How's That Hopey Changey Thing Working Out? I'll Tell You!

I went down to the Chelsea drugstore
To get your prescription filled
I was standing in line with Mr. Jimmy
And man, did he look pretty ill
We decided that we would have a soda
My favorite flavor, cherry red
I sung my song to Mr. Jimmy
Yeah, and he said one word to me, and that was "dead"
I said to him

You can't always get what you want, no!
You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want (no)
But if you try sometimes you just might find
You get what you need~Jagger/Richards

I was in favor of a single payer system for health care before I found out I'd be the single payer. I went to fill prescriptions for Karen yesterday. I had to wait an hour at the pharmacy even though I had dropped the prescriptions off earlier. When they rang it up, it was $700.
In the meantime, Karen was at the dentist. They were finishing up some $1500 worth of work that was supposed to be reimbursed (with my money!) from our FSA, but the FSA said they needed more information before they could give me MY money.

I'm pretty cranky about this, and if you were here, I could tell the story with a lot of hand waving and stuff, but ah, what's the point. How about this, though? I always thought Mick Jagger was saying, "My fever, flavored, cherry red" Isn't that a much better line?

Spring Pruning

I had a post about spring, "blah blah blah, going to use the power of earth's yellow sun to learn to fly."

Actually, now that I see it in print, it's pretty good. I think a lot of writers should consider that approach:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, blah, blah, blah, It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.
Like Dickens could have confined himself to three blahs.

"Don't Throw Me In The Briar Patch"

Of course, I always believe whatever the last person told me, but Virginia's Attorney General made a case for why this new health care bill is unconstitutional ("You cannot compel someone to buy something from someone else.") and right after it passed share prices for our  Br'er Rabbit health insurance companies went up.
Okay, we've gotten that out of our system; now can we pass a single payer system?  And just like they attached school loan legislation to this bill, can we finally start using the metric system? It's powers of ten, people.

Here's some real health care news. I've been touting the benefits of mega-doses of vitamin D to build healthy bones. Apparently, some of the extra calcium that's absorbed goes into making plaque for arteries hastening atherosclerosis, especially in black people, or maybe only in black people, I don't know. Maybe you shouldn't be taking Vitamin D, you certainly shouldn't be taking medical advice from a mailman. I mean, at first, I thought plaques for arteries was kind of cool, like you could hang one that says "World's Greatest Aorta".

Dogs Of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains. Oh, Too Late.

A few years ago, Anchorage dog owners formed a pack to push for off-leash parks, and they were successful. Like most human endeavors, it turned out to be a complete waste of time.  A couple of days ago, Leah and I took a couple of dogs for a walk on the on-leash trails near our house. Every dog within a mile came over to sniff us, and look at the leashes as an artifact of their former subjugation by human masters. The so-called masters, though, were skiing away, oblivious, oblivious to their dogs, and to everything except their quest to use their skiing technique to inconvenience as many people on the trails as they could at one time.
It's been a long time since I was a bouncing baby boy, but the good news is, I can still bounce. I slipped and fell on an icy driveway yesterday, and managed to bruise the front and back of my leg.
But now, since it's obvious that I've become just another curmudgeon, you can imagine how heroic this man appears to me.

Anchorage: We're Number 1, At Least In Our Own Minds

Okay, we're not number 1, we're number 137, in terms of the largest metro areas in the country, which is a relief, because I searched in vain to find us on the list of the craziest cities compiled by the Daily Beast, but they only compared the top 57 metro areas. Which seems a little arbitrary, and, well, crazy.

It's Not Bragging If It's True; I Crushed It Like a Bug.

Sadly, it was my bathroom scale when I weighed myself this morning, the first time I've been on a scale in six weeks.

This Post Rated R For Wince Inducing Language. Well, I Winced

It's spring break, so yesterday we had a spring blizzard. Somebody asked if I had ridden my bike to work, and I laughingly said "I couldn't have even pushed my bike to work today." On the way home from work, though, I saw that the municipality had cleared the sidewalk along the main street to the post office. So, I took my bike to work this morning.  But, the sidewalk clearing crew had been so fast that they were ahead of the street clearing crew, which, by this morning, had pushed all the snow from the road  up onto the sidewalk. It turns out, that I can push my bike through deep snow.

The snow was beginning to be packed down by this afternoon, so I attempted to ride home.  My back tire spun out, and it was only by quickly putting my knee on the ground and my scrotum on the nose of the seat that I was able to avoid damaging my bicycle.

I Didn't Even Vote For Him, And I'm Disappointed

I may have said this before, but strapping health care to employment just seems dumb. Why not tie it to toaster ownership, or much better, bicycle ownership? The system we have dates back around seventy years, grew in an ad hoc fashion and reflected the needs of the time. A sweeping overhaul could cut costs and improve service, but apparently we don't want to upset the apple cart. But who cares how apple carts feel and who gave them such power?

By the way, apple carts themselves, were a short lived phenomenon responding to an even earlier crisis about eighty years ago.

Follow-Up To Yesterday's Post, Or, Hush Little Baby

Sandy Dumont is an image consultant in Norfolk, Virginia. She writes on NPR.org: ... Blue is trust, that's why policemen wear navy blue. They don't wear baby blue however, because the darker the color the higher the authority. Baby blue is for putting babies to sleep.

Pantone wanted $9.99 for their  iPhone app, which is more than I was willing to pay (especially considering that Motion X's GPS with turn by turn directions was only $2.99 and I used it way more than the once I anticipated using Pantone) so this isn't official, but I'm pretty sure my letter carrier uniform shirt is baby blue.

You Know How Filmmakers Always Have Southern Churches Sing Amazing Grace?

Because it's the only hymn they know? But also because it's true; audiences know that  churches do sing Amazing Grace.
We just watched Whip It. There is a character whose life is a complete failure, not one of her dreams came true. What is cinematic shorthand for loser? The character, once she'd given up on her dreams, became a letter carrier.

"...he knows I'm going to stay."

We're waiting around a doctor's office where Karen was just told she has carpal tunnel syndrome. That's my girl, she's never met a syndrome she didn't have.

While we were waiting, I read this article that explains why, as much as I want to leave, I'll never be comfortable anywhere but Alaska.

Oops, apparently the iPhone's copy/paste function doesn't work in the "link" box, so I'll just have to tell you that gist of the article was that short, chubby neurotics (does that sound like anyone you know?) are best suited for life in a northern town.

The Zeitgeist, The Hive-Mind, The Buzz, or, You, Too, Can Follow This Blog

Do you get an e-mail every time I post to my blog, and did you then get 5 yesterday as I made minor changes to one post? I don't know how to make google stop sending them to me, which is just irritating since I don't need to hear my own buzz, or rather, that's all I hear, and I don't need to hear it from them.

My Contribution to Health Care, It Could Save Your Life

I'm reading "The Interrogative Mood", which is a book made up entirely of questions. Some of them are sort of personal, made worse by follow-up questions that assume your answer to the previous question.
I was pleased when I got to one I could answer forthrightly, "If you could assign colors to the days of the week, what color would you assign Tuesday?"

It appears that the danger that my government sinecure would be privatized has been averted. Our "business" model is so hosed that no one wants us. I'll probably end my "career" in Williamsburg showing tourists how the colonists churned butter, delivered a primitive form of mail, and watched TV with only 3 channels.

New research shows that boredom can literally be fatal, so I'm adding one more link to a real blog. This one was just voted Best Sports Blog for the third year in a row.