Don't get mad get glad

I'm taking a break from the CPAP machine tonight. I really need to get some sleep and I can achieve similar results in half the time by just putting a plastic bag over my head. Get me a flight of angels, stat. 

Hold up, I just re-read that and it sounded like a suicide note. It was supposed to sound like somebody showing off that they read Hamlet. 

If You've Got Your Health

I've been wearing my CPAP mask for a few days now. It seems pretty large, and regardless of its design, it seems to be waking me up more than the putative apnea it's supposed to be curing. When the technician was fitting me,  based on what she was muttering, she seemed to be thinking about that medieval conundrum about dancing angels.
Since I started this post, I've been back to the CPAP store, and exchanged the mask for a smaller one that feels like it's suffocating me, which I guess is a small price to pay for a good night's sleep. This post was delayed while I looked for a photo of me from a few years ago, to show approximately what the mask looked like if Michael Dukakis was wearing a sleep mask in a Russian Boy Scout/Air Force museum. I couldn't find it, which caused me to delete the whole middle part of the post about what a great job we had done picking up the house.

Oh, here's some good news. I know, that really doesn't fit this blog's format, but here it is. Karen has been telling her doctor for years, that she doesn't like the way the "miracle" drug he's been putting in her pump makes her feel. I've been telling him that she seems to have the 

•problems with memory, speech, walking, or thinking;

• feeling like you might pass out;

• extreme drowsiness or tired feeling, depressed mood;

• feeling paranoid, hostile, disoriented, or confused;

• hallucinations, unusual thoughts or behavior, thoughts of hurting yourself; or

• feeling less alert, decreased consciousness (stupor or lack of response)

side effects. Finally, he took it out and we are back to the pre-Prialt levels of hostility and confusion. A vast improvement. First, do no harm, indeed. Now she just has the underlying excruciating pain to deal with, but that's a small price to pay for clarity of mind.

Winter Olympics

The good news is, the rain stopped this afternoon. That's also the bad news. We are in the process of setting a record for the longest winter, as defined by days between the first measurable snow and the last. The graceful snowflakes look so delicate like little gymnasts gyrating down, but sadly, they are sticking the landing.
We've tried all our affirmations like, "Live in the moment," and  Ram Dass's "Be  Here Now," but so far the response seems to be, "This moment kind of sucks, I want to be where Ram Dass is."

Strange Days

Spring, "for want of a more scathing term," continues. Today we had rain, snow, and hailstones the size of tears. Now the forecast calls for record breaking snow this weekend. To be sure, any snow at this point would be record breaking, but they seem to think there will be more than just any.
In Washington, D.C., the cherry blossoms have come and gone, fertilized, no doubt by Fox News's coverage of Benghazi. A friend told me that so many former Republicans (like me, disgusted by its turn from small government to crony capitalism, corporatocracy, obstructionism and loony conspiracy theories) have left the party that soon all that will be left will be angry old white men. If Fox news advertisers (Aricept, AAGReverse Mortgages.) know the demographic of the people they're advertising to, they're apparently angry about, well they probably can't remember what exactly they're angry about,  but with the money from their reverse mortgages and their Medicare purchased scooters, they could present a formidable, if somewhat risible, march on Washington.

We Could Have Had It All

 We just watched a show about former developer/Governor/Secretary of the Interior, Wally Hickel. If we'd listened to him, we could have been Norway. With Parnell, we'll be Nigeria, without the scam income.

Even Though These Are Just Tweets, You Can Still Sign The Petition To Save The USPS

Sign to save the postal service. Even galley slaves don't want the boat to sink.goo.gl/dH7Qy#USPS #NALC # #WhiteHouse
— David Hart (@hartofak) May 10, 2013

Given the outrage and time devoted to Benghazi by Fox and Republicans, you'd think 4,487 Americans had never died in Iraq.#Foxnews #Iraq #
— David Hart (@hartofak) May 8, 2013

Stratfor says: "let Iran get sucked deeper and deeper into the Syrian maelstrom, not the United States"stratfor.com/weekly/america… #Syria #war
— David Hart (@hartofak) May 9, 2013

It's Not You, It's Me

Just a regular day off, took Karen to get her pump filled but the medicine wasn't there. Now I'll have to take time off from work to do the thing I scheduled six weeks ago for this day because it was a day off. Now we're attempting to get her some X-rays. Meanwhile (literally meanwhile, they answered while we were back in the room) I was on hold with one of her providers for 35 minutes because my insurance EOB said that they needed more information from them, but the provider said that the insurance company never told them that, they told them they were denying the claim. Who to believe? I went back to the insurance company web site, but every time I tried to check Karen's EOB's, I got logged out because they insist on me and my wife having separate web accounts, but clicking on the link automatically input my credentials, even though this morning it didn't.
After that I'm redoing my sleep study, which I apparently failed,  to tell me that I'm tired and cranky from sleep apnea, not because everyone around me is irritating.

To "All Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark"

Maybe I have adult onset attention deficit disorder, or maybe my junior high school teacher was right when he said, "You're not as funny as you think you are,"  but lately I can't seem to come up with a whole post, which means I'm ready for my Twitter close-up

Coldest spring ever. Today we had a wintry mix: rain, snow and despair twitter.com/hartofak/statu…
— David Hart (@hartofak) May 4, 2013

Today, I told a customer, "I don't want to look stupid," but then I nailed it.#customerservice
— David Hart (@hartofak) May 4, 2013

Today some people filled out Voice of the Employee attitude surveys at work. I'm holding out for an exit interview.
— David Hart (@hartofak) May 4, 2013

Get It While It's Hot

It's finally almost spring up here and the air is a miasma redolent of melting dog poop. As the snow and its winter's accumulation melts, it forms puddles, lakes, cauldrons of postmordial soup. I was pretty proud of postmordial, and was looking forward to tying it together into a whole post. Here's another line of that stillborn post, "How come they say that politicians only tell voters what they want to hear, and yet I never hear anything I like?"
But as I tweeted this morning,

At the time, it felt like I was awake from 3am-4:30am, but now it feels like I didn’t sleep at all.#insomnia #sleep
— David Hart (@hartofak) May 2, 2013

By the way, if you're not one of my twitter followers, and I'm pretty sure you're not,  that's an example of what you're "missing".