My wife Marianne, woke me up New Year's Day at 5:30 AM, asking me to take her to the Emergency Room at the hospital, as her heart was racing and fluttering. She has a history with A-fib, so I got her there quickly enough. They increased one of her medications intravenously, and our scare abated in a few hours.
However, her doctors decided to run a few tests, which ended up taking a few days.! "Just to be sure, you know.", they said. And really, who can argue with that? Thank the Lord, all the test results were good and I was able to bring her home Wednesday night,
Yesterday, we had our first significant snow for the Winter. The Governor declared an emergency in order to keep non-essential traffic off the roads. That didn't bother the company where I work, one whit. I managed to get in early, but it seemed almost everyone who works here decided to telecommute and work from home. Unfortunately, my position doesn't allow that. I was given permission to leave an hour early and the commute only took about 20 minutes longer than normal, so even that wasn't too bad.
When I got home, I was positively overjoyed to see my son had shoveled the walkway and the driveway. I have a great son! All I had to do was clean off Marianne's car. In addition to doing that, I decided to start it up and let it run for a bit, only to find the battery exhausted. It jump started right away; but it's the original battery and it IS 6 years old. This weekend I will replace it.
The only problem being that the process will be no joy in and of itself. The temps the next few days are going to be uncommonly cold for a QTH that is only about 20 miles or so (as the crow flies), away from the relatively warm Atlantic Ocean. It's NOT common for us to get into the minus Fahrenheit numbers here in South Plainfield. Maybe only once or twice a winter? Of course, that will occur the weekend I need to work outdoors, replacing a car battery.
No, no garage and "Mr. All Thumbs" here has difficulty working with gloves on, so I am sure there will be a trip or two inside to run my hands under lukewarm water in order to get the feeling back in them.
But ....... it could always be worse ........ right?
72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!
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