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[yogi]

I've become more philosophical now that I'm retired. That's mostly because I don't do much else but think and type at this keyboard. My forced retirement from Motorola didn't result in denial, but I always told people I was in between jobs. A lot of personal things came up during that period of time to make me glad I didn't have to go to work each day, but I would have if the right opportunity came along. That first year out of the office was spent looking for a new job. It took that long for me to realize it isn't going to happen. Oh, yes, I could have been a WalMart greeter any time I wanted it, but I needed to keep my dignity in tact. I had to question all that pride when during that first year I happened to meet my senior manager at Home Depot. He was two levels up from me at Motorola, but I met him as an associate in the power tools department. He still had kids at home and needed some sort of income after unemployment insurance ran out. That was quite the epiphany, but he was doing what he had to do. Anything to keep the family solvent. My point here is that for some people it's extremely difficult to stop working. The more you put into your life prior to retirement age, the more difficult it is to stop. That's why you see a lot of major sports figures joining some inferior team after they made their name elsewhere. They simply can't stop being under pressure to win all the time.

All I have to go by is what you write here, and all of that tells me you have been working full throttle all your life. Telling you to stop and smell the roses while you still can does not compute. That doesn't mean you are not happy with yourself; I understand that. Part of your activities are done out of necessity, but I think you actually need to keep active because you don't know anything else. So ... when you run out of oxygen, it's quite a shock to your system and to your mind. You are as mentally sharp as anyone I know who is your age. In many cases more brilliant than the average light bulb. The irony is that the body is programmed to stop functioning at some point. That seems like a very cruel trick of Nature. You are being forced to slow down out of physical necessity. Whose idea was that? Sadly, you are one of many people I've met who are frustrated because their body can't keep up with their mind. Losing mobility can be devastating. I can only say this as an outside observer, but, your mind is as fresh as spring daisies. I have a feeling it will stay that way until it fades to black. I've not met many like you in that regard.

[Kellemora]

I have had a fortunate life Yogi. Being raised in a large family business helped with some things. But my personal endeavors in other industries helped to round out my knowledge, even if it wasn't the best knowledge, it simply meant I knew how to do things most other people never even though about doing.
From the time I graduated from high school, besides working for other companies for a few years. Prior to that period, and again afterwards, I was always off on Tuesdays. Now Tuesdays was a slow day for most businesses, and back then they were glad to take you on a tour of their business. I was a curious sort and loved to see how things were made, so went to visit numerous manufacturing facilities. Even worked for a few for short periods of time to learn more.

As a child, I loved to take things apart to see how they worked. Many of those items I had to destroy in the process, and some that were broken I took apart and figured out why, fixed and reassembled them. Sometimes so they worked better than the original.
All of this got stored in my gray matter, hi hi. But the key here is, I learned to think outside the box. Use things from different industries to solve a problem, often in a unique way most would never have thought of.

My biggest problem was, and I learned this real quick. I hated working for others, especially if they were closed minded to new ideas or ways of doing things. My dad's heart attack came at the most opportune time for me. The company I was working for and planned to stay with began changing the rules and how they did things, and in such a way it would shut me out. So, out of family necessity, I stepped in to fill my dad's shoes and became manager of the cut flower shop.
I made many changes while in that position, most of which dad kept when he returned to work. But like me now, he was stuck behind a desk and couldn't do much of anything else with only 18% of his heart functional, and he was getting worse rapidly.
I won't touch on the many boring things I did to make changes, other than to say we were much more productive, and all the employee's were much happier. I nearly double sales while cutting back labor costs by a third at least, and without laying anyone off either. Just didn't need to make them work super long hours and pay out so much overtime. Plus adding the computer helped with things like driver routing. Still took the same amount of time to deliver, but establishing the routes now took seconds instead of an hour or more for the drivers each day.
You already know about my developing a planting system and opening that company which got the slats pulled out from under me.

I worked in the trades to get my plumbing license, electricians license, and later my general contractors license.
I had HVAC, Natural Gas, HazMat cleanup, and a few other certificates too. Which is how I was able to make my home renovation business profitable, up until 9/11 that is.

But more than anything else, I hated dealing with customers and clients, which is why all of my little businesses I started were sold off, until I hit something where I only had to deal with one person, my mfgr. rep. hi hi. And then I worked with him until he would only order a large order like six or seven times a year. To me, that was heaven and let me go about doing other things.

All in all, I had a good life. Usually poor and scraping to make ends meet, but at least I was happy most of the time!
I'm still happy and learned to do what I'm physically able to do, even if it doesn't bring in any money, a little bit sometimes, but just enough I don't sink, at least not yet.

I've been offered jobs at a few hardware stores in the electrical and plumbing departments, but turned them down. Mainly because it would mean working for someone else again, and on the schedules they would assign to me. For such low pay too, would it really be worth it? Well, I'm unable to now, so no matter.

[yogi]

I sensed it from all your previous writings, but you saying that "thinking outside the box" is your hallmark hits home. I've run into an unbelievably high number of incidents where the "not invented here" syndrome curtailed if not blocked progress. We have taken note of it a zillion times here in these forums while talking Microsoft/Linux topics. They each remain in their well established ruts because the won't concede there may be a better solution than the corporate business model. Those are obvious instances, but I've run into it with individual people more times than I can count. I've often talked to people who lamented about how difficult their lives have been. Well, yeah. Do the same thing constantly and you will get the same results every time.

One of my flaws (yes, I actually have one or two) is that I don't think outside the box often enough. There is a high degree of comfort in repeating a process so that you don't have to think about what you are doing. But, as I noted above, there are times when that predictable outcome is not acceptable. That's when the "do something different" concept kicks in. And, it usually solves the problem. This notion of changing methods, sometimes radically, came out of a few books I've read on the power of positive thinking (thank you Norman Vincent Peale). One of the shows on the public broadcast network in Missouri has to do with Growing Bolder. It's presented by a guy who is at least my age and interviewing a lot of old timers who are enjoying their Golden Years because they remain positive and active. To be honest this guy turns me off with his candy sweet advice, but the concepts are the same as the ones I've embraced since my early thirties.

So, here we are thinking about how long we will remain here. That's something to consider, of course, but it's not positive thinking nor is it outside the old timers thinking box. When I was care giver to mom the hospice people told me that part of my mission was to help her die with dignity. Well mom was special to begin with but that dignity stayed in tact all the time she was conscious. After her memorial services I had to write thank you notes to all the people who gave something in her memory. The thank you note included a picture of mom dressed in a scarf she received as a gift and made her look like a Ninja. Yeah, an 88 year old Ninja, and I'm sure she is still kicking butt wherever she is.

[Kellemora]

You are a very smart man Yogi and know your stuff.
All I can say about your above comments is WOW, dead on!

You would laugh at my outdoor exhaust ashtray, hi hi.
I think I sent a pix of it once a long time ago.
It consisted only of things I had available in my junk box or sitting around my office.
The main components are a Blower Motor from a discarded dishwasher, a Spaghetti Canister, a Peanuts can, the offset pour spout Funnel from the day of the original oil cans, and a swimming pool hose.
Other than replacing the motor every few years, it has worked now for over 15 years for me, hi hi.

I only had a couple pictures of Ruth because she never allowed her picture to be taken.
But I do treasure having the couple I do have.
She did appear in a few other group setting pictures, but always facing away from the camera.

It does make some folks uncomfortable when they are around me, because I'm just too positive for them.
In a way that is good, those negative people tend to stay away from me, hi hi.

[yogi]

It is very kind of you to cater to my ego, Gary, and I love it. LOL I spent most of my life feeling inferior because I didn't know enough, but I did take to learning as much as I could. I'm looking a lot smarter in my old age because, well, there is no competition. I don't have to struggle to keep my job and my family is all out of the house and on their own now. So, what else is there for me to do but pontificate?

You and I have a number of common interests. Even those things we disagree on are due to the fact we are both interested in them. Many of my uncles from both sides of the family were mechanically inclined to one degree or another. Those who were not were alcoholics. Visiting the office you have above your garage would be like reaching Nirvana. I probably would smile at most of what you did there and certainly would laugh at an invention or two of yours. It would not be condescending but instead an affirmation that being part of the establishment is folly. I think I would look at your ventilation contraption with awe because I can appreciate re-purposing common objects laying around the house, or garage in your case. Perhaps we are kindred spirits, but I look around here and have nothing, or very little, to show for it. I did make this here computer, but that's about all I can brag about after 36 years of electronics with Motorola. Part of the reason I like communicating with you is because you are indeed proactive and have many proofs of your abilities close at hand. I like a guy who can show me results. I'd hire you but I know you don't like working for other people.

[Kellemora]

As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. And when you are flat broke, you use whatever you can get your hands on that will do the job.

I should clarify something here. My office is on the ground floor, actually underground or earth sheltered if you prefer. Not the whole garage, just the back part, like it was dug into a hillside. The windows that face out the back are only 1 foot above grade. Then on the sides of the garage, the land slopes downhill so the garage door and man door are flush with the ground level.
Originally, this garage had two car park areas, and one lawn mower park area with a smaller width overhead door.
The two east side overhead doors, a car door and a utility door were removed and new blocks set it place, and one man door installed.
When I built this office, I built it in the back east or southeast corner. Front to back it is a couple of feet shorter than from the front of the garage to the back, and it's width is about 4 feet less than half the width of the garage.
Before I built my office, I used a CAD/CAM program and designed several different possible uses for this garage.
At the time, both of Debi's parents were still living, and I also had no idea I would ever buy this house for Debi.
But still had in my head the tales her dad told me about wanting Debi to live here, and the city refused another dwelling on the property.
So, although it would probably never be built. I had a full-bath inside and to the right of the man door, a small kitchen to the left of the man door. A hallway down the middle of the garage, which would also make this office area as master bedroom, and allow eventually for two more bedrooms on the west end of the garage, if it were no longer used for a garage. If it was to be maintained as a garage, I showed a 1 hour firewall, between the car parking area and the rest of the garage apartment, only now it would only two bedrooms instead of three. A smaller bedroom would have become the office.

Getting away from that for a minute. Again, long before we bought this house, but while we were living here in a single room. Right after Debi's father died, and I had to take care of Debi's mom. I started redesigning our bedroom area, taking into consideration the existing kitchen, and all the wasted space that up until I came was unused.
They had a huge cold air return from the den with the big metal box inside the kitchen. It had a shelf over it that ran from the metal box to the north wall of the kitchen. A washer and dryer sat tight up against the front of this shelf, and a wire rack shelf stand was on top of the shelf over the metal box, and simple curtain hung from the shelf to hide the metal box. And that is how they used the kitchen for 30 some odd years, or however long after they got a furnace. Prior to that heat was via free standing stoves and a fireplace came later.

What I did after a lot of careful CAD/CAM work, was shift the bedroom door to the north by about a foot and a half.
Rebuilt a new wall in front of the metal box in the kitchen. Made a cabinet over the metal box built into the wall. Then on the Den side of the wall, installed a 4 foot wide 16 inch deep closet for linens with many shelves inside.
They gained much more storage space in the kitchen with the built in cabinet, and actually 4 more inches because I thi in walled the back of the cabinet so it was between the studs, as far as storage space goes.
On the bedroom side of the wall I added two 4-foot wide closets, both 18 inches deep for clothes, with two shelves. And in between the two closets an alcove for an armoire.
After that I tackled the bathroom. Then turned the original living room into a bedroom, Debi's office now.
It wasn't until after Debi's mom passed away that I started the kitchen renovation, and after I bought the house for Debi.

[yogi]

Given all the times we talked about your office refuge, you would have thought that I had a better picture of the circumstances. You have in fact explained it before, but perhaps not in as much detail as you did here. My image was of you sitting in a room above your garage and detached from the main living quarters. In reality your garage/home is identical to my Old Missouri Home. The house here is built into a slope as is yours. The main difference here is that there are three flat levels. The street level is where our front door and main house with attached garage sits. It looks like any other house in the neighborhood, but our basement is different. The north side of the basement is dug into the hillside and the south side is open with windows and a sliding door. Thus the front door is on one level and the basement door is on another level about eight feet lower. My back yard extends maybe twenty feet out from the basement door at which point it takes a dive again, down another six feet. The back edge of my property rests on flat land, and it is on that flat land which all the row houses are build. Thus I can stand in my kitchen and look out the window to see dozens of row houses. From the basement I'm below their roof line but above their ground floor. I love the walk out basement but cutting the grass on these slopes taxes all my energy. Good thing I have a 4WD mower. LOL

We custom build the last house but had an architect do the detailed drawings. It was a simple rectangular ranch style with full basement. We never finished off the basement and sold the house with gray concrete walls still untouched. The house was about ten feet from the flood plane that surround the drainage ditch going through the property. We had some scary moments when we got the 100 year rains but no water in the basement. However, I always feared the worse and put no effort into making that lower level look livable. Besides, I had many decades of "stuff" to store down there and it didn't need knotty pine walls. There were one or two houses in that neighborhood that had walkout basements. I like the idea but they were not what I have here. They were regular basements with a dug out entry from the outside. Well I figured that dug out part was the perfect place for rain water to build up and never attempted anything like it. Here, any flood waters coming down the street might surround my house on it's way down the hills into the kitchens and living rooms of those row houses. We have a sump pump here, but I don't think it ever went off'; it hardly ever stopped at the old house. So that's one less worry plus a dream basement design. It's not looking like I'll finish off this one either, but a full living apartment could easily be made down there. I doubt that it will ever get filled with as much "stuff" as the old house had, but we are working on it.

[Kellemora]

My house here is near the top of Rodgers Ridge, a foothill to the Great Smoky Mountains. My property actually runs to the top of the Ridge. We are on the North Face so don't see the sunrise until an hour after everyone else, hi hi. No chance of being flooded up here.

Ironically, my home in Creve Coeur was also near the top of the hill. Olive Blvd. was above us, about level with my roof, but my neighbors roof below me was below my grade level, so we should have never got flooded at all. However, we got flooded out twice, both times due to illegal activities done by contractors when building large buildings near us. Like the bank above us and the medical building to the right of us. In both cases they ran storm water into the sanitary sewer system which is illegal, but they got by with it without fines or penalties. And of course our insurance paid nothing because it came in through the sewer system.

Here my house is parallel with the street, and the garage is about 50 feet behind the house and set at a slight angle. Debi's dad didn't want it that way, but the city insisted before they gave him his building permit. He told me the reason they gave but I've long since forgotten what it was.

We have a neighbor about three doors down from us, who's home is on the watershed. Every time it rains, his driveway washes down our street to the next street and down to Debi's aunt's yard.
Right after I added gravel to my driveway, I saw it washed the finer particles of crusher run down to my neighbors stoop, so I hurried up and set up framework to pour a concrete drive, but after seeing the cost of concrete down here, I went with blacktop. Had a course base put down first with a finer layer over it, so it looked great and is still holding up just fine. Then I had to find someone to sell all those 4x4 steel grid pieces I bought to put into the concrete. I was going to put it over the coarse blacktop before they put the topping coat on and the guy said not to do it, as they would rust and separate the blacktop layers, and I would make it go bad faster. Blacktop is porous, even with sealer.

[yogi]

I love asphalt driveways. We had a 60 foot long driveway in our old house. It served as the approach to the two car garage and off to the side was a pad that could easily accommodate three parked cars. That extra pad is where our guests would park and more often than not the place where the snows of winter gut piled up. LOL When new all that asphalt was sealed and looked pretty. That sealing doesn't last very long and I had to have it done again a couple years later. Each time I had it done the price went up. The last time it was sealed I did it on my own. I bought a few buckets of sealer and the proper application tools from Home Depot. It took an entire afternoon to do it and didn't look any different than when I payed the Mexican workers to do it for me. After that I never sealed it again for at least ten years. Every year people would come to my door wanting to seal my driveway. I asked why it was necessary because they don't seal the asphalt streets and those things last a long time. I was told my driveway is different and will crack and turn into loose pea gravel if I don't do something right away. Well, there were a few cracks in the driveway after several years. Some poured tar took care of those. The surface turned speckled where the binder wore off, but other than looking ugly it worked fine. When we sold the house I replaced it all just to make it more appealing. So, the bottom line is that I don't see the point in sealing asphalt unless you are into aesthetics.

[Kellemora]

What kills asphalt driveways is sealing them with water based sealer instead of oil based sealer.
It's almost like writing a death sentence for the blacktop.
I had my driveway sealed with oil based the first two times and it filled whatever small cracks got in it.
Then I got took for a ride, the guy said it was oil based, but I could tell by the look and smell it wasn't.
They just spray it on without filling all the cracks first, and now those cracks are larger.
I talked to the blacktop coating company and they said they cannot get oil based anymore, it has been outlawed.
They use an emulsified tar that when dries is like the oil based. Trouble is, it is thin as water.
I went to a paint store that sold paint stripe paint used on blacktop, which is an oil based paint.
They had it in white, yellow, red, green, blue, and black for covering old stripes.
I bought a gallon of the black and used it to fill some of the early cracks and it worked great. But did take a couple of applications before the cracks were filled. Now that I have many smaller hairline cracks, it would cost too much to do the whole driveway using striping paint, hi hi.

Back home we had one house with a blacktop driveway while all the rest were concrete.
This guy had a tennis court company come out and put a beige sand finish topping over the blacktop.
He figured it would work since the tennis courts are blacktop underneath.
They came out and sprayed a greenish adhesive on the blacktop, then over that they sprayed a heavy layer of thick tan colored paint and then spread tan colored sand over that. The next day they came back and vacuumed up the excess sand and it looked just like a tennis court. About five years later it looked like it did when they did it, except for two lines where the car tires wore the sand away a little.
I checked into that for here, and the cost would be more than pouring concrete, hi hi.

One of the rich area homes has blacktop that looks like bricks. We are seeing more of that here at crosswalks now too, but I think those are just thick tar strips glued down.

[yogi]

One of the arguments that the blacktop people would give me had to do with those small hairline cracks. They claimed that their version of sealer had something like sand mixed in it. The sand would fill in the cracks. Perhaps it would, but I was thinking like you in the sense that it would need several applications of sand to fill those cracks and the price they were quoting was for a single application. While my unsealed driveway didn't actually turn into gravel, I did have the notion to do exactly that if it did. I would not mind removing the asphalt and simply lay down some gravel. The only thing that turned me against that idea was the snow. My driveway was on a slight incline and I'd never be able to get to my garage if I left the snow on it and it turned to hard pack and/or ice.

There are a few, very few, homes in this subdivision what have something like the tennis court finish you describe. The surface is course and sandy but there is a swirling pattern across the whole driveway. When we moved here there were footprints in the concrete and I had to have a few words with the builder to get him to fix it. He wanted to simply top coat it, which I agreed to let him do if he would come back next year and fix it again after the topcoat pealed off. They replaced it after some careful consideration. I asked if he could do that swirl pattern thing as long as they were starting over from scratch. The builder's contractor said it could be done but his company doesn't do it. And, the builder would not pay to have anybody else but his buddy do the work. I have no more footprints but the requirement is to keep sealing it every year. WTF is that? I thought I got rid of the sealing problem when I abandoned asphalt. I don't see any blacktop driveways here and I"m not sure if it's an HOA issue or they just don't do that kind of thing around here.

[Kellemora]

My last top-coat had the sand finish and they obviously used white sand, because I ended up with areas of white sand streaks where they got the topping spray a bit too heavy. I was angry about it too.

We had a friend who would seal his driveway like twice a year, until it looked like a sheet of rubber.
Which did make it look a little odd compared to what we are used to seeing. It never got sticky in the summer as one would expect.

The price to put in a concrete driveway in Missouri is about 4 to 5 times cheaper than down here. I don't know why it is so high down here, but it is.

It's easy to get a swirl finish. I used to do it on almost all the ceilings I replastered.
In ceilings I used a white tampico brush. But on driveways and sidewalks I just used a warehouse broom and did the swirls before I did the edging pass.

Also not available down here, and may not be in St. Louis anymore was PM-30 concrete patch mix.
This was the perfect topping to use for several things. I would use concrete glue first, then the patch mix, and it never comes back up again. I also used it to paint outside foundation walls with, again with a white tampico brush. Really looked sharp when I did that too, and lasted almost forever. It stayed on my house for over 20 years with no problems.

[yogi]

Now that you mentioned it, there was a home up north that had what appeared to be a latex driveway. LOL I'm sure he did the same thing you saw and gave the asphalt several coatings of sealer. It was shiny and looked odd, but hey. There was no HOA to stop the dude from doing it.

My current house, being built into a hill, has about half the foundation walls exposed to open air. Those sections were coated with something white and I was told it needed to be done periodically. As it stands today the concrete touching the ground has corroded. The coating is missing for an inch or two and bare concrete shows. Then a thin edging of black, which I suppose is the water proofing. Then the majority of the wall is white which I presume is the sealer they want redone. Aesthetically the white looks better than the bare concrete, but the argument is that the concrete needs some kind of protection for reasons I've not heard yet. If it's not touching the soil I don't see what there is to protect the concrete from. But what do I know? So much for having a maintenance free home.

[Kellemora]

You don't have to go to a lot of expense to keep the lower concrete wall in good shape.
Most of the damage to the waterproof coatings happens in the top 2 to 3 feet, due to freezing thawing and activity in the ground. Below that is usually hard packed clay.
During a long drought, when you see the dirt has separated from the foundation by about 1/4 inch. You can pour all your old paints down that crack, or use something like a liquid roof coating material, or even thinned black top sealer.
I did that on my house in Creve Coeur as well, and when I had to have my sewer lateral replaced and they dug all the way down to below the footing to replace it. All of the original sealer below about 2 feet was still in perfect shape. But above that, there was a mixture of colors from where I dumped old oil based paint down there, and several cans of Frye Liquid Lap Cement greatly thinned. It did the trick.
Before they backfilled, since the backfill would be loose, they sprayed the exposed wall with a tar coating, although what was there looked OK. They said the soft dirt would cause deteriorating activity if they didn't add new over the old. Then they stuck a sheet of plastic drop cloth over it before backfilling also.

Missouri dirt is fairly alkaline, so we don't have much concrete deterioration as they do in places where the ground is more acidic. I do know one area of Florida where the ground is so acidic, they have to use several layers of thick plastic before they pour the slab for the floor, else it won't last more than about fifteen years before it turns to gravel.

[yogi]

I guess I'm spoiled from that last house I lived in. It was a ranch style and all brick. The windows were aluminum clad wood and the doors metal. The only wood I had to paint at some point was the garage door and two wooden pillars they built for the front porch. I could do all that with a 6' ladder. The drive, as I explained earlier, was asphalt and probably suffered from my lack of attention to it. But it worked well as it was intended to do even if it did look a little ugly. The front porch was poured concrete and never needed sealing. However, it did separate from the house as did the same kind of porch in the previous house I owned. I thank the gods of waterproofing because I never had any signs of water in the full basement; the normal cracks by the window frames notwithstanding. I did have all those cracks filled before I sold the place just to prevent any building inspector from complaining about it. I consider all of that to be maintenance free. There is not much to paint here in this house either, but there is a lot more concrete than I ever owned. LOL What good is concrete if it falls apart after a few years? Oh yeah. It looks pretty and everybody in the neighborhood loves it.

I bought a pH meter which probably isn't very accurate. I wanted to see what the soil is like at least in a relative way. All of it is clay and rock. There must be some amount of dirt mixed in because things like trees and shrubs do grow in it. I was digging some holes for rose bushes and used the pH meter to see what the soil was like. Most of it came in at 7 - 7.5 which is neutral to slightly alkaline. I think grass actually likes that, but some of the flowers and all the conifers don't. Well, everything we planted is growing and only one pine tree had to be replaced. I don't think it was the soil that killed it off, but the lack of moisture that first year was not a good thing. I miss my 24" of black dirt at my old house.

[Kellemora]

Looks like you did an update and possibly lost a couple of days of responses.

Let me hit the other posts and see if they are missing the past couple of days also.

[yogi]

mmmm ... nope. Didn't do any updates yet. I have yet to download the new code. It does appear that some content has been lost. I could get on the helpdesk's butt and make them do a restore, but I don't think it's worth the confusion that would cause. They supposedly do backups every day, but that's probably what cause the loss in the first place. Unless there is something you absolutely know was lost and need restored, I'll just let this one incident go.

[Kellemora]

I did have to log-in yesterday, which is why I figured you did an upgrade or a reboot.
I had to today also but that was because I forgot to hit the remember me button when I logged in yesterday.

I carry a small oxygen bottle up to my office with me and leave it up here with a regulator and cannula, just so I don't have to tote the portable tote bag with one in it back and forth. I try to keep a new one in the tote bag, and take the partially used one for up here. I load up on the O2 before I walk down to the house. Then hit the larger tank after I get down there before fixing lunch or eating dinner. Royal pain in the pa-toot.

[yogi]

I sympathize with you because I know what my mom went through. Her COPD was basically asthma gone wild, but along with her heart problems fluids would accumulate and make breathing difficult. It was amazingly easy and quick to remove the fluids, however that involved a trip to the outpatient clinic from time to time. Most of the time mom had a leash attached to her head, be it from the concentrator or the portable canisters. She did quite well considering but then she didn't have all the damage that you do.

Oddly enough I had to log in as well. That tells me the server must have crashed and some data was lost in the process. I guess neither one of us are here often enough to have witnessed the explosion.

[Kellemora]

I felt sorry for my late wife having to drag around a 150 foot hose all the time, which is why I installed the liquid oxygen pipes to each room. The most expensive part was the wall valve boxes that had to be hospital grade because that was the only kind made. We can't even get liquid oxygen down here, unless we want to pay super big bucks for it. They supply my with ONE and one only Oxygen Concentrator for the house, which I wear all night. And rather than giving me a portable oxygen concentrator they give me small bottles and a tote bag. I did get to next size up bottles and a little dolly to use when I'm in the living room or when the power is out. I have 8 of the small bottles and when I have 4 of them empty, I can call to swap them out for refilled ones. I try to be frugal with them so they last longer, because they do have a healthy co-pay amount associated with them.
My son bought me a small home style oxygen concentrator for my office, but it is basically useless. It only puts out 30% oxygen at 3 lpm, and even 3 lpm doesn't have the same flowrate as 1.5 lpm from a tank. I think he got took on that purchase.
The reason my late wife was on liquid oxygen in the first place, was because an oxygen concentrator is only around 95% and compressed bottles although at around 99% at the 6 lpm she needed with them, the HUGE bottles only lasted half a day. While the liquid would only need refilled every other week. We had two large liquid oxygen tanks, and whether you use them or not, they still evaporate at the rate of about 4 lpm.

I was saving up to buy my own oxygen concentrator for the office before this Covid thing started. Then the price of them nearly quadrupled. I figured there will be tons of them for sale cheap after this virus runs its course, so am just biding my time to get one.
On another note: My wife just got home from having her scripts filled. The price of the ones she has to pay for was half of what they were last month. The co-pay for the ones the insurance company covered was the same, but they too are paying half of what they were also, according to the pharmacist. Part of that is because Medicare is paying a higher amount than they were, and the drug price itself is now down a tad also.
Basically, of the Insulin's she has to take, the 400 dollar a month one is now 200 bucks. The 300 dollar one is 160, and the 25 dollar one went up to 35 bucks as we expected it would. So people who were only at that 25 dollar one will be mad at Trump, but all those buying the higher priced will be elated with him getting the prices down for them.

I've never once been to my websites when they were down, but I do get an e-mail from time to time saying they were down from 3 am to 3:15 am for maintenance. But now that they have so many servers, they only do one bank of them at a time. So I wonder if that means the websites are never down, since the other servers can pick up the load.