Right Wing Nation

In a nutshell, here’s what happened.

• I registered my domain with a hosting provider I no longer use.
• My domain expired, and because I no longer use them, they did not send me a notice.
• Straightening all this out was a complete pain in the ass.
• I’m changing hosting providers, so the blog will go offline for a day or so, until the DNS info propagates.
• Since I’m going offline, I probably won’t be blogging much beyond this until I’m back up.

From today’s local rag:

Irving’s Bakery Cafe is multiplying.

A new location opened at the University Park Airport last Monday

Okay, a baker/sandwich place at the airport makes sense, but:

and an additional location will open at the new Geisinger Grays Woods facility on Aug. 4 — the same day the medical facility is to open . . .

The Geisinger location provides a little cafe spot that will feature more grab-and-go type offerings, such as sandwiches and salads. Espresso and smoothies will also be offered, she said.

In a medical center? How weird is that? Would you want to go to a medical center to grab lunch? Can you imagine the conversations, like, “Let’s do lunch at Geisinger!”

I’m not wishing them ill, but I think it’s just bizarre.

But I have an education article (only part rant) in the pipeline.

Iraq, that is, on the civilized nations list:

KFC is now open in Fallujah—formerly Iraq’s most dangerous city. It’ll be interesting to see how residents cope with the subsequent arrival of naked PETA protesters.

Naked PETA protesters in Fallujah. I’d pay good money to see what the Iraqis would do to them.

I hopped over to my high school website, and the school is about the same size (senior class has 62 students) with an 87% graduation rate, but I didn’t recognize any of the teachers, not the names, not the faces. I suspect most are local (that’s the way it works, plus the family names are a clue), but all of them are younger than I am, enough that I don’t even remember them from school.

Actually, I did recognize one, but on the band website. He’s retired, but at least he’s there. And the home ec (yeah, yeah, whatever the euphemism was) teacher’s last name was the same as the home ec teacher when I was in school. I suspect perhaps her daughter.

Sadly, there was no page of retired teachers. Somebody should do something about that.

I see that the FFA and FCA are still there, but what happened to the NHS and FHA? I also see that there are women in the FFA now. There weren’t when I was in school. But the FFA seems to be going strong.

I just found out that one of my high school teachers died last year. He was one of the teachers we played a lot of jokes on, but I’ll just let those go.

courtesy of Wyatt. Don’t fly US Air:

NEW YORK (CNN) — U.S. Airways is pressuring pilots to use less fuel, undermining their authority and possibly compromising safety, according to a spokesman for the U.S. Airline Pilots Association.

Eight pilots and their union have filed complaints with the Federal Aviation Administration, accusing the airline of infringing on their authority and making them fly with less fuel than they feel is safe, said James Ray, a spokesman for the U.S. Airline Pilots Association.

No more comment necessary.

About once a day, I get these calls (caller ID shows “unavailable”) from a computer, which says:

“Hello. I’m calling about important personal business. Please call me back. My number is. Again, my number is.”

The message doesn’t leave a number. It just says, “My number is. Again, my number is.”

Must not be too important.

and the store. Cherry pie in the works.

Trooper York:

A German woman called cops on a female pal who had come over to chat and wouldn’t leave - for 30 hours.

Sounds familiar.

When finally forced to leave, Ms Weiss turned to her friend and said “I’ll be back.”

Yeah. That’s her.

Wyatt was stung by a bee (unfortunately, he’s allergic).

The last time I was stung was in 1983, well, until last spring. We decided to do some exploring, and drive around the county on the country roads. It was maybe 75 and the windows were down (have I mentioned that not once have I used the car AC since we moved here?)

My right leg — specifically, the top of my thigh — itched, so I put my hand down to scratch it, and yow! I got a hot nail in my thumb. I looked down, and there was a squished bumble-ee-bee.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anybody being stung by a bumblebee. I like bumblebees (actually, I like bees — but I hate, and take great delight in killing — wasps). We were in the boonies so I just pulled over and looked, but didn’t find a stinger, so I pulled back onto the road, sucking my thumb till the pain subsided.

About thirty minutes or so later, my leg itched again, and again, I put my hand down — and I’ll be damned if I didn’t accidentally squish, and get stung by, a second bumblebee. In the same place.

By the way, it’s no more painful than a honey bee sting. Maybe less.

We’ve been having virtual rain here all day. The internet connection has been going up and down (they’re doing something to the cable — I’m hoping it’s done now), and I just had to reboot my router.

So the signal suddenly disappeared, and I looked outside.

It’s raining. Like really raining. It never rains up here. Never.

I’m not sure who’s been signing me up for email lists over the last couple of years, but reallly, it’s getting tiresome. As of this morning, I am suddenly on the HuffPo’s Campaign Trail list.

Hi,

It’s the electoral race of the century. Political maps are being redrawn, and rules are getting rewritten across the board. Fundraising records have been broken. The candidates are even comparing the sizes of their email lists.

The mainstream media is tripping over itself to report on every last press release and campaign announcement. But do any of us REALLY know what’s going on?

With you helping from the frontlines, the Huffington Post can change campaign coverage. OffTheBus is HuffPost’s citizen-powered and -produced election site, and we’re depending on readers like you to tip us to what’s going on or, better yet, to write up the stories you think should be covered.

Look. Deleting messages gets old, okay? So whoever you are, stop.

Thanks.

That’s what’s going on here (you know, backup data, etc.)

Because tomorrow, we celebrate our independence from Great Britain and severing our relationship as one of her colonies, I thought today would be appropriate to thank the United Kingdom for what she has given us and the world.

Oh. This is likely to be my most Politically Incorrect post ever. Just so you know.

I’ve been having a fascinating, extended conversation with a post-doc fellow from one of the countries that make up what used to be known as French West Africa. The conversation began with Mugabe, and spread outward, encompassing a broad variety of related topics.

One of those topics was imperialism — more specifically, contrastive imperialism, where we spoke extensively about the marked differences between the British Empire and other European empires.

The British took with them their institutions, their rule of law, their traditions, their parliamentary democracy, and their liberal (in the classic sense) ideals. Unlike the French or Belgians, who did little more than prop up one tribe against another in their colonies, the British extended Britain across the globe. For that, we — meaning all of Britain’s ex-colonies — owe the British Empire gratitude.

Contrast India with Pakistan or Bangladesh. India kept those British ideals and institutions. When, shortly after India declared independence, the state of Pakistan (later to split) was formed, they rejected everything British, and reverted to tribalism. Hence today, while India certainly has problems, it stands in stark contrast to its backward, barbaric neighbors to the north. Malaysia, like Britain, kept the civilized government and institutions from the British, but is sliding back into tribalism (it’s not yet obvious what will happen there).

Maggie Gallagher has an anticipatory column on Real Clear Politics: Three Great American Ideas. I encourage everyone to read it, but at least for today, keep this thought in mind: Had we been a French or Spanish colony, the United States would not exist, nor would the ideas upon which our nation is founded, for those were distinctly British in origin.

So for today, I say Rule Britannia! and offer a few specific things for which we owe our nation’s birth and existence.

• Magna Carta
• Glorious Revolution
• Whig Party
• Edmund Burke

I’m sure I could come up with many more, but I’m pretty engrossed by this history of the US I’m reading.

When I read this, I nearly had a stroke:

Democrats in Congress today plan to introduce a bill to halt the recently-announced closing of some 600 Starbucks coffee stores, noting that the displacement of 12,000 Starbucks baristas would overwhelm government aid offices…

[…] Rep. Pelosi’s bill would subsidize the 600 money-losing Starbucks locations by giving away millions of taxpayer dollars in so-called ‘Venti Vouchers’ to residents of these hard-hit neighborhoods. If the effort fails to revive the flagging stores, Rep. Pelosi said Democrats would “seriously consider nationalizing the coffee industry to ensure the free flow of java at fair prices.”

Like he says, it’s believable. Too believable.

Please stop sending me spam, specifically, “iPhone 3G is coming July 11. Watch the guided tour.”

1. I hate cell phones. Don’t own one. Shove it where the sun don’t shine.
2. I hate hype. If I were to buy a cell phone, it would just be a cell phone. Just for the record, I wear watches that tell the time and nothing more.
3. I hate Apple in all of its manifestations.

So after eating a whole rack of ribs, I came home, hit the couch, and groaned.

Back after class.

I couldn’t do them yesterday, or at least yesterday morning, because Best Buy was here setting up the TV (I didn’t do them yesterday afternoon because I had better things to do — like play with the new toys).

So off to the dairy, etc. Back later.

Somehow, at some point while watching that re-make, my receiver lost all of the schedule info, so I rebooted it. It’s back, but it took me a few minutes to realize when it comes on, it looks like it comes on, then goes off again.

The schedule right now is a wasteland. I think I’ll put in a DVD.

Them’s some ugly critters.

The Time Machine remake. It’s on TNT now, just started at noon. I barely remember the Morlock guy, and that he talked, or something. Don’t really remember anything else, not even whether I liked it or not.

Anyway, he’s just now climbing into the machine …

They’re gone, and the whole system is set up: Satellite, new DVD burner/player, and Laserdisc player. Until next Saturday, the only thing we can get close to 1080 on is the DVD, so Band Wagon is on right now. Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, Nanette Fabray, and Oscar Levant.

I’m sorry to say that the Laserdisc isn’t nearly as sharp and clear on this TV as it was on the GE.

It’s a little more complicated than it was before, since we have two inputs on the TV, and before, only one (I switched everything from the receiver). But it’s set up so the DVD will burn whatever we’re watching.

That new desktop I have has a TV card, so I decided to hook the VCR/DVD-R unit up to the desktop, if I need it. It doesn’t upconvert, so the picture wouldn’t be great on this TV.

Ah, life is good. I did find out that the local channels don’t broadcast HD yet (supposed to start in September). Well, there’s nothing on network TV now except re-runs, anyway.

They’re on their way to set up the whole system.

That’s the first time a plugin returned a 500 error. Deactivated.

There must have been a glitch in the satellite yesterday. We have two tuners, and local channels.

We won’t get HD signals until July 5, so this is purely regular signals on the 1920×1080 HDTV.

When I first started watching, the picture was pretty terrible. Then I found the format button on the TV remote, and found I could change the resolution, as you would change the resolution on your monitor, and that I had been watching on something by 480 resolution.

I found “stretch” mode at something by 768, and while still a bit fuzzy, it’s perfectly watchable. Still, once we get the HD dish, we’ll be watching HD as much as possible. Stretch fills the whole screen, and even without HD, these people have some big heads, and lots of skin detail we never saw on our 1986 GE. Even if there were lots of bigger TVs, this is a big picture.

Jonah Goldberg:

Out of 16 major American institutions, Congress ranks dead last in the eyes of the American people according to Gallup. Even HMOs are more revered. If Carrot Top and Joey Buttafuoco were elected to Congress, it would improve the legislative branch’s reputation.

I guess we do have two tuners. I set one program to record, then switched channels. This time, I did not get the prompt to stop recording. It’s possible that while we were going through the setup yesterday, there were problems with the second satellite signal that worked themselves out.

No DLB, though. That’s going to take getting used to.

If I record a program while it’s playing, then try to change channels, it makes me stop recording to change channels. That, and the error on the second dish during setup, is why I assumed we only have one tuner operating. But I set up a program to record at 8:00 am today (before it started), then changed the channel. I’m still on the other channel, but the red record light is on, so it looks like I have two tuners.

I’m not sure what’s going on.

It hung during reboot, so we cold booted it. Service is activated. Now, I’m going to figure out the remote and interface; this ain’t TiVO.

So I was on the phone with a DirecTV service rep, who patiently walked me through the setup, and changed my access card number and updated my account. The minute I got off the phone, I tried to pull up the guide and got:

DirecTV is not activated on your account. Please call 1-800-DIRECTV to activate your account.

So now, I’m on the phone with another rep, and he had me boot the system. We’re still on Almost there, just a few more seconds please . . . I’m used to a receiver that takes forever to boot, but this is ridiculous.

Oh. And we couldn’t get it to see the second dish, so no local channels.

Before (click to see full-size — and yes, that’s the top of my foot at the bottom right):

After:

You know, I have the new DirecTV receiver here. I could plug it up and activate the card. Maybe I’ll do that.

Day 2 of no TV.

Dealt with the cords (note: cord tangle is a breeze to deal with if the cords aren’t attached to anything). Swept up all the dust bunnies, now on the back porch where they can naturally recycle. Best Buy called. They’re bringing the stand and TV (we have everything else here) between 10 and 11 today. So I get to look at a TV with no picture until Saturday.

Day 2 of no TV.

Everything is unplugged and removed, in two piles: Things to keep, and things for Best Buy delivery to cart away (TV and DirecTiVO). The cabinet has been moved to a temporary location.

It’s a mess, but not quite so much as this. We have a big pile of serious cord tangle on the floor where the cabinet used to hold everything, and big wads of electrostatically-bound dust. Right behind the TV picture tube was a big black spot, but it came right off with a little windex.

So I still have to untangle all the cords, then sweep (thank God the floor is laminate, and not carpet, and I can just sweep the dust bunnies out the french door onto the porch).

Delivery is today, so I’ll get to look at the pretty boxes until Saturday, when they come to set it up.

The first is an accurate description of how I feel. The second is because I just realized that we’re going to have to tear down the TV and equipment, and move the cabinet someplace else, because Best Buy won’t.

I need a haircut. Bad. And this quiet house is driving me nuts, so I’m off to Wally World to get a haircut, and maybe some of those apple turnovers.

Very quiet here on Day One of No TV.

Class this morning. Blogging this afternoon.

but I think this is funny: The UK refuses to let Martha Stewart in because she’s a criminal. I know, I know, given how the UK aggressively shelters actual criminals makes this kind of ludicrous, but I really despise Martha.

Uncommon, that is, given the source. Common sense from The Atlantic:

Memphis has always been associated with some amount of violence. But why has Elvis’s hometown turned into America’s new South Bronx? Barnes thinks he knows one big part of the answer, as does the city’s chief of police. A handful of local criminologists and social scientists think they can explain it, too. But it’s a dismal answer, one that city leaders have made clear they don’t want to hear. It’s an answer that offers up racial stereotypes to fearful whites in a city trying to move beyond racial tensions. Ultimately, it reaches beyond crime and implicates one of the most ambitious antipoverty programs of recent decades.

Read the whole thing.

Went to the doctor, and we agreed to just stop the muscle relaxers. So far, I haven’t had good luck with them.

Because I responded so quickly to the prednisone, and because the pain did not go down my leg, the doctor doesn’t think it’s sciatica, but (ahem) arthritis in the sacroiliatic joint. It’s a lot better — what’s been knocking me (and the blogging) out has been the medication.

The ilium is the wing-shaped bone that forms the seat of the pelvis. The sacrum is the “tailbone,” which lies between the two ilia. The sacroiliatic joint is between them. Here:

We all get arthritis as the body rebuilds bone in joints. I have a number of joints that cause discomfort from time to time, but this is the first time arthritis has caused serious pain. It’s also the first time that I have had bad reactions to not one, but two medications.

Life goes on.

Yesterday was rough. Fell asleep somewhere around 7:30 and slept till 4:45. No nausea today, but I have an appt with my doctor this afternoon to change the meds.

Early yesterday morning, I got sick, but as soon as I barfed, it was over, so I figured I’d drunk too much coffee too fast and forgot about it.

This morning, I suddenly got sick, and didn’t make it. It went all over the bathroom, the walls, the floor, the back of the toilet, everywhere but in the toilet (it took about a quarter roll of paper towels to clean it all up). About an hour later, I got sick again, really sick, and continued with dry heaves after all the coffee was barfed up. I’m queasy now. So I’m starting to wonder if it’s the meds.

I almost never get sick enough to barf, by the way. Maybe twice a year, at most.

Anyway, I’m not feeling well, and may not post much.

Good for Kos. If you didn’t catch this, AP has decided that copyright law doesn’t apply to them, and have threatened to sue several bloggers (see Memeorandum for a big roundup of commentary from all across the political blogosphere).Note that the AP had demanded $2.50 per word, then turned right around and quoted one of Patterico’s entire articles without either asking permission or paying Patterico said $2.50 per word. And let’s not forget that AP is a network of plagiarists, consisting solely of news articles lifted without attribution.

AP can suck rotten eggs.

From the Corner:

Where are all of the Hollywood celebrities holding telethons asking for help in restoring Iowa and helping the folks affected by the floods?

Where is all the media asking the tough questions about why the federal government hasn’t solved the problem? Asking where the FEMA trucks (and trailers) are?

Why isn’t the Federal Government relocating Iowa people to free hotels in Chicago?

When will Spike Lee say that the Federal Government blew up the levees that failed in Des Moines?

Where are Sean Penn and the Dixie Chicks?

Where are all the looters stealing high-end tennis shoes and big screen television sets?

When will we hear Governor Chet Culver say that he wants to rebuild a “vanilla” Iowa, because that’s the way God wants it?

Where is the hysterical 24/7 media coverage complete with reports of cannibalism?

Where are the people declaring that George Bush hates white, rural people?

How come in 2 weeks, you will never hear about the Iowa flooding ever again?

He took me off that damned flexiril and put me on something else.

I think I kind of love Flathead County, Montana (just scroll down and look at the news items). I can’t decide which is my favorite, “A man on Shady Lane got angry and threw things,” or “A man called in to report that his wife was being verbally abusive. They decided to sleep in separate rooms for the night.”

Just like my hometown paper, which once feaured the line, “Mr. and Mrs. Beezer Carnes drove to Louisville today to buy some items.” Seriously. I’m not making that up. Everybody in my dorm when I was a freshman gathered round every week to read my hometown newspaper — my father always said in Korea, all of the guys in his unit did the same.

I was reading a comment war between the ObamaMorons and Hillaryites, and one of the former said something I’m going to archive and pull out every time some Democrat whines about the 2000 election or the electoral college. The quotation?

popular vote tallies only matter for public perception

Indeed. indeed.

The comment:

One could call Pat Buchanan the court paleocon in the royal petting zoo of the media. He is trotted out, like an aging bear on a chain, on those occasions when the media requires an “authentic” conservative to disparage neoconservatives and Republicans and especially Bush & Cheney. He emits pugnacity and noxious fumes and spouts cockeyed history.

On this article, where Professor Hanson guts Pat Buchanan’s Hiltler apology like a fish.

Not to dump on the Blog Father, because this is a common attitude, but he sez:

ENVIRONMENTAL GOOD NEWS: Leatherback turtles return to Texas.

Maybe I’m just dense, but why is this good news? Why should I care? I just don’t get the whole “We thought the purple spotted cockroach was extinct, but it’s not and that’s just wonderful!” thing. It seems to me there are lots of other, more important things to worry about than whether some species is endangered or not.

Class, something I can’t remember, MD appt, something else I can’t remember.

The signing of the Magna Carta.

Physical therapy, first session, here in a little while. I have no idea what they’re going to do.

First we have this example of nobly battling oppression and a legacy of evil colonialism: Mugabe’s goons burn opponent’s wife alive. Then, we have the words of the evil colonial himself:

You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.

And that says it all.

Got four quarts of strawberries today.

Definitely. I’m going back to bed. I’ll be back online later this morning, probably around 11 or so, after I get back with those strawberries.

It will be, I hope. Going to the farmers’ market later this morning, and hoping to find more of those perfect strawberries. I may very well go back to bed first, but not because I feel like hell. I don’t sleep well on the pain meds; I wake up every hour or so. I could use some more sleep. But because my brain cells are actually operating, I’ll see if anything is going on first.

Monday, I started an experiment. I wanted to know whether it was the pain meds or the muscle relaxers that were making me feel so godawful. Not taking the pain meds then (or now) wasn’t an option, so I did not take the muscle relaxers. It’s taken three days for them to work out of my system, but I feel much, much better. So when I see the doctor, I’ll ask him for something else.

Today is day one of physical therapy. I have no idea what to expect.

The sciatica isn’t it. It’s the meds. I get up feeling awful, I go back to bed, and get up feeling awful, and feel awful all day. My brain feels like cherry jell-o: I kind of see words, but they don’t parse.

Anyway, sorry.

Something seems to be bad wrong with Gmail and Google both.

I inherited my grandfather’s eyes. I had 20-10 vision until I turned 40 (that’s when everything starts going to hell, by the way), and it was only when I couldn’t read a newspaper held as far away from my eyes as I could reach that I broke down and got glasses. So I wear reading glasses. Distance vision is still excellent.

Very infrequently, I have this rather disturbing thing happen, and it’s hard to describe, because you can’t do it deliberately. My eyes go out of focus. Actually, my left eye goes out of focus, so it’s kind of like crossing your eyes, but not quite. See two of everything, and everything in the left eye is fuzzy. That happened today when I was driving home, not the best time for your eyes to go out of focus. I closed my left eye and made it with no depth perception, but it was a little unnerving.

This is sometimes accompanied by partial or total numbness on the left side of my body. It usually only lasts thirty minutes or so, if that long. Today, no numbness. Just no focus.

Anyway, made it through the class.

I’ve got a class starting today — was supposed to start last Monday, but that was a no way. I’m hoping I can find a chair that doesn’t start the pain.

I had resisted the temptation to buy strawberries at the store for two reasons. First, they looked much as supermarket strawberries usually do, not dead ripe, and chosen for size and shape. Second, I was holding out for the Amish to reappear.

They did, and they had strawberries, beautiful, deep red strawberries. So we picked up some yesterday. Today, I hulled them, then sliced them, and they were a juicy deep red all the way through, strawberry perfection.I sprinkled them with sugar and let them macerate for a few minutes to draw out juice, whipped some cream, put berries on my shortcake and slathered them with whipped cream.

Ah …

That’s better. I just had some more.

That reminds me of a conversation I’ve had several times with Bloomingtonians, usually sparked by mention of, or going to, the farmers’ market there.

You have to understand that Bloomington’s farmers’ market isn’t what you think it is. It should be named the neo-hippie, pick weeds out of a yard and sell them as organic market. Actually, it has grown over the years, and there are a fair number of farmers who sell there, but it’s still dominated by moonbats with Socialist Worker Party buttons shoving petitions in your face and tone-deaf local “musicians” singing about world peace and social justice.

The Bloomington farmers’ market is the neo-hippie-wannabe event of Monroe County, held every Saturday. Most moonbats don’t get up very early, while farmers do, so the secret is to go early, around 7, before all of the wackjobs in dreadlocks and birkenstocks arrive.

About a third of the booths are things picked out of somebody’s yard. One of Bloomington’s nuttiest wackjobs sells “organic” cut flowers, for example. She doesn’t grow flowers; she just picks them on the way there. People buy them up because they’re “organic” cut flowers.

The remaining booths are farmers, for the most part (there is always a kettle corn booth, though why anybody would want to eat popcorn at 7 am I have never understood), and several local greenhouses set up booths so you can buy sets to take home and plant. Of the farmers’ booths, about half are Amish, and the other half, not. The non-Amish farmer booths can be divided into local farmers and hippie play farmers, and are pretty easy to distinguish: The real farmers have a lot more produce to sell, and don’t have “organic” and “free range” and other such nonsense written all over their signs.

Anyway, it’s a large farmers’ market, much larger than anything here, and there are many good things to be found there (just go early so you don’t have to put up with all the moonbattery).

Back to the conversation, always sparked by the market. Somebody always comes up with, “I wouldn’t expect you to go.”

Why not? Well, because Bloomingtonians — and not just I — see the market as some sort of super hippie commune thing, and place to be seen by other hippie types. Oh, and because you can get “organic” there.

Anyway, the conversation always boils down to this: Buying local, the moonbat believes, is something lefties do, not something conservatives do.

Okay, now do you find that odd? What is leftist about buying local?

Not a damned thing.

I love Wal-Mart, and there are a couple of supermarkets here I really like, but sorry, I’m going to be buying tomatoes from the Amish during the summer, not at Wal-Mart or the supermarket. It’s not political, particularly. It’s quality. In fact, I never buy supermarket tomatoes. If tomatoes are out of season, I buy canned.

Well, I suppose it is partly political, although I don’t think of it as political, since I’m not a moonbat and don’t keep tally of feel-good political statements. Farming is essential. I want farmers to succeed. So when they’re selling, I’m buying. I don’t give a frak if they’re selling “organic” or not. “Organic” isn’t the point.

Capitalism is all about parties entering into contracts for mutual benefit. The Amish get our money, and we get great strawberries. There’s nothing leftist about that.

And buying local, even in Bloomington, doesn’t mean giving your money to moonbats. At the farmers’ market there, you can get great certified conservative Republican elk roast, from Duane Long. Great stuff. Try it.

For the first time since we started buying milk once a week at Meyer Dairy, we ran out. That’s six gallons gone by Friday mid-afternoon. I guess we need to pick up seven gallons today.

Stiff, and a little sore. Not bad. Just feel pretty bleeah.

Can’t think of anything we need from Sam’s or Wally World. There’s the breakfast buffet at the Pennsylvania Roadhouse in Pleasant Gap we haven’t tried. Maybe that, then the dairy, then home.

Going back to bed soon. Feel icky.

Wyatt has moved.

Somehow, I’ve managed to fire off three articles. That’s three more than I’d anticipated. It’s starting to hurt, and I’m going to log off, at least for a while. I’ve been holding off on the other meds (flexaril and the pain meds), and if I want to continue holding off until a decently late hour of the afternoon, I need to lie down to ease the pain.

I may return. I may not. No way of knowing now.

Back to stiff and sore — but not memorably painful.

and thank God for that. Hillary’s not done yet, of course, and she won’t be at least until the convention, so there will be plenty of popcorn opportunities.

I’m thinking somebody’d better get me the conference call info real soon, before I disappear completely behind this flexaril fog. Still just a little soreness.

but I’m in sort of a flexaril fog. Sorry.

I don’t think I mentioned that last weekend, we lucked out at the North Atherton Meier. They had two rows of veal loin chops, one above the other. The price on the lower row was $9.99 a pound, and on the top row, $2.99 a pound. Being the honest sort I am, I called the meat woman we always talk to over, and asked if the $2.99 a pound labels were a mistake. She said yeah, so as soon as you pick a few out for yourselves, I’ll take them back and relabel them.

So we got 4 veal loin chops at $2.99 a pound. We’re going to have two of them tonight, like this.

I’ll dust the chops with flour, then brown them over medium heat in butter for about five minutes a side. I’ll remove the chops, then add the peppers, onion, and garlic, and cook them until very soft. I’ll puree them with the cream, then pour it all back into the pan, toss in the chops, and put gnocchi on to boil. I’ll let the chops finish cooking in the sauce, remove them when I drain the gnocchi, then toss the gnocchi with the sauce.

Maybe it’s the drugs, but I think it sounds good.

I assume it’s the prednisone, but wow, I’m barely sore. I’m not going to be running any marathons, but this is amazing.

Oh. Flexaril + pain meds == good night.

Sciatica. Well, probably. All of the symptoms, he says, are classic, except the pain should be shooting down my leg. So he put me on prednisone to reduce the nerve swelling and flexaril and physical therapy. I’m going to see him two weeks from today, and he says there should be improvement. If there isn’t, it isn’t sciatica, and he’s going to give me an MRI.

Sitting on the couch is worse than sitting in the recliner.

More like this, please, and fewer like these.

I have an appointment with my GP today at 2:45.

I switched chairs in the office. It isn’t as bad, but it doesn’t help. Sitting seems to make it worse, and the only thing that seems to relieve it is lying down (but on the couch, not the bed).

I moved to the couch, but really can’t tell if it’s helping. It still hurts like hell. So I’m going to lie down (that does help) for a while, then sit up, and see if it gets worse again.

The hip thing has been getting worse, not better, although I figured out this morning that sitting in the chair in my office makes it a lot worse. I get up, and there’s not much pain. I make coffee, go into the office and sit down. I get up a while later to refill the coffee, and there’s a great deal of pain. So I’m going to switch chairs, and see if that helps.

Anything that’s too soft makes it worse. If I sleep in the bed, when I get up it hurts like hell. If I sleep on the couch (firmer), there isn’t much pain. This chair — my recliner — isn’t as bad as my office chair, but I may move to the couch, and see if sitting there helps.

I’ve also figured out that it isn’t muscle pain; it’s too deep. It feels like bone pain. I have no idea how I could have done anything more than pull a muscle (and that’s kind of a mystery anyway), but I’m going to the doctor.

It seems going to Harrisburg wasn’t a great idea.

I just missed the ice cream truck.

Did not sleep well (or very long) last night. I think I’ll be going back to bed soon.

Where have we heard this before?

Dramatic photographs have emerged, showing one of the few remaining peoples on earth thought to have had no contact with the outside world.”

Taken from a small airplane, the photos show men outside thatched communal huts, necks craned upward, pointing bows toward the air in a remote corner of the Amazonian rainforest

One word: Tasaday.

Time for a review.

The Intellectual Dishonesty of Anthropologists

More Intellectual Dishonesty

If you need to induce vomiting, just read this. Hat tip — although I think a “Damn you!” is more appropriate — to Dru.

Speaking of . . .

I hurt my back Sunday. It’s now Friday. In five days, there was no improvement. None at all.

Today, there is. It’s still sore, but sore is a lot better than serious pain — and it was serious pain. It’s not really my back; the pain is right at the top of my left hip. Except today, it’s not a red-hot shooting pain like it has been. Just sore.

Sore I can deal with. And I really want to check out the Civil War Museum in Harrisburg. Maybe today.

I just nodded off, so I’m going back to bed.