Another physical therapy change....

Well,  I hope I am not being too fickle of a PT patient.  But I have spoken with the head PT person at both ISMI and at Sawtooth. 
I was seeing a young pt named Paul at ismi,  and the head PT probably spent a good deal of time describing how they were most likely doing a good job.  After a but more discussion about how my detailed question have gone unanswered and my interest in how best to address the swelling were largely answered by the fact that there is a protocol and they follow that.  While that probably largely works for many people  (and it probably works for me too)  I have an interest in the metrics and monitoring measurable change. 
So my call to sawtooth as a new client sounded a lot better.  Most likely my questions regarding the fact that I wanted a more personal approach led Sawtooth to tell me they do an evaluation at almost each visit.  But I liked the information they gave me regarding both manual stretching and excercises.  
Paul over at ismi did not ever touch my knee with the intent to manipulate it.    I don't fault him for that since I didn't ask him to, but when I called for an appointment I did request that they connect me with the person who was most experienced in my type issues.     They gave me a somewhat inexperienced person.  Well he might have been experienced but he did not like to answer questions about my knee and he didn't ever do any evaluation except to say that with how late I started, he would have preferred that my knee  fully extended by now.  That kind of led to my questioning him on what we should be doing different. He didn't have an answer so I wanted to talk to the head PT guy. 
He was definitely more experienced but he was not as willing to "stray" from the protocol.
One interesting thing that ismi said that made me seriously question allied (Sean hassinger) was that ismi says No braces, immediate PT after surgery,   They feel open chain excercises are important to strengthen important muscles, they think CPM machines are antiquated and haven't  used them for 25 years.

So my ramblings and experience with these PT places have helped me understand several things
- question all dr decisions and ask them the alternatives,pros, cons of the decision.
- interview your providers or caretakers to ask them what makes up good care.  Ask them the benefits of using their experience and ask them how they would personalize your care.
- ask the front desk to talk with so someone over the phone that has experience and can help you get the best care
- do not accept a new person/provider just because they are available to schedule.

Trailer brake light fix

Recently on a trip to look at and possibly buy a Dodge Charger in Jerome one of the tires blew a retread and bent ul the trailer and destroyed the trailer brake light.  So today I cut off the mangled fender portion, reshaped the leftover bent portion. 

The next step is to purchase a replacement brake light.  The person we bought the trailer from, purchased the winch at harbor freight so we will look their for the replacement.  It should look like this. 

Turns out that we have a little wiring issue.  where the 4 wire plug has a couple of wires that have come detached as well,  so we had to rewire them.  and to do that we had to learn  which  wires are which,  we use  this here diagram.

Once I had rewired everything I figured I

out that the left light bulb was also out. So I may not have needed to rewire things but now the connections ore ore taped and I just need to get a new bulb.

Beatrix the great dane, bigger bedside crate

As Beatrix the great dane has continued to grow we have had to grow the crate size she is in.  At about 3 months she gre out of her 24x24x36 crate.

This one was from petsmart and was the right size up until 90 days.

  Now we keep it in the front room, open,  so if she is tired she might go climb in. But she had to squeeze in rubbing the top of her back.  Once she is in she curls up and fits fine but can't stretch at all. 

 Up stairs by my bed though  we have the 36x36x42 inch crate that should last another 2 months. Since it is bedside, it also has to replace my bedside table so I found a top that appears to fit perfectly.  A restaurant table top on amazon was the correct thing.  While kind of expensive. It fits perfect and has a professional finish and matches out black furniture. 

 

the table top is available here from amazon with free shipping (this is the best place I could find to buy it all others charged less but then 30$ shipping)

The crate you see above is also through petsmart.  For the next size (which we briefly purchased through amazon and returned because we just don't have roo  and it was just not needed yet) we will have to consider whether we need an actual crate or some sort of room.

Knee physical therapy - new research shows that my lack of research is my own fault

At physical therapy which I have been to only three times.  They have been working on strengthening my muscles around my knee,  and I can tell that they are certainly weaker.  I have trouble raising my leg in certain ways compared to my other leg.  I do need to continue working on the exercises however I am finding that my knee is not getting any closer to being fully extended.  I told my physical therapist that of all of the stretches and exercises I wanted to focus on the ones that made sure I got it extended and him being a 20 year old kid said okay let's get started but really not addressing anything he was just moving through the protocol. So I was doing a little bit of research and I found that there are some physical therapists that actually measure your muscles and they take measurements before your physical therapy and after physical therapy and they know how what has changed since your last visit or during your visit.
All those measurements and evaluations show a different level of attention to my recovery and so I need to find level of physical therapy and while it may be much more expensive the thing that is disappointing  is that even asked the PT office about the different types of PT asking for their evaluation for it, I didn't know that I needed to ask about whether or not different physical therapists did different stuff and they never mentioned it. I know that my insurance pays for a certain number of physical therapist visits so I plan to use those with a physical therapist that pays more attention to exactly where I am at and how I am progressing.

I will be re interviewing them to find a PT that actively monitors my progress using measurable metrics. 

Company River Trip - knee surgery prevents participation in the 9th annual.

So, yearly we go on the river trip somewhere in july rockets not figured that july 25th put it in plenty of time in order to recover from the surgery n_d ready to go on the river however I can still can houston -0 the way and jar in a little bit or something a little bit still hurts so being on uneven ground as I hold a wrap around or walking around in the raft would certainly have how many a little bit the minimum but the worst would have been an unexpected misstep or accident that could have caused major damage.

So instead I drove back into Boise to check out a grand opening of Carolyn Hennen's "The Rag Company" retail store and warehouse.  Then I filled up on fuel and went up to where the rest of the team was rafting found a photographer and convinced them to take a blurry shot with my head in the picture and the boat was in focus in the background.

Then I headed back to the Cascade base to hangout and wait.

A happy birthday audio collage for dad

I setup a voicemail recorder for my dad's 71st birthday and then I sent an email out to all of the family members asking them to call in and wish dad a happy birthday.
Each of the voicemails for emails to me and so I downloaded a free version of wave pad and combined all of the recordings and sent an email with an attachment to my dad.  I then uploaded according to the business phone line and created a little hot line that my dad could come into and hear everyone's birthday wishes.



Happy Birthday Dad.


Call This Number 208.258.8054 or Listen here

Knee excercises

My knee won't extend all the way.  My left leg hyperextends to -2 or -3,  but my right knee still has alot of swelling and I can not seem to get my knee to extend or bend all the way.  I have been trying to do excercises but I am not very religious at it so I just focus in the excercises that stretch my knee and I let the strengthening exxercises go.

Amazon echo - alexa plays music well

As we sit around the dinner table eating pizza we realize hey we need some tunes so my wife says alexa, can you play the Gypsy Kings and we rocked out.

Tarped bridge over the columbia

As we were driving to Oakland we notice is strange bridge crossing over the Columbia River the tarp on it and it seemed rather odd to have a tarp covered bridge so we decided to drive across it. Today. It was really need to go across the bridge never seen before so we took a couple of pictures and we guessed that the reason might be because the chain link that was behind snacking too many birds for the tarp solve the problem. When we got to the other side of the bridge we noticed a fruit stand and stopped there

we bought a flat of blackberries that we would pick up on the way back through tomorrow, and a pound of cherries that would make sure stopped at the next three rest areas.

As we drive back through the bridge we see a sign that gives a number to call for more information.  I call the number.  

it goes to voicemail for "Columbia River Area Engineering"  so I leave a message asking for information about the "tarped bridge project" and I leave my name and number and request a call back.  It would seem strange to have someone call me back but it would be interesting.  Perhaps I will lose interest though when I am no longer in "river mode" and I will just say yeah, yeah but I am working.

Tight hotel blanket over an unbraced knee at Oxford in Hermiston

I took off my brace to sleep in a hotel bed last night.  The blanket was heavy, tucked in on the sides, so the pressure kept me  moving it very carefully during the night.

This morning though I woke up with an incredible amount of pain.  I have walked around with out my brace in the morning to go to the bathroom and take a shower for the last couple of weeks and today walking right out of bed was very painful on my knee. The pressure of my weight had me feeling like I needed to keep my weight off my knee in a way that I haven't done since the days after surgery.
One nice thing about this room in the Oxford suites us that it was their last queen, which means it was their handicapped version and the bars in the shower helped while I worked out the early morning kinks.  I needed those bars though as the annoyingly soft water required extra rinsing. 

Rain over the blues

On yet another trip to the seattle area (this time to pick up janae's grandma and bring her back to her home)
And the road just before Baker is covered with Monsoon like rain.  The windshield wipers at full speed can not work fast enough to keep us going faster than 65mph(which is normally a painfully slow speed).

We are thinking of stopping g in baker to get food and to wait out the storm.  But we would have to get out of the car to get food and would have to subject out selves to big ol' fat rain welts

One hour at Foothills PT

I got to foothills PT to work with Lisa swan on my knee recovery.   My appt wad 230 and they asked that I show up at 215 for paper work.  I show up at 220 and had the paperwork done by 228. Better than I waited for 10 minutes as I watched other patients come in me to the therapist in go to the back. Ask out the front desk am I still on the list so she went back to check on Lisa, she told me she's with another patient but I'm going to go in anyway. Ask her 3 minutes Lisa came in and got me and we went back. She ask me a bunch of questions about my knee  getting right to the point  and then got me started on all sorts of exercises. Which I won't go into mainly because I forget what they were called. I will probably take a picture of them she gets them to me later. Anyway the exercises seemed to really stretch areas that needed to be stretched and she gave me the confidence to work on getting my extension going she did describe to me that the reason I felt like I could not extend any further than I was able to was that it appears I have a bunch of swelling and fluid under my kneecap which makes it so that there's nowhere for my knee cap to go when I am extended my knee. She measured it and it appears that right now I am at 15 degrees and I need to get to somewhere between native three and native six degrees that I can hyperextend money based on my other like. She showed me a couple of exercises I should be doing many times each day in order to get that motion back but she seem to think that in general I was it progressing very well. At the end of our session she wrapped some ice compression machine around my leg and kind of sold me on the idea that it was something that other patients really like however then she told me she was going to go visit another patient so someone up front will disconnect me. That made me kind of think that perhaps she was really far behind and was using this to catch up. Anyway the coldness of the rap is about the same that I get out of my ice packs that I use at home and the impression I get is greater than the rap I use at home if you think about the whole leg however the compression I get from the plastic wrap I use at home is much greater on just the knee. One other thing that I asked her about was A is it that has shown up recently where my knees much skinnier and it seems as though that is due to swelling around the area but she believed at it is most likely due to atrophy. We were doing exercises she said it looks like that area is already coming back even in the few minutes. Another interesting thing I didn't know was that in the areas where they actually put the screw in there are large amounts of bumps and let me know is fluid and she said well it could be food but more likely it's scar tissue ask her if that's something that I have to work on in order to make it go away and she described that know your body will normally take care of that I won't go into the neighborhood get with your calls. Probably take a picture of she gets into me later. 

Motorcycle endorsement

I don't know much about motorcycle driving since j haven't done it once in the last 18 years.  But I decided I would go ahead and get my motorcycle endorsement on my idaho drivers license so that I could have the endorsement on my international drivers license when I go to Vietnam, and therefore I would be legal to driver a simple old scooter when I get to Vietnam. They recently (in the last year or two) started to accept international drivers licenses without a need to convert it to a separate Vietnam license.

So I went in for the test today and after waiting about 30 minutes I paid my 3 dollars to take the test and I walked over to take the test and realized that I had only briefly skimmed the manual a couple times, never going into much depth.  I  eeded to answer 20 of the 25.questions  correctly or I  failed.   The testing program tallied what I got correct and what j got wrong,  and I missed 5 of the first 12,  if I got one more wrong I would fail the test on the spot.  I don't  remember  how bad I got the first ones wrong but when I realized that I don't have a single additional one I can miss I spent much more time making sure I was positive of the answer before selecting.  I didn't miss a single additional question and I passed the test.  Kinda nerve racking, since I never barely scrape by at anything. 

Anyway, I now have an instructional permit and I can drive around and them I will go take the skills test with a a dude named Paul for 10$.

Beatrix the Great Dane, pooping is a vulnerable time

When Beatrix the Great Dane has been going out into the yard to poop,  I have been encouraging her to go farther away from the house by pointing farther out in the yard and saying "go" as she sniffs for the perfect poop spot.    Well today she must really had to go because she bounced around out farther one time, but was actually not much farther so when she doubled o er into poop squat stance I gently ( I have been plenty rough with he other times but I this time I was very gentle) nudged her to get her to pop a squat further out. 
Instead she yelped like I had shoved her nose in what she was working out.  She freaked out and ran top speed back into the house ( I left the door open )  and she ran directly upstairs to her safe spot. 
I brought he back down but the next opportunity she got she ran right upstairs and laid down in her crate. 

The lesson I learned was that I can try and teach her stuff before and after she curls one out,  but I just can't bug her while she is in position.

Whiskey experiments with oak flavoring

I took two oak flavored sticks and put them into two separate bottles of whiskey and saved out a shot of each of them. From this I expect smoother aged flavor and I will be able to compare with what the whiskey would have tasted like without it here are a couple pictures.

 since the last experiments blended in with the other bottles in the liquor cabinet,  this time I labeled them a bit better.

 can you find them in the over full liquor cabinet?

Getting up early is hard to do

This morning sam had to be to his new new job "detassling corn" at 5:30am. Yesterday it was 630, and we got home st 230 in time to go to work at on the border by 300pm.  He was tired this morning nevertheless and I couldn't hardly get up with him. I was back in bed on my phone when he called mom not understanding what exit he missed trying to get to highway 55.  Man he was mad all that work getting up early and he was still late.  In the mean time I found my way back to bed after my shower and knee exercises and stayed her with researching a new product idea excuse, and when I ran out of that I wrote this quick blog entry.

Barber head shave - 10th and main in Boise

I got my haircut at a barber 10th Street downtown this morning it was nice to only take 15 minutes to get my haircut and not have a mess in the bathroom. David was very quick, the shaver he used though was 80 as requested but somehow my hair was still a little bit longer and it is when I cut it with a zero at home. In the future I will be requesting the. 0005 size clipper.
He also suggested a type of shampoo that can help with my embarrassing dandruff / cradle cap issue. So tonight and went out and bought some Nizoral. 

I will be shampooing my head with it a couple times a week at first and then once a week after I notice an improvement (if ever).

The shave was quick so I will do it again first thing in the morning  by just taking a quick break from the office if I reach the fuzzy duck hair phase and end up at the office.

Gillian Flynn don't write as fast as I read

I read gone girl by Gillian Flynn awhile ago.  I heard that there was a movie coming out directed by my the same person that directed my all time movie Fight Club. Since the movie wasn't out yet (and because my wife kept suggesting it) I picked it up and dint put it down. It was the first book I read after the Fifty Shades of Grey Trilogy and the HUGE  difference in literary quality helped me love Gone Girl.  I was a bit disappointed in the movie as It didn't come close to capturing the love story and depth of emotional roller coaster the guy rode. (whatever his name was).

Anyway, somehow on a whim I picked up dark places by Gillian Flynn while we we at hastings burning 15 minutes before an end of year EMBA party in Bown Crossing.  I didn't start reading it until after I got surgery a week later and I had plenty of time to burn right through most of it.  Then when my wife left town to do some delivery of children from the oregon coast I  had nothing to do but recover from surgery (on the couch) and finish the book.  The story was very dark and disturbing and downright literary genius.  I am probably still unfairly looking at how far above the Fifty Shades of Grey bar this is,  but I broke the no driving with a weak knee rule to head to hastings and buy Sharp Objects. Which i devoured before Janae returned 2 days later.  Now I am out of Gillian Flynn and looking for something similar.  A quick Google of authors similar to Gillian Flynn came up with a first result post describing books that a person with a thirst for more Gillian Flynn books would like.  First on the list is the Never List a book about a twisted sadistic tale with a female protagonist.  I don't know if the author is any good. This appears to be her first book.

So it is off to bed with a bag of starburst, a raw hotdogs and my new book

I beat the CPM machine in one week

In my qwest to restore full range of motion for my right knee after acl reconstruction.  I had been using a continuous passive motion machine, which bends and unbends my knee to controllable degrees.  The machine always seemed slow but at the beginning g that was a good thing.  I quickly increased the speed to full throttle and increased the flex to the maximum 110 degrees and the extension to -10. ( the office told me not to go to negative numbers but the padding that holds my leg to the device is not strong enough to hold my knee down and even get it to 0 degrees). Since I beat the machine,  I am sure my knee needs the more exacting attention of a physical therapist

Beatrix the great dane is growing out of her crate

Beatrix the great dane is officially too big for the crate we bought her.  When she sits in it she has to slouch. When she steps out she has to lower her back or it hits the top of the door.

I am buying her this crate from amazon.  It came highly recommended and it should fit her even as an adult.

If you attempt to buy it on amazon, the will tell you that there is a newer product available, but that other product ( while potentially an upgrade is slot 50$ more and I have not seen anywhere that describes what us better about it.

Hold on a couple more days Beatrix,  it will be her Wednesday on amazon prime.

Making room in the garage for the impala build

Today Sam and I needed to make room in the garage so we can put the moser 12 bolt rear end and the new suspension package that is showing up on to the frame. 
The frame is already powdercoated and waiting,  the sway bars and steering components have all showed up and we are waiting for the rest that should be arriving in the next week.

To get ready we needed to move the primered body parts of the impala out of the garage, so we took them to the storage.  First I bought some remnant carpet to put down in the trailer and on the concrete storage floor.  I found a remnant at lowes for 70$  which was 7x12.  They sell remnants at 50% off and I decided that I would rather have nicer softer carpet to work with, cuz when laying under a car it is nice to have that.
I then flipped it upside down and cut it into about 8 manageable pieces.  Loaded the trailer with the fenders, hood, doors and Front and took it to storage. 

Next we will have to clear out a motor and some seats and other car parts.  Hopefully we have a buyer for the engine soon.

based on the condition of the garage now you wouldn't know we cleared much out,  but those were starting to get scratched so we need them out of the way

Dance studio for Sydney - mirrors

Today Sydney and I went to Lowe's and bought a bunch of wall mount mirror clips so we could mount some mirrors we found on Craigslist 5 years ago on the basement wall for a small dance studio for sydney.  It only took a couple of hours and most of the time was finding tools, buying clips chasing sydney down so she could help me hold the mounted mirror so I could  screw in the top clip.

Since the mirrors were 36" x 42" we had to find the correct height to mount them so sydney could see her face and her feet on the floor at the sam time.

Then we  measured from the floor at 22" all the way around the room and put in clips. Mounted the mirroe and put in two top clips to  hold it.

The only problem we ran into was that one corner was considerably higher than the rest of the floor.  So the 22" from the bottom was much higher in that corner and it left the mirror there at an angle.  So i just leveled it out by removing one of the clips and making the space even between the mirror next to it. And resetting the mount.
Since the mirrors are really heavy on the bottom mounts I used the drywall insert they provided.  On the top mounts there is very little stress so I just screwed it in with the provided screw.

Next step is for sydney to clean the mirrors and move her craft table somewhere else.  Mom has a freestanding 4 foot ballet barre coming that can be adjusted to whatever height syd wants.

Raiders of the lost ark is a classic

After all this time, raiders of the lost ark is still one of the best movies I have seen. Today we watched it in the downstairs theatre, the first movie we have watched in there for like 6 months.

Aside of some of the cheesy special effects ( which my daughter says are "the worst") the movie has great action, great love story,  great everything.

We actually had to double request that Sydney watch the whole thing, but in the end she said it really is just not her type of movie

Blood pooling from knee surgery

I have been sleeping with my knee on a couple of my knee is about my heart however most of the time my ankle is on the mattress.
It would seem that this is not a good idea and I should have my ankle and knee higher his blood has been pooling in my foot.

So... The advice is to put both your knee and foot above your heart when you are elevating your knee. 

Beatrix the great dane says I love you

I am laying on my back using my continuous movement machine to rehab my knee and Beatrix the Great Dane and starts to get worse than jumping around breaking. So I say to her I love you and she comes back with three syllables. I did it a couple more times and then broke out this video with her I swear it sounds like she really is trying to say I love you.

Beatrix the great dane eats to fast

Beatrix the Great Dane used to eat way too fast. She was attacking voraciously and just gulping it down.
It never caused a problem for her however it just seems like it would be better her to eat a little more slowly. So we started feeding her in a muffin tin and now she does eat much more slowly.
As an added benefit we can also more easily see how much she has eaten because she seems to eat one of the sections at a time, OCD style.

Camp trailer shopping in boise

I just thought I would share a bit about my shopping experience for a hard side camping trailer in Boise. 
I knew my budget of 10 to 15k.
I knew I wanted 3 separate sleeping areas so the kids did not have to sleep together.  We need a bathroom a shower and oven and a refrigerator. In the towing capacity needed to fit our smaller Jeep Grand Cherokee.
We would only get into the top end of our budget if we got a full size refrigerator and Janae really dislikes the type of bathroom here you shower or over the top of the toilet.

We had already been to a couple of dealers and knew the basics of what we want so we thought we'd go out and hit four different dealers and see what we could find. First we stopped buy Leshes RV we talked to Jamie. He was the friendliest and nicest of all sales people we would buy an RV from him he had the right type whatever the had a very small selection that did not meet what we were looking for.
Next we went to Nelson's RV which Janae had already been in to, so she knew the salesman's name that she would talk to however he wasn't there. Perhaps that took a little bit of sales pressure off of us as we went out and looked at our favorite trailer. It was a little bit heavier than would  be ideal for our towing capacity. So we would have to be concious about what we loaded it up with. However we could pull it and it had nicest inside feels including a large oven and refrigerator and everything else we needed. One of the things that we paid attention to was our bed for me and Janae. There was one bunk directly over it so another of the three sleeping areas was right where we were slept. It's not like we had much privacy anyway and we wanted to make sure it would work so we lay down on it and found that it was not too coffin like and we could fold the upper bunk up and out of our way in the case someone wasn't sleeping in it.
This was our favorite trailer of all the ones we went to see.
However we continued on and went to Dennis Dillon RV and we quickly realized how nice the lower pressure sales environments the first two places we were. First Dillon sales guy took us through all of the trailers that we already knew we were interested in from a previous visit and when we found out that none of them worked he quickly did the ole switcharoo over to another salesman and said " have a seat we're going to have  Dennis come out and speak to you you and he may be able to find you a better floor plan". I wasn't about to take the switch routine so another salesman can pressure us and make it uncomfortable to say no.  However Janae realized that she forgot her purse somewhere.  So we went out with a new sales guy to find it where she left it in one of the trailers. It turns out that the trailer she left it in was the very last one where, similar to the trailer we found it Nelson's, had a bunk over the sleeping area me and Janae werein. However in this trailer the lower bed was like a coffin and the upper bunk did not fold out of the way if we wanted to.  Anyway we found her purse and second salesman attempted to show us some more more trailers that didn't fit and made it rather awkward for us to say no thank you.
Finally we went out to Bishes RV in Nampa. Immediately we could feel a sales nightmare when the lady at the front desk scrambled to find out which sales guy was owed the next client in their sales group. (Instead of helping us get to finding a trailer).
This indicated to me that sales was their top priority, and it probably flavored my whole visit. He sat down with the us  asked us a ton of questions including our budget which we told him was 10 to 15 first. At the end of the question and answer. You definitely knew what he was looking for however it felt more like a tactic to get us to invest time with their RV shop instead of actually trying to find out what we were looking for . Since we had already told him that we knew exactly what we were looking for .
As we walked out he said as you can see we do things differently here by getting an understanding of the trailer you are looking for. I don't know how to describe the way he said that however it was very cheesy and in no way helped us see  any benefits of doing business with them. We then sat in an old huge used trailer that never would have been able to be pulled behind the Jeep and he knew that because he asked me about that before we went to look. However he spent a bit of time awkwardly again attempting to tell us why it was a good one for us and why there just weren't many options. When we finally convince them that we are not buying that trailer he said let's go take a look at one other one. And we drove all the way across the lot and he said oh wait I forgot to look at this one which was the closest possible match and fit all of our criteria very well. However we ultimately decided we just didn't like the layout. You had to change the main bed into the dinette which was nice because we had a full sized dinette and a full size bed however something about it just wasn't perfect for us, we had to think on it. He again made it difficult as we tried to say no thank you and we went driving around for about 5 minutes looking for that other trailer she was originally thinking of and finally he said that I guess we must have sold it. He came across as a very disingenuous person and so we walked inside and he started giving us a little bit of pressure again about whether the the trailer we like would have worked for us and I said well how much is it says so we can come in under $15,000 limit and I told him for $15,000 limit is our budget but I need to know what the price of the trailer as he was very difficult to get a price from and I said if we can't get a price then I can't decide whether it's the right one for us and yet again he came back with some reason why he doesn't have the price.  We were talking with him and slowly making our way to the door which is also close to where his desk is and finally he said come sit down I will talk to my manager about getting us actual price. I considered whether to walk out at that point but just waited around since really we need the price as this was a close second for the trailer we wanted. He went upstairs got a price came back down and told us it was twelve thousand $12,000. Now I really knew he was disingenuous because he was planning on selling us the trailer for 15k We left and decided that we will not be doing business with Bish's RV or Dennis Dillon RV.
Now the last step is for us to go and buy an RV from Nelson's. 

International clinic - vaccination and blue cross

I called blue cross and they told me I am approved for vaccinations at 100% for Mmr, hep a/b, tdap, and typhoid. I am going to vietnam soon and the International clinic recommend those vaccinations.
However I go in to the clinic to get the vaccinations and I call again to  make sure and this time the guy says 'it depends' on whether you are getting routine vaccinations or vaccinations for travel.  Well immediately I start saying crap, they already had the vaccinations out to give them to me, and I am not sure how I am gonna pay.  After a bunch of conversation where I try and find the way to spin the fact that I am going to use the vaccinations routinely and during travel.  I finally just say, fine give me the vaccinations and I will pay and argue with blue cross later.
I go in and talk with the nurse and she says.  Oh the mmr, tdap,hep a and b are all routine.  The typhoid is for travel.  So I paid for that one,  and the rest blue cross paid ahead of time.  My recommendation,  find out what routine immunizations you need, and get them from another clinic, then go to the international clinic for a meeting with a nurse that can tell you about what outbreaks or bugs the have at the International clinic.  Then you don't have to worry about whether the routine ones are covered (that is, if you have a blue cross plan like I do)

To day my left arm aches where they gave me two shots including the tetanus.  I have some typhoid oral pills I have to take over the course of a week (every other day).  I will start next week and they will give me like 5 years of protection.