Organizing medications

Hannah is doing very well. We were very worried earlier this summer about her because she seemed to have started down that slippery slope. I had very real worries about whether or not she would make it to her 14th birthday (next Monday). Now I'm pretty confident that she'll make it ;-)

Hannah is on a lot of medications right now. Pretty quickly I realized that it would be quite a task to keep up with them all -- not so much of what to give when (we have a list on the fridge for that) -- but with when to reorder what.

That is where Remember the Milk comes in. Hannah gets seven Tramadol a day. Her refill is for 100 pills so she gets that refilled every 14.2something days from the pharmacy. The FortiFlora and Denamarin come from the vet. The melatonin comes from Whole Foods. You get the idea. I have all of these set up as reminders in Remember the Milk (RTM). When to call it in, what the prescription number is and the phone number to the pharmacy (or the vet, etc.) and then I allow time for them to order the Denamarin or count out the Tramadol before going to pick up the medications and supplements. Once I get the reminders in, RTM will e-mail me reminders each morning that I have something due. Remember the Milk has been a fantastic tool for organizing this.

Hannah's refrigerator list:

1 hour before breakfast
Denamarin

30 minutes before breakfast
Famotidine (generic Pepcid) (10 mg)
melatonin (3mg)
Tramadol - 2.5 pills

At breakfast time
Zubrin
FortiFlora
flax oil

After work / Late afternoon
Tramadol - 2.5 pills
Famotidine (generic Pepcid) (10 mg)

At Dinner
Amoxicillin
Actigall
flax oil

At bedtime
Tramadol - 2 pills
Famotidine (generic Pepcid) (10 mg)
melatonin (3mg)

letting .mac go

I decided to let my .Mac account go. I basically used it to sync my iCal and Address Book on my home and work machines. To replace or improve upon .Mac, I wanted:

• Synchronize calendars between two or more Macs
• Share calendar with selected family members
• Synchronize Address Book between two or more Macs
• Mail is not an issue, I use my work account for work mail and Gmail for personal mail.
• Web storage for files would be a plus
  

A co-worker suggested using fastmail.fm to publish my calendar. (I understand that Box.net also has webDAV support but I haven't tried them.) I can use their webDAV to publish my calendar from one machine and view it on another. That works but I'd like to be able to write to the calendar as well. I'm looking for synchronization rather than replication. Additionally, it seems that Apple isn't all that into supporting the publish to private server feature in iCal since every time there is an OS update, I end up having to republish by selecting "Change Location" in iCal. That being said, fastmail.fm is very nice and I like using webDAV for file copying via Filer's Go -> Connect to Server. Very handy.

I've tried Plaxo for this and it's only so-so. It grabs updates from both machines and puts it on the web but not onto iCal. It also seems to be bit flaky. Plaxo works fine for Address Book, it's just flaky on the calendar side.

GCALDameon - I tried this and I really really wanted it to work but I had not luck with it. I think that the problem has to do with the changes to iCal behavior when going from Tiger to Leopard. It may have worked fine under Tiger. It doesn't work fine under Leopard. iSynCal seems to be in the same boat.

Spanning Sync seems like a pricy solution at $65 for iCal <-> gCal. I downloaded the trial and give it a whirl. Not only was it very slow, I ended up with a ton of duplicate events on gCal -- so many that I deleted the test calendar that I used. I was very thankful that I had backed up iCal before starting!

gSync is $20 for up to two computers. I download the trial for this as well and it has worked really well. It was slow synching one of my large calendars the first time but since then, it's been great.

BusySync is a third option but a I'm not going there. It's more expensive that gSync and I don't see any value added for what I am trying to do. gSync seems to be working and I'm betting that Google will come out with CalDav support because if iPhone since it already has fairly robust CrackBerry support.

Google Tutor discusses setting up a one way "sync." Since I really wanted a two way sync involving two computers and multiple family members, that doesn't work for me.

30Boxes is very nice and I do think that it has it's place but it doesn't support what I want to do in this case.

I'd be interested in hearing about other tools that people are using.

What's for dinner? White chili

Meal planning can be challenging. We eat dinner at home six or seven nights a week and we eat together about as often. Even two people can make up a family and we make an effort to have meals together. Finding recipes that we like that aren't too time consuming, calorically dense or sodium filled -- or leave us with a month of leftovers -- can take some effort!

Last night we tried a recipe for white chili for the first time. It was a hit! I used some homemade broth but I did use canned white kidney beans. The cumin and oregano were both from Penzey's. I make it a habit to use bulk spices from Penzey's, The Spice House or the bulk section at Whole Foods.

White Chili

1 teaspoon canola oil
1 small onion, chopped
4 ounces ground chicken or turkey breast
1 4-ounce can chopped green chills
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin seed
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 15-ounce can white beans, rinsed and drained
1 cup reduced sodium chicken broth
1 teaspoon cider vinegar (or 2 teaspoons lime juice)

Heat oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the ground chicken/turkey and increase the heat to medium-high. Cook until browned, about 2 minutes. Stir in chills and spices. Cook, stirring occasionally, until fragrant, about 1 minutes. Stir in drained beans and broth, bring to a simmer. Cook, stirring occasionally, until slightly reduced, about 10 minutes. Add vinegar (or lime juice).

Source: Eating Well: Serves Two

Tonight, we just had omelets but I think that I should get bonus points for making the dough for tomorrow's pizza!