Here’s one Black Friday sale item I would not mind having:
I mean, anything for Aremid.
The only problem…I can find no evidence that this product exists outside of Petsmart’s Black Friday sale. Whiskey City seems to have produced this particular cat tree exclusively for Petsmart to sell on Black Friday. So, “Save 50%, Regular $129.99″? I call shenanigans. This has never sold for $129.99. This will never sell for $129.99.
Here’s something else I can use, a new carry-on suitcase. I’d like a Samsonite because the crappy luggage I buy never lasts more than 2-3 years.
But this “Glyde” item? It apparently only exists at Kohl’s. So there is no evidence that this Black Friday price is any less than you would pay anywhere else. Shenanigans.
Not that I planned on going to any Black Friday sales. If I really needed a new TV or tablet, I can see how there are decent deals out there. Acutally, no, I don’t see, because I have no idea how much they’re supposed to be going for. If anyone had a Black Friday deal on a Chromebook, I might be interested. I see no such evidence of one of those, those lots of people staked out domains that include the terms “blackfriday” and “chromebook”. The internet is full of shenanigans.
I used that phrase a couple of days ago. As it turns out, if there was a literal blood clot card, it might look something like this. This is actually from a prescription for a compression garment used to treat thrombosis. They do make them for men, though you can’t tell here.
A couple of months ago, I went through the challenging ordeal of perusing papers from years ago, mostly of the academic variety. I don’t think I delved into quite how demoralizing this was. I wouldn’t have. I do still censor what I’ll put in here, whether or not that seems apparent.
Now, I’ve just gone through the contents of a filing cabinet. Mostly healthcare records from the past decade. Don’t need those. Amazing the sheer volume of medical history I have, but I don’t need those. There are pay stubs from old jobs. Don’t need those. Offer letters from old jobs. Plenty of junk that doesn’t affect me a whole lot.
Then there are the random journal entries, from 1998, 2004, 2006…from when, I suppose, my means of electronic recording weren’t available.
Never read old journal entries unless…well, I can’t think of a good reason to ever do this…
Papers and notes from old jobs. Doesn’t sound so interesting until I uncover
1) Notes from a job where I really felt I was making a difference day in and day out (too bad I had to be in Knoxville, TN to find that; I couldn’t stand to be in Knoxville, TN day in and day out)
2) Documentation of test cases for and usage instructions for an application I developed within the first three months of having been introduced to the wretched application development platform that begins with R, whose name I won’t utter, and (to be fair to it, pays most of the bills, and could be a fair tool if anyone ever bothered to fund and manage it properly). I probably learned more and achieved more in that three months than I have in the subsequent…many years, the sum of which I won’t utter.
These finds are all the more shattering when paired with the quote-of-the-day from a figure at work, who advised me to “Tone down your aspirations.” That’s all I’ll say about that, since I can’t trust the internet to not link my name to this blog. There was some context to these remarks, but I’ll still note it as possibly the worst and most demotivating advice I’ve ever received.
I have been rating songs for three months now. My spreadsheet is huge. (Yeah, that does warrant mocking. My spreadsheet is HUGE!) I’ve cheated and calculated the in-progress ratings a bunch of times. (No, there’s no purity to my methodology.) I’ve been obsessing over which songs are going to be in the Top 10, which I won’t even reveal for another 13 months. I’ve been obsessing over which songs will make the cut in the Top 370s. I’ve been obsessing over all of the music I like.
Maybe I haven’t mentioned that I’m happy with the music I like. I’m in full-embrace mode. I love this music. It doesn’t mesh with what anyone likes (for the most part). People have their favorite bands and maybe some nostalgia for 80s ballads, but I have a ridiculous affinity for these songs, and even more so for the schlockiest of easy listening ballads. I embrace schlock. I embrace cheese.
If I knew anyone who’d go to karaoke with me, I’d gladly go and butcher all of these songs (after a drink or two). (Volunteers? Seriously. I’ve karaoked about four times in my life, and I’ve always wondered why I don’t do it more.)
Stream-of-consciousness interruption…how I also wish I’d just say to hell with it far more often and just write…just embracing typing whatever is on my mind, and being self-absorbed enough to imagine that the world actually cares what’s on my mind…
I’m going to execute on this Top 379 idea, and I’m going to do the site, even if I only have one person other than myself actually following it.
Oh, and Top379.com is live! Nothing to see. The logo is a placeholder doodle for now. The real logo will likely be a slightly more coherent doodle.
And, of course, a Top 379 preview, which I think would be awesome with interpretive maracas during the bridge at the 3:20 mark.
I should follow up after my last post. It felt like a waste of an afternoon to stop by urgent care and then Duke Radiology to find out that I’ve got superficial thrombophlebitis, or a blood clot in a vein close to the surface of the skin. I know, I needed to have deep vein thrombosis ruled out, because that’s not a diagnosis you want. But it’s one of those how-the-hell-did-I-get-this things. I wasn’t seated on a plane for more than two hours straight last weekend. Maybe it was the sky-cycling. I don’t know. Anyway, so I’ve got a blood clot; not the bad kind. THE END. Sky-cycling pictures coming soon.
I shouldn’t have called the CIGNA 24-hour nurse hotline for advice. Of course they would tell me to go to the ER. I should’ve just gone to bed as I had planned. But the swollen leg veins just didn’t seem right. The paranoid internet bulletin-board-posters assume they will have an imminent blood clot. The nurse was more concerned that, with my immunosuppressants, I might have an infection.
I have never had anything but a terrible experience at the Duke ER. But better safe than sorry! Well, I got triaged fairly quickly, but I just got asked some questions. They didn’t even look at my leg to assess the severity of what I was reporting. Two hours later, and one hour after I was told it should be soon, I hadn’t been called back, and I decided that if triage hadn’t been alarmed by what I was reporting enough to get me back there, I could go to sleep at home and be confident I’d wake up in the morning. So I left. From experience, I could’ve easily been looking at 2+ hours in an exam room. 4-6 hours if they had to run a test and wait for a specialist to look at the results. Not worth it.
If I succumb to a blood clot overnight, my stupidity will be the reason. And I should’ve gone to urgent care before they closed at 8. Otherwise, I’ll post more Tulum pictures tomorrow.
On my first morning in Tulum, I had a terrific breakfast at my hotel’s restaurant. I tried to remember the name of the dish. I spoke something into my cell phone, but it’s mostly unintelligible. What I think I discern is machaca, so this is some sort of machaca-with-eggs-and-other-stuff dish. It was delicious.
Well, the first night. I hadn’t made my plans to attend the wedding until it was too late to book a room at the main hotel, where 90% of the guests were staying. I am happy with my choice, a tiny adjacent property on the beach. Well, I chose the cheaper room option that wasn’t quite on the beach; maybe it was 40 feet from the beach. Anyway, I decided to venture out on my own that night, which was not the safe proposition since I don’t typically feel comfortable venturing out on my own. By venturing out, I mean I merely chose to stay at my hotel and go to a wine-tasting that my hotel restaurant was having.
This was my first wine-tasting. I think we sampled five or six wines. Honestly, I don’t really care to know about the grapes or the soil. But I can pretend to be interested. The key take-away (oh, man, corporate meeting lingo…take-away? really, Dave?) was that Mexico has some good wine, but doesn’t export much of it to the States. I asked our wine expert why that’s the case, and I got some hazy answer dealing with trade rules. But my mind was a bit hazy by then, so maybe I just didn’t follow. What did we have? Some other kind of blanc besides sauvignon. Chenin blanc? A fumé blanc? I think there was one of each. La Cetto? That’s the winery that made these two. Then there were two or three others wines. It doesn’t matter. All I recall is that every wine I had was obviously better than the $10 bottles of whatever I am used to drinking. And what I remember most, mostly because I took a photo to remember it by, was the last wine, which was the best wine.
Monte Xanic Cabernet Sauvignon – Merlot 2008. Only 390 pesos according to this website. I paid considerably more to buy a bottle for the table of wedding guest folk I had dinner with after the wine-tasting. (Wine-tastings apparently increase my joviality and generosity.) No need to comment about these wines if you know anything about them. I won’t understand. But I’m buying this wine if I ever see it. There’s another wine from Tulum Night 3 that was also outstanding. That wine, I think I saw at Whole Foods. It’s an Argentine Malbec.
Ah, here’s the foursome who joined me at the wine-tasting. It’s “Claire” and “Nick” from London, and “Jan” and “Trevor” from Brisbane. I’ll use pseudonyms to protect their identities. Screw it. I’ll use their real names. That’s Claire and Nick and Jan and Trevor. (I didn’t say they were good pseudonyms.) And that’s me after some wine. Yeah, I shouldn’t post such pics on the internet. I don’y care. Wine and moon-face. Great. Motivation to look better at my next wine-tasting. Anyway, I spent most of the time talking to Claire, who despite a life of privilege and globetrotting, enjoyed coaching me on all the adventures I ought to go on. It helped that I mentioned having gotten a new kidney. There’s my one and only conversation-starter. So, according to Claire, I MUST go to Rome…and as long as I’m in Europe, I must go to London and Paris and Barcelona. And I must go to Buenos Aire. And Australia. And I hate to admit it, but when Claire and Nick asked if there was anything worthwhile to see in North Carolina, I felt compelled to say, “No, not really”. I mean, c’mon. I know, I’m terrible.
Actually, what’s terrible is that I pretty much have no pictures of any of my friends, the people I actually know. I’ve got one group shot, and it’s with THESE people. I could post some pics that others took that are up on The Facebook, but then I’d be engaging in bad web etiquette. If you know me on Facebook, I’m tagged. And it’s horrifying, because the pics confirm what I’ve known for a long time, that I have no neck.
It’s been awhile since I’ve been verbose, hasn’t it? Not just verbose, but writing without a net.
Oh, and what’s this? The wine guy starting talking about tequila, and he brought out “the best” tequila, or at least one of the best. It can’t be that luxurious, because I got some at the duty-free shop at the Cancun Airport. Anyway, we got a free sample of the Clase Azul. Buy the tequila, and you get the fancy bottle!
And what Tulum night would be complete without a coconut tree bathed in moonlight?
I have been rating songs for three months now. My spreadsheet is huge. (Yeah, that does warrant mocking. My spreadsheet is HUGE!) I’ve cheated and calculated the in-progress ratings a bunch of times. (No, there’s no purity to my methodology.) I’ve been obsessing over which songs are going to be in the Top 10, which I won’t even reveal for another 13 months. I’ve been obsessing over which songs will make the cut in the Top 370s. I’ve been obsessing over all of the music I like.
