Pining for the Fjords

Did you read Part 1 ?  This blog post won't make much sense without it... When last I blogged, I documented my recent experience taking the Everlywell Food Sensitivity Test, including the ridiculous process of bleeding myself dry while attempting to fill out the collection card (ridiculous because of me and my super-clotter fingers, not because of anything Everlywell did). As I mentioned in the previous blog, I received my testing kit in the mail and filled it out on Monday, 4/4; I mailed it back on 4/5, a Tuesday.  According to the Everlywell website, they received it by Friday, 4/8, and around 4pm on Saturday, 4/9, I received an email saying my results were ready!  Honestly, I was not expecting it to be so darn fast - almost everything involved in the medical realm is taking much longer these days - but I was happy to log on and view my results. In looking at the site, I was happy to note that my results were actual results, not a message saying the lab couldn't proces...

About a year and a half ago, we finally "cut the cord" and cancelled our long-standard DirecTV subscription, moving instead to a series of streaming services, including Hulu (plus Disney+ and ESPN+), HBOMax, and appleTV.  While we have Hulu plus live TV (I can't not have live sports when college football and hockey season are in session), we don't pay for the topmost tier, and since we switched, we've been exposed to more commercials in the past 18 months than I think we've cumulatively seen in the last 10 years.  If you have any of the streaming services with commercial breaks, you know that the set of ads that rotate through become pretty familiar, playing over and over again.  One we've viewed several times now is for Everlywell , an at-home testing service; while they offer several testing options (including a COVID diagnostic), their most popular offering is related to Food Sensitivities. I'd been pondering the idea of testing for food sensitiviti...

Did you forget about Part Four ? On the last blog, we enjoyed all sorts of wine tastings in Paso Robles, CA, and made our way to Villa Park to spend a few days with Dad and Risa. It's bee keeping time! On Thursday morning, we leisurely awoke in Dad and Risa's spare bedroom; they had some prior engagements (Rotary Club and service for their truck), so we puttered around the house, drinking coffee/chai, eating breakfast, and just enjoying the view from their front patio. Chris helping me with PT exercises while enjoying said view Although the temperature in Southern California was mild while we were visiting (it is ever not mild?), the wind was blowing pretty decently, and as we sat on the patio, we distinctly remember hearing a weird *thump* sound down below us.  We didn't think much of it, but when Dad and Risa returned, they reported that the wind seemed to have blown over their bee boxes!  Oh no!  They have two boxes, full of honeybees, that sit up on a raised wooden pl...

Don't miss Part Three ! In the last blog entry, Chris and I had driven through the Valley of Death (the actual one in Nevada/California, not the allegorical one) and spent the night at a cute little Airbnb in Bakersfield. Hooray, wine! Despite some sort of domestic disturbance on the street behind our Airbnb that caused quite a bit of nearby dog barking around 2am, we slept well in our cozy spot in Bako, and after enjoying a relaxing breakfast (more yogurt parfaits!  All the yogurt parfaits!) and getting ready, we packed up the truck and continued our journey west. The front hallway in our Airbnb, with our personalized welcome message! We tried taking our own picture with the on-site camera, but either it was out of film or there was some user error involved. Either way, this was as close as we got to leaving our image here, like others had. After driving for so long the prior day, we were glad our trip today would be rather short - it would take us only about two hours to make it...