Monday, January 21, 2002
I recently lost my Palm m100 (I think I lost it while watching Lord of the Rings at a local theatre, but no luck there) and I have been surprised how much I have missed it. I used it not just for taking notes for articles/reviews intended for The Computer Paper and for keeping phone numbers and addresses, but also as a pocket watch and occasional game machine.
So when I found out that Michael at work had acquired a new Cassiopeia, I asked him what he was planning to do with his now-surplus Palm Vx. So, he told me he wanted to sell it, and offered it to me for half the current price of the Vx minus the cost of a replacement rechargeable battery (which needs replacing soon). This equaled the price of a new Palm m100, so I took him up on the offer. So now I am the owner of a shiny new (er, used) Palm Vx. Niiiiiiice! ;-)
I may also acquire his Palm portable keyboard as well, as my old arrangement utilizing an old Newton keyboard with my Palm m100 (and previous PalmPilots) means that I always had to have one hand holding the Palm while I typed with the other.
So, anybody want a Newton keyboard and extra hook-up gear for a Palm m100? Maybe I’ll have to make a visit to eBay soon...
A “Thank You” Goes a Long Way With Me ;-)
I got a call from my wife a little while ago, thanking me for ensuring (as it turned out) that she got a full night’s sleep by staying up with baby Annie last night.
When I got back home from Keswick yesterday afternoon, I could see that Erika was a little bit frazzled and in need of a break. So I treated everyone out to a meal at the nearby Il Fornello, which down well (especially the tartuffo with Vanessa – yum! ;-) We both went to bed early, though baby Annie apparently wanted to stay up and “party”. So I volunteered to stay up with her, and together we watched an episode of Walking with Prehistoric Beasts on The Discovery Channel, in between bouts of her eating a few mouthfuls of food, playing with my computer keyboard (“ooh, I can make thing go ‘ding’ have things appear on bright screen when I hit funny buttons”) and then mxing her food with the keyboard (which I soon put a stop to). I kept Annie up until I knew she was good and tired, and subsequently she slept through the night.
Hence the thank you call I got this morning from a well-rested and refreshed Erika.
Spending the Weekend Monitoring Mom
I picked Mom up from the hospital on Friday afternoon, and took her to her home, as part of an experiment to see how well she could fare at home. Am glad to report that she fared well – I wouldn’t rate her performance as A+, but certainly a “pass”.
Mom was definitely glad to be home in familiar surroundings. She had to adjust a bit to the fact that some things have been moved about (thanks to Erika and I’s work the previous couple of weekends). She was also a bit down because of a cold she had got while at the hospital, which peeked on the Saturday. But by Sunday she seemed to be getting back into the swing of things, was certainly more chipper, and definitely wanted to stay at her home instead of returning to the hospital.
Over the weekend I did a number of things, ranging from putting in and getting her prescription, buying more food for her, showing her how to work some new gadgets (like the electric kettle which has an all-important auto-off function), finally cleaning out the attic (yuck!), learning how to remove and replace the regulator from an oxygen bottle, further cleaning up, putting up hooks throughout the house for Mom to string her oxygen tube on, and so on. There are things that still need to be done, such as getting her a new bed, and ensuring she has enough spending money available, but I want to hold off a bit on the former at least until I am sure she’s staying there for more than a week or so.
What I did not do – on nurses’ orders – was to help Mom with the day-to-day chores that she would have to do on her own when I wasn’t there. I had two main concerns – one was that during her first attempt at making dinner, she left the stove on. This caused me real concern, but Mom took care to make sure she didn’t repeat this mistake on subsequent occasions, by always using her alarm-equipped egg timer to reminder her that the stove is on. I thought seriously of disconnecting the stove from the power source as a precaution, but Morris convinced me otherwise (and he also said he’d check on the stove for me daily). The other concern is the amount of electrical juice the oxygen filter requires – whenever I had that on along with the space heater and one other high-powered electrical device (like the electric kettle) bang would go the fuse. Thankfully the fuses are switch fuses, but I doubt my mother could reach the fuse box to switch it back on. As a precaution I put a label in big letters on the electric kettle telling her to make sure the space heater isn’t on when the kettle is switched on. We also arranged for a friendly next-door neighbour to drop by should the fuse still blow. I couldn’t help but curse my late-Father for not having a decent upgrade done to the electrics for the house ages ago – as well as a bunch of other things to improve the house – though I guess hindsight is 20/20.
The place in general seems a lot more “livable” – the drastic reduction in bulky furniture and especially in the dust levels makes a real difference, or at least it did for me. Though after spending the previous three weekends up in Keswick, I was beginning to get homesick, missing my family back in Toronto, and while I may sound selfish, I am really hoping that no emergency will call be back up for a fourth weekend in a row.
In any event, Mom is glad to be home, and so am I. The plan from this point forward is to hopefully wait until a place opens up at a nearby (preferably Keswick-ian) nursing or retirement home. In the meantime, in addition to Morris, somebody from CHATS will come to check on her once a day (hopefully soon, twice a day – once in the morning and once at night).
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