u/MaKoWi

I will be heading north from Cheyenne, and Fort Laramie National Historic Site. It looks like Gillette is a possible stopping point with plenty of hotel options (I'm not camping, please don't recommend it) before going to see Devils Tower. But DT is an hour's drive away from Gillette. That may be fine, but I thought I'd see if anyone knew of other options. In case it matters, after Devils Tower, I will be heading east through Spearfish and on to Rapid City.

Coming up from the south, is there a better option than Gillette for where to spend the night?

Side question: do you recommend Devils Tower in the morning or late afternoon?

Thanks!

I'm not sure I have any specific question, maybe I just need to get this out.

I'm 66. My Mom (89.5) and Dad (92 and 9 months) are still living in their own home, ~600 miles away from me. But over just the last 2-3 months, my Dad's condition has really deteriorated. The difference in his condition between an April visit and an early-July visit, has been surprising to me.

I've read a couple of really good books (Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande, and With the End in Mind, by Kathryn Mannix) and I've started finding videos about signs someone is approaching their death. I feel like my Dad displays at least 80% of the signs that would indicate he's in the "transitional phase" toward dying. Primarily, he has little to no appetite so barely eats, maybe a few bites of something once or twice a day. He's gotten quite weak with no stamina and he can only stand for a few minutes before needing to sit down and rest. He sleeps quite a bit, 10-12 hours overnight then naps during the day. His eyesight is bad (technically considered blind, at least for the tax form checkbox), as is his hearing. Falls or near-falls, are happening more often and becoming a present threat. And I think it's getting harder for my Mom to take care of him.

Up to this point, however, he's had no obvious illness. Then a recent fall sent him to the ER. Thankfully, no broken bones. Just a scraped-raw arm from sliding along carpet on his crepe-paper-thin skin. He needed 3 staples to close a small wound where he hit his head. But after a CT scan of his shoulders, there were no signs of any fractures. However, the CT scan, which included part of his chest, showed a dark spot. They did another CT scan focusing on his chest and they found a "mass" in his right lung.

They're going to their own doctor tomorrow so I hope we'll be able to find out soon what it is. (Beyond the obvious jump-to-conclusions cancer.)

Given my Dad's frailty, however, I know they need support. And if I'm right about how close he might be getting to dying, I wondered if hospice was an option. But for hospice, someone has to be within 6 months of dying and/or(?) have a specific terminal disease. Now that they've found this mass in his lung, maybe that will make him eligible for hospice? Maybe that will shed some light on how much longer he has to live?

I've known we'd eventually get to this point with my parents, and now, it would seem, it's here. But I'm at peace with it. Reading those books helped so much. And knowing we've always been able to say "I love you" to each other, knowing there are no fences to mend, no relationship to patch up or salvage, it's about as good as it can be in these circumstances. And if this is the case, my concern will switch to my Mom and how she will handle being alone after nearly 71 years of marriage to my Dad.

Thanks for listening.

I just created a budget in ZeroSum and imported my YNAB budget (via the token method). ZeroSum says I have money to assign, but it should be $0, just like it was in YNAB.

I'm only assigned in June, I have not assigned anything to July yet.
I have $0 credit card debt and 0 loans.
I checked the balances of each account and the values in each budget category against YNAB and they are all correct.

I don't understand why it says I have money to assign. Any help would be appreciated.

So, this movie appears to be living in my head rent-free for now. And this morning, it landed on the scene for his first spacewalk, to catch the cylinder.

He looks out of the hatch, and his response is "No". It's funny and totally understandable.

But then something happens and he gets thrown out of the hatch by accident.

He could have just pulled himself back in and called it a day. But he didn't.

Once out there, once in the actual situation, he puts his mind to it to accomplish the task at hand. This is just part of his character, but we really didn't fully know it yet.

He was asked to go voluntarily on the Hail Mary and he said "No". Then he was "thrown" onto the Hail Mary, against his will, in spite of his answer. But once he wakes up and the memory of what needs to be done returns, he puts his mind to it to somehow accomplish the task.

I wonder if there are other scenes or instances that demonstrate something similar. I guess I can let my mind wander.

[Book Difference: Grace does know how to handle a space walk and in the book he is surprised at well he does it. But of course he does, because later in the book one of his returned memories is that he was the stand-in in the huge pool when they were testing and fine-tuning the gloves and the suit so he had some "practice". But I don't mind this change for the movie at all.]

I loved Andy Weir's book Project Hail Mary. And as its own media, I loved the movie. So what makes me feel old(er)?

Watching YouTube reaction videos to the movie and discovering a disheartening number of these youngsters who didn't recognize the "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" musical notes.

The number of these "kids" who didn't understand why naming the planet Adrian after Rocky's mate was truly the obvious and only option, because of the "Rocky" movie.

Sigh. 😂

Yesterday, I returned home from a road trip. So the last tank of gas was 99% freeway driving. At about 20 "miles-to-go" for the tank of gas meter, the display presented a "Low Fuel" warning. I finally pulled off the freeway in my home town with the miles-to-go=11, and the fuel gauge needle just starting to brush the top of the E line. I had 361.8 miles on Trip A (my gas fill-up distance driven). I put in 10.841 gallons for the 12.7-gallon tank.

I guess I could have gone another +/- 30 miles, but maybe this is now a good reference on how far to push it.

I'm happy with the 33.4 mpg despite pushing the speed just a little bit.

How close have you gotten to an empty tank?