Good news on the Apple crop ....

... only half of it was destroyed by the freeze we had at Easter. So that is something at least.

I still think of poor old Blaine the Groundhog...

... because I am afraid that someone may have run over him deliberately. His body was laying in the middle of a fairly short driveway and unless someone picked up speed at an extremely fast clip he should have been able to avoid it.

Unless, of course, he was coming back from a night on the town and his reflexes were impaired.

The results of my sleep test ...

... of a few weeks ago finally came in - I definitely suffer from sleep apnea. That is almost certainly the reason I have trouble staying awake when I am driving. So - one more trip to the sleep lab to see if I can sleep. This time with the C-PAP as they call it. It consists of a small vacuum cleaner on exhaust attached to various types of clear plastic masks to force enough air down your throat to keep the soft tissues from collapsing while you sleep.

Nurse Cindy was there at the door to greet me when I arrived about 9:30 pm. Got me set up with the first of the sleep masks she wanted me to try. It only covered my nose.

I didn't like it. It felt like the Alien stage that attaches itself to your face. But after about a half hour I fell asleep. A bit later Nurse Cindy woke me up and told me my mouth was falling open, which destroys the effect of the C-PAP. She attached an elastic band around my head to keep my mouth shut. Now I felt like both the Alien and the Mummy. Not very comfortable.

She woke me up a bit after that and said let's try another one - this one covered my nose and mouth both. It felt better than the first one, though I felt a bit like Jacque Cousteau on an aqua lung. After a bit the piece across the bridge of my nose begin to cut in a bit too much. Didn't like it much, but it was an improvement from number 1. And I did fall asleep with it on.

A bit later she woke me up a third time to try yet another one. This one simply stuck up my nostrils with a rigid plastic bar built in to keep my jaw up. It was the least obnoxious of the three, though when she took it out after the test my nostrils hurt. Still, she said that was the one I did the best with as far as sleeping went, and that I would get used to it. Easy for her to say.

By then it was 5:30 am so I packed up and left. Went to the Huddle House for a good old fashioned high cholesterol greasy breakfast of pork chops and eggs. Then out to the Boone Greenway was a long walk, and then over to my office at school.

It was about 9:30 and I needed a nap.

The weather in Wilkes has taken a nasty turn ...

... and eventually got around to our house. On Easter weekend we had two days of all night lows in the 40s which destroyed the peach crop and probably most of the apple crop. In an agricultural community these are heavy blows.

Then Sunday and Monday we had two days of absolutely ferocious wind. Except up on a mountain top, or in Minnesota, I had never seen such severe wind. By Tuesday morning though it seemed to be over, we thought.

Then as I sat at my computer in my home office the power went off and I heard the loud POP of electrical equipment blowing out. This has happened several times before (most memorably the last time our niece Mulan was down). I have to assume it is because Duke Power just hasn't installed proper equipment, but maybe not.

I thought it would take about 2 hours to get the crews out here and have it fixed, but I forgot to reckon with the wind storm. Trees, branches, and power lines were out all over the state, so all the Wilkes county crews had a backlog. At first Duke told us it would be 48 hours before it could be fixed, which seemed a bit excessive.

In fact the power came back on about 25 hours after it blew out. Thank goodness - Carmen and I were all set to go over the the 'Y' to take our showers. The food in our fridge ought to be OK, and I won't have to write any more letters by candlelight.