June

 Christian finished school at long last. We immediately went to work getting our stuff together to get out of town for a few days. There was another fire in the hills near our house. Caitlyn and I went up the street to take pictures at our neighbor's house.

They had it pretty much out after a couple of hours, I think. It is really neat watching the fire-fighters at work. Caitlyn actually was able to capture a line of them walking up the hill afterwards with her new zoom lens. 

Afterwards, we went back home to continue getting ready for our trip. Our goal was to make it to Coyote Pass near Bishop. We didn't quite know what to expect. We saw some footage of it on the YouTube. It didn't look too bad as long as we didn't try to take the hard way back out.

We stayed our first night off of Big Pine. We got there some time in the afternoon and spent the last hours of daylight just wandering around and investigating the area.

We found a nice campsite and Caitlyn built us a fire. The next morning, we continued on our way. We stopped in town to pick up a couple of maps and some mosquito repellent, as we had forgotten to pack our. We found the start of the trail without too much trouble.

Of course, it showed that the trail is rated as "difficult". We did not quite know what to make of that but we continued on our way to see how bad the trail was. It was really steep and winding with some exposure but curiously, in some ways, not as bad as some other trails we have been on. I think Emily would have really liked it. I think Christian would have rather gotten out to guide her than to have to drive and guide himself up some parts of it. 

It had some amazing views though. We stopped along the way to investigate some rocks that Christian wanted to climb. We want to come back and maybe put up some rocks on a crag that we named, "The Chief."

We passed a couple of cars on the way up, but we seemed to have most of the place to ourselves, which was really nice.

We saw some deer and a bunch of miniature lupine when we got up to Coyote Flats. There was lots to investigate. It was just a matter of deciding which way to go.

We could see the Palisade Glaciers from our road and Christian went in search of a good place to take some pictures. At some point, he figured that the best view would be from the Sugarloaf across the canyon from the Glaciers. We decided to attempt the hike up. The peak is at 10,896 feet, so it was not exactly an easy climb when you have been so out of shape for so long.

It was definitely worth the hike up though. The view was breathtaking...or that might have been the thin air.

Christian found a little log at the top and Caitlyn signed it. We can add it to the many peaks that she has bagged. Afterwards, we went back down to find a place to camp. We realized that it was going to be a lot colder than we had anticipated. Last night, we had discovered, much to our dismay, that Caitlyn's old sleeping bad didn't even fit her anymore. We had apparently not used it in many years and didn't realize that it was now too small. The last times that we've been out camping, it was either a lot colder or a lot hotter, so we had brought other gear to use.

We did not want her to be really cold and uncomfortable all night, so after much discussion and contemplation, we decided to retreat to lower ground. Unfortunately, one of the only other campsites we would have considered on our way up, was already taken by another party. In the end, we retreated all the way back to Big Pine.

We were initially going to just camp at the same place where we camped the night before. It was isolated enough and fairly warm but it was somewhat windy. It was a lot worse when we came down the mountain into Bishop. And although, it was not as bad here, it was still windier than we would have liked. Since it was still somewhat early, we decided to go a bit further and see if we can find a better place to camp and explore some new areas. 

In the end, as the sun started to go down, we found ourselves in Death Valley without any place to camp that would give us any cover.

We decided to go back to our original campsite after all. But after further consideration, we decided to just head home. We were going to head home in the morning anyway and we knew that there was going to be a package waiting for us at home. As it is most often the case these days, it was either supposed to have arrived before we took off on our trip, or it was supposed to arrive after we got back, but the delivery date shifted and it was going to be sitting on our doorstep while we were away. It was not a very high value item, but we didn't want people passing by to get any ideas so we decided to just go home early.

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After Christian finished his dad's air conditioning system, he had decided to re-charge my A/C and swap out the dryer to make sure my compressor stayed in good working condition. After doing that, it worked great for about two days and then the whole system shut down. The compressor would no longer turn on. He spent the next week trouble shooting the system. He figured that it was an electronic problem with the way it was acting. In the end, he found out that it was the clutches on the compressor. However, you cannot just buy the clutch and replace it. They do not even seem to sell it to the general public. You have to just buy a new compressor and replace the whole unit! Luckily, my compressor is a lot easier to get than Terry's and significantly cheaper as well. Christian had also decided that since it was just the clutch, there was no reason to have to replace the condenser or any of the other parts in the system. 

We got a freak thunderstorm roll through while Christian was out working on the car. It hot and humid out and it was totally unexpected. Clouds hardly ever result in actual rain in this area.

We've had the worst heatwave this summer so far, so it was really nice to be able to get my air conditioner back. 

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For Father's Day, we decided to go down to San Diego to visit with Christian's dad.  Mike was going to bbq some more tri-tip. I made some baked mac and cheese to go with it and a triple chocolate mousse cake. Unfortunately, I forgot the mousse in the refrigerator here at home.

It was good, but after eating it for four days afterwards because we didn't have a bunch of people to share it with, I can do without chocolate mousse for a while.

We got Terry a spare tire cover for his Trooper and Christian crafted some new bolts for his spare. For some reason, his spare was only being held on with one bolt!

Christian spent almost the entire time trying to re-align Terry's Trooper for him. We had done it initially when Christian did all that work to his front end, but afterwards, Terry took it up to Oregon and got some new tires. Apparently, they seriously messed up his alignment. The next time we met up with him, the toe was completely off and Christian tried to fix it really quick before Terry had to go home. Apparently, the change only made it worse because it was not square to the rest of the vehicle. So, we noticed how bad it was when Christian did the A/C system. He drove it back down to San Diego for him. Caitlyn and I drove in the XJ. The working conditions at Terry's house was less than ideal for many reasons, so it made it a lot more complicated than we anticipated.

After we got back home, Christian got his Father's Day dessert for himself and he got to open a few presents of his own. We had a bit of an ordeal coming back home on top of the fiasco that was aligning the Trooper, so we were pretty tired and irritated by the time we got back to take any more pictures to record Christian's Father's Day celebrations, but I guess he didn't really get much of a Father's Day for himself anyway!

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Caitlyn has spent the month taking her online driver's course. She took her written test at the DMV and passed! Now we just need to get her her behind the wheel lessons to validate her driver's permit.

She also go more adventurous with her hair. She decided to cut her hair again. The haircut she wanted was a lot more different than she has tried in the passed but she wanted me to still do it for her. So, we watched some videos on the YouTube and then just jumped into it. It isn't quite what she wanted since she is still growing out her bangs, but all things considered, it turned out pretty cute.

She is enjoying the ease of care of her new much shorter hair.

May

 At the beginning of the month, Marian threw a big party. It was a Star Wars themed brunch at some steakhouse in Whittier.

Unfortunately, we were so full afterwards, we had to practically roll ourselves out into the parking lot to get home.

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On one free weekend, we took off to drive Old Dale Road once again. It was Caitlyn's nemesis for a while but she has pretty much conquered it. She just wanted to do it again to get some practice driving the trail. She is doing really great. She just needs to work on getting her permit now.

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Christian spent most of the whole month taking apart his dad's Trooper to replace the entire air conditioning system. We had it scheduled for months but they kept yanking us around about the new compressor. In the end, we had to settle for a refurbished one as that is the only thing available. Every time he touches that Trooper, he finds out half the fasteners are damaged or just missing. He spent half the time searching for replacement parts or having to find some way to fabricate new ones himself. He also did a little bit of body work on it. He paid Caitlyn to help him clean and protect the dash and a bunch of other parts that he had to take off.

The a/c came together finally at some point but we were still scrambling trying to get all the pieces to put it all back together as not all of the parts we found even fit properly. As we were almost done, we found out we had a deadline as he planned to take it up to Oregon the next week to do some work on his property there.

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Caitlyn got to go to a couple more youth activities including another dance this past month. She is having a lot of fun at those.

We took my mom out for a Mother's Day picnic at the San Dimas Canyon Regional Park. My brother and his family was supposed to meet us out there but we had some miscommunication and he was having some problems with his neighbor by the time we realized the error that we told him to just not worry about it.

We've been to the park before but they haven't taken very good care of it in the past couple of years and they blocked off a lot of the trails so it wasn't that nice.

We went back to hang out at my mom's and ended up staying most of the day. My brother decided to come over that evening and he brought some tasty new Indian Curry pizzas for us to try. They were very different but pretty tasty. We want to see if we can figure out how to make them at home as they were pretty expensive for pizzas.

Christian smoked some ribs for my Mother's Day dinner and I got a bunch of cooking gadgets.

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Caitlyn and I went to the dentist this past month. Caitlyn has still never had so much as a cavity in all her 16 years so we are pretty happy about that! My dentist kept complaining about my high blood pressure so I guess I am going to have to do something about that soon.

Caitlyn finished her Junior year with straight A's! They went back to school 5 days a week this past month. They still had a really weird schedule so it was kind of irritating but we powered through it.

Christian has an additional week and a half of school so he is still slogging away with that. To top it all off, he had another kidney stone. We did not go to the hospital this time as he still had some medicine from the last time, and that's about all they can do for him anyway. It is just debilitatingly painful.

Emily is doing okay back at school. She joined another intramural soccer team. She has more roommates this year but she seems to be getting along with all of them better. She had a 24 hour stomach flu one weekend but she got through it okay. Either that her her and her roommate at something bad the night before. Who knows?

Sweet 16

 Caitlyn turned 16. Happy Birthday Caitlyn!

Caitlyn only had school for a couple of hours online today. Grandpa Terry and Marian came for her birthday luncheon. We had to wait until Christian was done with his classes at 12:30 though.

She chose skillet potatoes for breakfast and carne asada fries for lunch. She went with a carrot cake this year.

We had lunch and opened presents. She got a very generous Amazon gift card from Grandpa.

A strange selection of gifts from Marian.

We got her some camera accessories that she has been heavily hinting at. 

Plus a little something for Grandpa's birthday as well. His birthday is about a week before Caitlyn's.

Afterwards, Christian took his dad home because he was leaving his Trooper here again for more repairs. This time Christian is replacing his entire air conditioning system. 

Marian took us out for Boba. We tried to get her to think of something else she wanted to do but she couldn't think of anything so we returned home again. We chatted for a while and then Caitlyn decided that she wanted to go out for a walk to try out her new zoom lens. Marian decided to head home but we ended up chatting in the driveway some more until there was no light left for poor Caitlyn to take pictures.

Emily tried to get a hold of Caitlyn several times to wish her a Happy Birthday but they kept missing each other. She finally got a hold of her late that evening before bed. Before Emily left for school, she made a duvet for Caitlyn's weighted blanket that we got her for Christmas out of a sheet. She also got this cute candy making kit for her.

I think it was overall more fun and cute than tasty. The "salmon roe" was super neat though and quite tasty. It was the strangest thing watching them being made and having them pop in your mouth.

She was supposed to get chicken flautas for dinner but nobody was hungry still as our lunch was to filling. She will have to wait for another night soon to get it.

April

We started out the month going back down to San Diego for another bbq with Christian's family to celebrate Easter. 

The next weekend we headed over to see my family for Tomb Sweeping Day. We had lunch afterwards at my sister's house. Her in-laws were also there after doing tomb sweeping for their ancestors. They ordered a ton of food so Emily got lots of Chinese food.

The girls finally got to play the new organ at church. They played for the whole service. Well, Caitlyn played for almost the whole service. Emily played during the sacrament portion. They both did a great job. There are still some issues with the organ but they just played through it.

Emily started packing to go back to Idaho. She was pretty excited to be back with her roommate. She changed her transmission oil with the help of her Dad to get ready for the long drive back up. She has been breaking up the drive into three sections. The first day, she stops in to visit her cousin Austin. The next day, she heads up to her roommate's home. They got up really early the next morning to finish the shortest leg up to Rexburg. They want to make sure they register early so that they can get a choice of rooms or at least to make sure that they get a room together so that they don't get stuck with someone they don't get along with. It was a hard drive but she made it with no problems. 

Caitlyn and I continued sanding on the XJ. It is so much work! Christian painted the roof, back and the back quarter panels. It was really stressful. We are maybe about halfway done. We plan to take a bit of a break from it for a while as Christian is going to be fixing the a/c system on his Dad's Trooper next. He is replacing the whole system, so it is going to take a while. We are currently waiting for all the parts to come in. Some of the parts have been really difficult to get as we have been waiting on the compressor now for months.

The cursed neighbors have been having parties every weekend. If it is not one, it is another. In between, they are still out there blasting the music from their cars or garages and it has been miserable. We have not had any peace around here for quite some time. The neighbor right next to us was obviously planning a huge party again since they were putting up speakers and tables full of beer in the morning. We decided to skip town for a while to try to keep some sanity. 

We headed out to explore some different roads out near Death Valley.

It was a pretty nice drive. We didn't run into any problems on the road but we were out driving a long time. We didn't get back until two in the morning. As we passed our neighbors house to park in our driveway, we saw that some of them were still out there. The music was still going with idiots talking loudly over the music and lights flashing all over. One of the younger kids (under the age of 5) was out there too just wandering around in the front lawn at 2:am! We were so pissed. I was exhausted though and just turned on my white noise machine to try to sleep. Christian said they continued until three in the morning!

Of course, the neighbor across from us thought it was a fine idea and had a party of their own the next two weekends consecutively. 

Caitlyn decided to attend this year's youth conference. We are glad that she has been getting to know some of the other kids more and has been trying to get out and socialize more. She's been shut in far too long. It isn't good for anybody.

March

Spring Break this year was pretty messed up. Christian had the third week off and Caitlyn had the fourth week off. That pretty much made it all but impossible to really do anything. At the start of Christian's break, Emily and her dad decided to take off for a bit of an adventure. Their plan was to do Steel Pass in Death Valley with Caitlyn's Jeep. Of course, as usual, as soon as it starts, we get a weather system in.

Regardless, they said most of the towns they went through was super crowded. They got rained on which turned to snow at some point. A lot of the roads were messed up but apparently, it was beautiful out there.

They camped in the rain. The tent needs to be treated. Apparently the rain got in and some of their stuff got all wet. We've had the tent since way before the kids were born.

They got up in the morning and headed into the snow.

We don't have chains for the Jeep yet but luckily, the ones for my truck mostly fit on her tires. They certainly needed them.

At one point the road gave way and the Jeep ended up in a pretty precarious situation. As before, Christian ended up having to rebuild and redirect the road to get out. Emily tried to help him move some rocks and broke our camping shovel. We always bring a full sized shovel for these situations and that's what Christian uses to literally dig himself out of these situations.

The pictures never really show quite how bad the terrain really is. It is really hard to capture. Luckily, they didn't roll over and the only thing that got damaged was a hanger for the exhaust pipe. Hopefully Christian will be able to weld it back to something useable. 

Because their camping gear got wet the night before, they decided to cut the trip short and head home after their long ordeal. 

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Christian spent the rest of his break working out in the shop mostly. He has a bunch of welding projects lined up. Emily worked on and off. When Caitlyn finally got her Spring Break and Christian had to get back to work, we planned a few afternoons out. Emily only had a few days that week that she wasn't working. On one of the days, the girls and I drove out towards LA to do some shopping (and eating). Emily wanted a few things before heading back to Idaho. We planned to have lunch out there and the girls were excited but we had trouble with most of the places we picked out. Some of the restaurants were not even open that day. We wasted a lot of time driving around and around. 

We finally settled on a little Chinese restaurant. The food was pretty good and we were adequately hungry by then but we didn't want to stuff ourselves because the girls wanted boba afterwards. We did some shopping in between. We had actually intended to stop by to see my mom while we were out there but we took too long and decided to head back and come see her another time. We didn't want to run into the worst of the traffic going home. We had a good time though and it was nice to spend some time with both of the girls. Sometimes Emily and I would go out but Caitlyn was usually in class or home doing homework or whatever.

Emily and Caitlyn spent one of their free days going to the beach. They had a great time but came back fairly sunburned. Caitlyn put some sunscreen on but her coverage was not that great. Emily didn't put any on at all and got it the worst.

The girls spent a lot of time this past month trying to relearn their organ songs. Their teacher wanted them to play during church which we were supposed to start back up. The organ was mostly put together but they were still putting some finishing touches to it and we kept having problems. We had to keep pushing back the date for them to play because the organ just was not ready yet. It was very frustrating.

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We did manage to get together with what is left of Christian's family this past month in San Diego. It was nice to see everybody for the most part.

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We spent the rest of the month sanding the XJ down to bare metal so that we can paint it. It is a lot of work. We are starting with the roof as that is where there are the most rusty spots.

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The girls went to another youth dance. The youth are sick of being isolated and basically missing out on the last of their childhood and have decided to get together with others who aren't afraid to get out and live their lives. Before all this, I tried to get the girls to go out to official church dances but they scoffed and refused to go. They never did too much with the other kids from church except once in a blue moon or during special holiday get togethers. Now, they have a group chat going and they get together every few weeks or so for a dance or to play games or whatever. It's kind of nice.

After a full year of being away from school, Caitlyn's school started re-opening at the end of the month for in person classes a couple days a week. Of course, because of "social distancing," they have the kids who signed of to go back to school split into two groups. Group A goes Monday and Tuesday and Group B goes Thursday and Friday. They are still online on Wednesday which is a minimum day anyway so they really only check in to all their classes. But because the teachers are stretched so thin, they pretty much reduced the amount of work the kids had to do by half. It's all pretty pathetic. None of the kids are getting much of an education. It's all a joke and the teachers are tortured with all kinds of useless red tape.

Caitlyn wanted to take the CHSPE and just test out of high school at the end of this school year but because of "COVID," they kept delaying the test date. Once it was finally announced, we found out that there were no test sites in the Inland Empire this year and the cost went up more than double. 

She only needs two classes to graduate and is trying to figure out some kind of loophole to get around it but it doesn't look good for her as her district won't let her take anything less than 5 classes so that they can be sure to get the funding for her attendance. They offer nothing in the way of electives that is worth taking so she is very frustrated.

Emily's Birthday

 Emily turned 18!

It's so crazy that it has been 18 years and she will be leaving again for Idaho next month.

Her birthday landed on a Friday this year, so we were just home by ourselves. She did not have to work. I guess it was a good and bad thing. She didn't really want to have to work on her birthday but they still have her working very minimal hours still. Every week she gets a little more so she might be working halfway decent hours by the time she has to quit and go back to school! We are happy she got a chance to earn a bit of money for school though and now she has a bit of job experience to help her get her next position.

As usual, we had some of her favorite foods she either doesn't get that often or missed. For breakfast she asked for some rice porridge. For lunch, we picked up some carne asada fries at our favorite taco shop. And for dinner, we made poke at home.

She also got to open/use some of her birthday gifts. her main gift was a couple of pairs of new Vans.

Some of her old shoes were pretty trashed so I got her some new ones on the condition that she throw away one of her old ones that she keeps saying is still "fine."

We had the usual suspects over for a big birthday luncheon on Saturday. We have not all gotten together in a long time. 

I always save her fancier cake for her party as I don't have the energy and time to do that twice. So if I know we are planning a bigger party, I will do something simpler for her actual birthday with just ourselves. She got more presents...well, sort of.

Apparently, Emily was in the doghouse with Marian again. It seems that they had another agreement that Emily did not follow up on. I don't know what it was and frankly, I don't think I want to know but Marian definitely wants Emily to know that that is not okay. So she got a shredded $20 bill and a bag of Idaho potatoes. Don't ask...I won't either. But in the end, Marian got her some gas so, they came to some kind of understanding about it all.

She also brought over the rest of our presents from Christmas since we didn't see her for the holidays this past year.

She got Comfy's for all the girls including myself. Evidently, a bunch of Emily's college friends had them so she knew what they were. Marian had described them to me before but I had never heard of them. They are very warm! Emily will definitely get lots of use out of hers in Idaho. Caitlyn has already gotten lots of use of hers since she gets up early for Seminary and just sits in front of her computer all day. Our house is kept fairly cool most of the time as Christian usually runs hot if he is not also sitting in front of his computer teaching.

Christian had to rotate Marian's tires as well. Seems like everyone needs it. That's the third set of tires he's rotated in the past month that doesn't actually belong to us. They were going to try to get her to get a new set of tires but Christian said that she doesn't need them yet and just rotated them so that they would wear a bit more evenly. Plus, she had one tire that was over inflated which seemed to be causing the problem. With that fixed, hopefully Marian will not need new tires for a while yet.

After Terry and Jackie had left, Marian got us some cap steaks for dinner and she played MahJong with the girls. Caitlyn has been wanting to play again since they learned to play over Christmas. I have forgotten completely how to play. Our set has not been used since college when we played with Marian!

Frustrating February

 Another month of busy nothings has passed us by. It's been nearly a year of covid shutdowns and I am so sick to death of all the bullshit. We seem to be just passing the time and waiting in limbo for something to happen.

The only significant thing we did this past month was celebrate Chinese New Year. It is the Year of the Ox. We normally get together with my family and make and eat dumplings until we drop. This year, we did manage to get together with some of my family but we just had a big luncheon. We planned to go visit with my mom and she ended up inviting my brother and his family. Surprisingly, he agreed but we would eat outside in the yard. 

My sister did not expect that we would be getting together this year and did not make plans to come back, so it was a surprise that we kind of got together at all. She would probably do something with my mom in another week or two when she planned to return again.

We went over early to help my mom in the kitchen. Apparently, my brother also went early to help. Maybe he wanted to prepare the food himself for his family...I don't know. But shortly after we got there, Christian went to look at my mom's car, as she was having problems with the check engine light coming on and my mom sent my brother out to take him to the auto parts store as we did not know the area. One of the possible problems was a vacuum leak from the gas cap. Since that was the easiest fix, they decided to address that problem and see if it would fix the issue. 

Afterwards, Christian noticed my mom's tires were not wearing evenly, so he wanted to rotate them but her car did not have a jack so they had to cobble together what they could find.

My brother's family arrived in time for lunch but stayed outside in the backyard. We ate but did not interact that much as we were all sitting at different tables. Plus his kids were sullen and not very social. It was all very sad. We tried to talk to them but they were not very responsive. The girls told us a little more about what was going on afterwards but I think their Covid isolation is getting to them in ways that my brother just doesn't understand.

Afterwards, Debbie and the kids left as the kids had homework and junk to do. The girls and I sat and visited with my mom while I helped her clean up. Christian sat out and chatted with my brother for quite a while before we all decided to call it a day and leave. Christian needed to come back to Riverside to help ordain a friend's son to be a Teacher in the Deacon's Quorum. Afterwards, we visited with their family for a bit as we had not seen them for at least several months.

Emily was disappointed that we were not doing dumplings this year. She had returned home from college excited for our normal traditions. We decided to make a small batch by ourselves at home. We have only done it once all by ourselves. We had to work out some details so we took some notes as we worked as we don't want the tradition to die off with my mom. But our family has been doing the majority of the work for years now at these get together's so it was not that difficult. 

The only problem we ran into was running out of wheat starch. We thought that we had more of a stock of it, but was only able to find one package. The girls and I made a run for the semi-local Chinese market but they didn't even carry it. When we got together with my family, my brother went for a run to the market to try to find it for us, but the store he went to did not carry it either. Emily was devastated, so we decided that we will have to continue some other time when we can make some time to go to the proper markets. 

Anyway, the small batch that we made turned out really well. It was delicious!

We basically celebrated Chinese New Year on Valentine's Day so we didn't do that much for Valentine's. 

The rest of the time was just spent slugging through school and work for Emily. She's doing okay but they don't give her that many hours. They have been increasing her hours slowly every week but it is just incremental at best. She's just biding her time and trying to earn as much money as they will allow her before returning to college in a month and a half. 

And unfortunately, the new gas cap did not fix my mom's check engine light as it came back a couple of days after we left.

Christian ended up back in the Emergency Room. Apparently, he got another kidney stone. Because of Covid, I could not go in with him. We did not know what the problem was initially, so I sat in the parking lot for over an hour, waiting for some kind of status update. By the time I was allowed to call in to find out what was going on, they had run a CT scan and were waiting for the results so I just went home to wait because in trying to call in to get an update, my call got dropped twice. It was very frustrating. Christian did not grab his phone so there was no way to contact him directly. 

After another hour or so, I called back in. They said that it was most likely a kidney stone but that the doctor had not reviewed it yet to say for certain. After the third hour, the doctor finally called to confirm that it was a kidney stone and was getting ready to release him with an order of drugs.

Christian was pretty doped up on pain killers which made him a bit groggy and very nauseous but they had already released him and he was waiting in line at the Pharmacy. Now that place was a freaking nightmare. We waited in line for about 30 minutes to get to move on to the line in the actual Pharmacy. Once we checked in, they made us go back outside to wait in line to get back in all over again. The line was even longer than before. There were so many pissed off irate people but they just treated us all like cattle. They didn't care if some could barely stand up. Anyway, the whole thing took nearly as long as his stay in Emergency. And they kept making us put hand sanitizer on every time we went in and out of the door so the skin on my hand was trashed for almost a week afterwards.

The whole hand sanitizer thing was such a joke anyway because Christian was telling me how filthy the Emergency room was.  There was trash all over the floor and the bathroom was covered in urine and feces. He tried to get someone to clean it but no one ever bothered to do it in the 3 or 4 hours that he was in there. Luckily, the doctor and technicians/nurses seemed fairly well competent and helpful though.

In the end, it was a small stone and he was able to pass it fairly quickly after all that. He had a phone appointment with his Urologist afterwards and he has ordered some additional tests. Apparently they were concerned as his kidney was a bit inflamed and his uric acids are a bit high.