ProfessorTomoe

I lost my dinner to a cat last night. Allow me to explain. My wife had a meeting with some members of one of the pet adoption groups here in Garland yesterday. After the meeting, she went out to dinner with the higher-ups of the group. She called me at around 7:00 p.m. to let me know and told me she'd bring me something back, probably around 9:00. Fast forward to just after 9:00 p.m.—I get another phone call. She's been called back to the Pet Adoption Center to help catch a loose cat that's been prowling around indoors for three days. You see, the cat's been ignoring the regular feral cat traps (it's found a source of food somewhere, probably in storage), and my wife has one of the only "drop traps" in the city (picture a box on a stick, then make it a big fold-up device). She said my dinner (beef enchiladas) would probably get cold, but she wouldn't be gone too much longer. I get on Facebook and find she's posted thermal imaging pictures from the adoption center's security cameras. I post a comment, saying I hope they've got a refrigerator, referring to keeping my dinner from spoiling. Fifty-two minutes past midnight. I'm dead asleep. The phone rings, but I can't find it before it goes to voice mail. It's her, but she doesn't call back. I go back to sleep. Sometime past 1:00 a.m., the door opens. She walks in with a Whataburger bag with a Monterrey Melt and onion rings inside. My beef enchiladas did *not* go into the fridge at the adoption center, because she didn't pick up on what I was trying to say. Instead, they went into the garbage. Whatever. At this point, I'll eat whatever she offers, which is half of the Monterrey Melt (all my gastric bypass stomach can handle—the rest goes in the fridge (insert cruel irony here)). She gets the onion rings to go with her chicken strips and gravy. I thank her for the Monterrey Melt and go back to sleep. At least I got Whataburger.

Good news: first day off the hydrocodone and back on the Tramadol was relatively low-pain, if not pain-free. Not-so-good news: waking up the second say was a bit of an experience. The Tramadol hasn't reached a steady serum level yet, so all the aches and pains are back. I had to creak into the kitchen for tea, with which I could take a Tramadol and a couple of cough-suppressant pills. Yes, the coughing is still going on. I'm pretty sure that it's due to the oak pollen which coats my truck, my wife's micro-van, and just about everything else outside.

And you've always got that most brilliant of ideas, the M-28/29 Davy Crockett nuclear device, with a range of about 2 to 4 kilometers. Anything within a few hundred meters of it when it exploded got a lethal dose of radiation. The troops firing it probably wouldn't have fared much better, due to close range fallout. Can't imagine it becoming a popular weapon if it'd actually been deployed.

If I remember a report I saw correctly, that was more-or-less a suicide mission. Those were set to air burst at altitude directly over the launch site, weren't they?

No, but there must be some delay for message propagation, decoding, and reply encoding/transmission.

No butt twitches this time around? No auto-twerking?

Test Match Cricket, live on WillowHD. India v Australia. Day 3, Session 3. India trail by 131 runs with 320-5.

Good lord, what year was this? That's not exactly recent technology, even for the 80s, is it?

Good point. Has Voltaire taken a different tack while still holding true to his vow?

I had a locking cap on the 1970 Ford Maverick that I was forced to drive in high school. It was my step-mother's car, and like her, it was a piece of junk.

Moo.

So, when will Tedd's father stage the Cheerleadra sighting? I'm betting Elliot is wishing for that to happen sooner rather than later now.

Just got a call from my primary care doctor's nurse. He wants me to switch from hydrocodone back to Tramadol, post haste. I warned them that I'll probably be doing three pills a day (my average prior to the back flareup was two). The nurse didn't seem to have any objections, but we'll see about what the doctor thinks about it once refill time rolls around.

Well, our replacement for it is a Kenmore Elite, purchased from a Sears Outlet (read: scratch & dent) store. I don't think it took too kindly to being scratch & dented, because it's been making the weirdest copper-tinged gurgling sounds ever since we got it ... I swear it might be doing some long distance communicating with mlooney's dishwasher on a higher frequency. It's an unholy conspiracy, I tell you.

Guess what? Item #2 above happened, in essence. Just my luck. He saw spots of arthritis and *maybe* a spot where there *might* have been and old compression of less than a tenth of an inch, but otherwise the MRI didn't help him much. A manual exam, however, DID help. He pushed areas on my back that hurt so bad they made me forget who won the Super Bowl this year. My pain level jumped from a 5 up to a 7.5 after his exam. End result: he's scheduled a procedure on March 30 of "diagnostic shots" along both sides of the four vertebra above the area where it becomes solid (whatever that is - I haven't looked it up yet). I'm supposed to go home and unload our dishwasher afterward, noting if and how much pain relief I have. I report that back to his physician's assistant later. If the relief is sufficient, he'll perform what is basically a cauterization of those same nerves. That, he said, should give me 6 to 18 months of relief, in conjunction with 12 physical therapy appointments. If, on the other hand, the diagnostic shots don't provide much or any relief, he'll try again in a lower area. Lather, rinse, repeat. Mix in an electrophysiologist appointment on April 4th and I don't know what the fark you get. Oh, and he also wants me to talk to my primary care doctor about getting off of the hydrocodone and back onto the Tramadol. I've called and e-mailed him about that. The pain is bad enough with an every-eight-hour hydrocodone dose, so I don't know how it's going to be on Tramadol, whatever dosage he prescribes. Guess I'll find out eventually.

their back sides

Just about time to get ready to go to the spine doctor. Gotta take my pills, shower, get dressed, and then fight traffic and construction to get to his office. I have two fears: I'll get there and discover I forgot the MRI disc. He'll study the MRI results, come into the exam room, and say, "Well, I'm not really seeing anything ..." It's enough to trigger an anxiety attack, either way.

Worst refrigerator I ever had was from Norge. I swear it was Helheim-bent on some sort of Viking revenge against us.

Vicious circle (cycle? I could never tell). Sounds logical. I hope what I've ordered will give my throat a long enough break, because this 2-hour menthol stuff isn't really doing the trick.

Just went back and checked—I'm four days shy of a month of coming down with the sinusitis that started me coughing. The infection appears to be gone, with no fever and no swollen glands, but I just can't get myself to stop coughing for more than about 15 minutes at a time. I'll go that long, then hit a jag that'll have me coughing for almost a few minutes, off and on. It might be allergies, in which case it's about to get a lot worse. The huge live oak tree in front of my house is about to start spewing pollen. The good news is I think I found an alcohol-free source of dextromethorphan HBr (i.e., cough suppressant) on Amazon. It's in gel caps, and it's definitely not available from CVS. Until it arrives from Amazon, I've got to put up with Mrs. Prof's CVS menthol lozenges which taste terrible (I swear that woman has cross-wired taste buds sometimes) and only help a bit for a couple of hours at a time.

My favorite monocle gag was from "Young Frankenstein," where the town constable (or whatever his rank was) wore a monocle on top of a patch over an eye.

Thanks. You know, what I should do is create a new CD with the viewer software directories duplicated, but with all the images replaced by cat pictures of the same size. I'd do it, too, if my appointment was on April 1st. (The appointment is actually Friday morning. Not today. I have a hard time telling what day it is with all the drugs they're pumping into me.)

You need to read Misfile.

Yesterday, I played around with the CD that I got from the MRI place. I'm stumped. I think I was able to see a left side compression fracture, but I couldn't tell my L1 vertebra from any of the rest. Forget about trying to see pinched nerves on my right side—I just know that the pain is still there, despite the 200mg Topamax daily. Coughing has only slightly let up. I'd get cough syrup, but I'm pretty damned certain that anything on CVS's shelves would have alcohol in it, and that's a no-no with hydrocodone and Topamax. Follow-up meeting with the spine doctor is tomorrow Friday morning. Wish me luck.

This looked interesting: https://www.sereneteaz.com/jasmine-dragon-phoenix-pearls-tea/ I might grab a couple of ounces and give 'em a try. Thanks!