Of course, all those years ago there wasn’t anything like Google or even the WWW to keep us happily informed on all things in fact, Sergey and Larry were only around 12 years old at the time so I swallowed away in happy ignorance. But now we not only have the WWW but Google and Wikipedia as well and it’s instant access to anything you’d possibly be better off not knowing.

Apparently Barium, a heavy element (now isn’t that just lovely), in it’s various forms is apparently used in more than a few ways than just a piss poor excuse for a medical milk shake (non-dairy type, 1 ea.). Here’s a few of them:

• Barium compounds, and especially barite (BaSO4), are extremely important to the petroleum industry. Barite is used in drilling mud, a weighting agent in drilling new oil wells.
• Barium carbonate is a useful rat poison and can also be used in making bricks.
• An alloy with nickel is used in spark plug wire.
• Barium oxide is used in a coating for the electrodes of fluorescent lamps, which facilitates the release of electrons.
• Barium nitrate and chlorate give green colors in fireworks.
• Barium peroxide can be used as a catalyst to start an aluminothermic reaction when welding rail tracks together. It can also be used in green tracer ammunition.

Aack! That’s enough! I was better off with the radioactive egg salad sandwich.

Drilling for oil, making bricks, welding, tracer ammo and rat poison?? If I didn’t need surgery before now it  certainly sounds like I’m going to need it before the morning’s out. Perhaps all this wonderful instant access to anything you might want to know isn’t such a great thing after all (rat poison?!?).

Sometimes it just pays to remain ignorant. I’ll see ya’ when I get back…maybe.

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• Severe nausea: This will stop you every single time but there’s a catch…it has to present 24 hours a day, every day, without exception and it has to get steadily worse as each week goes by. Kind of like having a bad case of the stomach flu forever. In my case, I should finally be getting surgery for this before the month of October is out and once the recovery period is past and gone, I’ll no longer have this excuse so I’ll have to think up another one.
• Medications: A lot of them. You have to be able to take at least ten to a dozen pills a day (repeats of some are allowed) to qualify for not posting. And you have to be oversensitive to any medication that isn’t Aspirin or Excedrin or the generic equivalents. Once again, in my case one of those is a minimum dosage (10 mg) of an anti-depressant which is used for chronic pain control and although it’s very effective in doing this there’s an inherent problem—anti-depressants make me depressed.
• Depression (see previous):  Although artificially induced, I stand (sit, kneel, crawl) amazed on how badly depression really is. My god, how the hell do naturally depressed people manage to function at all? I mean the best things I could possibly think of was on the order of dark- moldy- rotten insects eating my brain, images of dead and rotting things unmentionable and bananas (okay, so I have this thing about bananas…I can’t stand bananas). I stopped taking the things…I feel much better now.
• Fighting off the cats: True enough as strange as it might seem. We recently rescued a small female and added her to our family of felines and she’s driving our 3 large males absolutely crazy. Being pounced upon by this little female creature from feline hell and the results thereof is nothing compared to the fact all three of them have been following her around waiting for her to…er…ripen, shall we say. Then they have to come crawl all over me making whimpering noises and staring at me with their wide eyes saying “Make it stop!!”. So far, they’ve only managed to destroy about 1/3 of all our possessions.

Update: Upon arriving home after minding the quilt shop for the day while Laurie was off doing her thing at one of the local farmer’s market, I found a message on the old answering machine left by the Boston VA (W. Roxbury facility). It seems I’ll be headed down to Boston for surgery on the 28th of this month…finally! Hopefully this should solve the first item on the above list and although I’ve been told that I’ll still have to take the medication that (somewhat) controls the massive over production of stomach acid, this operation should at least significantly cut back on the nausea I’ve been experiencing 24/7. I’m actually looking forward to it.

Rats…I seem to have posted. Have to stop that.

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Stephen C. Rose of The Huffington Post reflects my feelings quite well in a fairly short, to the point article I’ve excerpted below. Give it a read yourself and see what you think.

McCain is the man who crashed five jets, mistreated his wife, opposed Dr. King and would overturn Rowe v. Wade. He favors bombing anyone who does not fit in to the neocon agenda of forcing freedom everywhere while squelching it apace.

Stephen C. Rose: It’s McCain Stupid — Why McCain Is The Issue

I make it a point not to get too political on this blog nor am I that politically minded by nature but I’ve been drawn to the current election like a bee to pollen especially considering the current national and global situation. The next president is going to have one hell of a job on their hands and we need someone who is clear headed, open minded, intelligent and flexible. Someone who will refuse to resort to old, obsolete, narrow minded, “what’s in it for me?” way of doing things and McCain just doesn’t fit the bill.

There’s a whole lot of people, people that the general public will never know about until these good folks are most likely dead and gone, that put the safety of the people of not only this nation but the entire globe as a whole before everything else including health, welfare and even their own families to make sure this old world stayed just the way it was, problems and all. They succeeded and most of them paid dearly for it and I for one will not see it taken away by some befuddled old fool who appears more and more that he’s lost all sense of direction. Here’s another fine example (reading it won’t take long but the point is well made): McCain on banking and health

All this, of course, is purely subjective on my part and being too involved in old Cold War affairs I can hardly admit to offering an unbiased opinion however, just being experienced in those old Cold War affairs as I am, I know far too well what was nearly lost back then and it would be unbelievably sad and pathetic if we actually elected a President who, for all intensive purposes, would work hard at actually making things worse.

Alright…I’m done now.

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I have a rather large 7 day pill box you see (keeps me from losing the thing) that we have to refill every Sunday evening after dinner. Over the past few years I’ve had to go from just filling the morning and evening compartments of each day to filling every damn one of the things, 4 compartments per day which can become very trying at times–I hate taking pills let alone trying to remember which one goes where.

So knowing myself the way I do plus the fact that Laurie seems to want to keep me around a bit longer, for what reason I couldn’t possibly fathom (she’ll beat me profusely for saying that by the way), she sits by my side and double checks to make sure that I get all the correct pills in the correct compartments. She does this in fear that I might mix them up if doing it myself and end up turning into a small purple marmoset or perhaps something even worse. And over the course of time she has developed nicknames for each of one of these little darlings based either on the shape, size or sometimes both. It helps her keep proper track of things you know.

Now I’m actually starting to refer to each of these little wonders of mine by the same nicknames which provides me with no end of embarrassment when renewal time comes around for any one of the little buggers and I accidentally use the nicknames without thinking. Once you see the list of these nicknames you’ll understand why…

• Big white one
• Little white one
• Cat’s eyes
• The Geritol (no, it’s not actually)
• Flippers
• Big red one
• Flying saucer squash
• Poop
• The pregnancy vitamin (we’re not going to go there)

There’s a couple-three more in the lot that haven’t yet earned a nickname but don’t worry—it’s just a matter of time.

So, as I’m sure you can see, it can become quite an interesting conversation if I slip up and not use the proper name but the nickname instead. Good thing they know me down there.

To wit:

“VA, Telephone Advice, this is Anne, may I help you?”

“Yeah, this is [insert: name and Soc Sec number here] and I need a refill on cat’s eyes.”

“Excuse me, sir?”

“And the flippers, I need more flippers.”

“Uh-huh, flippers and cat’s eyes…anything else?”

“How about a poop then? One of the big ones, not those two little things you keep sending me. I can’t get my fingers into ‘em.”

“Do you need some bat entrails while you’re at it, sir?”

“Oh come on now, let’s not get funny about this, I’m running low on this stuff and I’ve no refills left.”

“Sorry, so who’s your Primary Care Physician, sir? Have you perhaps seen her lately?”

“I see her Tuesday, why?”

“I think you better ask her about this, I’m not sure if we’ll have any poop in the facility until Monday afternoon.”

“Fresh out of poop, huh?”

“I’m afraid so, sir.”

“Good idea, then I could just pick all of ‘em up there instead of waiting on the mail and say, that reminds me. It’s almost time to renew the flying saucer squash too. Thanks, Anne.”

“No problem, that’s what I’m here for. And don’t forget to take your pregnancy vitamin before bed now.”

“I won’t, take it easy.”

“You too.”

*click*

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Oooowwww-I went to the dentist this morning for the last in a series of VA approved procedures that consisted of removing 3 broken teeth (all molars) and one filling, the last removal and filling I had today. My dentist, who actually is quite good, saved the worse for last–the last meaning that this particular broken tooth still had a live root in it plus most of it’s hardware still in place. If I had to do it all over again I think I would have done this one first and just got it over with since the others being were much older, deader than a doornail and a piece of cake compared to this one.

Saying this one particular tooth was stubborn is like saying that Frodo Baggins just took a day trip to Mordor to return a lost ring.

When applying a pair of hook-jaw locking pliers to the task, bracing a foot on my chest and having his dental assistant haul away on his belt for good measure didn’t budge the ornery piece of chewing equipment, he finally achieved success by duct-taping me to the chair and using a block and tackle rigged to a beam in the ceiling with the hauling end of the rope run out the window. This was attached to the 3 point hitch of a medium size, diesel powered, 4 wheel drive farm tractor his brother-in-law had brought over and running her in low gear the tooth finally came out. Once they bolted my lower jaw back in place, I was done (good thing we were in farm country or I might still be there).

The saving grace of all this rather painful fracas is that I didn’t have to pay a dime for it which is just as well. I always thought that having to pay the exorbitant fees charged for dental work these days and all the pain and aggravation involved is akin to being kicked in the face after I’ve been clubbed to the ground. I may not not be too fond of this particular service related disability of mine which was the reason behind all this dental work but at least I had the work done without having to go bankrupt to do so.

Now for a couple of Percocet and a few days of soft food and I’ll be right as rain. Next time though I’m bringing a glob of plastique and a roll of detcord. Diesel fuel is expensive nowadays.

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