ProfessorTomoe

I asked her. She said it would be "pretty ridiculous." She has a thing about a person being able to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, as it were. I told her that if this first round of shots doesn't work, we might want to look at it then. No reply from her.

If this had happened yesterday, I'd be heading for the hills right now ...

Back to my junior high school days of 1976: I spent a lot of my summer vacations in Austin, my home town. My parents would ship off my sister and my self and then do God knows what. (One summer they got separated, but that's another story.) Anyway, my grandparents and great-grandmother gave me pretty free-rein through the city via the Austin bus line, which in 1976 was safe, cheap, and dependable. I explored a hell of a lot of downtown Austin that way, but one of my favorite places to explore was the State Capitol. One day, I heard that there was a special session being held to impeach a State District Judge. I went straight to the Capitol and started asking how I could be a page for the special session (get your minds out of the gutter—we're talking running errands, making intra-building deliveries, etc.). I was finally directed to the District Representative for my home in Pasadena, TX at the time. He was already there, preparing for the impeachment sessions. After a few minutes of talking and him explaining that they don't use pages in special sessions, he finally agreed and ordered his secretary to type up something for me to present to the House Sergeant at Arms the following day. My grandparents went nuts with excitement along with me! The took me around from store to store after they got off work and bought me a whole new wardrobe to wear for the next couple of days. You can imagine what it looked like (think Saturday Night Live of the 1976 era), but they were so proud that I could have gone in a diaper and I'd still have made them happy. The next day I boarded the old #21 Airport bus route and proudly got off across from the State Capitol, permission slip in hand. I walked straight to the House chamber, found the Sergeant at Arms (I hope, or I'm getting a lot of this story wrong), and presented them with my official permission to work as an Honorary Page for the 1976 Special Session. Turns out I wasn't the only person, so the secretary had us take seats and wait for jobs to come along. We didn't have to wait too long. I did a lot of copying, picking up, delivering, getting lost, and even once going out along the side of the Floor of the House of Representatives to get to the Speaker's office and make some copies. I can even remember what I ate for lunch: Frito Pie and Coke. The second day wasn't as exciting, since most of the business had been wrapped up on the first day; I was basically told to go on home after a while. Still, there's no way in Hell or Texas that I'm ever going to forget my legitimate brush with real, live back-room Texas Politics.

I would skip the error part and take them straight to trial.

I made a guess over in the comic discussion thread that Edward might be upset about Tedd's female form because she reminds him of his ex-wife, Noriko. My question: has Edward ever seen Tedd in his FV5 form? My reasoning: if f!Tedd merely reminds Edward of Noriko, fv5!Tedd would blow Edward's mind, based on the photos we have. Noriko seems to be the epitome of FV5 form, at least when it comes to her hair. If Edward has never seen his son looking even more like his ex-wife, he might have an aneurysm when he does.

7:58 a.m. CDT 20170822. Okay, how the hell did I wake up with a sore throat? It feels like a damned infection, but it could be my allergies kicking in again. I'm drinking my protein coffee to try and put it out of my misery. I've also given my nose an Afrin spray to blast out whatever is in there out of there. Not having a fun morning. Found a well-hidden container of cranberry juice in the pantry. Am now mixing it with my tea to get that extra vitamin C burst for my throat. Last night's disaster with the ice cube pick-up has mostly dissipated. I won't be trying that again for at least the next week. Had to play a Daft Punk song to exorcise a Christmas song out of my head. That could be the worst of the symptoms from this morning.

I'd forgotten about that. Thanks for the reminder. Aneurysm avoided.

Oh, no no no. Thanks, but no. Mrs. Prof would have a stroke if I got one of those.

I did a damned dumb thing. Bent over to pick up an ice cube I dropped. Oh hell. Head straight for the hydrocodone. God it hurts.

6:32 p.m. CDT 20170821. This has been a sleepy day. Mrs. Prof and I did manage to get outside and see what percentage of the eclipse we could see from the D/FW Metroplex (only 70% or so) via a pinhole camera and the shadows on the ground through the leaves (a neat trick I learned from National Geographic magazine). Other than that, most of my day has been day has been spent asleep or taking medication. The steroids have yet to kick in, and my left big toe is still hurting very badly—something I need to discuss with my pain management doctor. I don't know when I'm going to get a chance to get to talk to my primary doctor about the thing on my ear. It's going to have to be dealt with soon.

I assume toy lobsters are easier to come by in Denmark than they are as far inland as Dallas. ;)

I still have not seen EGS appear on the Library of Congress's list. The list has grown slightly, if memory serves, but not by much.

The United States Library of Congress, caretaker of copyrights for this country and main aggregator of published works in the United States, has begun a Webcomic Web Archive. Several well-known works are already in the archive, such as Hark! A Vagrant, xkcd, Girl Genius, Shortpacked, and Girly. I think if those are in there, then EGS deserves to be in there, hands down. I used the linked contact form to appeal to the curators to add EGS. I made sure to include a mention of the criteria listed on their main page that EGS fits in my request. I don't know if multiple requests would help the cause, so I leave it up to you as to whether or not you wish to join in. I hope you will.

Mrs. Prof will happily provide more of those when she has time. She'll be pleased as punch, in fact.

I do use one of those, actually. However, I have a USB mouse sitting behind my laptop, just in case I need it for an emergency.

Bed pee isn't over yet, either. somehow, Loudmouth (we assume) got under the waterproof cover and spent a penny on the sheets. He's been finding new and more exciting places to do it as well, like the floor mats of the guest bathroom. We're starting to fear that this is something we'll never get under control.

We know the joke. There's a Pittsburg in Texas, too.

Mrs. Prof is off spending around $139 on a new battery for our Honda Ridgeline. I'd prefer that she get a Honda battery, but there's no way the current one would last until Monday and she's got driving errands to do. She'd also probably have to spend considerably more than she is for the Autozone Duralast Gold she's getting anyway. Battery failures always happen at the most inconvenient times.

5:30 a.m. CDT 20170820. Warning: do NOT cough within three days after having a lumbar caudal epidural steroid injection with catheters done. Just DON"T do it. DON"T.

* raises hand for most of the manga *

4:48 p.m. CDT 20170820. Had a rather painful experience a couple of hours ago, as the pre-race show for the IndyCar race from Pocono was coming on. I was trying to swap sides on the sectional so that I wouldn't be lying on my right ear. I got everything ready and laid down on my left side. As I did, I heard and felt a huge cracking along my spine. I couldn't take it for very long. I had to get up and swap back so that I was lying on my right side. It took me a while to recover from that little event. I'm still a bit stiff along the left side, and, of course, sore on my right ear. Sigh.

Wrap-up of the IndyCar race from Pocono. Will Power won. Josef Newgarden came in second.

Sorry—I left the above in the post buffer for several hours.

6:23 a.m. CDT 20170820. The last time I had this "procedure" done, I experienced the majesty of levels 9/10 and 10/10 when it comes to pain levels. Not. Even. Close. This time, I had hydrocodone still active in my system, at doctor's orders. This time, I had a doctor who used a targeting system and a catheter to put the medicine where it needed to go along my spine. This time, I had heavy metal music playing in the background and a doctor who wore something that looked straight out of Heavy Metal magazine as his scrubs, complete with goggles. I'd say that's a troika lined up for success. I think I'm already feeling some relief for the stone bruise pain on my foot. However, I'm still sore everywhere else. I think it's going to take the full five days for the steroids to kick in. Outside of that, I've got that painful spot on the cartilage of my ear which has not healed, despite my doctor's treatment. Makes it painful to lie on my pillow with my right side, and I'm still spotting blood. The basal cell carcinoma, if that is what it is, is still in full swing. Yep, I'm properly back from the hospital, me and all of my secondary ailments.

One last Close-Up Foundation item: In 1981, another schoolmate and I were scheduled to represent the Soviet Union on the International Court of Justice, regarding a case between Chile and Argentina. Now, for one day of the 1980 Close-Up tour, our group was scheduled to be split, with my half going somewhere and the other half going to meet the head of the Organization of the American States! I finagled my way onto that half so I could ask the head what the group's standing was on the dispute, which was over who should own the Beagle Islands at the tip of South America in Cape Horn. The answer I got wasn't very helpful (he wasn't too prepared for something like it from a group of high schoolers), but still, I got to talk to the man at the head of the Organization of American States!