Excitement about the Smallest Things can Make Your Day

A high point in my day has become getting the mail delivery.  It’s true; we get mostly bills and an endless jetsam of advertisement waste.  The great thing about all this crap you get in the mail is – it’s bulky.  What’s so great about that, you may ask?  Well, it means that the postal carrier has to put a rubber band around it.  And, the rubber band is FREE!

Hot damn, yes, you heard right – free.  Now, I’ve been diligent about saving these over the years and have a collection such that I never have to go to Office Max to buy rubber bands.  Going to Office Max as many have heard about lately is a hellish venture for some.

The Post Office rubber bands come in a variety of shapes and wear.  Many of them are pre-discolored with newsprint that tells folks “this person is a recycler; a consciences consumer, always reconsidering something used instead of crackin’ open a new pack of stuff.”  Gives me a sense of pride. 

I’ve got lots of rubber bands nowadays.  Our architect business is down to the nubs and we don’t have any plans to roll up and secure with a rubber band.  They have other uses though.  They held up our plants until they all died.  You can use them to keep the sole of your shoe from flapping.  And you can use them instead of expensive file folders to hold repossession and past due notices together so you don’t lose them.  They can even serve as a fastener for button less jeans. 

I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s bundle.

It’s always something.

Shingles - More to 'em than meets the eye

Where to begin with this?  Got back from Kansas Tuesday April 5th at midnight.  I had spent two full weeks with my mom, cooking, taking care of her and watching all the programming fox network provides its minions.  Got a HORRIBLE cold the 2nd week there in Kansas.  Couldn't tell at first, what with a combination of the good ol’ Midwest hay fever resurrected in my sinuses and the constant smoky haze of Marlboro 100 lights (that's light, as in - hey this will kill perhaps just a teensy bit slower than the regulars).  Geezus frick-a-monda what misery.

I noticed a rash on my face the night before my flight back to Seattle.  Tuesday flying all day I checked it during trips to the flying can and at layovers.  I was becoming disfigured.  By the end of the day my face was swollen on the left side and I looked like I had just lost a prize fight, gone out into the alley, got mugged, and then shot in the face with a shotgun.  I think this is why folks were giving me lots of extra room at the airport.  Next day I went to the doctor.  He said I had the Shingles.  And, yes, it's as bad as it's advertised to be.  In my case the virus had awakened from its slumber and found the jail cell door wide open, as all my antibody cops were fighting the cold and no one was in the jail to keep guard.  These malevolent little virus bastards, now fully awake, found themselves on 'John's face nerve Ave.' and decided to make up for the lost time since they had participated in my Chicken Pox so long ago.

My teeth felt like I was having constant dental surgery with NO NOVACAINE.   This lasted for 3 days, even with the Vicadin.  My eye was swollen shut.  My mouth and chin were swollen so I couldn't eat except through a straw.  Then I got sick on my meds.  Come to find out the pharmacy mis-typed the instructions and I was taking 6 times the normal amount.  Medicine vomit is a curious experience.  There’s no real substance, no volume.  Nothing floating to survey as to what it might have been before partially digested. 

I'm better today - just mild pain - and the wounds are healing on my face.  I’ve gone past the ‘frightening little kids’ stage of facial disfigurement.  It’s been nearly a month and I still can’t sleep comfortably.  I have this ‘St. Elmo’s fire’ thing wafting over my face all day and my eyes still hurt.  I’m hoping I don’t have the ‘long term’ version of this which I’m told can last forever. 

If you have had the Chicken Pox and are getting’ on to 60 then I’d suggest getting the Shingles Vaccine.  (I kept seeing the advertising for this and for the longest time wondered why one would need to be vaccinated against being single.) 

It’s always something..

here's some good information...

http://www.shinglesinfo.com/index.html

Back when the world was black and white

Well, Internets, I’m in Salina, Kansas this week and next.  My mom is 90 years old this year and still living on her own – sort of.  She’s needing more care and my brother’s family needs a break so I’m here for awhile. 

Mom was the 7^th kid, born 1921.  Ten were in her family.  Six girls, two boys, mom and dad.  In one house, four bedrooms, one bathroom.  Kitchen had an icebox and a wood-fired cook stove/oven.  You put a big cardboard sign in your front window on the day the ice man came by, with the amount of ice you needed; 25, 50 or 75 pounds of block ice.  He would pull the block down with tongs, go around to the kitchen and heft it up in the top compartment of the ice box.

The stove was fired with wood.  I don’t even want to know how difficult that was.  No hot water (they heated buckets on the wood stove).  Washed the clothes that way.  No dryer.  You ran the clothes through a wringer and hung them outside.  Six girls, two boys must have made wash day interesting. 

For baths, same drill.  Heat buckets of water from the pump on the stove; carry them through the dining room, living room, boy’s bedroom, mom and dad’s bedroom to the one bathroom in the corner of the house.  Take a bath.  Drain the water into the yard.  Put on your clothes from the clothes line after ironing them with an iron heated on the wood stove and you’re all set to go out and walk to wherever you need to go.  The boy’s Sunday shirts and dad’s shirt were starched with a mix that mom would make on ironing day.

Their dad had the car all week, traveling in western Kansas selling china and crystal for an outfit in Kansas City.  They couldn’t order stuff on line. 

This all sounds like geezer-speak, but danged if I haven’t been impressed with all the things my mom’s family didn’t have.  What they did have was a closeness that you don’t see too often these days. 

All except for my mom they’re all still very close – in the dirt about a mile from here.  And as one may or may not choose to believe, now in a better place with more conveniences.

It’s always something.

That dang Comet Elenin

So I'm thinkin', was the Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan recently due to this comet thing?  (see last blog below).  March 15th came and went and nothing bad really happened, other than another usual tragically bad day for me.  Gee.....maybe....dooya think?

It's always something.

Mark your calendar - March 15

In the interest of passing along life-saving information I am putting this on my blog.  Of course, I "snoped" it and found it in an article on "bad astronomy".  So, here are links to You-tube posts I found interesting.  If you're reading this blog it stands to reason that, 1) you're a professional time-waster and 2) you are interested in occasional humor (which, I admit is only occasional here in my basement).

This stuff is classic.  I just love "the truther girls"  I've become a follower....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Hfo0RLxMrA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVJ3ETfSDtc&feature=related

it's always something

Another One Bites the Dust.....

Well, Johnny Nitro sailed off to the Big Gig last Saturday night.  Never new the guy.  He was a cousin of a friend of mine, guitar player, from San Francisco living up here.  Sounds like he, as many musicians, led a few years of ‘dog life’.  That’s when you age 7x faster than you should.  I figure B.B. King has to be what? 150 – 185, somewhere around there with this factored in?  He had to sit down for Obama’s gig, but who can blame him?

I’ve been reading the obituaries more often in the Sunday paper.  I don’t know, it just seems interesting now.  Kind of like when you’re in line, nearing the row of windows you sort of start looking left and right to see how short the other line is.  You can count the people to the window easier in the other lines than in your own line.  Yeah….I check the years of birth and sort of am relieved to see more in the 1920’s and even 1930’s than late 1940’s.  But still I check.  Kind of morbid I guess. 

Every now and then someone born in the 1960’s kicks it (yeah, and the guys I knew who went to Nam) and I think “man, they came and went and here I still am…”

I swore to my family the other evening that I didn’t want them to leave me in a vegetative state – to be dependent on a machine and fluids from a bottle.  They came over, unplugged my computer and threw out my wine.

It’s always something

read more about Johnny:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/02/20/BAN81HR1FE.DTL

Your Fortune Awaits.......

February 3 was the date heralding the New Chinese Year.  2011 is the year of the Rabbit, according to the neighborhood bulletin board in the Chinese/Cantonese restaurant down the street.  Canton is supposedly in Southern China. 

I guess southern Chinese food is like chop suey with grits and ribs maybe, or perhaps Barbeque sauce on the side.

It all tastes much the same to me.  But then I’m not an affection-ado of Chinese cuisine.  I do like Sum Dum, that type of meal where a horde of wait staff wheels around carts laden with various cooked (mostly are cooked) things.  Some of the really fresh entrees have not died yet and other entrees seem to have been dead quite some time.  Almost all of them, dead or alive, are slippery and elude the novice chopstick.  I usually stab it with one stick and eat it like a corndog.  This makes some of the staff frown and gives them something more to talk about in the kitchen.  Did I say talk?  I’m sorry, yell.  I’ve never been in a Chinese kitchen but all seem to have a certain constant din.

My favorite thing about a Chinese restaurant meal is the fortune cookie.  A simple mixture of egg white, vanilla extract, unbleached flour and sugar, the fortune cookie can be just a cookie or a new life.  They’re usually positive and chime in along the lines of astrology in their significance.  All depends on the reader.  They’re fun when they make you think you have friends and will get rich.  I’ve grown to depend on them from time to time, being an architect. 

So there’s this guy in Missouri who’s down on his luck and he has purchased 365 fortune cookies and is living each day by what they say.  Here, check it out for yourself…

http://www.mydailyfortune.net/

I don’t know.  I think I’ll just keep enjoying them whenever I have Chinese.  Every now and then you open one that makes you think twice, however.

It's always something.....