TGIF

Well, well, well—it’s been quite the week at my company. As of Thursday evening, I had 25 meetings scheduled. On Tuesday, I had back-to-back meetings from 1000 to 1700. The two slotted for today may yet metastasize into seven. It’s been like that.

I believe it’s time for a bit of this with my pizza bianca tonight:

Not worth a penny

On the twitters-dot-com, where poseurs go to appear profound, you often see banal tweets with hashtags like #Mondaymotivation or #Tuesdaythoughts.

Here’s one from a guy I must have followed for some reason, but either I stopped or I muted him because so much of his banality was also moronic. Viz:

If you’re going to fake profundity, at least spell the one-syllable words right.

Feeling feline

Seen on the Webz:

I’m at 9, if you’re asking.

Markup

I came across this on the twitters-dot-com.

I suspect that what few proofreaders are left in the publishing industry will relate.

Gratitude Monday: mobility

Somewhere along the line of life, I trashed my knees, and now it’s payback time. It’s not a specific injury or anything like that. My cardio exercise of choice in my younger days was running; I’ve been reduced for the past few years to walking, but evidently arthritis doesn’t care.

Back in 2011, I had arthroscopy on both of them. That helped for a while. Then, in 2014 I had injections of cortisone, which I’m not wild about, but hyaluronate—that stuff was da bomb. That relief lasted right up until a couple of months ago, with the exceptions of long days walking the concrete floors at Grace Hopper conferences or the streets of Prague, Berlin, Paris, Belfast and Dublin.

My PCP gave me diclofenac gel, which helped—in Dublin I had to resort to oxycodone (left over from one surgery or another) only once for the pain. But it’s been getting worse since then. I need to lose weight, and I can’t exercise if my knees won’t cooperate. Ugh.

So my PCP gave me a referral to an orthopedist, who turns out to be in the same practice as the one who performed arthroscopy on my shoulder about 15 years ago. (Turns out I have a lot of joint issues.) Although he’s not a charmer, I trust this guy’s approach, and fortunately I got an appointment with him last Thursday. They took X-rays, and no surprises—arthritis.

Well, Dr. Non-charmer asked the usual questions about what’s helped in the past, and when he asked if I’d had “injections”, I went straight to the heart of the matter. “Well, I’ve had hyaluronate…” Did it help? “It was amazing.”

I was a little concerned, because some orthopods rather pooh-pooh it. But he thought it perfectly reasonable to try what’s worked in the past. Also, diclofenac tablets and physical therapy, which is literally a pain, but it’s gotta be done. I do not fancy knee replacements.

He has to order it (and it has to be pre-approved by the insurance company, because of course they have to be certain that I’m not hankering after having a hypodermic the size of an apple corer repeatedly stuck between my tibia and my femur for frivolous reasons), so could be up to six weeks. But I’m happy to report that the tablets appear to be making a difference in the meantime.

And so, today I’m grateful for the prospect of pain relief and mobility.

Gotta go

While waiting for the Trader Joe’s to open a while ago, I walked around a new neighborhood, and apparently poop is a thing there.

Within a couple of hundred meters, I saw both these signs:

But evidently the dogs don’t read:

As an aside, I cannot count the times I’ve seen little plastic poop bags, neatly knotted at the opening, left along sidewalks. Like people feel they’ve discharged all their responsibilities by picking up their dogs’ detritus, so they’re not obliged to carry the bags with them to the nearest trash bin.

Well, I suppose it would interfere with their texting.

An apostrophe too far

Whenever I come across some mailbox with something like “The Johnson’s” on it, I want to park my car, walk up to the front door and ask the occupant “The Johnson’s what?” Because the plural of the preponderance of English nouns is formed by adding an S; it never involves an apostrophe.

But I don’t, because I don’t carry a whiteboard around with me. Also, I don’t fancy getting into a fight over it.

And I know it’s pretty much a losing fight—the barbarians are winning this one, and it’s getting worse.

Viz. this sign found at a grocery store in California:

I hope it’s someone taking the piss, but I fear it is not.

Frozen

Here’s how cold it’s been in the environs of the District They Call Columbia: I noticed this frozen puddle of water on Monday’s walk:

I thought the pattern was kind of pretty.

What I do not think is pretty is this:

I’ve seen this person/sleeping bag along the W&OD for a while, and it’s appalling and outrageous that in the jumped-up People’s Republic, there folks sleeping rough even in these miserable temperatures.

Roadside fare

Some time ago, on my usual egress to the W&OD bike trail, I came across something interesting.

It was a couple of months after Halloween, and the pumpkin hadn’t been carved. I wondered if perhaps it had been put out there for squirrels, woodchucks and other critters, but if so, they hadn’t been particularly interested. Viz. the half-hearted nibbling.

Well, a few weeks on—and a couple of snowfalls, freezes and rain—and here it was yesterday:

[]

Still not clear to me whether anyone’s actually eaten it, but I’m guessing it has far fewer seeds than it should have, so maybe…

Gratitude Monday: a dream

Today’s the day we in the United States commemorate the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr., a black man who had a dream of equal opportunity, and who was murdered because there are people (many, as it turns out) who viewed—and still do—that dream as an abomination.

Having a racist, ignorant, corrupt, misogynistic kleptocrat in the White House has encouraged and emboldened white supremacists to emulate his vile willie-waving in ways I have not seen for decades. Maybe that’s an upside to this dystopian nightmare—that the façade of progress we’d seen in the courts and legislature of the country has been revealed to be just that: a veneer covering the same old nasty, rotted wood of fear and hate that’s festered ever since the Confederacy went down in fire and dust.

Maybe this is something to be grateful for: that we can see the termites scuttling about in rages and stained tee-shirts, and that we can take action before they eat away at the foundations of democracy. We once had giants of strength and compassion, like King; men and women with moral compasses and courage to do the right thing. We can hope there are more to carry us forward, while still there’s an earth left.