I wrote about our dinner at the Brew Project with our friends Bob and Sini in my last post. When we went out Friday night, Donna and I both left without our smartphones, so I didn’t have any pictures. Sini sent us a photo Bob took with her phone after dinner.

Sini, Donna and me

We drove the rental car up to Menifee on Saturday to visit my step-dad, Ken. Ken was diagnosed with an abdominal aorta aneurysm – this is a serious problem with the large blood vessel coming from the heart through the thorax and abdomen. Ken is 84 years old and not a good candidate for open surgery to repair the damage.

We visited with Ken and his neighbors, Ray and Helen. Helen had driven Ken to the emergency room Thursday after the enlarged aorta was found during a back x-ray. They performed a CT scan and confirmed the problem. Ken was in good spirits and seemed to be getting around fine. We were surprised to learn that in all of his years, Ken has never been to the hospital! He has another appointment on Wednesday to discuss the next steps. I’ve been reading information on the Internet and I don’t see a lot of options. We’ll find out in a couple of days.

The drive on I-15 and I-215 is always interesting. On the way home, traffic slowed to a crawl at the junction of the two freeways. I always expect heavy traffic near the Pechanga Casino, but this was unusually heavy and miles north of the casino. After stop-and-go travel for 20 minutes, we saw a multi-car wreck with damaged vehicles, emergency vehicles and tow trucks on the side of the road. Once past the scene, the traffic sped up and drivers were going 80 miles per hour and weaving through traffic again. Crazy!

Last week, I posted about the lithium-ion battery in our Verizon Jetpack blowing up again. A reader commented on that post with a great idea. He suggested using a timer on the 120-volt AC cord to turn the power on and off. This would allow the battery to discharge while the timer cut the voltage off and recharge when the timer is on. I thought this was a brilliant solution. Partially discharging and topping up the battery should solve the overcharging damage and a partial discharge shouldn’t affect the life of the battery like a full discharge would.

Last week, when I went to Al’s RV Parts in Yuma, I found a Radio Shack store right next door. I bought a digital wall timer there.

Digital 120-volt AC wall timer

The only problem is, I don’t really know the discharge rate or the charging rate of the Jetpack. When I bought it, the Verizon guy told me it would run for about three hours on the battery. I used this as a guideline and programmed the timer to alternate periods of one hour off (battery discharging) with random one or two hours on intervals (charging). Theoretically, the one-hour off would discharge around 30 to 40 percent of the battery capacity. One hour on may not be enough to fully recharge it, so having some two-hour charge periods in the 24-hour program should keep it charged. After using it since Thursday, it seems to work fine. Hopefully I can get a few years worth of use out the battery without suffering another blow up.

Sunday was mostly a hang-out day for me as I watched NFL football. It seems wasteful to squander such beautiful weather – we had clear blue skies and the temperature was in the mid-70s. It’s easy to become complacent about the weather here in San Diego – the good weather is expected and often taken for granted. Having said that, there’s rain in the forecast this evening and in the early morning hours tomorrow before we resume the mid-70 sunny days.

Donna went out for run to Crown Point and back – two miles each way. She’ll head up to LA to run in a 5k at Universal Studios next weekend. Ozark the cat was a couch potato like me all day.

Ozark zonked out on our bed

I saw terrible news on Facebook this morning. Our friends Jeff and Deb Spencer (Rollingrecess.com) were hiking the Flat Iron Trail in the Superstition Mountains in Arizona. After they reached the summit and started the descent, Deb fell and broke her arm and went into shock. Her wrist was shattered and will require surgery. She had to be rescued from the steep mountainside – it took 4 hours to get back down the mountain. Our thoughts go out to both of them and we wish Deb a full and speedy recovery.

Today I need to make “things to do” list. I have a number of things to attend to and I keep forgetting some of them. We’ll go out to lunch, then return the rental car.