Blood Vessels

It's been a week since my Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm ultrasound, and I haven't heard anything.  I am assuming no news is good news at this point, but I think I'll check with my doc to make certain.

image: Mikael Häggström, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59525248

Odds & Ends

There is so little happening around here these days, other than... well... you know... everything, that I find myself scrounging for blog material.  So here's a collection of disjointed recent happenings.

The ancient cooktop that was original to the building, hence some 30-40 years old, gave up the proverbial ghost with a loud bang a week or so ago.  New glass-top range has been installed.  Amusing anecdote: the range manual listed a specific cleaner for the cooktop, stating that other brands do not clean as thoroughly, etc.  Included with the range was a small bottle of cleaner, from a different brand.  Product placement fail.

My brother successfully underwent surgery to reinforce an aneurysm in his abdominal aorta.  These days, as the surgeon said, the procedure is rather like slipping a pipe into a pipe (they do this on a much larger scale when rebuilding aging water and sewer systems).  An incision further down and slip the repair stent up the femoral artery to the aorta.  No doubt it feels a bit weird when you wake up; my brother reported a headache, but I know they didn't go up that far.

The DC area just set a new record for number of consecutive days above 90º.  Yesterday we had 97º (36ºC) with the characteristic unbearable humidity of the region bringing the heat index to 107º (41ºC).  Fit for neither man nor beast, as they say.  Recreation now takes the form of driving around in a car with the A/C on.

Desperate for amusement as we are these days, I switched the setting on the Roomba so that the machine spoke German.  That was fun; I've now set it back to English.  Next time, I might try Danish.

I woke up in the middle of the night last night and stayed up for a few hours.  I hate when that happens.

The new modern, jet-age cooktop.  Full remodel of the kitchen is still a couple years off.

H.M. Margrethe II, Queen of Denmark.  She too speaks Danish.

Lillies

Those familiar with my FB page will know that there is a place in our living room which ended up, quite by accident, with perfect lighting to photograph cut flowers.  Here are some recent shots.

Oh Ick!

With retirement and Covid conspiring to make every day deadeningly the same, and the heat around here hitting the higher 90's (36ºC) so that even going outside is a misery, and of course Trump, I've fallen into quite the funk the past couple of days.  And retirement was going so well... until I couldn't go anywhere or do anything because of the plague and the freakin' idiots that insist on prolonging it.  Anywho, I realized this morning that the only way to get out of this was to actually DO something, even if I didn't feel like doing so.  So I cleaned my bedroom and bath, took out the trash, and did a couple of other things that made me active and feeling useful.  Feel much better now.  But I do have the feeling that the earliest anything will break will be the election.  Oh ick!

Thought for the Day

Aside from the brilliance of this particular cartoon panel - Daffy Duck has been a role model of mine since childhood - this post marks a significant decision on my part regarding the blog.  Since I am still off Facebook, I decided that it's OK to post quality memes on the blog.  Since I strongly associate these things with FB, I at first thought they were not appropriate on this platform.  But after seeing other bloggers use them, I determined there was nothing wrong with posting them here.  There won't be an avalanche of them, as happens on FB, but posting as appropriate and when it suits my mood is a good thing.  So there you have it.

The Axis in a Cup

This morning I used the last of the German coffee, Dallmayr, and so mixed it with a new package of Italian, Lavazza.  The alliance proved much more more successful than it was in WWII.

Beautification

Yesterday I trimmed my beard and got a mani-pedi.  Today I get the first haircut since the quarantine.  Tomorrow I get an aortic ultrasound.  I'll just be a vision of beauty inside and out by the time this is all done!

 🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷 And... Happy Bastille Day!  🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷

Yer Another Puzzlement

I'm pondering another social media conundrum.  I really despise Facebook, and am on yet another hiatus from it at present, but all sorts of friends post to it.  Hence, all sorts of friends see what I post, and so I manage to easily stay in touch and have the occasional banter with them.  I really prefer to blog, but I don't know how many FB friends read the blog, and thus far it has not generated much banter.  I'd love to just leave FB altogether, but I don't want to do that if it means losing contact with my friends there.  Anybody have any clever ideas on what to do?

-- Bewildered in Northern Virginia

Investment Strategies

After Trump was elected, I moved half my retirement savings into money market cash.  With Covid, I upped that to 75%  I just surveyed today's international headlines and am now considering gold bars under the mattress.

A Day Off

I couldn't come up with something to write today, so I thought I'd write about taking the day off, which I am currently doing.  Now some might wonder how, when one is retired, one can take the day off.  Surely, all days are days off, no?  At this point I'll repeat the often cited quotation from AH's cousin: "The problem with retirement is that you never get a day off."  Au contraire, I would vigorously contend!  I find that usually I have some sort of agenda for the day, whether it be grocery shopping, cleaning, some little household project or web investigation.  (NB: the skilled use of the comma in the previous sentence.  Household projects and web investigations are grouped together, indicating I consider them to be the same species of activity.)  But I digress...

A day off for me is to have either no or a very limited agenda and to feel no urgency in accomplishing anything.  Today the agenda is very limited indded, viz., replace the fitted sheet on my bed, which has developed a sizeable rip, and take a shower.  Beard trimming is optional, perhaps shaving as well.  I believe it's healthy to leave the fields fallow from time to time.  A mid-morning nap is not out of the question.

 

Meet the Pets - part 2

Many of you may already be familiar with Rodney, our little wombat.  He is among the most loyal, affectionate, and undemanding pets we have.  Heart of pure gold.

Among the most adorable is little Connor, a lamb we adopted in Ireland.  Such a cutie!  He's been known to hang out with the puffins in the Halloween candy bucket.

A special favorite of AH is Dorian (excuse the obvious name).  He's a real cuddle-buddy.

We also are privileged to have a small family of the very rare and aristocratic Mouton-Frisé house sheep: François, Gloriana-Angélique and their daughter Yvette.

Townie is local talent from Georgetown.  He is of a size, shape, and proportion comparable to animate sheep - a rarity among house breeds.

Break Time Again

Today I started yet another break from the onslaught of stupidity, bad news, and outrage on Facebook.  I don't think you could design a media platform more psychically draining if you wanted to.

Toot, toot! Ding, Ding!

Being a huge fan of urban rail: subway, elevated, light rail, people mover, etc., one of the things I miss most these days is riding the DC Metro.  It's largely running back to normal at this point, but neither I nor AH feel comfortable riding it yet.  Deprived of one  of my great pleasures in living here, I find myself looking longingly at pictures and YouTubes of the trains.  The system has some pretty cool things about it.

From www.mcsweeneys.net

Discipline-Specific Guidelines for Classroom Social Distancing

by Bethany S. Keenan

Math

Students will begin in the classroom and then move out in an attempt to be infinity steps apart. Every time they get situated, the professor will shout, “One step further!” When they get back to their dorm rooms, declare that good enough and move class online.

Education

Professors should contact local schools and request printed copies of the amount of bureaucratic paperwork and testing requirements the average teacher deals with during the academic year. This material will be placed as a barrier both between each individual future teacher in your class, and between each future teacher and their pedagogical dreams.

Philosophy

Students should begin class online with a discussion of what it really means to be “in person” anyways. They should then stay online until they have resolved all questions about human existence.

Foreign Languages

Students should remain in their rooms until other countries feel the United States’ handling of the coronavirus is safe enough to allow Americans to travel.

Psychology

As the limitations on student activity in residential areas basically recreates the Stanford Prison Experiment, students should spend the semester taking copious notes on how their roommate is handling things.

Computer Science

The programming students didn’t actually want to leave their dorm rooms anyways. You’re good.

Faculty will be able to guarantee students follow these guidelines by including distancing policies within their syllabus, the one document we know all students read.

Please Bear with Us

Weltschmerz

Weltschmerz is one of those wonderful foreign words, in this case German, which concisely expresses something for which there is no English equivalent.  Literally it means "world hurt," which is better expressed as "world ache" in the sense of our "headache," a pain caused by the world.  But there is also a certain connotation of "the world is hurting," so the ache of the world is causing you a world ache.  Those clever Germans!  (It differs from the French ennui, which implies boredom and lack of feeling.  Weltschmerz hurts.)  There's a lot of it going around these days, and social media is a virulent carrier.  I've been having a recurring case of it for the past few days.  Quite unpleasant that.  A delightful Zoom chat a couple days ago with friends in AZ helped lift my spirits, as did a ride in AH's convertible yesterday morning when the temp and humidity were still bearable.  But the thing that really helped was something I have never done before.  When I got back from the car-ride, I shut off my phone, iPads, and iMac and did not touch them for the rest of the day.  I read, and napped, and watched the Dr. Pol marathon.  It was quite calming and refreshing.  I'll have to do "turn off" days more often; it's more effective and satisfying than just not looking at the devices.

So, before the end of the day, use Weltschmerz three times in a complete sentence.  You'll be glad you did.

Not experiencing Weltschmerz.

Reading Report

Just finished Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark, which was quite interesting and entertaining.  The book contains intriguing discussions about the nature of language and grammar.  Most diverting.

Cosmology is next on the docket:

Home Sweet Home

Just because our pets are inanimate doesn't mean that they don't share the instincts of other members of their species.

Wombats will borrow:

Birds will nest:

Torn between Two Targets

One of the advantages of where we now reside is that we live in between two Targets.  No, not as in between the Pentagon and White House if the Russkies send the big one over, but between two branches of a popular chain of discount stores.  There is, however, a world of difference between them.  Toward the south (the less fashionable direction) the store is closer and easier to get to.  The problem is that inside it looks like a Moscow department store under Brezhnev.  Lots of empty shelves, sloppy organization, frequently out of things, generally unkempt.  Now, you might think to blame this on the epidemic, but in fact the store was like that long before anyone heard of Covid.  To the north (the more fashionable direction) the store is further away and the traffic can be pretty bad, having to go though the middle of Old Town Alexandria to get there.  Its shelves are always stocked to overflowing, all is in order, what you want is usually there, and the checkout lines are efficient.  This is also the store where Michelle O. used to go every now and then.  But those were the good old days; now one has to go all the way to the Costco in Arlington to bump into someone famous.  (Hillary ran into Justice Sotomayor there one Saturday; no doubt attracted by the coupons for family-size barrels of Cheese Dinkles.)  So I'm torn.  I hate the frustration of the southern store, but don't savor fighting the traffic to get to the better one in the north.  They're building a Metro station by the northern one even as we speak; maybe that will settle things.  File under first-world problems yet again.  Toodles.

See the Connections

This is my first simultaneous post on the blog and Facebook.  To me, it’s that important.

In the county in which we live (and there isn't enough room here to go into the difference between cities and counties in Va, but it is quite interesting I assure you) at this point records 13,976 confirmed or probable Covid cases and 503 deaths, in a population of a bit over 1 million.  More than half the deaths occurred in nursing homes.  Among other things, it was discovered that a nurse's aid who worked in three different homes tested positive, bringing exposure just herself to three different facilities.  How did this happen?  As a nurse's aid, the person could only secure 20-hour/week jobs.  Why?  Because if she worked more hours the employer would have to give her a medical insurance benefit.  To cut costs, employers limit hours.  To make ends meet, she had to work three 20 hour/week jobs.  In other words, our so-called health insurance "system," was actually responsible for spreading the disease, accounting for an unknown number of the 250+ deaths in nursing homes in our county.  Nor is this person's case rare.  Low-end healthcare workers, whose work is indispensable, are miserably paid to begin with.  Add on top of that our bizarre tying of health insurance to employment, and the ability of employers to deliberately and callously abuse loopholes in the regulations, and you get not only a bloated, overpriced, and inefficient healthcare system, you get one that is actually a danger to public health.  Want to stop needless deaths in nursing homes?  Then support fair wages and universal health coverage.  It's all connected.