time" to get a burrito and as I ordered and was waiting for the waiter to tell me how much I owed, this man came over and started talking to the waiter. I was getting upset at the rudeness of the guy to come and cut in so when he turned to me and said “I’ve got it” I didn’t understand what he was talking about and asked what so he told me again and I finally had sense enough to say thank you. And as the waiter gave him the change he dropped it into my sandwich bag for which I thanked him again. Then after I went over to the tables and started eating, as I had not brought out my water, this same man brought me a large drink, that I had not even asked the waiter for!

I told Diana that I wasn’t going to wait for any more money, when I need anything I would just keep the dark glasses on and hold out my hat! That should bring in a couple hundred a day.

Love you all.

Do you want some more of my working life

Or would you like some more of me and my life? I guess I will tell you of my impressions in each location I worked. Will that be better?

I explained why I decided to move to Spokane and I believe it was best for my family but I really struggled while there and because these struggles are personal I will not explain them. Then I was offered the opportunity of taking a job in NC which I wish I had thought more carefully on. Even if it was the favorite job I ever had, I wonder how much my family suffered and therefore I think now that I should have thought more on the subject. When I first went to NC I was awed by the beautiful dogwoods blooming all around and I had seen some postcards showing the beautiful fall season in NC. So just the beauty of the place was a big reason why I wanted to move there, but we had just been through a very cold and snowy winter in Spokane, snow on the ground from early Oct. to early Apr., and I did not want to face another, the weather was quite warm in NC and it was far enough south that I didn’t think we would have to face another cold winter like in Spokane. So I accepted the first job offered in NC but wonder if Texas might have been better.

There are so many memories of the travels I did while the family stayed in NC and I will share most with you as we go along but for today I think it will be enough to talk about two or three. So we should go chronologically and will begin with Newtown, CT where I went after working for GE in the Research Triangle Park. The first time I went there it was a November day and while NC was so beautiful with colorful leaves Newtown was plenty of trees but they were all completely bare, not even one leaf. Well I went there to work for DuPont, Inc. and the entire nine months I was there I was miserable except when I went to New York City to visit on some weekends. The reason they wanted me there in Newtown was that they were switching from an IBM to a Hewlett-Packard and since I had switched the other way they thought I would be a great help.

The next place I went to was Allendale, SC where I worked for Westinghouse. One of my experiences here in Allendale was that I went for brunch one Saturday morning and as I was eating at a local restraint when two young men were coming to eat aso and as the one closest to a pickup sitting there and he ran his hand along the edge of the pickup bed while talking to his friend and all of a sudden he didn’t have an arm. You see there was a live alligator in the bed of the pickup. Why the alligator was there has me baffled but apparently they moved alligators in that fashion. Why one would stop to eat breakfast while moving an alligator is a mystery but ill bet he doesn’t do that again.

While working here I worked a great deal and one week I worked 106 hours, to which my boss asked why I had taken Sunday off.

And on with my working life

One of the reasons I went to work at KeyTronic was that they were using an Hewlett-Packard computer which I fell in love with while working at the City of Moses Lake and I wanted to continue working with the HP. Ask Diana and she will tell you that I was more in love with my computer than I was with her. It might even still be true if I were still able to work. Anyway, I still wanted to work with the HP while KeyTronic was converting to work with a larger IBM computer. Because of this switch and because I was sick and tired of working as a supervisor, and not doing a good job because of it, I was afraid that I might loose my job with KeyTronic so I started looking for a new job in Oregon, in California, in Texas, in North Carolina, and in Minnesota. Well as part of switching to the IBM several of us at KeyTronic were sent to a training session in Winston-Salem, NC and on returning from this training I was totally convinced that I would love to live in NC, so when I was offered a job at around the same rate as I was earning at KeyTronic $46,000.00 per year, I accepted it. With a little talking to Diana we decided that we would be better off in NC than we would be doing in Spokane in a couple years as Spokane was in a terribly depressed state about then.

After taking the job in NC I was totally in love with the equipment I had to work with but also with the job I was doing with General Electric Semiconductor. I worked with the HP 950 once again but also I was working as a systems programmer where I wrote the code to determine when we would need more disc space or cpu megs or tape drives and so forth. We ran two systems where the first is what was used on the semiconductor floors and the second was to always be completely in sync so there was never any down time for errors nor for backups as backups could be done on the in sync system. When there was an error on the system that was normally on the floor we could switch from that t the in sync system within two minutes, 60 seconds was the fastest I was aware of. Anyway this programming was done with the Pascal programming language and a little SPL which was used for the system to system communications.

And this is the very first job I worked at in the consulting effort. Again tomorrow.

Our weekend!

Calixta where she belongs at home












with her husband.

Kristy, Diana, Keary and Calixta at home.

Kristy, Tonia, Diana and Calixta the belle of the ball.

And Tonia, Kristy and Calixta at home...

And more of my working life…

When Calixta was born it was early on a Sunday morning and I had just accepted a job giving me a $30,000.00 a year raise. And Calixta almost killed Diana but all I could think of was obtaining that great big paycheck. Vallen probably laughs as he probably makes that much per month with his new job. Anyway I think I was the biggest jerk around as I ran off to get that job after Calixta was born. We then lived in Moses Lake, Washington making three of our six children being in Moses Lake or Alex, Andrew and Calixta or the little ones as they came to be known to us in our family. Cathy and Kristy were born in Laredo, Texas. Leaving poor Ciria to be the black er lost sheep of the family and the only child being born in Othello, Washington, which she should be very proud of as that is were I graduated High School from. One might say that most children were born in Washington State. The one good thing about the day Calixta was born was that Verl and Michael-Jean Hansen also had a baby that same day, however, this baby was a very pre-mature baby and I was asked to help give the baby a blessing. Spiritually I was doing a little better than I was doing with Diana.

Well I ran off to work my fourth job after college in Spokane, WA. Then I hurried Diana to come up there to help find the house we would live in. another silly or thoughtless action on my part. I was batting zero in my familial abilities but quite high in my work abilities. I didn’t even have to interview for this or any further jobs as my name and work ethic and ability got to be quite well known especially along the east coast.

Working at KeyTronic Inc. I was given the ability to work in a managing position and found that I was not the type of person to give one of my workers a raise and not another. I had one individual who I continually found sleeping at his desk and I could not convince myself to fire him, he had struggles as he was trying to move while working or something else, instead I kept finding excuses for him. Never again did I want to be in a management position although I did find myself there once for a few months while working as a consultant. I even remember the name of this company “Shakespeare fishing equipment Inc.” I had to look it up. LOL

The only person I was responsible to was the controller and that made no sense to me as the controller should be responsible for finances and not for the manufacturing part of the Computer Science staff should be under the manufacturing manager or VP. I always get upset over the near-sightedness of some business men. What does a comptroller know about the workings of a shelving sequence? Most would say nothing or give you a dead answer as they really know nothing and are trying to impress everyone around.

Anyway after working for KeyTronic I moved cross country to work as a consultant. My favorite way of working in North Carolina where I moved the family to and most if not all can now speak as if they are from the south. Bye for now.

And finally Calixta!

Calixta was such a disappointment to me that I cried when Diana told me she was expecting once again. To be honest Calixta was not a disappointment but the fact that we were going to have to support another child and all the pampers and all the clothes and allll the shoes and all the food. And at the amount of money I was earning. I just couldn’t think of how we were going to survive having another child. Calixta would probably say that I never forgot that moment, but I will never forget the great blessings that were poured out on all of my family since we were willing to support another of our Heavenly Father’s spirits.

Diana and I found how much our Heavenly Father loves us and how much He will bless us with if we simply follow His commandments. And I remember one of those commands is to be fruitful and multiply and I am so grateful that we did follow this commandment as we could. I now realize that everyone is unable to follow this commandment, but many are to selfish to follow this commandment as they do not realize how much Heavenly Father will bless those who do follow each of His commandments. Isn’t it amazing the efforts satan goes to to convince us that we only need follow one rule – that of being selfish.

It is amazing to me all of the blessings Diana and I have shared in through our lives while raising our children and then I feel that I have not yet done something that I should have done already and for this reason I have slowed down a great deal on the life story. If I finish it I might have finished something that is keeping me alive. Maybe there is something completely different but I have no clue what it might be if it is not this then I think it might be a mission, as I understand that one is forgiven his/her sins for every child of god who one teaches the gospel to and must follow ones patriarchal blessing.

As Calixta grew older she was such a delight to us as she has always been an extremely fun person. I was extremely frustrated with Calixta as she turned a teenager and started hanging with a bunch of, in my opinion, losers. I can think of not one who has made something of her life except Calixta. I realize I should have been kinder to these girls as Diana was, however all I could see was the loss of one of my Heavenly Fathers children and I didn’t think Andrew would such a thing. Just goes to show you that no one might be perfect without my or our proper teachings. Hopefully by teaching the gospel to a rew people I might be forgiven all the wrongs I have done my family.

Calixta was a challenge for me to accept and she was always one to correct me with what I found to be what she had been taught in church and I would be very embarrassed at what I should have done.

I was so proud to see five of my six children in the celestial and the sealing rooms when Calixta was married and I wondered what had caused Andrew to decide not to follow what Diana and I had tried to teach our children.