Friday, August 15, 2025

A Litle Exploration

Well, the Crex photo contest is over for the year, and some very excellent photos won. I was inspired to try for some new ways of getting better shots for the next time around. Since entries are limited both by location and category, I definitely need to get out more, not a hardship in the sense that it's my favorite place to hang out with my camera anyway.

One restriction was that they need to be taken within specific boundaries. I discovered I hadn't quite realized where those were, and how far reaching they went. I picked up some maps of the locations to expand my horizons and opportunities available for scenery and wildlife. I've been missing a whole lot of territory, basically because I've been hunting for  locations holding my favorite birds, the greater sandhill cranes. There's a lot more out there.

A new category opened up this year as well: night skies. I hadn't realized one could get galaxy shots and their reflections in a lake. I also had no idea how many different people got aurora shots as well, something that the latest smart phones capture very well. In fact much better than the human eye can perceive. All but one of the entries in that category were auroras. (How does one choose between those? I mean, really!) I'm still not tempted to get a smart phone, but the lack of variety of submissions got me thinking in new directions.

I have been experimenting with thunderstorms at night from the house, mostly video so far. It's been a very stormy summer. Just the attempt has made the benefits of digital photography apparent, since no film is wasted and all the mistakes are free. I have a particular idea in mind, requiring  a fairly wide expanse of open lake and just the right storm location relative to that. Yep, I want lightning reflections. I found the lake for it to set up a tripod from, where the only access faces east across the water,  so I can set up after it passes but is still active. Or at least that's the plan. Another lake I didn't know existed until this week has a great vantage point looking north.

Why am I thinking I need new lakes? I want a lot of open water. Even the largest lake I was familiar with is covered in blooming waterlilies, rice, and cattails. Reflections of the sky are a pipe dream. One can only get large areas of clear surface water in the early spring after ice out, and that's just too early for thunderstorms. Great for those galaxies and auroras though, when conditions are right. I just don't have the right cameras.

                  Reflections of the sky? In this? Sure! Uh huh. Riiiiight!
 

One disadvantage of the stormy season this year - if I'm not making all the wrong assumptions - is a dearth of young birds. Adults are scarce enough, though they are around, and usually way far away from what a modest camera can capture. I have yet to see a single trumpeter cygnet this summer. As for baby cranes, aka colts, the grasses are tall enough to hide all but parental heads when they rise to watch for danger, at least in the refuge. Around the local roads where we live, they have been sighted from the car when foliage is low, such as early cornfields or soybean fields, and even a construction site or two before the machines get noisy. At least this year I haven't seen any as highway roadkill. Come to think of it, I haven't seen possums splayed along the margins either, just coons, a single skunk, and the seemingly requisite number of deer.

My scouting trip yielded a few shots, as it was a rare blue sky day - no Canadian fire smoke - and a few puffy white clouds did double duty both above and below, with just enough landscape details to make the shots both identifiable and interesting. A lot of other shots were just the kind I take to remind me by, say, a sign, exactly where I was at the time of the shot. Which turns do I take to get back there? One also had the sign clearly rising from a nice swath of poison ivy, just in case I might be tempted in the dark to get closer.


These are both shot from the same spot, one nearly straight east, the other more to the north. Pleasant enough for now, so long as I avoid the poison ivy, but with interesting possibilities in the right weather. By the way, tonight has been forecast as a possibility for storms. These also have the advantage of being next to paved roads and a fairly quick, straight shot from here to the highway. Most of the refuge roads are gravel and dust coats the rear of my car before I leave. One rear wiper blade and a squirter gives me some visibility, but I'm glad the hose easily reaches the back where it gets parked, saving me a car wash each visit.

 Because they look east, I also have started to make note of full moons. I have hopes for a nice bright orange one rising from where the top picture is aimed. I know my camera has no problem getting a rising full moon and its reflection as it clears the far shore. I've done it in another location a few years back. This is the only place that shot would work inside refuge boundaries. The road to this spot is problematic enough I wouldn't consider it in winter conditions, but a harvest moon approaches.

On the way back, at full highway speeds, I was blessed with two interesting sightings, much closer than I've seen either since both were just a few feet from the pavement and unfazed by speeding traffic. First was a fawn, still fully spotted and huge ears for its head, looking as if it was planning to cross, with no understanding of how the process of transforming into roadkill was accomplished. I slowed a little despite almost no warning of its presence, and spoke a warning to it as if it could hear through my closed windows and understand. Just before I came even with it the fawn got sensible and darted back into the woods it had presumably emerged from.

I do hope Mamma was on that side of the road so it wouldn't try crossing again.

Just as I was getting over such a close deer sighting, up ahead at the very rim of the pavement was an adult sandhill crane, very dark from a recent dirt application, head down to the ground, leaving me with a first impression that somebody left a dark silhouette sign at the edge of the road. Then it moved, tugging at something I couldn't see which appeared to be caught under the pavement edge. My car didn't alarm it a bit. Was it a snake perhaps? I had read that they ate small reptiles and amphibians when available. What else could be stuck there to interest a crane?

It was still tugging as I passed, and safe in the glimpse from my rearview mirror.

Just as safe as my camera was, zipped into its hardbody case while I rolled by. Sigh....



Thursday, August 14, 2025

The Epstein Memorial Ballroom

By now you've likely heard about tRump's "improvement" to the White House Rose garden. You know, the part where he buried it and most of the accompanying lawn under plain concrete and threw some picnic tables over part of it. No flowers. No trees. No grass. No shade. Just, well, tacky.

Perhaps you've also heard about his "improvements" to the interior of the White House, covering everything he can with gilt.You know, because nothing personifies his values like a thinnest film of gold over whatever he can hide under it. Again, tacky tacky tacky.

Does it even bear mentioning that he hid the portraits of our recent Presidents up a staircase and along a hall where only very special people with very exclusive clearance are even allowed to set foot, never mind set eyes on them for who knows how long into the distant future? It can't be claimed to be political, exactly, since both Republican and Democratic Presidential portraits have been thus relocated, as if anyone who still lingers in living visitors' memories for comparison to him must be as erased as much as possible, with only his own likeness worthy of being prominently displayed. Let's face it though: we have not had any President of his caliber in the White House in living memory. Twice impeached, narcissistic, unintelligent (thinks Alaska is part of Russia), vengeful, convicted of 34 felonies, he is truly in a class of his own! Or at least we hope so.

Now he's busy planning a huge - I mean really YUGE - ballroom as an addition to the White House. Such an addition, in fact, that it will dwarf the White House into obscurity. Go ahead, look at the renderings of what he has planned, see what I mean. We hear no justification for why we need such a thing added. Comments have been made that this is meant as a distraction from the Epstein scandal, something to distract the country from the likelihood of tRump having availed himself of the party favors in the form of access to underage girls, from his years long buddy Jeffrey Epstein at his frequent parties. I don't need to describe the sordid details further, right? We've all heard them, whether we choose to believe the worst or not. The point here is the likelihood of his using one tacky disgrace to distract from a deeper disgrace.

I'd like to pass along a suggestion I heard earlier. Let's start referring to that proposed YUGE disgrace of building a proposed gilded ballroom as a distraction from a much worse disgrace as "The Epstein Memorial Ballroom!" Let us never forget!

Wednesday, August 13, 2025

What A Difference Half A Day Makes

Yesterday afternoon was PT again. I've been working on putting some of the stretches into ordinary activities. For example, just to get my deodorant on, I've had to force my arms up along the door frames in the bathroom for years already, pulling them by climbing with my fingers, then stepping back a bit to make enough room for that little roll-on bottle. It makes it possible to do (so long as I keep gripping the door frame) which I'm pretty sure those around me appreciate. Now I even have to do the same thing without the bottle, once the hand is at a new level for as high as I can get it, not just step back but twist away towards the other door frame. I think the eventual goal is being able to reach the back of my head... comfortably? There are two of those for each arm, one high, one low. I can give it a go each time I head out of my bathroom - you know, the point in my life when I'm no longer in a hurry  -  and get that particular set of stretches in there several times a day.

So would you think it would be getting easier? The stretch a little longer? Less painful? How about if I told you I spent much of three days last week being pretty sure the right shoulder was self-dislocating again? Somehow that surprised my therapist yesterday when we were doing a bunch of stretches while I was lying down on her table. 

It was an interesting session in itself, partly because of the horizontal position, partly because there was a lot of stretching and pulling to warm my shoulders up so we could get the extension I got at my last visit. But I managed a lot of conversation to distract us both from what was going on. She keeps telling me these are not supposed to hurt, and I should stop her when we get to that point. I kinda figured if I stop when it hurts I'd never get past the situation I'm currently in. Pain avoidance is how I got here! I'd started it by telling her how one of the homework stretches was getting put to use during last week week when there was a bunch of planting as my mail order iris and daylilies arrived. There was also a lot of pulling out of dead leaves around the bottoms of the current daylilies, done from the sitting in a chair position and reaching way forward, which turns it into a more upward stretch relative to my back, which I need.  Those dead leaves pull out easily, but finding them all is a challenge. It's a long reach towards the center of the circular garden. Removing them allows visibility to find the newest sprouting of weeds as they show up against the newly bare dirt.

I plan to give her a pod or two of seeds in the fall, whether we're still working together or not. She was interested in my tall balloon flower plants. I can just drop them at the front desk with her name on the envelope. It should also include some names of varieties of other plants we discussed so she can look them up to see if she wants to locate her own. Ahh, the joys of finding a fellow gardener.

As a distraction, the topic worked really well during PT, and she managed to get me past the point where I'd start to try to pull back against her stretches, past the point where it hurt until I had to make it stop... but I wanted to finish my sentence first. Of course sometimes the "OW" just burst out.

There were times I needed her to move the arm being worked on back into normal resting position instead of me doing it. There was more pulling and tugging during the process and we made the joints stretch a few degrees past the last session, something they had to be worked on to achieve as they had tightened up again since then. But we made real progress by the end of the session. 

Now I would have figured I'd be aching all over the place last night, even just sitting in my chair watching TV. Lying down to sleep should have been excruciating... but it wasn't. My shoulders were pleasantly numb last night. I was greatly encouraged.

Of course by 3AM it was a whole different story. I'd wake myself up from the tiniest motions, like pulling the covers up a bit as the house grew cooler, or pushing them back down as I got just a bit too warm after a short while. Apparently I do this in my sleep, only now it was waking me up.

Rudely! It's even messing up my dreams!

Rather than being able to go back to sleep in my bed, I needed a more vertical position. This means relocating to my recliner, which is where I'm writing from. Each morning I need to take my thyroid pill an hour ahead of taking anything else - no breakfast, coffee, or pain pills, and not just because the latter need food to be consumed with them. Last week I learned for the first time since 1985 that my cast iron stomach allowing for up to maximum recommended ibuprofin intake was not a guaranteed thing. I'd taken some at bedtime but without food, trying to keep my blood sugar levels down in the morning. Minding the diet is easier than minding yet another medication. What I got in exchange for that slip was a very sour stomach. So no more skipping being mindful of enough food intake with the pills, as well as lower pill intake to keep it easier to juggle both needs at the same time.  The cost of that turns out to be less pain control. Ma-a-y-y-ybe a little less stretching homework.

PT shares the same roof as my primary doc. On my way out yesterday I stopped at her scheduling desk and made an appointment with my primary to discuss getting the same non-narcotic pill Steve is currently taking which is doing wonders for his pain control, which in turn does wonders for his mobility. Some days he even ignores his walker! Of course that means he tends to overdo it a little and gets to endure a couple days needing it again, but I'm sure he'll get the new improved normal balance worked out. There has been so much time where we doubted he'd have any good days again.

My primary already gave me a referral to a pain doc. Unfortunately the online system they use for medical communications is a bear - to be very very polite. But since I'm not asking for a narcotic, because I want to try to avoid one of those until, say, dealing with post-surgery stuff, so I can continue to drive legally, I figure she can prescribe pain meds without that particular complication, without signed contracts to promise not to overuse and abuse the meds that going on narcotics would require these days. It's a bonus that a drive to her office is twenty miles shorter as a round trip than the closest pain doc. If my primary wants to just go for one bottle and reassess, fine.  But I know the stuff works because (shhhhh, don't tell) Steve let me have a single pill to try. One with breakfast, lasts the entire day, no needing a dozen pills to get through a full day and still not eliminate pain noticeably until compared with a full stop of pain meds.

My doc has an opening Monday. I'll be in after work.

Meanwhile this morning my body is overreacting to the extra stretches and pulls and pushes from yesterday's 45 minute session. By now the thyroid pill has had its hour to work, so I'm going to go get my morning pills, coffee, and breakfast together and have a real start to my day while I start proofing this for posting.

Owww..... But there's time for enough pain relief to tolerate going off to work.

Tuesday, August 5, 2025

An Accidental Repair

 I'm nowhere near as handy as I used to be. While I'm still fairly spatially adept, certain things that used to be second nature have now faded behind the veils of time and old age, not to mention the moderate brain damage that happened during a cardiac procedure some years ago. I'd thought for years the damage was mostly affecting speech, though that has mostly repaired despite words often escaping me for periods of time. At least when writing I have time to try workarounds and come up with what I was looking for.

But certain skills with basic tools are becoming more challenging, and I even include a computer keyboard among them. There are times I have to stop and figure out which keystroke will do what I need in terms of procedures. They still work well with basic typing, just the usual abundance of typos. But sometimes I just have to tell myself to stop thinking about the keyboard and just let muscle memory take over. Shut it off, turn it back on, and log back in usually reminds me which thing to hit where.

It's been photography season for the last few months. I've been managing with a slightly broken camera for over a year. A film camera would have been toast. I managed to drop the thing one day taking it from house to car, violating one of my cardinal rules: don't just rely on my ability to balance a stack of items. The camera has a strap, as does its case. When holding either one, at least a finger needs to be hooked though the strap. DUH!

Oops! I changed direction to open a door and heard it clunk on the pavement. The case of the camera body came slightly apart. Not enough to fall off, but enough to interfere with turning it on and off, since the process involves pushing out its telescoping lens, or pulling it bsck flat with the case. I quickly figured out that pinching it right in a line with the on/off button enabled those functions to work. I tried the same off to the other side of it but the case wasn't budging. It wouldn't come back together. 

I decided not to force it. Being digital, it's not like light flooded inside the camera body to overexpose  film. I still got OK pictures, or at least as OK as what I was actually taking. I'm one of those people who can easily take ten shots and sort through for something between acceptable and pretty darn good. As long as each shot was taken with a pinch in that one spot, the camera worked. It had made handling it interesting, nearly always a two hand production: one to stabilize, the other to shoot. I could still easily get this, shortly after the break:

Or this, one from last summer, also post break:
Or even this, from early spring this year, with enough detail to keep most everybody from recognizing it as pussy willow, all puffed out.
I'm not sure exactly what happened, but think I just got frustrated from being in a hurry and trying to work the zoom. My hand just clenched a bit harder then usual. The unfastened side of the case suddenly clicked, and even as I watched, progressively popped itself back together.

Could it be? I hit the on/off button. No pinch, just a tap. It clicked, shutting off. Another tap, it opened. One more and the shutter clicked. I looked in the back screen and, allowing for the glare from the sun bouncing off my shirt obstructing its view, the shot I just took was there. 

 So why, oh why, hadn't I gotten brave enough to do that on purpose before this?

Of course I know exactly why. I had no replacement camera. Just the day before I'd been looking for that exact model online. I found out three important facts. First, it was made in 2014. Second, only refurbished ones were available, if I trusted  the source to have done the wonderful job they claimed. I'd done it buying this camera when we lived in Arizona, and it worked perfectly. Now? No longer confidant. Third,  the price on even refurbished ones was much higher, but replacements remotely close to this model via newer cameras were close to a grand, way over my budget. Besides, they had more lumps and bumps and stuff to learn. I wasn't that desperate that day. Now I don't have to be! 

I had concluded that if I actually got that desperate, I might finally start considering getting a smart phone.

OMG! Not that!!!! Yes, I do know it's likely my only practical shot at getting photos of night skies. Galaxie shots, auroras, whatever, the newest ones have cameras which capture the light and colors very well. But I'd have to learn a whole damn new phone AND camera at the same time! 

I already have this unique talent for just touching Steve's smartphone, and killing it. I can't even get the swipe right to answer an incoming call for him, however important it may be. 

Go ahead, call me a luddite. 

Just don't drop my camera!

Friday, August 1, 2025

Can You Pronounce YOUR Medications?

I continue to be amazed at how many people cannot seem to pronounce certain medication names. Nor do they seem to care one iota, and this even includes some in the medical field. But a phone call this morning got me absolutely giggling. It's I good thing I knew the names.

My Part D insurance requires that my pharmacy is Walmart. Either that or I pay the whole amount. One calls in, and has to fight past the automated answering machine to speak to an actual pharmacist. I have discovered one sure-fire effective fib that works: tell the machine you need to "transfer a prescription'". The machine is programmed to "help" take care of all your issues without bothering an employee. Yelling does not help. Trust me on that. The machine won't hang up on a rude caller, which is almost more frustrating than if it did. "Pharmacist" or "speak to pharmacist" no longer gets you connected, but instead gets an inquiry from the machine as to why. But it's not capable - yet - of taking care of transferring something from another pharmacy, even a different Walmart one, because the number system on the bottles is different. A HUMAN IS STILL REQUIRED. Take advantage while it still works.

Occasionally it's helpful to bypass the human. One could be on hold for a while. My store's machine will call and ask me in its mechanical voice if I wish to refill something that its records show is about to run out... if I've been taking it as directed. It's usually phrased as "...beginning with the letters - - -". Usually that is helpful, as long as the letters are perfectly pronounced, the background noise is nonexistent, and there's only one thing starting with those letters.

I test my blood sugar once a day. Both the lancets and test strips start with the same three letters - their brand name. They don't come in boxes with the same quantity inside, of course, because Medicare hates giving me more than a 3 month supply. Lancets only come in 100 count boxes. They can't change that, but lancets are cheap. Test strips come in 50 and 100, but since I only test daily, the 100 count box is too many.  Those are expensive, so Medicare tries to limit me to one little 50-count supply. This means they get renewed in different schedules. When that automated call comes through, are they asking about the lancets or the test strips? I want a pharmacist!

There are times when the dosage I need for some reason is changed temporarily. Do I need the one the machine is pushing? Can I have time to check in my bathroom when I'm in the living room or even out in the garden?  I just say,"No." Nancy Reagan would be proud, right? 

While there are lots of reasons to avoid the machine, this morning I found a new one. Whoever programmed it never bothered to find a way to give it correct pronunciation cues. 

I started the call. I was going to be in the store later and wanted to check if my recently ordered refills were ready. There could be many reasons, but just knock it off to the grocery pick-up being at the totally opposite end of the B-I-G store from the pharmacy. I just informed the machine I wanted to check on prescriptions. It noted the number I called from, gave my birthday (oh-oh, could be security issues here) and asked me to verify it, and then did it's worst to pronounce what was ready.

First was my statin. Yes, I'm of a certain age where statins  are useful, and have been for a while. Any word with "statin" in it, including statin, emphasizes the first syllable. In my case, the product name has 5 syllables, the last two of which are "statin".  So the 2nd and 4th are accented. The machine accented the first, third, and fifth.

Good thing I remembered what I'd refilled, right?

I also take a drug with what seems to be the hardest name to pronounce in the country, metoprolol. It's so bad that I actually compliment medical personnel who actually can pronounce it properly. Not even all of them can. People see the word and break it up into sections... and do it wrong.  1st two make meto. (It sounds like meh - toe'.) Not "me too", something also chosen. People read a familiar word instead: metro. They borrow the "r" following the "p" and stick it earlier in the word for that particular gymnastic tongue exercise. Then there's no "r" for the 3rd syllable. Thus meh-toe-pro-lol becomes anybody's choice of four or five different mispronunciations.

The machine this morning assured me that two totally unrecognizable drug names were ready for pickup.

So yes, I hung up giggling. It beats swearing at an uncaring machine. At least the news is good.

I wonder if I could get paid for teaching a machine how to speak "medical". I figure almost anybody who did well in "speaking" organic chemistry at the U could do it. We won't discuss how "interesting" the lab-recipe part was, OK? But I do recall somebody pronouncing "acetyl" as ass'-uh-teal'.

If you need pronunciation help with that, go look it up.  Please.


Tuesday, July 29, 2025

Life On Steroids...For A Week

Part of my shoulder therapy mercifully included some interesting pain killers. Or at least that was the theory behind prescribing them. Ibuprofin wasn't cutting it, at least while I was unwilling to bring it up to the maximum dosage. When the knees were busy grinding bone-on-bone for years, because I had to continue walking, I was regularly up to 4 pills at a time, 4 times a day. I've been limiting them to 3 for 3.

Note that I can't recommend that dose to anybody else despite using it myself. All my doctors agreed on that point back before they were replaced due to geographical distance, and several now-local ones even afterwards, in the wisdom of their hindsight for me. I had been able to stop altogether for a while once the knee grinding ended. I started again when the shoulders demanded attention. One helpful doc in Arizona had just finished making that anti-recommendation while he was reviewing my lab work. When he got to the kidney function he noted it was down a bit... before adding my levels were "right on for my age".  So much for that warning, eh? The docs all warn against digestion issues as well, but I call mine a "cast iron stomach" and have for decades. Once that final pregnancy was over, it took spoiled food to get it to pay attention.

However, when I took my current primary doc up on her recommendation to see somebody about my shoulders - after delaying long months because I'd heard enough about how painful it was - I was told that PT (physical therapy for those lucky enough to never have needed it) was the mandated first step after X-rays, which had shown severe arthritis in both shoulders. My immediate response was "No PT without pain control."  They already hurt enough, to the point where use prompted the shoulder pain to run down the arm to the elbow, and continued use sent it into the thumb, finally tingling the fingertips. PT on top of that? NO WAY IN HELL!

Without batting an eye the orthopedic doc sent a prescription in to my pharmacy... for steroids.

Steroids? Seriously? OK, then. I made my first PT appointment for the time I was taking those, a collection of pills that started off at 6 the first day, 5 the next, and so on,  one less per day until they were gone. One card held them all, so if you took them start to finish you knew exactly where you were and what time to take the next. No "did I take that one yet?" The biggest issue was reading the teensey tiny print under the pills to see when to take them. Then just poke the foil and push one out.

The first side effect was terrible! Taste! OMG the bitterest thing I've ever had in my mouth! It was best if I had something to coat my tongue with immediately, but not all the timing of them allowed for that. I eventually semi-mastered the technique of keeping them off my tongue as much as possible on their speedy route down the hatch. Note "possible" does not equate with "perfect." Blecchhhhh! Water does not "cleanse the palate". Be warned.

Day one was 6 pills, from before breakfast till before bed. You'd think I'd get some pain relief after those, right? Hey, want to buy a bridge too? I know where one is for sale.......

Day two was my afternoon start to PT. The only effect so far was morning diarrhea! Wowsa! Six pounds gone in a flash! Yee-hahhh! Maybe I could learn to like this stuff, eh? Who knew it was a weight loss drug? OK, maybe everybody else in the world, but I'd never had any interest in using them for any reason before in my life. And I still wasn't noting any pain relief. With nothing more to lose I gritted my teeth, walked into the PT facility, and met a sweet young thing named Kim. OK, maybe she was 35 or so, but from my perspective, "sweet young thing" was accurate enough.

A quick discussion gave her my history, and some gentle manipulation of my arms verified what I couldn't do. I was correct about them self-dislocating when my arms were raised, even the small amount I could do myself. Trust me, no bragging there about being right, not when it's a sharp increase in pain level. Yep, even on the steroids.  

We switched to the rest of the hour being her guiding my arms into different positions and me saying "OW!" when it was time for her to stop. Bless her, she stopped! She brought out plastic angle-measuring things and wrote down what my starting range of motion was. Then followed some stretches, held for 90 seconds each if I could. I confess to pulling back a bit on those as 90 got closer. It seemed a better idea than whining.

We chatted through much of it. She'd been surprised by how flexible and pain free my back was, but was even more surprised by the reason: 6 years of belly dancing way back when. I demonstrated a few things that didn't need anything except back flexibility. No pain. Still lots of motion there though I don't do it any more. 

She's pondering looking for a teacher....

Once the stretches were done, she checked my range of motion again. It had improved, as being defined by my ability to move the arms a little farther before the "Ouch". I couldn't actually tell since the ouch was still just as much of an ouch. But she was happy with the possibility of progress. I tried to be too. since she'd explained to me that if they need to do surgery, and providing I wished to have it, they wouldn't even consider it unless I could demonstrate increased range of motion before they even started.

Apparently surgery for pain control is not to be considered. Do you suppose Big Pharma helped put that rule in place? What? Paranoia?

There were 4 more days of steroids, one less pill each day. Pain levels increased to familiar levels, pointing out to me that they had actually been doing some good while I was taking the larger doses. I bet you're trying to be polite and not wonder about the diarrhea being ongoing, eh? Well, my eating habits had no change, but nothing was coming through until 2 days after the pills ran out. And in the next several days I watched the numbers on the scale return to their previous normal. No higher, thank goodness. But as a diet pill those things are a total failure.

Sigh.....

And I seem to be losing the increased range of motion I'd gained with that first visit. I can no longer touch my hands behind my hips, for example. During my PT visit I'd done it for 2 seconds! (Fingers splayed, of course.) I haven't been back to PT but only because they were booked three weeks out, at which (re)starting point I booked three in a row, a week apart. Same weekday, same hour, easy to remember. The stretches are reaching shorter points, except the one against a door frame needed to put deodorant on in the morning. It hurts less as well. Oddly, putting things up into the microwave over the oven is more painful than before.

I think however that I'll be raising my ibuprofin dosage to it's highest for the next month or so. I'm hoping to make progress, but I'm not hoping for more pain. And I'm back to one arm aching just because it's hanging from my shoulder. So I guess those nasty pills had some effect.

Time for that other appointment, the one with the pain doc.


Monday, July 21, 2025

YAHOO! Crazy In The Email

I have so many complaints about my email system these days. Yahoo has been hosting my account from many many years back originating with Frontier, and finally decided to fully adapt it to Yahoo. As the format hadn't changed in the previous years, I didn't think to much of the announcement. My address wasn't changing. What's the fuss?

Then I started using it.

Start with the layout: The list of what's there takes up a chunk of the left side of the screen. When opened, there's a tiny middle column with the actual email inside it. Note that it's never reformatted so I can read/view the whole thing without zig-zagging left to right for every partial single line of text! I was familiar with the phenomenon for people sending very wide emails. I could decide if it were worth the bother to read it all. 

Photos are even worse, unless  you think viewing small chunks at a time can give a sensible view of the contents. By the time I get from left to  right and top to bottom, I have to go start over in hopes of seeing what the actual picture was, especially if there's something that was supposed to be funny about it. Their alternative is to make them all thumbnails, where a child's head is the size of a pin head - and not even a hatpin's head. (Anybody remember hatpins?) Oh sure, I can expand it... to about double. So then the kid's head actually looks the size of a hatpin head. Whoopee! Is that child smiling? Crying? Holding up an award? Sticking out their tongue? And by the way, more than one kid means I have to ask which kid I'm supposed to care about in a photo?

It's not just that my laptop fits my lap instead of overlapping it (no pun) by inches on either side. Mine is light, easy to carry, doesn't cut off my circulation like one 10 pounds heavier might. So the screen is modestly small as a result. But my email carrier has decided to fill the right side of my screen with a huge ad. Did I ever ask for an ad? Do I mind terribly if it crosses the bottom of my screen  instead, allowing me to actually read my own emails instead of having to bounce them a round every two inches? No, and no.

The email content is always prefaced by a blurb telling me what it says. Because if I can't read my own email I can read the summation? Because I can pre-decide it the hassle is worth it? Because I'm too stupid to understand what the sender wrote but I can figure it out from what AI wrote about it?  Oh yeah, there's a little blurb mentioning the summary was written by AI. Trust me, it's not an improvement. It focuses in on a word or two as being the most relevant in the message, when often it's not relevant whatsoever. If that isn't enough of a time killer, it follows that alleged summation by asking if it was helpful. If I choose to acknowledge their  query, I can click on a thumb, up or down, take my pick. Either choice will require filling in a form saying why I clicked that one.

I just wanted to read my own email! I don't need your G*D* Survey! Just go the F*** Away! Forever!

I have found all kind of ways to express how it's not helpful, not wanted, not within my time availability, an impediment to my space functionality, and always followed by my very sincere request that they stop doing it!  Apparently the problem AI has with its attempts to understand what people are actually trying to communicate to me is even exceeded by it's inability to understand my reaction to it! So far, unlike Alexa's programming, it hasn't taken to scolding me, however politely,  for certain word choices. I might begin to understand it has some potential for usefulness if it demonstrated that much comprehension, but really, I just want it to go the F*** away! (Did I forget to say, "Please"? Well screw you! Sideways!)

Even without all those issues, if they went away there'd still be an abundance of STUPID in my email. For example, we order a lot of things to be delivered to us so we don't have to drive all over the place. In response we get a lot of emails, keeping us informed about where in the progress to arrival any particular package allegedly is. That changes per package with each progressive email. There's the normal stuff: got your order, got your money, putting it together, shipped, tracking label to follow it, expected ETA. Then there's Change in ETA, which is always about a delay, never about getting here faster, of course.  

OK, there was that one time... but they changed their minds and it was even later than before.

So far there's not much stupid in all that. But one sent Saturday raised my eyebrows. A plant would be two days later than promised, and it's revised 3 day delivery schedule for today would now be for Friday. 

The 22nd of July.

Got your calendars handy? Today is Monday the 21st. In what year will a July Friday be the 22nd?

C'mon now, this is a live plant. I really do want it to arrive in that condition! You know, STILL ALIVE!

I was already giving sincere thought to changing my email address to a  totally different carrier. This plant won't be that final straw, but it just adds charcoal and vinegar-preserved spider topping on the email frustration.