Granpaw's Journal

At last post the well had quit working due to high water. That changed as soon as I tried the faucets in the house…voila! there was water coming out, the pump was working too!…
Checked the level of the water in the well house and it was below the pump and the damned thing was pumping water…? wassup widdat???
Not going to count my blessings here folks it’s working now..that’s great.

Now…
On to the latest of my adventures that is ongoing at present.
Readers may leave now cause the rest of this story is pretty uninteresting, and I am just rambling on anyway…

After years and I do mean years of being forced to use a dialup account at Centurytel (now CenturyLink) due to the lack of High speed internet access in my area, it became available this last July. I signed up for it to save a bundle on my phone bill as I had to have two lines in order to use the phone while the computer was on-line. I also got a cell phone through Verizon last December.
Let me say I have the greatest respect for non-geeky people forced to use a dialup account who then make the switch to HSI or DSL or whatever it is without knowing what they are doing….like I did..
After a half hour on the cell phone with a nice young lady in texas who was tech support at CenturyLink, she finally found that the account had not been activated yet is why the thing wasn’t working…
Back to dialup…till this morning…Turn on the computer, hit the dialer…”no dialtone present”…Oh yeah…they disconnected it this morning…create a new dialer for the high speed.. Connected at 100 bps! wow!!
Load a page…fast load!! click a link…”server not found”…THUD!!! (sound of my head hitting the desk).
Go through the steps again and look for troubleshooting help…HAHAHAHA you thought you’d find help??? NOT!…then…freeze…everything freeze…pull the plug and restart..same crap…four times going through those steps and then…it works! the damn thing works!! I don’t have a clue why but again..I’ll not count my blessings, I’ll just take it as it comes…till the bill that is.

Well it’s back to dialup cause it’s not working again..now neither is the phone line working right and it’s time for the packer game…so continued tomorro!

Got a call from the house a few minutes ago..
The wife says “hey…there’s no water…”
So…I says to myself….”drat!” well not that word exactly but you get the idea…
So I threw on an over coat as it’s is still raining cats and dogs out and went out to the well house to see if the pump had lost it’s prime, like usually happens in the winter when it hits 30 below.
Well…I didn’t hear the pump running, so then I thought the pump might have blown a breaker when the power went off a couple of hours before…
So…I moved some boxes off the top of the well house and raised the 200 pound lid to get to the inner lid and as I raised that one up my right foot sank into the ground a bit…and then a bit more…”Oh Drat!” I said, well not exactly those words, I got another stance and reefed the lid up to stare at the muddy water that had completely covered the pump and up to within inches of the top of the well house!
“Holy crap” says I…well not those words exactly…but you get the idea…

The water had come up through the top of the well and filled the well house…! That means the pump (that didn’t throw the breaker) is filled with water, most liikely burning it out..

Now what….Or should I say what’s next???

This year our family re-union, or get together, is to be held during the Labor day weekend.
I left the northwoods on the morning of the 8th. of July with my brother Linn and his wife Linda and arrived at their house in Lane around 5 am the morning of the 9th.

I spent about two weeks getting to know the dogs in anticipation of their leaving on a vacation to New England. They left around the 23rd. of July and returned the first week in August after a trip up the east coast as far as Maine.

The 14th. of August, my brother Linn, his bro-in-law Bobby and I took a float trip down the Blue River over by Tishamingo Oklahoma. The pictures I took with my phone can be seen at this link Blue River float trip.
They are on facebook as that is the only place I can upload mobile pics to (until I figure out how to do it on this site)…

About the last of July we got word that our cousin Carol had passed away in Oklahoma city.
(I will add pictures to the gone on before page when I return home around the 9th. of Sept.).

Yep folks summer is just about over for another year….

well not really the saddle..more like the kennel…
write more as time allows.
The weather has been tolerable for this used-to-northern-cold feller this year….lots more rain than in the past.
I can’t figure out how to get pictures down from my phone to the computer for uploading here…drat!!

Here is a little female yorkie.

Charley

In case it isn’t readily apparent…that’s a quarter in the middle.

We all know what it is that happens when we buy a gallon of ice cream a few miles from home on a warm day don’t we…For those that don’t…

And it's not even hot yet.

Well the first has come and gone and still I’m not…quite….smoke free…yet.
still trying though.
Chantix has run out and no refills left, but in retrospect I don’t think I need them anymore.

The one thing I’ve found about my quitting after so long (50 years) is… Smoking to alay stress is my greatest stumbling block.
The second greatest block is lack of anything else to do.

This is getting close to being a done deal folks…
I’m going through a pack every two-three days now instead of one a day..
This is a bit of a let-down from the first round when I was down to three or four smokes a day…
I’m anticipating being totally smoke free by the first of April.
This time there are no strange dreams or other side effects, unless I count not being able to get to sleep very well and then when I do drop off I awaken at the least noise and am wide awake. I have become accustomed to sleeping a lot during the day now.

Well after all the hoops I jumped through to get the Chantix, as I wrote in the previous post, the card company sent me a letter of rejection, of course it came on friday so I couldn’t call them till monday…They rejected me for not registering on the hot line…Of course the letter was dated before I even knew I had too.
I have no trouble seeing why people go “postal” in this country!…

You’d think that the State of Wisconsin, who’s Governor raised the price of tobacco to it’s present day sky-high level, would want to help smokers to quit the vile habit..

Don’t they tell you that you are killing your children and everyone within breathing distance of you.

Didn’t they make it illegal to smoke in most public places.

Rumor has it, smoking will soon be illegal in your own home and/or vehicle if you have small children aboard…

I imagine they tell children in school that their obviously stupid parents who smoke, (if they do), don’t care about anything but themselves, and should be admonished and/or nagged until they give it up or go insane which ever comes first.

Having been a smoker for longer than I can remember, I have quit smoking for any reason you can throw at me… to no avail.., I simply do not have the will power to quit on my own.

I can tell you first hand how the Government provided cheap smokes to the military, and still does so as far as I know.

I can also tell you how hard it is to get any real help from that same Government.

They will gladly talk to you on the phone about how you really should set a date for quitting and stick to it….about how they have people who will call you back to let you know they are “with you” in your struggle.

I happened onto a partial Chantix prescription recently…It worked folks!…for the time it took to get the stuff in my system, then it ran out…

I went to the doctor and got a prescription of my own…took it to the pharmacy and lo and behold….My card didn’t cover Chantix…I am on Soc. Sec. retired so it should be no problem to arrange payment right?? wrong!…
That was Spring 2009..

This Winter 2010…the prescription is still at the pharmacy,
I got a new card, which I made sure Chantix was covered in full…no charge. Then I called the pharmacy (long distance) to see if the prescription was still good….
Oh sure…it’s good till June (2010) cmon in and get it…
I drove the 20 miles to the pharmacy and proudly gave them my new card…
“Wait while we put the info into the system”…sure no problem….
“Do you want the starter pack?”
Uh yes I suppose that would be good.
“We’ll have to get the card company to tell us what they want to do about this prescription”…what???
“Yes, they, (the card company), need to ok the transaction”…”it will not be right away either”
“You can buy it today if you’d like”…It’s only a hundred and some dollars”

LADY!!! If I could afford it I would have gotten it last year!!!
“Well the card company will have to tell us if the prescription is going to be paid for”

That round was about 2 weeks ago…
About a week ago my doctor got me on the phone and told me the card company was requireing proof that I have signed up on the Wisconsin hot line before they will pay for the Chantix….Ok…did that… then went throught the hoops about how I should really set a date for quitting and Yada yada yada….

The person on the hot line was really helpful and polite, but didn’t know enough about my struggles with the system so far…She promised to send proof that I had signed up and talked to her, so now I await the proof….We’ll see if the State will come through or not….
I personally think the Government is buying time to get the public to cry out for a Social Health plan..

.The average retired senior is inundated with red tape and confusion when it comes to their health care in this country.