Maine nurse refuses to be quarantined, it's a violation of her civil rights.  She *might* be incubating a deadly disease.   On this basis it's largely acceptable to a lot of people to curtail her civil rights.

I haven't heard the NRA make a statement on this and one did not turn up when I did a quick search.

Just pondering.

My neighbor is in her early 70s and is probably the most stubborn person I know.  Help?  Doesn't need any.  Except under extreme circumstances like in the months leading up to the hip replacement.

Our circle of friends is of course full of kind, well meaning, highly intelligent, stubborn nutcases.  There's the lady with COPD who Will Not Stop Smoking and has been waiting for the man to come and fix her refrigerator for over two years.  She's the most mainstream of the bunch, I think.

Between us all, as much as we're allowed to do is take care of the bird room - it's down some stairs, and pick up things from the store - no driving!  Neighbor always has a REASON why she has to do this or that, including why SHE has to cook dinner for COPD Lady the day after her operation instead of letting COPD Lady do it.

Then there are the dogs.  Old Dog has Cushing's and just wants to lie around.  Border Collie Mix dog is 3.  OMG.

The Moluccan is his own special hell in a handbasket.  Albeit extremely cute and very polite.  "Come Innnn!"  "Buh-byeeee, buh-byeee."  Except to the dogs when it's go out time, "GOOOOGOGOGOGOGGOOOGOGOGOGO!!!!"

It's like Wild Kingdom right there in the living room, not counting the five birds in the aviary, the pair of conures and the canary in the office.  It's a wonder this woman hasn't completely lost her mind.

Or maybe she has.

I spent a good part of the day doing some shopping, helping out at the house and bringing her favorite dinner from the Salvadorean place.  Mostly I listened to her trying to resolve whether or not she had a "real problem" with the blood pressure and low grade fever - the one likely dehydration and the other a side effect of the blood thinner.  I played with the dogs until BCM doggeh was too tired to go all the way to the flung monkey and bring it back.

Tomorrow it will be Dunkin' coffee and a "coffee roll" which is all it takes to make her day, most times.  We'll see...  I hope she's all better soon because I bug out on Weds PM for 6 days.

OK, I will be good. 

My old boss invited me to his birthday at the Brewery.  It did not occur to me until this morning on the way to work that there was a good chance The Sphincter might be there.  It's a long  story.  But I hadn't seen Old Boss since Feb of 2013 when I left NASA with a boatload of angst, embarked upon 7 months of retirement followed by re-employment at a place that is, essentially, European. 

I went to the event anyway.  At a brewery.  I was kind of hoping there was an attached restaurant so I could get a burger. Um. Nope. 

So, I threw all caution to the wind and ate pizza, which I should not, and drank beer, which I also should not.  Since these things used to cause me intense discomfort, sinus pain and arthritis like pain for about 36 hours.  Well, on the theory that this is all a result of leaky gut syndrome and the fact that I missed lunch today made me stu...er adventurous.

My sinuses are a little unhappy.  So far, not so bad.  Haven't eaten "regular" pizza since before 2000.  It wasn't that great, but hell.   If my gut has healed up sometime in the last 14 years maybe there's hope!  Not 100% sure it's  "gluten" issue - since the "gluten free" beer in Bavaria still killed me.

Tomorrow will tell.  Or maybe tonight, is this the incipient headache or is it just me being hypochondriac?  Will not even consider checking the blood sugar, there's naught to be done about it.

I said not a word to the Old Boss about the beer/pizza and only a few about how awesome the new workplace is.  He was happy when I mentioned I still use one of his metrics (it's OK to wait on the customer, it's NOT OK for the customer to wait on YOU), and that I selected the "pig" stein out of the pile of give-away steins, of which I did not take a photo.  And we have a deal to take the motorbikes to Richmond.  Soon.

So if I can avoid serious joint pain and sinus explosions in the near future, life will have gotten both easier and harder.  Easier to worry about finding a meal away from home and harder to avoid the temptation of the evil carbohydrate.

I'm really pretty glad nobody has been foolish enough to tag me for the Ice Bucket Challenge.  Aside from my general automatic resistance to coercive memes, what does the IBC offer anyone but a chance to be seen  - not being seen writing out a big check to a charity because that would be boring - but to seem to support a charity (by sending them a lot less money than you *could*) and maybe look a little bad-ass by inflicting icy discomfort upon yourself.

My charitable giving habits are not lavish, but they are also not driven by peer pressure and surely won't be mentioned on social media.  What causes I might support are my business and I regret that someone just might get offended when a challenge like this is brushed off.

I think that it's nice for the ALS charity to have a whole lotta cash come in that they would not have gotten, but what other charities are now not getting money they would have gotten and how many others are going to try and replicate ICB and generate windfall donations?

Maybe the net effect will be good, in the "awareness raising" kind of good and maybe in 4 months nobody will even remember it and countless attempted follow ons will have already faded from conscious memory.

Oh and YOU DAMN KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN!

Required:  One laptop bag strap or other flex-mesh, wide strap.  Also:  Extreme caution.

Seeking a longer term stretching than 3X30 seconds, but perhaps at a lower intensity.  Configure the strap like an old book strap - place the loop under your heel and knee, set the strap in the back of the knee and the other end around the ball of the foot. 

Tighten the loop until the strap stays in place - maybe this won't work for skinny people - and tighten until the ankle flexes and the ball of the foot is pulled back toward the knee.  Excess strap end can be used to crank this down a bit for more stretch but should not be done for long.   I have the excess end coming off mid-calf height, i pass it around the other side of the strap and under so friction will hold it.

Will be test driving the low intensity stretch with attention to any abrasion or circulation problems being prevented.

As performed by my feet.

This song is inaudible to the universe at large, it plays only in my head in the illusory body I experience there.

The song is the song of Plantar Fasciitis.

It's a terrible song, I don't recommend it.

Depends heavily on what day it is and how I feel.   Many of my favorite "songs" are actually instrumental music.  One day it will be the Allegretto Scherzando from the 8th symphony by Beethoven.  The next day I'll be rockin' out to something from 1973 played by a long haired hippie freak.  Sometimes it's the Promenade from the JAWS soundtrack.

Things are, largely good.  Professionally I am finally in a place where "The Colleagues" don't dis me from the start, continuously and condescendingly.  They don't expect me to do all the work they don't want to do.  They don't expect me to clean up after them, in any sense of the word and they listen and consider what I've said if I'm impelled to speak up.  I am contributing in ways I can see are helpful and ways that nobody else does.

It may be Ironic that this respected and included situation is actually taking advantage of something women are more socialized to enact - I am cleaning up some stuff, making some computer housekeeping  happen.  The fact that I'm still new to the team means I haven't got a lot of entrenched projects or responsibilities, and that helps me look up from the ticket queue and notice things that ought not be - like a situation with customer expectations crashing into what one of the colleagues (the lower case, external contract colleagues) did and communicated.  (A variant of the "we're not gonna do that for you" "oh, ok I'll do it myself and break all your crap," scenario.) I can see structural problems everyone else accepts, because I'm "not from there."

At my old job this kind of thing earned me nothing good.  I had some very good ideas there that were never acted on, until someone else "magically" came up with this really great thing we could do that we'd somehow "never thought of."

This is a huge deal for me, professionally, from a confidence perspective and emotionally.  I am not drained and depressed after work every day.  Sometimes I can't wait to get up and go back because I Got Stuff To Do.  I never dread interacting with The Colleagues.  I think I have heard one possibly insensitive comment since I started - a complaint that the aspect ratio of our "signature graphic" for presentations is wrong, and makes the lady in it look short and frumpy.  You know, like me.  I gave a little jab back about us short women not winning and we all had a laugh.

It's pretty great.

Because it's late and it's time to practice Snorin' Ryu...