I feel better, and I don’t quite trust it. You know how these things go: You step out of the shower and proclaim lo, I am healed, set off about your day and feel like crap by noon. I have a full day of training tomorrow in Ann Arbor, and I need all my strength to carry a few bags out of Zingerman’s. So I’m laying low for another 24 hours.
I am not a hypochondriac. This season more than ever anyone who coughs in public faces the wrath of all those standing within germshot, and frankly, I don’t blame them. If only it was like this every year; I remember one flu season when Alan sat between two tubercular hackers, and I had to listen to a 10-minute rant every day when he stepped through the door. There, there, dear, I’d say, pressing a glass of wine into his hand. I sat close enough to hear it all, and I know that even if the coughs themselves were germ-free, the sound alone would send a sane person right over the top.
So one more day. Carry on while I eat some Jell-o.
LAMary said on October 21, 2009 at 11:05 am
I have a hypochondriac boss who has been sure he’s had the swine flu three times so far. From this angle it looked like a cold, but who am I to judge. I had a one day hideous stomach flu a few weeks back and the boss told me it was probably swine flu. I think it was a 24 hour hideous stomach thing, but I’m not a doctor, I just am surrounded by them.
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brian stouder said on October 21, 2009 at 11:20 am
I remember one flu season when Alan sat between two tubercular hackers, and I had to listen to a 10-minute rant every day when he stepped through the door.
I think I could become OCD by the time this all runs its course, myself. And indeed, some people’s public coughing is so theatrical that it becomes tempting to wonder whether they’re actually being anti-social, or whether they’re that bereft of social conciousness.
Speaking of which, here’s something else I was ‘moved’ to ponder, this past weekend. I had a room on the 25th floor of a hotel in Springfield (the thing looks like a giant golf tee, and all the hallways endlessly curve, and the rooms are all somewhat pie shaped, but we digress), and as I sat in the chair at 9 in the evening, I became aware that it was subtly, rythmically moving. Before long, of course, I could hear all sorts of theatrical exclamations (and a few declarations) from next door. Pam called me on the phone, and during our conversation she asked what was going on! I told her “it’s not me – it’s the neighbors!”. So this got me wondering. Presumeably most folks know that thin walls plus relatively early hour = be discreet, or else be a public spectacle. It never really hit me before that THAT was part of “the juice”; a sort of accessible exhibitionism for otherwise regular folks.
Or, maybe not!
edit: and, sick girl, you might have to report to the FTC that gratuitous Jell-O product placement at the end there, if they gave you some jigglers (or whatever)
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Jen said on October 21, 2009 at 11:33 am
Oh man, don’t get me started on the whole swine flu thing! Apparently, our ER and most of the doctors around here have decided against paying the $100+ to test for swine flu, so they’re treating everyone with a cough and a fever like they have swine flu, so everyone thinks that they have swine flu, when really it could be swine flu, seasonal flu, a cold… But, I talked with my husband’s doctor Monday because my husband was sick, and the doctor said that, unless he had a fever that didn’t respond to fever-reducers or scary symptoms like difficulty breathing, he was just supposed to stay home, push fluids and rest. He said even Tamiflu doesn’t help much – just good old fashioned rest and water.
I’ll be glad when this flu season is over – not so much because I’m worried about getting it (although I definitely don’t want to get it!), but because I’m already tired of hearing everybody panic.
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coozledad said on October 21, 2009 at 11:34 am
We went into town yesterday to shop the Indian and Chinese specialty stores. The folks who run the small Indian grocery are very kind, and kept offering us samples of various home-cooked dessert items. I love Indian food, but the sweets are just not my thing. Particularly jellabys. I just don’t have the insulin required to process the things. And it’s a plague year. Not good for samples.
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Jolene said on October 21, 2009 at 11:50 am
I’ve gotten a new computer recently and have been having fun setting it up w/ Firefox add-ons and such. Amazing the kinds of little programs people have taken the trouble to write. Favorite thing so far is not an add-on, but a site I’d meant to try but hadn’t on my old computer: Pandora Really great to put in a few old favorites and get this interesting mix of tunes.
So, since I’m in a discovery mode, what should I check out? What are your favorite sites (other than nn.com, of course), blogs, add-ons, extensions, or other tricks and topics?
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Julie Robinson said on October 21, 2009 at 11:54 am
They closed a local school because 28% of the students were out sick. The other kids were coming in with over 100 degree temps and all sorts of active symptoms. Our son is down with strep throat and he’s pretty miserable. It’s enough to make a person paranoid. A plague year indeed.
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LAMary said on October 21, 2009 at 11:59 am
Jolene, I find Pandora rather annoying. You can choose an artist you like but get an occasional tune by that artist among lots of tunes by people Pandora deems related musically to that artist. I don’t always agree on the related part.
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Jolene said on October 21, 2009 at 12:07 pm
It’s been OK for me, Mary. I started w/ Linda Ronstadt (yes, I’m old) and got things by Carly Simon, Carole King, and a few others. A little too similar, really. But I’ve used the “add variety” button to add other artists, and it’s worked out well so far. Still, if there are other music-streaming sites that you like, I’d be glad to know about them.
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LAMary said on October 21, 2009 at 12:14 pm
I’m old too and getting older by the minute.
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Dexter said on October 21, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Long-time Pandora user here. I find that after a while your station plays more and more of the selected artist . I am sure it depends on the artist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG2Vj86B2hg
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LAMary said on October 21, 2009 at 1:43 pm
I like KCRW online. They have a music only option.
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Dexter said on October 21, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Jolene, here’s an alternative to Pandora. It’s out of Canada, and the selections are quite different from the fare at Pandora.
It’s also the easiest site ever to navigate. Used to be, one had to sign up on a complicated page…no more…just click a couple times and you have la musica.
http://www.icebergradio.com/
Also, for TV shows, try Hulu dot com. Thousands of TV shows, old and brand new, a click away.
EAST LANSING — Call him Honest John.
A homeless man known around East Lansing only as “John” found a large amount of cash near a parking lot in the city’s business district.
He could have kept it.
Instead, Capt. Tom Johnstone tells the Lansing State Journal John turned the money over to police this week.”
So…if you were homeless and hungry, what would you have done?
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Jolene said on October 21, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Yes, Hulu is great. Thanks for the other recommendations. More welcome. Not that I ever get around to all the things I’d like to read, but I like to see what I’m missing.
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Rana said on October 21, 2009 at 4:20 pm
I rather like Pandora; I have my own music on iTunes, so it’s useful for me when I want to hear something new… but not too different. I’ve been pretty successful with my “seeds” so far (Celtic, Cuban, folk), although I will warn people that a Carlos Nakai seed will result in nothing but practically indistinguishable flute noodlings from about five less-compelling artists. Yeesh.
I keep waiting for our local health services and clinics to get in a new supply of the regular flu vaccine. It’s part of my fall ritual, as someone who spends a lot of time on campuses – either you have the older students with sick kids and financial aid struggling to keep up, bringing their viruses with them, or you have the younger ones who live all on top of each other in the dorms, breeding viruses right there. It’s like a big ol’ Petrie dish of infection. As I’m a person who is apparently unable to break the face-touching habit, I’ve developed all kinds of hand-washing rituals, have learned to bump the handicap-door-openers with my hip, and to touch nothing on campus but chalk and my own stuff. Increasingly I’m having my students turn in their work electronically, and that helps too. Partly this is out of a desire to avoid the unpleasantness of being sick, but it’s also out of fear of what would happen to my classes if I missed a week – it’s a struggle to stay on top of it all as it is, and we don’t get substitute teachers at the college level. If I don’t show up, class doesn’t happen.
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Jolene said on October 21, 2009 at 4:36 pm
If you feel you haven’t heard quite enough about healthcare, you might want to check out these two programs from This American Life.
Part I: What contributes to costs – doctors, patients, insurers
Part II: A deeper look at how our insurance system works, how it got that way, and where it might be headed
A friend posted these on Facebook a couple of days ago. They were together, in part, by the Planet Money people who did such a good job of explaining the financial crisis.
Am just listening to the first one now, which starts w/ a very good exposition on unnecessary care, including a discussion of the complexity of deciding whether to administer certain tests (such as the PSA test) that yield results with ambiguous implications for treatment.
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crinoidgirl said on October 21, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Roger Ebert on books (swoon). The comments are good, too.
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/10/books_do_furnish_a_life.html
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joodyb said on October 21, 2009 at 5:19 pm
the pet insurance segment of Saturday’s TAL was absolutely riveting (of course) but especially on the heels of the interview with Uwe Reinhardt, whom I’d quite forgot about and is something of a savant nobody seems to be listening to, inside the Beltway or out. sobering, thought-goosing stuff.
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moe99 said on October 21, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Given my current condition, I could not listen to This American Life this weekend. Tell me did Uwe Reinhardt come down against the public option, like it looked like he was going to do?
One of the side effects of my lung cancer is a deep cough. Thus I have to keep telling folks that, no I am not contagious that rather I have lung cancer. So I find I have to be fairly open about this. Reaction has generally been ok, but sometimes I just wish I could say, “treat me as you would normally. Wait til chemo starts (the 29th) to treat me with kid gloves….”
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Jolene said on October 21, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Reinhardt said he didn’t think a public health option would have the cost-lowering effects its proponents believe it would. In fact, he says that competition among insurers limits their ability to drive hard bargains w/ providers. He said that the extensive consolidation among hospitals in recent years has been driven by the demand to get big enough to be a strong counterweight to insurers’ efforts to control costs. He believes that states should set prices for procedures; hospitals and insurers would then compete on the basis of quality.
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alex said on October 21, 2009 at 8:50 pm
moe, I’m so sorry. I want to reach out to you with kid gloves right now.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 21, 2009 at 9:33 pm
Moe, feel free to request kid gloves, boxing gloves, or iron fists in velvet gloves from us! We’ll give you our white glove best.
Did they just say Allen County on “Glee”? How many of those can there be, and in the Midwest, no less — have they said the school is in Ohio, or just near Ohio? A friend at work says it’s supposed to be Carmel High School (north side of Indianapolis/Marion County). But this is only my second (and a half) viewing.
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Dorothy said on October 21, 2009 at 10:28 pm
I watched “Glee” last week, Jeff, but just couldn’t fall under it’s spell. I was extremely annoyed at the cheerleaders wearing their uniforms to school every day. Would they really have a whole wardrobe of uniforms so they don’t have to wash the same one over and over every evening?! I doubt it. Those things are expensive. My daughter loves it, though, and played a few songs for me on her iPod when we were together for the funeral recently. I liked their cover of a Journey song. And Jane Lynch is terrific in everything she does.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 21, 2009 at 11:53 pm
I’m not sure i’m captivated, but it’s on the schedule on a night that doesn’t tend to have any other responsibilities other than the crushing load of 6th grade homework. So we’re trying to get into it. As two former swing choir veterans, it has a certain intrinsic appeal.
Made bean soup tonight, and i offer a two-part revelation: white pepper, and black pepper. They go together very well, along with a heavy dusting of thyme from the garden, rosemary from the store, and a bit of dried basil from last year.
White pepper and black pepper. Keep them in mind. It could be a frosty winter.
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brian stouder said on October 22, 2009 at 9:08 am
And speaking of ‘I haz a sick’ –
lemme just say I’m sick and damned tired of shadow-president Cheney and his one-trick pony show.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33426929/ns/politics-white_house/
Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday night accused the White House of “dithering” over the strategy for the war in Afghanistan and urged President Barack Obama to “do what it takes to win.”
“Make no mistake. Signals of indecision out of Washington hurt our allies and embolden our adversaries,” Cheney said while accepting an award from a conservative national security group, the Center for Security Policy.
Ohhh – shut yer yap and hurry on to hell, ya graceless old bastard.
The administration that Cheney headed(!) was faced with the same request for more resources from the military commanders on the ground in Afghanistan, and what NON-dithering answer did they get? Oh yeah – it was “NO”!!
And then, for more non-dithering decision-making, the stupid bastards REDUCED resources in Afghanistan and sent them to Iraq, including the Special Forces people who had the best chance of, you know – killing the sons of bitches who actually were involved in attacking America.
And now that tuxedo-clad sack of shit has the nerve to criticize a new president who wants to think things over? Bah!!!
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crinoidgirl said on October 22, 2009 at 9:22 am
Jeff (tmmo):
In my pepper grinder, I mix white, black, and green pepper. I agree, they’re quite yummy together.
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Julie Robinson said on October 22, 2009 at 9:50 am
Glee has totally captivated me in all its over-the-top ridiculousness. But I’m a musical theatre geek, so what do you expect? Plus, my son wanted to sit and watch it with me! In an early episode they mentioned it was set in Ohio. Ohio and Indiana are Hollywood code names for hick.
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crinoidgirl said on October 22, 2009 at 10:07 am
New Detroitblog:
http://www.detroitblog.org/
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John said on October 22, 2009 at 11:46 am
Has Nancy succumb to her viral outbreak? Will thousands of loyal readers be disappointed in their daily trudge through the work week? Has a vortex opened in Detroit sucking the ‘burbs into oblivion? Will Batman ever come clean and admit that the whole Bruce Wayne charade is outdated? Stay tuned…
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Jolene said on October 22, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Nancy has deserted us in favor of higher learning. According to her Facebook post, she’s at a workshop re online journalism in Ann Arbor.
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