Dr. Phil's Dreamwidth Journal

So, we've finished two weeks of classes for Fall 2015 -- the first full week, since Labor Day got in the way of the first week. And I'm tired. Not unreasonable given that since late December I've been trying to stay off my foot to let it heal. And by the end of the day, I hurt. No, not the foot, which has no working nerves. But the shoulders. It's all the walking with canes and walker, and standing in front of the blackboard.

My last class of the week I had a lot of equations to write. But, I had the two parts of the lecture online -- calculation of the electric field at a point P perpendicular to a line of charge and a review of 2D and 3D integration -- and so I punted and printed them out, then sat next to the document projector. I'm no dummy.

Wednesday

This second week of classes was also the next round of doctor's visits. I haven't reported all of them this summer. Mostly the results have been very positive, with the hole in my foot slowly closing in. Yay. But I've also had a couple of incidents (December, May, July) where I'd spike a low fever for a day or two and the swelling in my left leg would swell up some -- and like gas price hikes, take much longer to go down than build up.

So I see my foot surgeon about every ten weeks or so. She debrides the wound area and trims the toe nails. I don't need any local anesthetic for this scalpel work -- no feeling there. The trimmed area bleeds some, which is considered good. There's a new small pressure wound on the instep, caused probably by the combination of the new AFO (which has never quite been right) and the newer pair of shoes (which are stiffer, tighter and a slightly different design from the other shoes, despite both being New Balance 10½ 6E). The guy who made my first AFO left Spectrum Health and now it turns out the outfit which made the second AFO has been cut loose by Spectrum for problems. Huh.

Also, Spectrum keeps rearranging the deck chairs and so the foot surgeon is now in the third location after two years in the same complex. Like the new location of the Wound Clinic downtown, it's a longer walk/roll than it used to be. Sigh.

Thursday

The next day was the monthly visit to the Wound Clinic. I schedule these after the foot surgeon when they both show up together, so the surgeon does the debridement. The wound area is definitely smaller and in the last month dropped from the little central hole being 1.9 cm deep to 1.2 cm. Yay. Healing.

Neither doctor's office has the same bandaging supplies we have, so, no surprise, the bleeding on Wednesday had leaked out a bit and soaked into the offloading foam pads of the AFO. No problem. One of the staff is expert at "arts and crafts" and replaced the pads. We'll now use a bit of the calcium algenate with silver on the pressure wound as on the main wound.

We finally bit the bullet and Mrs. Dr. Phil went and cut some of the stitching in the newer left shoe's upper, to relieve some of the pressure, essentially extending the tongue. Also I finally have a line on a place which might be able to make shoes wider than 6E to accommodate the AFO. One size fits all my ass...

Friday

With those two doctor appointments out of the way, I stopped by the Campustowne Labs in Allendale to get another set of blood work for Infection Diseases. I had planned on calling them this week to see if we were ready to end the antibiotics I've been on for over a year.

Saturday

But then... around midnight to 1am, I felt very tired and my stomach hurt. Not my stomach, actually, but on the other side. Since 2013, I've sometimes had issues with gas, so I took a couple of Gas-X. That didn't help. Well, maybe it was more heartburn. A couple of Tums didn't help.

The pain was getting stronger, sometimes feeling like it went straight through me to the back. I tried to go to bed around 3, which is usually a little early for me on the weekend, but it wasn't like I was getting any writing done. But I couldn't get comfortable. Lying on my left side, as usual, I had no good way of placing my arms that didn't cross the sore area. 3:38 I got back up and went back out to the living room chair.

Around 4am I began to get concerned. Several times I had gotten heaves, but hadn't actually vomited anything. I checked my temperature -- no fever at 97.1°F. But I also got out the tablet and began to look at WebMD to see symptoms for things like appendicitis. A little while later I got Mrs. Dr. Phil up. Of course the librarian used her search-fu and felt maybe it was more like gallstones or a gallbladder attack. Or maybe pancreatitis.

At this point I figured I was probably going to go to the ER, so I called my doctor's office and got the emergency service. A few minutes later the on-call doctor got back. She was liking pancreatitis better than appendicitis, but agreed I should go in. Now, given my size, history, mobility issues and the nausea, I asked about the difference between our driving the half hour plus to Butterworth from Allendale versus calling the EMTs. She figured it was pretty 50-50, but felt it was good to err on the side of caution and get some data from the EMTs.

So I called 9-1-1 and requested an ambulance. Actually, Allendale Fire showed up first. They were very nice -- one of the tall young guys remembered when they came in May 2013 when I first got sick and had to carry me out of the house. The men from LIFE ambulance were next. The pain, which had peaked in the 8 to 9 out of 10 range (I figure a 10 would be incapacitating/passing out) was down to a 3 to 4. Everyone agreed I needed to go in. At least this time I was able to slowly walk out of the house on my canes, rather than be hauled out on a canvas sheet.

It was odd getting on the gurney out front. With the lights from the garage behind me, the sky above was pitch black until they raised the gurney up and I could finally make out the outlines of the trees. The rains had paused. They loaded me in, took vitals and then we finally left with Mrs. Dr. Phil to follow in a few minutes. The guy riding in the back of the bus was a 31-year veteran EMT. He did a great job of setting an IV line while on the move. Also did a glucose check. Yes, I am not diabetic -- something I took great care to remind everyone after our 2013 hospitalization experiences. But I guess if your pancreas is shutting down then your insulin level goes, too. Glucose was perfectly fine.

I wasn't quite sure which way we went, except when I sat up a bit and saw through the light rain on the back window the McDonald's sign to my left -- we must've been on I-196 and taken the College Avenue exit onto Michigan. I've been in the ambulance ER bay at Butterworth before...

Wheeled into a room -- reminded the two EMTs of my weight, but other than grabbing someone from the nursing station to keep track of my feet, they lifted the sheet and got me on the hospital's gurney no problem. Now I would be in Room 43 for a while. The first nurse who came in said she'd be my nurse for the next half hour. By now it was 6:30am and at 7 the shift changes. One of the things I knew from previous hospital stays was how you have to repeat (a) your particulars and (b) a brief version of systems and history many times. Mrs. Dr. Phil showed up with a number 43 name badge stuck on her shirt.

They wanted to give me two injections. One was for Zofran, an anti-nausea drug. Fine. It works differently than OTC Dramamine, directly on the neural receptors, and I didn't find it to have any side effects I could tell. They also want to give me morphine for the pain. But by now the pain level was way down -- isn't that always how it is when you go in for medical treatment? Also, I have managed to go through all my previous hospitalizations without pain meds beyond Tylenol and didn't feel I needed to go there... yet. So I refused that.

My vitals were relatively normal, if not a little elevated. B.P. 141/37, versus my usual baseline of 120/60. Pulse was 66, versus usual resting of 59-60. I told everyone that I had blood work done from Friday afternoon and they drew blood to do a repeat 15 hours later. The area in question continued to be sensitive to being poked at, but not nearly as painful as a few hours before.

We'd brought a Ziplock with all my currents meds, plus I'd packed a little bag with my Kindles, USB cord and charger. Just in case. If they were going to admit me, I'd need that Kindle to stay sane. (grin) Mrs. Dr. Phil was amused that the hospital/Spectrum WiFi recognized her Kindle Fire HDX. Really don't know what else was going on in the ER. It seemed quiet -- Room 43 opened onto one of the nursing stations -- and I never saw anyone rushing around.

The two blood works -- Friday afternoon and early Saturday morning -- were fairly parallel. I talk about serendipity a lot in my life, and not only was it conveniently Saturday morning rather than a class day, having the Friday blood work as a baseline was just bonus. The white blood cell count was 0.40 and 0.41 respectively in the right units, for example. The liver enzymes were higher, but still in the normal range. If the gallbladder was acting up, it might not be delivering bile to the liver, so that might explain the readings. And at one point I passed 440mL of urine into a hand urinal -- I'm an old pro at this stuff. It was darker than usual, possibly because one of the websites had suggested not drinking water, I guess in case I needed surgery.

Then it was time to go and get an ultrasound of my abdomen. Poking it hard with the probe, especially while holding a deep breath, wasn't easy. But still, the pain level was way down from the 8-9 range. But they couldn't see any gallstones or much in the way of enlargements. The next level would be to do a CAT scan, but given my size that could physically be problematic. With the immediate thought of something like appendicitis ruled out, the best part of valor was to call it a day. I was sent home with a couple of prescriptions, just in case it returns -- whatever "it" is. It's interesting that the oral version of Zofran is a dissolveable, which makes a lot of sense if you're vomiting. (evil-grin) We'll monitor things and repeat the blood work in a week or so and re-evaluate.

Well, you can see from the blog entry title that they technically didn't find anything. If this is an ongoing thing and not a one-off, then we'll probably see more another time. Someone else might be disappointed or mad that they didn't find anything. But we know enough to know that sometimes it's just not possible to figure this out -- or it's too early if this is going to develop into something more definite. Bottom line, I didn't need to be admitted today or rushed to surgery. Which is pretty much a bonus. No one thought we were being overcautious or stupid about doing the whole EMT/ER thing, especially given my history of the past two years. Being on meds for that long, it's always hard to tell what stresses those put on the body, and besides, people get gallbladder and pancreas crap all the time.

I ended up driving the Bravada home. It's easier for me to get in on the driver's side than the passenger side, and having not been given any drugs past the anti-nausea, I felt pretty fine -- by now the clouds were beginning to break up, though there were some spectacular cloudscapes -- and the pain which had gone down to 1-2, was in the 0-1 range. I'd not gotten any real sleep overnight, but had dozed on and off several times. We had breakfast at 11:24 at home -- about an hour later than our usual Saturday morning. Then I went to bed for a two hour nap. This time the bed was cool and soft and comfortable -- no problems.

We were going to go see The Scorch Trials at Celebration North this afternoon, on the way to our monthly Game Night. But I passed on that, of course. Another time.

Oh, and I got a prize. Since I'd been gurneyed into the ER, I had neither canes nor walker, so I had them wheelchair me to the waiting room while Mrs. Dr. Phil went across the street to Lot 7 (she's an old hand at this, I'm afraid). Only one person there, but a few came in as I sat and read my Kindle book. A hospital cop asked a boy traveling with perhaps his grandmother if he wanted a sticker. And another kid. Then she smiled and asked if I wanted a sticker. I asked what kind. Turns out it was a Spectrum Health Security Police Junior Officer. Well, yeah.

I'm Dr. Phil. I carry a badge. *** (Click on photo for larger.)
©2015 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

Not shown: the awesome Hulk Smash bandaid I got from the blood draw.

And so, life goes on. You never know what will happen...

(Damn, I forgot it was Talk Like A Pirate Day in the ER. Guess I was more worried about that nasty pain thing, after all...)

Dr. Phil

*** One thing I'm jealous of with Mrs. Dr. Phil's newer Kindle Fire HDX is that it came with a photo editor. I've looked before at photo editors in the Kindle App Store, but mostly they're either crap or filled with pre-packaged Instagram-type filters. Yuck. But today I went looking again and found a Photo Editor by Macgyver. (grin) It's not perfect, none of the apps had more than a 4 of 5 star aggregate rating -- the big dings here included it no longer working in horizontal screen orientations. I can live with that. Anyway, I took this picture with the Kindle Fire HD, illuminated only by a 300W halogen torch lamp fifteen feet away, then adjusted the Gamma/contrast a little bit and resized the imaged. Then emailed them to myself. I can live with these results.

Posted on Dreamwidth
Crossposted on LiveJournal

In Which Our Hero Falls To His Fate

I hate falling down. Nobody outside of professional stuntmen and some athletes probably do, but being a klutz I'm no good at it. Also, with my size I worry about falling and doing some serious damage to myself. Hasn't helped that balance and good footing with my bad left leg nerve leaves staying upright a tenuous balancing act. (grin)

In truth, though, I don't fall down all that much, thankfully. Before this year, I think it was probably ten years ago that I slipped on some ice on campus and had to pick myself up. Now, you must understand that I sleep on a futon on the floor. And I have exercises twice a day and sit on the floor to change my socks. But there's a ready chair nearby for me to use to help me get up. Standing up in the middle of nothing, that's not easy for me.

Earlier this winter I fell in the middle of the night heading to the bathroom. Hadn't realized that my left foot had gotten wrapped in a blanket, so Down Goes Frazier. Sort of a slow motion fall, on carpet. I almost laughed, except that I didn't want to wake up Mrs. Dr. Phil -- of course she woke up when I went THUD, so there's that. But other than being a little sore, no real damage.

However, Tuesday as I was heading out the front door of Everett Tower to cross the windy gap over to Rood Hall and my 1pm Physics class, I opened the door and went to plant my cane and... underneath the fluffy white snow was very slippery wet ice. Cane slid and in midstep onto the slight slope outside the door my feet slipped and down I went. Funny thing is that I was carrying a wedge seat cushion for the hard metal chair in the lecture hall, and that might've been involved.

Actually my immediate reaction was that I was damned cold. Wet and cold. My hands, which slid on the wet ice under the snow were so damned cold. Of course that same coating of ice meant that there was not sand, salt or the rough surface of concrete exposed to tear up either my clothes or the palms of my hands. So... this is good? And while I could get on my hands and knees, I knew I couldn't even trust the cane to prop myself up with and get up. I assumed that I had to slide back to the windbreak outside the doorway and lever myself up.

But rescue came. Prof. Kamber came out of Everett and one of my students stopped by to help -- after he skidded to a stop and got off his bicycle!!! Really? Riding a bike on sheets of wet ice? Didn't we cover static and kinetic friction and its effects in class?

Once I had my left foot planted, I just hoped that the two gentlemen could hold on and support my unfortunate bulk. They held, and I managed to get up.

As I headed to class, I suggested that Kamber tell the secretary to call for salt. And indeed, coming out fifty minutes later after class, the ice was completely melted. When I left to come home, the sidewalks were wet and sloppy and the parking lot was something of a mess, but that was just on campus. All the roads were wet but clear. I didn't have to struggle with a long commute on a skating rink.

I don't think I really damaged anything. Though in the middle of the day on Wednesday, I realized that I'd forgotten I'd slipped on the ice the day before and that perhaps that's why I had odd aches and pains, so took some Advils.

But I hate falling.

Winter Blows In Again and Again

And of course the insult to injury is that "spring" was coming. When we lived in the U.P., we always seemed to get a major storm right about St. Patrick's Day, just like the last of our giant front yard snow pile up there used to melt on Mother's Day. Here in West Michigan, the St. Patrick's Day storm isn't as consistent. Mrs. Dr. Phil wondered if the weather we had at the end of last week was this year's version. Maybe not.

Meanwhile people to the north of us in the U.P. were getting serious snow -- 16" to 24" by reports -- and there are snow tracks from the Plains states through the Midwest south of us, and on into WV, PA and NY. So I'm not really complaining, as others have repeatedly gotten clobbered worse than us, and even the weather forecasts of areas around here getting clobbered haven't done so much of that, either.

Vernal Equinox

Supposedly it happened on Wednesday morning at 7:02 EDT. You couldn't tell that by either the color of the lawn (white) or the overnight temperatures -- about 14°F this morning, with wind chills about -4°F. Mrs. Dr. Phil was grousing about it being a cruel month of January this March. (grin)

At least I hadn't heard a lot of reports about either flowers coming up or lots of buds or blooms on the fruit trees due to unseasonably warm February and March conditions like last year.

So we'll let the March storms get it all out of their system and wait for a real spring day to show up. Eventually. They always do.

Dr. Phil

Why are you still smoking cigarettes?

That was the Subject line from an email from Wired magazine. I was tempted to snarkily reply, "Because you still have cigarette ads in your magazine." But since (a) I have never smoked and (b) I was sure there was no Sarcastic Reply button on the email, it'd do no good.

But after I trashed the email and thought about snarking about it on Facebook, I decided to go the email trash bin and read the email. Turns out it was for some e-cigarette device. Wonderful.

Gives you the warm fuzzies, doesn't it?

So I decided to blog about it instead.

Back In The Day

I grew up with a father who smoked. Cigarettes, at first, then a pipe. Over the years he tried different things. He was not above smoking "pretty" cigarettes marketed for women, if they were, in fact, lower in various toxic values. And frankly, he was right in the sense that pipe smoking slowed his smoking down -- it takes time to work a pipe properly and keep it clean. Alas, he cheated with cigarettes a lot.

In later years he'd smoke outside. He'd smoke his pipe in his workshop, which was a standalone building we had built shortly after we moved to Greensboro.

I remember the ashtrays around the house as a kid. I remember the smells of smoking. Today, I can barely tolerate any of that, even though we've banished smoking from the workplace, the restaurants, the movie theatres and within so-many-feet of the entrances to buildings.

Fast Forward To 2012

I'm always surprised when I see volumes of smoke coming out of a car window ahead of me at a light -- I always think "fire" not "smoking" at first. And since I usually drive with a window opened at least partway, I am stunned at being able to smell cigarette smoke from one or two car lengths away -- and feel my allergies cut in. The other month, while loading up my rolling cart to bring my things to the office, a tall slender young woman walked past. I'd not really have noticed her, except that (a) I got hit with the wavefront of cigarette smoke and (b) closely followed by a very strong hit with the wavefront of perfume, and I looked up. What struck me was that just for a moment, it was actually a rather pleasant combination. Huh. Then the allergies cut in again and the "magic" was lost.

My mid-50s self would never be able to tolerate the 1960s. Just a thought.

Dr. Phil

I've Been Pretty Scarce Online Lately

This should've been a week full of activities, including finishing posting about the Olympics and other stuff. And writing. Lots of writing. Alas, twas not to be. And -- ack! -- it's all my fault:

I've got a list of way too many things to do next week. But after Monday, the weather looks sunny and warm -- in the upper 30s -- for the rest of the week. So we'll see what I can accomplish. And at the moment, I don't have a cold and my sinuses are in much better shape than the last couple of years.

I always seem to get sick over breaks. I should never have mentioned I was healthy.

February Ends

Last Sunday I got up and soon found that it was uncomfortable to sit up in a straight chair. Some sort of intestinal thing made me very bloated and gassy and feeling constipated. And all that was putting pressure on a nerve or strain on a muscle. Dammit.

See -- let's look at the things I wanted to accomplish during Spring Break: Writing on the computer. Sorting and cleaning papers on the dining room table. Ditto for the kitchen desk, which suffered an avalanche over Christmas. Driving around on errands to a couple of places. Going out during the day for a movie or two. Setting up one of the small portable computers on the kitchen counter with the external CD-ROM drive and doing some software installs. Grading some quizzes I brought home with me. Or driving down to K-zoo this weekend to see some of the U.S. National Curling Championships. (!!)

Guess which ones of those activities involve sitting up straight? Yup. All of them.

A Week of Minimal Results

Three weeks before I had something intestinal for a day. But this was dragging on, so Monday I called and got an appointment with the doctor for Tuesday. Wasn't running a fever. And after a long time, finally got some "movement" going in the old lower GI tract. But whatever tweaked or strained that muscle was doing some lingering. As is typical, best way to feel better is to make a doctor's appointment. He checked all manner of things, but no real culprits stood out. Basic GI upset likely to be some sort of a virus. And I hadn't even gone on a Caribbean cruise! (snort) Still not 100%, but I can sit and type now. Did drive up to Chevy on Thursday and get an oil change on the 1996 Blazer and I spent Friday afternoon wandering off to Holland MI on errands.

So a few things got checked off on my Things To Do list late during Spring Break.

The Good News

But really, this is all rather good news for me. Because think of it. Imagine spending most of a week being hideously uncomfortable trying to drive an hour and a half each way, sitting in the office being stiff and in pain. Or worse, not being able to teach. Much better for my students for this to happen during a scheduled down period anyway. Which is why I am always a big fan of serendipity.

And frankly, the weather has been mostly blue sky and bright sun and temps in the upper 30s and low 40s all week, as the thick ice in the driveway has slowly eroded and melted away. Pretty. Restoring for the spirit, I imagine. (grin)

But I'm annoyed at the lack of writing time. That's lost time which is hard to recover. Dammit. (grin)

Dr. Phil

A Day Of Running Errands

That's what Wednesday was supposed to be. I had quite a number of things planned out. But that was tossed in the rubbish bin when I got an email from Mrs. Dr. Phil before noon that the Grand Valley Family Clinic in downtown G.R. was going to have H1N1 vaccines, both shots and nasal mists, for employees, dependents and family. 3:30 to 6:30pm. Okay, so rather than run around, I could go down and get first in line. Then after lunch, I got a call from Mrs. Dr. Phil wondering if I could just pick her up after work and we'd both go down and see if they had any vaccines left.

We got our regular annual flu shots way back on 18 September, earlier than usual. But as my PHYS-1060 Stars and Galaxies students have succumbed to the evils of the H1N1 virus, I've wondered when or if we'd be able to get vaccinated. On the one hand, we're both over fifty, so there's some evidence that exposure to the bad flues of the '60s and '70s might provide some immunity. On the other hand, with reports of perhaps 20% or more of WMU students getting H1N1, and several of my students even being stowed in the quarantine dorms, I'm clearly working in a cesspool of swine flu infection. (grin)

We got down there and there was nobody in line. They'd had a lot of customers early on, but there was no one waiting as we filled out the forms. I'd been concerned that they'd only have the nasal mist vaccine left, and since I'm still taking some steroids for my sinuses, I didn't know if that was a clever idea. Not to worry, old fogies like us over-fifty types aren't supposed to get the nasal mist -- as I thought I'd heard a while back, it's way less effective for us.

So that was Wednesday and this is Friday night now. And other than a little bit of upper arm soreness, we've not had any problems. It takes some time to be fully effective, but if I can keep from getting sick between now and the start of classes in January, I hope I can make it through the double-flu season of 2009-10 without getting sick from that crud.

Yay, vaccines! Boo, viruses!

Dr. Phil

Huh?

Tuesday I tanked up the 1996 Blazer. Regular gas was $2.59.9/gal. It's been at that price for about a week or more. Today I was driving around town and gas was $2.75.9 and $2.76.9 per gallon for regular. WTF? Once again, gas prices have no relationship to anything going on in the world.

Nothing new here, I guess. Nothing to see, move on, move on. Bend over and pay the man.

Exam 2 Next Week?

WMU began Fall Semester after Labor Day -- and Labor Day in the U.S. came as late as it could be in the calendar. Unfortunately, not only do they want us to post mid-term grades this year, they also wanted us to post first-grades. And the posting cutoff dates to the Registrar's grade system were such that I had to move up my exams by about a week compared to the same class in Fall 2008.

Then there Tuesday's class. Only maybe half the students were there. I commented on this at the end to a couple of students, wondering if the missing were just skipping, hating my lectures... or whether they were sick. The students all agreed that it was probably the flu. H1N1 is racing through parts of the WMU population -- they have two dorms for use as quarantine dorms, or students are allowed to go home. Actually, West Michigan has a lot of schools which are closed for 2-3 days because so many students are sick. The bottom of the screen during the news looks like snow storm season with the latest school closings. (grin) Over the weekend one local school forfeited a football game because of the flu -- over 100 out of 300-some students were out at that school.

So now the game begins. Because we're locked into Exam 2 on Tuesday -- but I suspect we'll have a lot of no shows. Maybe people will be able to do a make-up on Thursday, but not everyone is going to have a complete mid-term grade. Can't be helped. Maybe I'll have to declare a forfeit.

C'est la vie.

Dr. Phil

Fire One!

Yesterday Mrs. Dr. Phil realized that her university was doing free flu shots today (Friday) from about ten to noon. Usually this is complicated for me -- as a spouse I can get them free, too -- because my teaching schedule in Kalamazoo doesn't always mesh. But this was easy, with me at WMU only Tuesday and Thursdays this semester.

So there I was at 9:46am feeding quarters into a meter in front of the Kirchhoff Center, then head inside where (a) I saw Mrs. Dr. Phil right ahead in line and (b) the table filled with clipboards and data sheets and pens. I picked up a clipboard, started filling it out, and by the time I was done -- there was a line of faculty and staff waiting for clipboards. Ha! Got in line next to Mrs. Dr. Phil and a few minutes later we stuck with very thin needles.

This is the Ordinary Flu Shot, same as we've been getting for fifteen years or more. Gotta be about the earliest I've got a flu shot in years. The Piggy Flu Shots? Expected the end of October, but the county health department will be regulating who are the highest risk. I'd think a college professor would be a high at risk person. (grin)

Autumn Arrived

Sure, it's the week before the autumnal equinox, but by Thursday this week Fall seems to have come it. Lows in the 40s and Thursday it barely made 70. Of course it got up to about 83°F in Allendale today, but we're turning some of the corner here. Tuesday the drive home was made more painful by hitting the westward driving segments just when the sun was straight ahead. That and the massively fast repaving of M-45 west of Allendale.

Bouncing Prices

Meanwhile, since Labor Day, gasoline has been playing ping-pong between about $2.42.9 to $2.59.9, with the price shifting up or down by a dime or more for no apparent reason.

Actually, there is almost NEVER a real reason for gas price fluctuations, not ones which make too much economic sense. Or decency.

For Your Amusement

Might as well do something to make this post worth reading. So here's a link to my online friend Jim Wright's Stonekettle Station blog with some hilarious postings about cats. PLEASE, put down the food and drink before you click on this. Jim is a gifted writer and when he gets really going, his manly tour of his many workshop or how his cats are trying to kill him, he is funny. I read the series out loud to Mrs. Dr. Phil and I dare you to read this aloud without breaking up and becoming incoherent.

Seriously.

You're welcome.

Dr. Phil

MAD - The New Acronym Around Here

(sigh) Well, I suppose I am getting better. But this morning I was major league clogged up. Whatever this war is going on in my head, I do so hope that the antibiotics are winning, because I am really tired of all this. Mrs. Dr. Phil is over at GVSU watching a performance of Candide. I was coughing and gasping so much this morning I felt it ridiculous to subject concert goers with such a performance. (grin) This afternoon? My nose has been fairly clear for breathing for a couple of hours now. Of course.

Meanwhile I'm not really getting anything done this weekend. I haven't got much of anything done in the last couple of weeks, except that I haven't quite given up -- hence the Minimum Actually Done concept. Whether too tired, too congested, too blah, I haven't had the motivation to concentrate and read a book or do much in the way of writing. Lots of ideas running through my head, but it doesn't translate too much into action.

Another Trip Home Canceled

Actually, on Friday I realized we'd never even tried to get airline reservations to Greensboro NC for Spring Break. But whether I am still sick, if the first 10 days of antibiotics doesn't quite cut it, or just recovering, I'm not sure I'd even want to chance flying given how congested I've been. Ohmygod! That fat man in 10-C, his head just exploded! And then there's the fact that it's been a month since I've been able to lie down in a bed to sleep all night through. Not sure if there are any suitable chairs for sleeping in at home -- nope, not even gonna try that.

So some of the stuff that I've not been getting done since the Inauguration (more or less) might have a chance of getting caught up with during Spring Break. And though the 'rents will miss seeing us in March, we hadn't actually discussed much about coming since we had to cancel the trip back at Christmas due to weather.

Okay, I've typed the four paragraphs I wanted to type. Now it's time for a nap. Later...

Dr. Phil