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I've never quite understood what to make of this national holiday, either in terms of its significance or its observance. From the wee hours on this morning, my Facebook Wall was full of thanks to the troops- for all they do to keep us safe, and free, and brave. (Sorry, but I can't help but remember the Firesign Theatre riff on that: Ask the postman, ask the mailman, ask the milkman, white with foammmmm!) Only one problem: that's the premise of November's Veterans Day- which, because it is still observed on its actual whatever-day-of-the-week-it-is and, face it, is now firmly in the middle of Retail Christmas, is a secondary holiday gotten off only by bankers and civil servants, and is roundly, if unfairly, ignored by most of the country. No, Memorial Day is rooted firmly in the ground of troops who fought and died- and, since it was originally Civil War dead being remembered, today's national holiday honors losers as much as winners. Its Congressionally recognized home is 100 miles east of here, in Waterloo, New York, which to this day reserves the sort-of original date of May 30th for its formal observances, and they begin in a series of cemeteries. We're remembering specific Whos, who died for their side, not some vague patriotic concept of how important military service is. And, of course, I'm not sure many people today are even thinking it's about that.
----
It wasn't always this way. The federal holiday shifted to the Monday-holiday schedule, along with a bunch of others throughout the year, sometime in the Nixon Administration, and I've never especially liked them. In my fast-approaching 30 years in the workplace, they've always meant an awkward "day" off followed by four days of hectic catch-up. Why didn't they move the holidays to the corresponding Fridays? I'd much rather have an extra day off at the end of a workweek, since the ensuing Mondays are always tough adjustments, anyway. For those first Nixon years through the first Memorial Day under Carter, my Memorial Day was spent stuck in a tin can with spats- doing the hometown parade as part of my junior or senior high's marching band. Those days, like today here, were invariably hot, humid and painfully long in both time and distance, and the route was lined mostly with (a) our own parents and (b) veterans who were so old they wouldn't have known if we were playing Sousa, Sex Pistols or nothing at all. At least back then, Memorial Day also marked the opening of the town pool, so it took major faculty effort to keep us from jumping into the deep end with uniforms and instruments still attached. Nowadays, budget cuts mean that our local town pool is closed until the last week of June, no matter how hot the hell gets out there. In my reed-less decades since then (it was 35 Memorial Days ago today that I hung up my marching outfit), the holiday has evolved more into That Thing it's become as the unofficial start of summer, much as Labor Day marks its end in this country. Increasingly, people in retail do not get off for the whole day, or even a part of it, and therefore Eleanor's been working today, as she did this year, for most of the time we've lived here. (She did get sprung just now, about an hour early.) We have no immediate or extended fam within 70 miles, and the only relative within even that range works for a hospital and is even more likely than she to be working on holidays, so it's never become the bigass family picnic day it is for many. Two major sports are in playoff mode, but both took the entire day off today (one NBA series starts tonight); and while baseball used to make Memorial Day doubleheaders a tradition, those died out in the 80s and now we're lucky they play any games at all on the last Monday in May (or, in the case of the Mets today, not so lucky:P). So now that beloved and child are both home, it's gonna be mostly hey, hey, hey, just an ordinary night: dogs on the grill, zucchini and sweet peppers on the side, and three hopefully kick-ass days to end the month instead of the four that would've included today. This entry was originally posted at http://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/51781.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
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Which means I get to give it a proper, and utterly thumbs-up, REVIEW!
(Full disclosure: While I did take on the editing of the first of Kate Danley's books in the Maggie MacKay series-
- yeah, that one-
I had nothing whatsoever to do with the next latest and greatest of 'em.)
K, that's not entirely true. I do get an acknowledgement for helping support her awesomely worthy effort, last November, to do a weekend worth of writing on this project as part of a fundraising NaNoCal project called
The Night of Writing Dangerously. Two hundred and fifty authors descended upon the Julia Morgan Ballroom in downtown San Francisco dressed in our 1940s best. Armed only with our laptops (and typewriters. Some took the noir theme very seriously), we engaged in an evening of literary abandon, typing to our heart’s content for six hours....The write-a-thon benefited the Young Writers Program, which funds free creative writing programs in hundreds of schools and communities around the world.
Much of the resulting book came out of that effort, but I got to see the results of it the same way you would- and should. Get thee to an Amazonery for four bucks, (or ask me nicely and I can "loan" my copy to you for free), or knock down a tree to the same effect for less than an A-Ham and have it whenever your super-saver-shipper shows.
And why should you?
* You will laugh. Kate is, at heart, a comic- grounded in Groundlings and with senses of timing and turn-of-phrase that will just amaze.
* You will love her 'verse. It's essentially the same one she developed for the original book- which I was hesitant to edit when I first saw the V-word, Twihards having scared the living garlic out of my appreciation for the genre, but there's none of that world in Maggie's- in either the original or this. She, rather, is just an ordinary gal who can walk worlds and stake vamps without the slightest hint of sparkly, with a dysfunctional but loving family that you will relate to; a limited but awesome cast of non-human characters carried over from MFH plus a novel spin on genies that Jonathan Stroud and Kat Richardson would be pleased to go out for bottled beverages with; and a story which reaches back to its predecessor enough to be a sequel while still not requiring you to read the earlier work to "get" most of what's going on (something said Kat could take a lesson from).
* You will appreciate the turns taken. The original established a second plane, dimension, whatevs, that Maggie can travel to and from, far more easily than most but not without worries about reliable transportation and the occasional interdimensional uckfup. MGYG maintains and expands on that, adding detail about how some can do it even better than she does, and introducing a third and darker dimension, respecting the rules of traditional I Dream of Geniedom while, still, turning them on their ear to work her magic in the thrilling finale-for-now.
* Worst of all, you will not miss my contributions one little bit. Okay, a teeny tiny here and there: "busses" are kisses, not modes of transport; there might be a missed opportunity for foreshadowing or explaining on about three pages; and, especially towards the end, the typographer got a little sloppy. I cared not a whit, and neither should you.
Why are you reading this last paragraph? GO!
This entry was originally posted at http://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/51543.h tml. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
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The story, when I dropped off the truck for the Posse of Movers round 10 this morning, was that I wouldn't really need to do much. Nope, they got it. They might need me to help move one heavy piece of furniture, but they got it. I should've recognized that line.After I met up with them and could do little other than deliver beer to the storage place, I resumed my erranding, which took longer than expected. I did get most of a pizza to share with them out of the deal, though. When I re-met them inside Uncle Bob's a bit past 2, the panic had begun to set in. By then, they'd laid in only one other load, Emily was tired in general and tired of driving the truck in particular, and although we were about to acquire an even bigger entourage for the rest of the afternoon, it just seemed that most of us were just standing round for way too much time. I started getting executive, aka bitchy, with them- sending Roomie L. back to the apartment ahead of us in Emily's car to load up non-huge stuff, while she, I and the other two guys picked up the next load from Locker Roomie K's place. Nerves were getting shot all the way around by then; there were at least three more full loads involving a truck and two cars, and the storage place closes at 6:30, which left us time for one, maybe two, such runs. They had to be completely out by 10 tomorrow morning. Emily just wanted to go home. Also? The pizza had gone on ahead in her own car and, surprise surprise, she hadn't eaten anything since this morning. Once we got back there, I practically shoved her into her own kitchen with the pizza box in hand from her passenger seat, quoting a rather famous in-line Eleanor and I picked up from John Pizzarelli- Eat something. You look bad.- and I also did a little reconaissance. I'd seen an imposing-looking notice on one of the nearby townhouse doors. Embracing my inner nosy, I went and read it; it gave that unit a 24-hour special dispensation to finish moving out beyond the deadline. There was a phone number. I called it and left a voicemail beg. Finally, around 5 p.m. and our vehicles all reloaded, I was left at the front of the parade to get back to Uncle Bob's onnne moorrre timmme. My usual in-and-out road from her side of campus is called East River Road, but I've been on that road around 5 before and I could already see the backup. I know, I thought smartly- I'll cut across campus and come out on Townline Road and beat that.
Not on Graduation Day I wouldn't. A block into my detour, we encountered real detours, as thousands of freshly minted alumni all left simultaneously out the one main drive of the campus, and we had no choice but to join them. Fortunately, I knew to turn away from the madding crowd once we got to Jefferson Road, and the clockwise Outer Loop round the city, though a mile or so longer than going our usual counterclockwise way from there, wasn't backed up at all and we got to the locker in plenty of time. We also got two important calls. One, from RIT itself, answering my plea and giving them all of tomorrow to finish their unloading and cleaning. The other, from my own late-afternoon client, who had no problem at all with my running late. Met her round 6, took my final apartment run an hour later (Em and L. were out getting ice cream and who can blame them after all that?), and after quick runs for dinner and wine for the house, I got in the door not quite 13 hours after I went out it. If Em needs me to go back tomorrow, of course I will, but I think, from what seems to be left in the increased time to do it in, that she's got it;) This entry was originally posted at http://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/51022.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
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Or in this case, yellow truck.
I've been up since 5, on the road since 8-something, and likely won't get home until past 8 tonight. So far I've:
- Finalized and printed a whole damn black ink cartridge worth of stuff for my 10:30 appointment; - Loaded up the truck with rope, bungee cords, empty boxes and (eventually) beer- the universal currency of collegiate moving days- and driven it here to the 585; - Switched out said truck for Emily's car so she and beermates could begin hauling furniture to the self-store place; - Met 10:30 peeps remarkably close to 10:30, but left with more work to do; - Called Appointment of Indeterminate Time and determined it would be 12:30 at the Starbucks a block from my 1:00; - Ran my old phone up to Chez Guru, in hopes he can replace the glass (I discovered yesterday that, despite being deactivated, still works as a WiFi receiver and iPod, thus, its rechristening as my "Zombie Phone"); - Checked in with Team Truck, who'd meet me at Uncle Bob's (the storage place); didn't get the part of the message about the place being drive-in, and thus waited outside uselessly while the four of them were inside offloading futon parts; - Delivered the beer, making the rendezvous not entirely useless. Am now Starbucking, waiting for the redetermined 1:00 to show up. From there, a late lunch at a friend's office, another round or two of furniture herding, a new client at 5, and, I hope, home before too ridiculous o'clock. Tags: via ljapp
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On the whole, not a bad 24 hours of shiny. I was in a pretty grumpy mood late yesterday afternoon; I'd counted on a good free hour or so before a 5:30 workout class- my first since getting the all-clear from the various doctors on Team Ray- but wound up running over to a nearby bar, represented by a friend of mine, to notarize some last-minute affidavits. Thus, I was out of touch with Teh Interwebs and headed straight to said class, only to find nobody there. Turned out only one other student had signed up, and she had canceled, so our trainer called the thing off. ( Sensing a theme here?) Which, due to my incommunicado interruptus, I didn't get the word on until I'd gone clear cross town to the gym and waited a good half hour for nobody to show. Also, after I'd managed to drop my phone during the changing process and wound up with something looking like this:  Owie zowie. Damn, I've dropped that thing close to 100 times, but almost always on its back; this hit a hard tile floor at exactly the right angle and with perfect knuckleball spin on it, so I knew, from the hideous crackback sound, that I'd done something bad. Yet, oddly, not all THAT bad. Everything worked that had worked before, other than my eyesight looking at the display. Mind, the thing's been a quasi-boat anchor ever since I stupidly installed the 4.0 OS onto this 3.0 phone; the "off" button has been off for months (I just minimized the timeout setting and it rarely bothered me); the headphone jack has been skeevy since Em poured soda into it on a high school RIT visit; and the iPad and Safari functions have been painfully slow for years. Still, it did its job, such as it is, but I didn't think that display would be appropriate for clients, so I headed over to Le Store today for the inevitable upgrade.... And came out, pretty much, with the penultimate Next Big Thing- same one Emily has, only without the case, or the insurance, or the screen protector. It's infinitely faster in "music" (formerly: iPod) and "browser" modes than the older one was, and it transmits to the "cloud," the main function of which seems so far to be all of my work emails showing up in duplicate. But it's got a lot of the same features we've gotten used to on our tablets, such as on-the-fly camera function, video recording capability, and faster access to more than just the iPod function (that was never all that fast on the older one). Dude did an admirable job of trying to upsell me; on the indestructable $80 case, the $10 a month insurance with the $200 deductible (translation: sock away $10 a month until Eleanor's contract is up and achieve the same thing with less risk), the landline service at our house and even changing my cellular service to business (translation: buh-bye Family Talk). I took none of it. Instead, I will try to get our guru to fix the glass, reinstall the original 3.0 OS and stick it in a drawer until something breaks. ---- Round the same time: our letter carrier came, only no letters. Instead, there was a box outside the front door. A totally decadent box of cookies, and a touching thank-you card, from the friend I transported to Toronto on Saturday. I replied: Totally unnecessary. Also, totally appreciated, and totally delicious-looking.
Those spoils will be sharing the living room with Eleanor, Nurse Jackie and me, moments from now:) This entry was originally posted at http://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/50687.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
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I can be such a stubborn idiot sometimes. Sometime a year or so ago, I downloaded the 4.0 update to Firefox. Within minutes, there were only two words to say about it: Hated it!The menu buttons were in all the wrong places and couldn't be moved. Worse, one of my primary uses for the browser advised against the upgrade because of issues with electronic signing of certain documents going through it. So I forced it back into 3.whatever and just kept updating the 3's, even as they tried feeding me 5, 6, and now, somehow, already all the way up to 12. Then they got cheeky, and stopped supporting the 3-series browser. Website after website started giving me nag notices about it not being compatible with their sites, and one by one I moved the more important ones over to Chrome. Lately, the nags have been coming, daily if not more, from Firefox itself, about the 3.whatever version no longer being supported or protected from nasties.  Und you vill LIKE it!
Actually, that "automatically updated" bit wasn't true; Xing out of the thing always prevented that but didn't stop the nags. Finally, this morning, I got tired of the whole business and just accepted my fate- and of course, it's fine. They moved the buttons back to where I want them, actually improved the visibility and activity of a bunch of add-ons, and it seems to work fine with PACER (the court viewing system), if not the ECF filing component of it. Maybe now I should upgrade to AOL 4.0 if they ever send me a disk for it in the mail. I hear they have 16-character screennames now! This entry was originally posted at http://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/50324.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
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(Along with Cardiac Dyescan, and their opening act Jiggle the Handle.) That, however, is what I was told I've got, after the CT-Renal came and went, starting just over two hours ago. Not even a clothes change was required (although we did discover a hitherto-unknown zipper in the drawstring shorts I've been wearing for close to two years), and the trip inside the Tunnel of Love was brief and painless. It is a bit weird, having the machine talk to you. It's HAL-ish looking to begin with, and when it told me to hold my breath, I waited nervously the first time to be sure I was told to release the breath, not "I'm afraid I can't do that, Ray" when I started to turn blue. Then came a brief wait for the radiology MD- she who called off the previous act last week- to confirm that the pictures were okay. Officially, she's only supposed to verify that they were okay from an imaging standpoint, but after last week's ordeal, she spilled the beans on me that the stone(s) be gone and that everything looked good. I even got a referral to a urologist for more long-term planning. So thank gods THAT's over:) This entry was originally posted at http://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/50058.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
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Road Trip weekend continued, with both of us again out the door at a way early hour, to get to RIT in time for the screening of Emily's animation project. She'd told us 10:30, but things were a little spontaneous in the timing department and we wound up slipping in the door moments after 10 and just in time to see hers screened. The programme gives you a flavor for the general ambience of the place:  Two guys acted as hosts-slash-bots, and while they did no MSTizing during the films, they told jokes, played with props and ran filler videos in between them to keep the movie train more or less careening dangerously down the track at a just slightly faster than safe pace. As for the films themselves: WOWsers. When we visited two springs ago, the animation school gave us a DVD of that year's senior project films, which we marveled at in terms of their creativity, technical expertise and utter fearlessness. Today's group- a few senior-thesis projects, but most, like Em's, just underclass projects from a 10 or 20 week course- were just as creative, well cast (in the live action cases) and drawn/CGI'd (in the larger number of animated ones), technically proficient and just as willing to stretch the bounds of what short films and animations are allegedly supposed to be. After each screening, the creator(s), sometimes with their producer or DP, came up for questions or comments, and all got good reviews, but constructive criticism, as well. I'm told that Emily's will be on Vimeo soon, so I'll let it speak for itself when I can link to it. Of the others, our favorites included two from near the end of the morning: "Clean-Up on Aisle Three," an color animation describing, almost with lifelike precision, many of Eleanor's older customers at Wegmans; and the last one, "The Food King," pitched as "The romance between a cat and his food." I gathered, from one of the faculty comments, that cat animations are popular subjects in these screenings, almost to the point of becoming a trope, but this one, just a few minutes of black and white cat in absolute rapture with various noms, was so well done that she pulled it off. Yet we're proudest of all of our own's contribution to the collection. Even Dr. Forrester and TV's Frank would have had to let her go by the time they saw this one:) ETA. And heeeere it is: (Or, here, if that didn't work;) And if you're on an Android, sorry. This seems to be what we sadly refer to as a "known issue." Working on a fix for that.) This entry was originally posted at http://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/49720.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
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I mentioned yesterday that, with everything else going on, I would not be going to see the Mets in Toronto this weekend. True dat. It turned out, though, that I did everything short of pass through the actual turnstile. One of the friends I met at the conference last month was going. She flew into Buffalo last night, and, on my sage advice, booked a Megabus direct from the airport to get her into doontoon TO by 8-ish this morning, leaving plenty of time to sightsee before the 1:00 first pitch. Sure enough, on two-ish hours sleep after a late flight in last night, she was at the bus stop at the appointed hour, and.... no bus. Nobody waiting for a bus. Worst of all, nobody in the Megabus office until 6 a.m. to revive her from her panic. Or, as it turned out, not until 7:30. By then, I'd read her post about the impending disaster, told her I'd do what I could to help, picked her up from the still-deserted arrivals stop (Eleanor had already gone to her early Saturday gig at Wegmans, so I wasn't bothering anybody with this), and taken her for much-needed caffeine while we figured it out. No, they had no idea what happened. Yes, there was another departure, this one from downtown here, at 8:15, but it was sold out. Maybe she could get on it standby if somebody didn't show. Yet, when we arrived at the station a good 20 minutes before 8:15, there was a TO-bound Megabus pulling out. Must have been all full up and no reason to wait. They'd have reimbursed her for a Greyhound ticket, but their next departure wasn't until 3. I just gestured to the car and said, "Let's go." But not before shooting this:  Taryn is famed, along with her husband, another of the Met-blogging community, for co-authoring many of their pieces with Joey Beartran, the dude sticking out of the bag. To keep him company, I brought along my own member of the ursine Met mafia- one my sister got for me years ago which I'd never really taken out and about before, nor even formally named. Now, though, after today, his name is forever set in Met blogger lore: Meet Megabuster Bison. ---- Getting there was a breeze. It took a little 'splainin' at the Peace Bridge entry to Canada about why one of us was coming back this afternoon and the other, much later tonight, but when she asked us how we knew each other, I just confidently stated, "We're both bloggers for the New York Mets." I am so glad she did not ask for formal credentials, although that's about the only thing the many wonderful members of this quasi-press corps doesn't have. We were waved through without another bother, and were around the corner from the Skydome before 11. (I know they changed the name. Once a stubborn New Yorker, always a stubborn New Yorker.) Some Starbucks and wi-fi were had, and I shot some proof of being there (I think Taryn has one with me actually in it): ( Read more... )I got bearings, while Taryn had some uncomfortable chatting with a random fan about Met broadcaster Ron Darling, and we then headed down the street to the Hockey Hall of Fame, where some other friends were waiting for her: ( Read more... )The drive home took a bit longer, but not without a little relief to start. As I got onto the outbound Gardiner Expressway, I saw an inbound Megabus coming in from Buffalo- quite possibly the same one she'd been unable to get on four hours before. (Border checks doubtless take longer on a full double-decker.) There was a bit of a backup just past Missasaugua, and all three bridges allegedly had 1-2 hour backups for cars, but I picked the cars-only one in Niagara Falls and got through in under 10 minutes. Once again, border dude looked a little confused about why I'd been away for only a few hours. When I explained it was for a friend who I'd taken because of a meshuga Megabus, he said, "Wow, that's quite a trip." I replied, as I had in an earlier message to Taryn's husband, with no truer words than could be spoken: We're Mets fans. We stick together and expect disaster:-)
He waved me right through. ---- I beat Eleanor home by about half an hour, got the kitchen cleaned up, the lawn largely mowed and the story, now, told. Oh, and the game? I probably could've stayed for it. Despite both teams kicking the shit out of the ball last night- an ugly 14-5 Mets defeat where their backup catcher pitched the bottom of the eighth inning to conserve their few remaining arms- today's game was over in barely two hours, a pitchers' duel that ended with Toronto again winning, but this time 2-0 and those two runs largely resulted from an outfield error on one of the few hard-hit pitches surrendered all day by a Met pitcher. The losing pitcher in question was an early-game injury replacement for the Mets' 41-year old starter Miguel Batista, a journeyman whose professional baseball history is almost as old as our marriage (he was signed as an undrafted player by the defunct Montreal Expos in 1988) and who himself is an emergency callup from Buffalo to replace a Met starter with a season-long injury. The Jays had their Canadian bacon saved in the top of the sixth when Met centerfielder Andres Torres (who made the earlier error) hit an almost homer to right field that the other Bautista on the field, Toronto outfielder Jose, snared with a spectacular catch. I saw not an iota of this, in the park or even on the television at home, but through the perfectly lovely play-by-play of Sportradio 590 AM from Toronto which followed me all the way home. It's been put in the books, for better or worse. I'm home, and I have every confidence that Coop will make it back tonight:) This entry was originally posted at http://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/49599.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
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Got back into the swing of things with a relatively productive day today. Picked up a new bankruptcy referral- my second of the week after things being frighteningly quiet all year so far. The first appointment in the second one will be either Monday afternoon- after It Which Must Not Be Named- or late on Tuesday. I can do either now because a court hearing scheduled for next Tuesday will not require an appearance for argument. That generally means the judge has already made up his mind; I'm not going to jinx the outcome by mentioning which set of papers so far was a bunch of shameless whining. I got in my first hourlong cardio of the week, and felt good. I'm almost done with Wherever I Wind Up, a memoir by current Mets pitcher R.A. Dickey. I'd heard an interview with him on the radio a few weeks ago, and the revelations about how much misfortune he's faced and overcome in his life were just remarkable. The book tackles them with grace, but they still hit you like a ton of bricks as he relives some immensely painful moments from his childhood and some almost-as-bad experiences in his baseball career. Ordinarily, I would be planning to head to Toronto this weekend, the first time in almost a decade the Mets have played an interleague series up there. But between lost time around work and home this week and Emily's animation screening this weekend (finally scheduled, for 10:30 Sunday morning at RIT), I just can't do it. My day ended by firing a client. He was- is- a sympathy-inducing soul, but this time it just got too much for me to take. I'd cleared my last two hours of the week to make an appearance for him in an outlying court, only to be told on the way in that his brother, who knows somebody who knows somebody, had "taken care of it." Since he had no need, therefore, to bring money for the anticipated fine, there was none for me, either. I said, sorry, I can't work like this anymore, and that was that. But I'm home, there's a total pigout meal on the grill, and our daughter's having her film debuted day after tomorrow. Things could be a lot, lot worse. Just ask R.A. Dickey. This entry was originally posted at http://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/49283.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
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I am back. And I am disPLEASED. The prep all done, the fast endured, I appeared before the appointed hour, registered, PAID as one now does in these places in advance of service, and waited. As with the session with Dr. Butts last March, the waits for fasting/prepped patients are interminable, and there's not a single restroom in the waiting room. Finally, though, I got the call, switched into the Gown of Shame, had pre-procedure X-rays taken, had the nurse come in to ask the Routine Medical Questions, waited some more, and.... Let's call the whole thing off. Apparently there's an actual MD-type radiologist in the radiology place- who objected to injecting the dye due to the fact that I only have the one kidney. Now maybe you didn't know that- although I've mentioned it in passing from time to time- but my primary care physician certainly did. I've been in this state since 1973, without any problems until now, and I always, ALWAYS mention it in histories, even to my flippin' dentist. I've been seeing this primary for over 15 years, and specifically mentioned it when I went in with the symptoms almost two weeks ago. Yet he prescribed this anyway. No, the radiologist said, a CT-scan would be a much safer diagnostic tool- and it, unlike this buttblaster special, doesn't involve any more prep than lying on a table. Fine, I said: Could we do it this afternoon, since it requires no prep and I'm sitting there in my underwear with the whole afternoon off anyway? Almost two hours later, the answer finally came back- no, since the insurance company requires pre-authorization from the primary and my doctor's entire office is shut down today and tomorrow because he's out of town attending to his sick mother. Can't blame him for that, I know. But blame him for not noticing a near-lifelong condition might contraindicate a very invasive procedure? I'm working on that as we speak. So now the Meow-Meow procedure is scheduled for Monday afternoon, after hopefully he's back in town. They're going to carry over the co-pay to that procedure, but apparently the cost of the rest of this business is on me: 64 ounces of Gatorade.....................$3.79 Large container Top Care laxative......$7.99 Lifetime supply of Fleet stimulants..... $2.99 Assorted juices and popsicles........... $6.48 Best health care system in the world? Worthless:P This entry was originally posted at http://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/48876.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
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But I will share a few Facebook statuses and other notes from the morning which has mostly been a big mess of Bo-RING. Fasting sucks. I'm not a fortieth of the man Jesus was. Wow, Zuckerberg. That's a butt-ton of HTML for a single line of text. No wonder you need so much IPO money. He's got an IPO, I've got an IVP. The worst is over except the ennui. Naturally, I had to feed the animals at their usual time today, and even their kibble seemed appetizing. I then fell back to sleep past the 8 a.m. cutoff for eating or drinking anything, hence the blasphemy a couple of hours ago. Spent the time, mostly, organizing my Series I QI's (and discovering there's almost half a season that we never saw! Yay! And the damn BBC is already up to Series C on DVD so I can't just order one even though the season's now over! Boo!), answering a couple of emails, and getting ready for our checking account to implode tomorrow when HSBC kicks all of upstate New York out of its world's local bankery. Got a call from my sister, to warn me that I may be allergic to the dye. And telling me that our niece, who's 10 years younger than me, went through this a couple of years ago. Our mother always bragged about our "good genes," but apparently she was referring to the Wranglers in the closet that we were never allowed to wear lest they get dirty. And, just now, my swan song until it's over: Ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille:) |
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( The backstory.... )Meanwhile, at 8 this morning I said sayonara to solid food and, in a bit over three hours, I begin the dreaded "prep." for the procedure known as an IVP. I just did similar "prep" a year ago for the colonoscopy, and it wasn't as bad as some predicted it would be, but this regimen, if anything, is even more thorough than that was. Then it's fasting completely after 8 tomorrow morning, with showtime taking about an hour in the middle of the day. I've never done the dye before, so I have no idea whether I'll have any appetite after that. On the bright side, as of this time yesterday, the pain, which had ranged from a little better to (as recently as Monday night) a lot worse, had receded to the point where I briefly considered calling the whole thing off. Given how hard it was to get the damn appointment, and given that I sat yesterday for two-plus hours on a hard wooden bench plus close to four more either side of it behind the wheel, it's back- still, though, better than it's been in days. I've heard different remedies talked about once I know if that's what it is. These have ranged from ultrasound to meds, and the dietary advice has been all over the map. Suck on lemons, some say. Stay away from citrus, say others. You pays your money and you takes your choice of poison. Suppose I should listen to what a doctor has to say, huh. So if I'm unusually quiet for the rest of the week, now you know why. This entry was originally posted at http://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/48406.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
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Get ready to fall off of your chair. This post is going to be about.... basketball- in particular, the NBA.
I haven't followed the sport in decades, ever since the league broke my heart in high school by admitting my hometown New York Nets to the NBA and promptly forcing it to trade its best player (Julius "Dr. J" Erving) to raise the exorbitant rights fees. When the team moved to New Jersey soon thereafter, I lost all remaining interest, and never restored it even through the eras of Bird and Magic, or of Michael, or of the current crop of immature millionaires.
I did feel a twinge of hoop nostalgia, though, seeing this piece in the USA Today on the lunchroom table today:
LOS ANGELES – When the Los Angeles Clippers take the floor at Staples Center, no one forgets the tenant of record for lo these many years. The Los Angeles Lakers' championship banners offer impressive reminders.
But a growing number of Clippers fans are finding it cool to follow this young, athletic and improving team. One reason is the Clippers are in the playoffs — that's something different.
It certainly is. The piece goes on to throw in this fun fact of lovable loserdom:
The franchise went 30 years between winning playoff series — from 1975-76 to 2005-06. Since moving from San Diego to Los Angeles in 1984, the Clippers have won two playoff series, one in 2006 and one Sunday.
What it doesn't tell you, there or anywhere, is that they won that earlier 1975-76 series, not in San Diego, but in a city that had an NBA franchise ripped from its municipal heart right around the same time the Nets broke mine.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the resurrected ghost of the Buffalo Braves.
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The NBA was long gone from here by the time I arrived in the 80s, but I'd listened to radio out of Buffalo back in their days of sharing the Aud with the Sabres. "Twoooooooo for McAdooooooo!" and "Ernie No-D!" are still phrases fondly remembered among that greater generation of sport fan here. The team had a bit of success a mere few years after its founding, but bad luck and bad management took their toll. In time, the original owner (local hotel magnate and Darien Lake developer Paul Snyder) sold the team to Kentucky Fried Chicken executive John Y. Brown (and a Rochester furniture store owner named Harry Mangurian). He, in turn, cut a deal to swap franchises with the Boston Celtics, at one of the rare downtimes in that storied team's history. For their final year in the Aud, the Braves suffered with all the old Celtics' bad players, but didn't get the draft pick that turned into Larry Bird, who singlehandedly would have saved the franchise. Instead, they said "California is the place you wanna be" and moved, first to San Diego and then up the freeway to become the Lakers' little brothers.
The Clippers have a little bit of this history on their official website- here- perhaps because they have so little history of their own to brag about. They did make a bit of a deal of this being their 25th anniversary season in Lalaland, but neither their legacy nor ours is much to pontificate about. Neither Clippers nor Braves have championship banners to hang from the rafters, and none of their handful of Aud-era greats have had their numbers retired- not even the franchise's lone Hall of Famer McAdoo.
Today's Clippers are about to start their second playoff round, as are their fellow Staples tenants. They knocked off their first round opponent more handily than the Lakers did theirs (the elder team taking a full seven-game series to escape Denver). Much of the newfound hope comes from the Clippers' homegrown superstar Blake Griffin, but also from the bizarre set of moves that landed longtime league force Chris Paul (aka "CP3") in Los Angeles over the last off-season. New Orleans needed to trade Chris Paul before he hit free agency, and the team had worked out a deal with the Lakers, but league commissioner David Stern- the same one who brokered the bolting of the Braves 35 years ago- put the kibosh on the trade, ultimately approving a different one landing CP3 in the Clippers' locker room down the hall.
It's unlikely, but possible, that the two LA teams will meet in the conference finals. If that happens, for the first time this century, I will actually watch an NBA game, just to show my support for the last remnants of Buffalo in the world of professional hoops. This entry was originally posted at http://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/48304.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
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To Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, and titular head of the BBC: Hi. Howya doin? How's the fam? Keeping the boys and the heiresses out of trouble, I hope. No unexpected visits from Batman, either, I expect, though with all these blockbuster films being set in major cities you really never can tell. Sorry I missed your birthday; you know, the real one. I figured I'd work this in before the official one, and ahead of all the Diamond Jubilee crap wot's going to be coming in next month. Since I'm sure you're busy, I'll cut to the chase: I'd like my citizenship back, please. Actually, just a small piece of it. I refer back to that last bit I added to your title up above, about the Beeb. I cannot tell you how much influence that organisation has had throughout my life, from those first teenage days when Monty Python first made it across the pond, but even more so now, when so much of my entertainment emanates from Broadcasting House. From my late discovery of the Doctor (I take it you've met; if not, your PM certainly has from time to time); to Mr. Sherlock Holmes (who I know to have been in the building); across the alphabetic queries of QI; through the reworkings of Douglas Adams most recently in Dirk Gently; to even the audio-only adventures of Golf Tango India. Through all of these, Your Majesty, I've become almost a full-time Anglophile. And, I must confess, nearly all of it has been without Your Royal Blessing. Most of it, in fact, is either delayed or made completely inaccessible to us here in the severed colonies unless we resort to, shall we say, questionable means. Your Government's official explanation for such limitations is that it is for the protection of your subjects who duly pay the licence fee for watching the telly within your sacred borders. Right. I understand that it is currently set at £145.50 for a colour set. Where shall I send the cheque? (The next few days would be ideal, since on Friday, the USA division of one of Your Majesty's banks, HSBC, will be nuking Western New York State off of its international map and I will no longer be able to make online transfers in sterling.) In exchange, I merely ask for access to the iPlayer for all current BBC programming, legal downloads of radio programmes, and a match to be lit under the arse of your subject John Fennimore to get Cabin Pressure Series 4 on the air. If the current licence arrangement doesn't enable this sort of payment, fear not. I have enclosed a copy of the current RSCPA dog licence form, with the word "dog" crossed out and the word "telly" written on it in crayon. In all seriousness, there are a lot of us over here who would welcome the opportunity to do such a thing. I know, however, that things that are so win-win, and make so much sense, would never overcome rights issues. 'Tis good to dream about it, though. Awaiting the curtsey of your reply, I remain, Your most humble obedient servant, Raymond of West New York This entry was originally posted at http://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/47932.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
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