Renovation Progress

Well, we lost about a week on the renovation due to the inspection.  It turned up some joists that had been "notched" (probably about 50 years ago) to accomodate plumbing.  So we had to get a report from a structural engineer to tell us to screw a couple of 2x6's to either side of the joists.  Really.

So once this vital job was accomplished (haven't received the bill for it yet), the real work could progress.  The boys have been doing some good work.  Tub is installed and drywall is up.  Taping and mud this week.

I like this picture of Pam and Lulu relaxing on the couch!

Renovations...

So back in December we finally decided to pull the trigger on the long-planned bathroom renovation.  As you may know we live in a very old house (100 years old this year) and in old houses, bathrooms are often not so nice.  Ours was no exception... ugly flooring, worn out vanity, ancient tub surround, etc...

...plus the toilet was actually in a different room from the tub and sink!!

So we decided to completely gut the two rooms, knocking out the wall in between and renewing everything from the wall studs outwards.

Here are some pictures of the destruction... the whole process is expected to take until the end of March or so.  Until then, while we have a powder room downstairs, we won't have a tub or shower.  Yikes!!

I'll post pictures as we make progress.  The guys have been working for six days now, and the wall is knocked through, new walls framed in, and plumbing and electrical work is well underway.  Exciting!!

A Weekend Away

 Hey everyone, time for the quarterly update I guess ;-)

Here we are in Gimli.  We had such a great time here last year that we decided to come up again for the "sweet deal" which includes breakfasts and dinners in the hotel restaurant. 

We were basically pretty sloth-like, except for Pam going to work out on the elliptical trainer in the hotel gym.  Good for you, Pam!  I just stayed in the room and read a book. 

We had a couple of nice meals in the restaurant and sat in the hot tub, too.  The weather was super-nice so we went for some walks by the frozen lake, which was very pleasant.  On Saturday night we saw something very unusual, a ring around the Moon.  Never seen one of those before so it was pretty cool!

We took a few photos on Sunday before we came back to the city so I thought I would post them here.  Oh, and a health update - the last few scans have come back very good and Pam is feeling pretty well.  Some very minor blood clot issues continue but it is not bothersome for Pam except for having to take daily injections, that sucks.  But it is bearable.  We are just looking forward to the summer!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I've just noticed that the blog hasn't been updated in awhile... in this case no news is good news :-)  Pam has been feeling pretty well lately and the results from her latest brain MRI were excellent - the lesions continue to shrink or disappear, and the ones that don't aren't growing, so the doctor was very happy to give us this news.  Pam continues to work four days a week but is at home today working to get the Christmas feast ready for tonight.  Pam's sister and her family, and her parents, come over so it will be a busy time at our house.  Tomorrow we will have breakfast with Pam's parents and then set off for Brandon for Christmas Day with my parents and my uncle, and a soak in the hot tub at the hotel later :-)

So in the meantime, enjoy our twinkling Christmas tree and have a wonderful holiday season and a happy and healthy 2011.

 

With love,

Dallas and Pam

So that was the summer!?!?!

Hey everyone.  Can't believe that it's now mid-September and the summer that we wait so long for, is now pretty much gone.

In any event, we had a really nice day on Saturday.  It was a beautiful sunny Fall day.  In the morning we had donuts from Tim Hortons, then ran some errands.  After lunch I worked on the P-car a bit, washed and waxed the GTI, and generally puttered.  We pulled some weeds in the driveway and then decided to go for a drive to Assiniboine Park and take a walk.  We strolled around the English Garden and even saw a fox sneaking around outside the zoo.  Watched a movie in the evening and went to bed.  It was a good day, for sure.

Anyway I guess we had a pretty busy summer and I thought I should post an update and some pictures.  I guess the most recent interesting thing we did was drive to Sault Ste-Marie, Ontario for the wedding of our friends Greg and Linda.  I was standing up for Greg.  We took the Porsche and it was a pretty fun trip. 

The first day, we stopped in Bemidji for lunch by the lake.

Then we hung out with a couple of friends:



We stopped in Duluth for the night and spent a really nice evening at the harbour front they have there, here are some pictures:

Can't drive through the UP of Michigan without a photo stop in my favourite town:

The wedding was lovely and a lot of fun.  While in SS-M we went on a boat cruise of the locks, it was very cool, especially meeting the large Great Lakes freighters.  These are amazingly large, some over 1,000 feel long... impressive!



On the way back, we drove up to Thunder Bay and then down through Rainy River back into the USA at Baudette, Minnesota.  Driving beside the lake was absolutely breathtaking, so many beautiful views.  Couldn't stop for them all but we made a few stops to take in the fantastic scenery.

And the famous Wawa Goose of course!

On the health front things have been pretty stable, thankfully.  Pam has scans and appointments on a regular basis but they have shown no radical developments, touch wood.  So we are hanging in there pretty well.  

We hope everyone enjoyed their summer and is having a great fall-time.  It's a really nice time of year here, and we are hoping to visit the corn-maze with friends and do some other outside stuff if we can.

Love to all,

Dallas and Pam

Micro-Update

Today was a nice day, Pam had a good sleep last night and was feeling well. I got my hair cut. Diane H. came over and left some delicious cookies.

We mainly stuck close to home and took it (mostly) easy. I did some overdue work in using some surplus plywood to replace the doors on our shed, and Pam puttered a bit in the garden. Good to be at home together.

Lastly, we want to give a special shout-out for our dads Gary and Lorne on Father's Day. We love you guys!

More Fun!

OK, this goes back about a month...

Pam had had a chest scan, and the doctor's office phoned back right away. Apparently the radiologist had spotted some blood clots in her lungs and this is something they want to address very quickly. So Pam had to go back to the doctor and get started on anti-coagulant drugs to try and prevent further clots. They also took her off her tamoxifen as they thought that this had contributed to the clotting.

So after a week or so of daily injections, the INR (clotting coefficient of the blood) was back close to normal, so they discontinued the injections. Big mistake ;-)

Soon Pam had developed a big clot in her leg, it was quite swollen and she ended up going to HSC Emergency on June 5. Then the daily injections had to start again.

Pam had another CT scan yesterday and it showed another large clot in her right lung. So out of caution the doctor scheduled an urgent procedure to implant an IVC filter - "IVC" being "inferior vena cava", the blood vessel that feeds the heart. The idea of putting a filter there is to stop any roaming blood clots from getting where they shouldn't. The filter is made of titanium and is inserted via a catheter through a vein in the leg. (I told Pam to make sure they used a "K&N" brand filter with the million-mile guarantee ;-)

We arrived at the hospital as required at 9am for the procedure at 11... but HSC being what it is they didn't get her in the OR until 1pm. In any event the procedure went very well, Pam was asleep through the whole thing, and just as I am writing this at 4:30pm she called me from the hospital and was sounding very good. So I will pick her up after I am done here and we will try to have a quiet weekend.