What an awful fap that was...

So.  I woke up at 4:30 Christmas morning with what I thought was an earache below my left ear, radiating down my neck, just behind my jaw.  I flopped a pillow over the affected ear, and tried to go back to sleep.  Got up and took an aspirin at 5:00.  And ended up with a cascade of other symptoms hitting, one after the other. 

Kids got up at 6:30-ish, like a school morning.  And they opened presents.  It was a lot of fun to watch, but I kept feeling worse and worse as it went on. 

I asked to be taken to the ED around 7:30 or 8:00.  The last time I requested that was when my water broke eight weeks early with the imp.  But...with the symptoms I was having, I wasn't sure it wasn't an emergency.

I wound up spending Christmas in the hospital, with blood drawn frequently (and not from the I.V. port already in place...no, these were from new sticks.  Lots of other tests run, and me run all over the hospital for said tests.  And nothing by mouth until 4:30 or 5:00 p.m.  By that time, I was ready to bite someone for a drink of water.  My usual water intake is between a half a gallon and a gallon of water per day, and I had had...less than a cup by that point.  And I was going mildly nuts with thirst.

I came home yesterday before noon, with sticky patches all over the place, a bruise the size of a fifty cent piece inside my left elbow, and bruising all around the top of my right arm (those hospital blood pressure cuffs are vicious), and a new diagnosis of GERD, a new prescription for six weeks of a proton pump inhibitor...and orders to stop taking aspirin from one doctor, and orders to take a baby aspirin from another doctor.  I also came home with a doctor's orders to get a blood pressure monitor for at home, and check it twice a day, and take the record with me when I went to see my doc in three weeks.  (It's already a lot lower than it was in the hospital...and trending downward.)

I am feeling much better today than I was even yesterday, and I was feeling much better yesterday than I had been the day before.  But I am not going to do anything I don't absolutely have to, and am planning on simply reading a book for the rest of the day.  Odysseus suggested David Weber's In Fury Born...I started it day before yesterday, and I'm greatly enjoying it.  And I'm incredibly thankful it's a very long book, and that it was on one of the Baen free CDs they were putting in the hardbacks years back.  Because, while we have the hardback, it really is a long book, and kinda heavier than I could probably have managed day before yesterday. 

He is Born!

Halford - Oh Come O Come Emanuel

OH, FFS!!!

No grounds.

The Democrats have no grounds to impeach President Trump.  The Republicans that hate his fucking guts know that.  They also know that he's a vindictive son of a bitch, and did not vote in favor when the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives decided to dive face-first into the manure pile for a mud-wrestling* session.

Abuse of power?  Obama did that.  Bush II did that.  Clinton did that.  Bush I did that.  I don't remember Regan, considering I was a pre-teen when he left office, so I can't say one way or the other.  If simple "abuse of power" was an impeachable offense, every president for the last 200 years (with very few exceptions) should have been impeached.

This opens up #10 cans of worms the Democrats really don't want opened, in ways they really don't want those cans opened.

I do not like President Trump.  I do, however, respect the fuck out of him, and I do respect the job he's taken on, trying to clean out the Aegean Stables.  He's making decent progress, too.

Hence, this stupidity.

Dear God, they know not what they have wrought.  


*Mark Twain comes to mind.  Also pigeons and chess. 

The end of an era

For the past several years, I've been clipping those Box Tops for Education from all of the products that have them.  I'd pack them into a sandwich bag until I couldn't fit any more in, and send them with alternating kids.  One year, I had a new bag filled every month.  That was a lot of box tops, and the kids' classrooms benefited.  

I gathered up the last few box tops this morning, put them in a bag, and sent them with the pixie. 

That's it.  There are no more, and there will be no more. 

Not because the program has ended, but because it has...changed. 

I noted, recently, that things that had had the little pink square on them (or two, three, four, or more), were...harder to find.  There were fewer products with that little pink square.  I think Kleenex was one of the first brands to stop putting it on the packaging.  Time was, I could get a big package of boxes of Kleenex from Sam's Club, and cut a dozen box tops off of the plastic packaging. 

They've disappeared from the Motts Apple Juice, the Progresso soup cans, and now the Old El Paso canned goods.  They've disappeared from a lot of cereal boxes, and from the brownie mixes I get. 

Note well: many of these brands haven't necessarily stopped participating. 

The box tops organization changed things up.  Now, instead of taking the box tops off the individual products and sending those to your teacher...

...you download an app, and scan your store receipt. 

Uh, no. 

For several reasons, no. 

First reason: you need a smartphone to participate.  I do not have, nor do I want a smartphone.  I have a flip phone with a camera.  It's as much as I need, and I have that only very grudgingly.  I hate cell phones with a purple passion...the only reason I have one at all is that I drive, and have the kids in the car with me most of the time.  It's a safety device. 

Second reason: while I shop with Amazon (which tracks my purchases) and shop at Sam's Club (membership...does the same thing), I am not in favor of having all of my spending tracked by whomever wants to track it.  I do not see how it's anyone's business what I purchase and when.  And, by forcing us to scan receipts, that's exactly what this stupid program has moved to doing.  If it was scanning the individual things that participate in the box top program, it would be different. 

Third reason: there's no way this program has a database secure enough that it won't be hacked.  There's no way the spending habits of millions of people won't be used by the unscrupulous.  Which includes the governments of cities, states, and nations.  Assuming they wouldn't be automatically granted access from the get-go. 

I had been spending the little bit more to get Kleenex brand tissues--something like $5 more per 12 boxes than the Member's Mark generics that I like just as well from Sam's Club.  That has changed.  Same with spending a few cents more per can for enchilada sauce, or taco seasoning.  Beans, refried beans, and brownies will just be made from scratch (lot cheaper than buying pre-prepared). 

And a direct donation to the classrooms can and will be made instead.