I See They've Fixed That

     "Labs" have become common in modern medicine.  At least once a year, you skip breakfast and go get a blood draw, and at your next doctor's appointment, there's a lot of serious talk about blood sugar, thyroid levels, and (at least for some of us)  that one is years past child-bearing age and has hormone levels that are out of whack (no, no, it's just mood swings, doc.  Yeah.  That's all.).

     At first, the doctor's offices did the blood draw, and sent the vials off to wherever.  Then the lab companies set up inside the offices of large group practices, and then they added external offices, usually near clusters of medical offices.  There were a couple of companies, at least around here, and in Indianapolis, you could count on finding one a short drive away.

     Orders -- the list of tests your doctor wanted done -- were computerized and you could usually go to any office.  They'd type in your name and everything would pop up on the screen, hey, presto!  It was quick and convenient.

     At some point -- I remember it as shortly before the pandemic -- one of the two big lab companies bought the other one.  They merged computer systems and a few offices closed.  Then the pandemic hit and they had to stay open, but with minimum staff.  They automated check-in, and all but the biggest offices ran with just one phlebotomist tech at a time.  The usual mask-wearing and social-distance rules applied, and they started to emphasize scheduled appointments over walk-ins.

     That was my most recent experience with them.  I avoided medical stuff as much as possible during the height of the pandemic, figuring the profession had enough to deal with.  Recently, the office of my latest doctor got put out of business; some investment outfit was buying up medical practices, got too big, too fast, and closed down suddenly in several states, including Indiana.  Surprise!  She absquatulated to parts unknown, needing to maintain employment to keep her bills paid, and I found yet another doctor.

     Ahead of my first appointment, they sent in a lab order.  "Nothing to it," think I, "Just black coffee for breakfast, a quick stop at the lab nearest the North Campus on my way to work, lose a few vials of blood and get some kind of delicious semi-fast food at one of the interesting places nearby afterward."  I was looking forward to it.

     It didn't work out.
     Item: That office is c-l-o-s-e-d gone.  The next closest is several miles away.  There are a lot fewer locations now.
     Item: It's pretty much all by appointment now, and their computer system has crashed: my test orders don't show up on the web site.  No test orders in the computer, no tests.  I called the doctor's office, gave them the fax number for the office I planned to go to, and they sent it in.  (Yes, a fax. In 2024.  I know.)
     Item: I am now stuck going to that office; they're the only one with my lab order.
     Item: If you do show up as a walk-in, the automated system slots you in the next open appointment.  When I did so, mine was two and a half hours away.  I needed to be at work.  I bailed.

     Okay, fine.  Gotta work the system.  I decided to do it Friday.

     I logged into the site early this morning.  The only open appointments were in mid-afternoon, when I needed to be at work.

     This lab isn't going to happen.  I'm pretty sure I can get the blood draw done at the in-office lab after or before my first appointment with the new doctor, and catch up later.

     But if I didn't have a couple of prescriptions that need to be maintained -- for blood pressure and some other old-people stuff -- I'd say to hell with the whole thing, and go back to using doc-in-a-box for anything that didn't clear up on its own.

66 Years

     It strikes me as wildly unlikely.  Nevertheless, there it is: I have been on this planet for sixty-six years as of today.

     Here's to sixty-six more!  I don't trust the rest of you lot with this place; I'd like to stick around and keep an eye on you, just to make sure you don't mess it up.

So, Saturday

    "Maybe I'll come up with something for Saturday," I said.

     What I came up with was to just about do myself in.  I've been chairing a small online writing-critique group for a local club since January and it meets for an hour starting at 9:00 a.m., one Saturday a month.  I can do that; there's plenty of time to grab coffee and a quick snack, shower and be ready with the stories all printed out and a "bingo card" of manuscript submissions and participants so I can be sure no one is left out.  The participants are all serious amateurs or aspiring professionals, and it's an orderly process.  Introverted though I am, I can handle it and only be a little tired afterward.  My cold is still lingering, with mild sinus congestion and a recurring, productive cough; not bad but annoying.

     In the usual course of events, there's an hour break after the critique group and then the entire club meets, both online and in person, with a business meeting followed by an interesting speaker.  It's relaxing and about the most strenuous thing I do is second a motion or make an occasional note.

     Yesterday was not usual.  I had to work, downtown, starting at 11:00 a.m.  I wrapped up the critique group a few minutes after 10:00, shut down my laptop and lights,* changed to work slacks and put on real shoes, packed my coffee cup, teabags and a candy bar, and headed south.

     Getting into work on this particular day involves talking one's way past a police officer: where I work is right on the parade route and they close the cross streets.  Some years, the officer assigned to the intersection for the street my workplace is on hasn't been well briefed; other years, all I need to do is show my ID.  This was a good year; I flashed my badge and barely had to slow down.

     I was working Engineering support for live TV coverage of the 500 Festival Parade -- a job that, if nothing goes wrong, consists of looking at TV screens and possibly making small repairs.  It can get exciting if something big breaks, but we try to have ways around all of the likely failures.  This meant I could set up my laptop and listen in to the club meeting with an earbud in one ear while monitoring the parade with the other ear and both eyes.

     It worked until the meeting's speaker began his presentation, off-mike and a little mumbly.  I had a choice: try to follow him or do my job.  I logged out.  That bread is only buttered on one side.

     Through all this, low-key interactions with co-workers, hi, howya doin', remember the year so-and-so drove by the cop without stopping and almost got arrested? (So-and-so piped up to add to that story) and so on.

     I felt kind of sleepy once things were wrapped up -- only a few hours -- and took my time getting ready to leave, waiting for traffic to ease.  I stopped at the grocery store on my way home, shambled my way through picking up a couple days worth of food, and arrived home with relief.

     Got the groceries put away, had a conversation with Tam, and went back to the kitchen, finalizing supper plans.  I was standing on our very old plastic step-stool, the kind with spring-loaded wheels that settles when you step up on it.  I was on the top step and had just shifted my weight when it made a cracking sound, dropping a half-inch as my full weight came over a wheel -- and the knee I'd put my weight on gave way!

     I lost my balance immediately.  The fall was unrecoverable.  I was in front of the refrigerator, and it doesn't have handles that stick out.  I said, "Oh!" and slowed my fall well enough that I didn't land hard, but I ended on the floor, on my back, out of breath and starting to snicker.

     Tamara came running in, and there I was, sprawled out on the floor, wheezing and snickering too much to tell her I was okay.  When I finally could, she refused to believe me until I got back on my feet.

     Dinner plans were scaled back; I made yellow rice with (canned) chicken, pigeon peas, fresh carrots, celery and a few mushrooms, chopped up.  I sauteed the fresh vegetables and mushrooms in a little bacon grease from one strip of bacon, which I crumbled in with the rest of the stuff: fast, easy and tasty.

     But I went to bed immediately after dinner, about eight, and slept until nine this morning: I was completely worn worn out.  When I started to fall, I realized I had no real reserves left; I was headed for the floor, no matter what.  It's a scary thing to realize.  Between the remains of the cold, two meetings, work and grocery-shopping, I'd used up all my energy.
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* During the pandemic, I set up my bedroom desk for videoconferencing, with a couple of mounted ring lights that have home-made diffusers.  It's been useful ever since -- and I don't have to show the chaos on my big desk in the home office.

Busy Day

     So, not much of a blog post.  Tomorrow will be busy, too, but maybe I'll come up with something.

Lost And Found

     Still in recovery from the awful cold, I have been taking allergy pills and using cough syrup as needed.  This has had exactly the effect you might expect on my mental acuity.

     So the early the day before yesterday, I went shambling around the North Campus, inspecting some of the outdoor infrastructure, a job I can do just fine even if I'm not a hundred percent.  I walked six hundred feet down a once-mown and slightly-grown path to inspect a couple of big gadgets, keeping my eye open for wildflowers (we've got a wide variety) and toadstools (ditto, including some genuine red-capped don't-touch-'ems) along the way, and at some point, dropped my car key without noting it.

     Comes time to go home, after coffee and routine have worked their magic and I'm way more alert.  I hit the door, reach for my car key, and...nothing.  No key.  Searched the building.  Nothing.  Retraced all my steps, including outdoors, very carefully.  Nothing,  Did it all again.  Nothing.  I finally gave up, called Tam and had her bring my spare key.

     Yesterday, I bought a spring rake on my way to work, figuring on walking my path again, dragging it behind me.  It was worth a try.  Arrived at work to find the lawn mowing guy had hit the place early before the heat (smart move, it's been in the upper eighties before noon the last few days).  But my key might have been destroyed or flung, or--

     I walked the path anyway, rake bouncing along behind.  At nearly the farthest extreme, I walked into a cleared area around one of the gadgets and there it was, sparkling in the sunlight, right in front of me, untouched: my car key.   Never needed the rake.  The lawn mowing had taken away just enough grass to make it obvious.

     And, hey, I've got a new rake for Fall.  A good thing.  The old ones had plastic tines and the bent ends were worn almost away. 

Clippy Offers Advice

 Talking, animated paper clip with big googly eyes: "IT LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE A LARGE LANGUAGE MODEL TRYING TO FIND A JOB HELPING COMPUTER USERS!"

Generic LLM: "Uh-huh."

Paper clip with eyes: "I HAVE SOME BAAAAAD NEWS FOR YOU."

Air Non-Conditioning

     The air conditioner froze up overnight, yesterday (if that makes sense -- I discovered it night before last), and I babied it along until I could get outside, take a broom to the coil, and then follow up with a portable vacuum.  That got it good enough to keep the house at 78°F when it was 89°F outside, and yesterday evening and through the night I kept nudging it down.  We're holding at 75°F, which is pretty good.

     I still need to take a hose to it and clear out the rest of the stuff in the coil.  This is a project, since the outdoor hose connection drips in use, thanks to a lousy install by an unsupervised plumber, years ago.  It's floppy, too -- all crimped together with PEX and the valve not fastened to the outside wall.  That was a two-in-one for that plumbing firm: first and last time I'll hire 'em.*  So I have to run a hose up from the laundry sink; done it before and I'll do it again, as soon as I have time.

     But for now, we're back in the cold-air business.  I just have to keep an eye on it.
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* Some day I will fix this, but I want to get rid of all the PEX that guy put in.  It takes specialized, expensive tools to do properly, unlike most other plumbing systems, and I don't like being at the mercy of overworked professionals, especially given that quality of work within the profession varies widely.

The Rich Are Bad For Your Teeth

     I have written in the past that I didn't much care if the 1% were living like emperors, if that meant the rest of us were living like kings and queens.  I still feel that way -- the problem is, that's not how it has worked.

     The top one percent -- the top five percent or more -- are living better than ever.  The rest of us?  Not so much.  Oh, it's not as if most people in the Western World were suffering in grinding poverty; but from the middle class on down, most people count themselves lucky to be standing still.  It has held true in the U.S. for a long time now, no matter which party holds the Presidency and/or Congress.  It's fun to blame the ones you didn't vote for, but the evidence doesn't bear it out.  Most of them -- and their best pals and  contributors -- have got theirs, and to hell with the rest of us.  Some of 'em are better at wishing us, "Sucks to be you," all tied up in ribbons and bows and some are worse, but the outcome is the same.

     In that light, I cannot help but remember that the essential topic of the first great televised clash of the pundits between Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr. was not, "What is the proper function of government," or some other philosophical issue, but -- in the long-vanished economic egalitarianism of the 1960s! -- how government might best keep the poor from eating the rich.

     I guess the rich stopped worrying.  I wonder how that's going to play out?

Yesterday

     I felt so much better yesterday that I did a heap of laundry, hacked away the the back yard jungle, and cooked a big meal on the grill: pot roast with turnip, potato, carrot, celery, onion and mushroom, plus corn on the cob.

     By the time the after-supper dishes rolled around, I felt pretty awful.  I did one dish-drainer full and left the rest. 

     Today, I woke up tired and slept in.  Coughing and hacking a little.  And so it goes.

The Dismal Science

     It seems to me that one of the biggest problems with macroeconomic theory is not the various and sundry theories nearly so much as it is the ability of facile politicians to slap the names of the theories on whatever crazy nonsense they want to try, which is usually ill-considered borrowing, austerity that somehow never touches the top ten percent, deficit spending, or running the printing presses overtime at the national mint.

     Having created a mess, they then point at it proudly or in alarm, and explain that it's "post-Keynesian metallism," or "nuclear chartalism," or "socialist capitalism," or some other high-sounding tag.  Afterwards, there's a rush of economists, some of them proclaiming, Oh No It Is Not, or pointing to the parts of the label they dislike most and explaining That's What's Wrong With This Fool Notion and even one of two trying to clear up that what actually went on was more like random meddling.  Nobody ever listens except for economics students, and most of them are thinking about what kind of bow tie they're going to wear for the TV interviews once they have a PhD and a best-selling popular-account book that explains why every other economist is wrong.

     Except for the one time in a thousand when politicians take economists seriously, and pile up heaps of corpses trying to make people fit the theory.

     And somehow, when we manage to dodge that, the rest of us end up doing the same old, same old, for the same old pay.  My only consolation is that there are very few rich economists -- and I can't help but suspect we might be better off if there were fewer rich politicians, too.

Seems Like

     Every time I blink, politics gets more stupid.  I don't understand the appeal, but we're not too far away from the Heinlein detail of public figures eating dirt sandwiches as "health food."

     Year of the Jackpot, indeed.

No, Look

     I never have had much patience with Congress, but I always figured it was their job to try my patience: to crank the wheels of government around with all due deliberation, with plenty of lost motion and chances for each and every one of them to sing out, "Whoa, nellie!" at ill-considered legislation, and, yes, to dip their state or district's beaks into every new dollop of gravy in the trough, ensuring, at least over time, a roughly uniform distribution of the burdens and benefits.

     Well and good, and if it resembles a clown circus from time to time, them's the breaks.  It kept 'em busy annoying one another more than annoying everyone else.

     But that system keeps breaking down, and these supposedly highly qualified boys and girls all saw that Jimmy Stewart movie -- or, more likely, read the Cliff's Notes -- and they think they can aw-shucks themselves into The People's hearts and pocketbooks, by either actually being some kind of semi-folksy, semi-poisonous idiot, or simulating one so well we forget to look up their privileged, Ivy-League upbringing, or, in at least one case, by simultaneously pretending to be a Public Intellectual and a hard-handed Man Of The Peeeple, a kind of six-dimensional Zen Everyman with furrowed brow and sweaty muscles.

     It won't wash.  I don't care if you're a gilded-palm New Jersey sleaze, a Rhodes scholar carefully sprinkling "ain'ts" like a society matron sifting well-aged parm on her pasta carbonara or a genuine moron from suburban Poughkeepsie, Atlanta or Helena, if you're not willing to actually do the work and pass up a few of the photo-ops and fawnings, then GTFO.  I don't care what your party is or what kind of crazy ideas you came into office with, if you're unwilling to deal with the actual reality of a giant country with global obligations, a hugely varied population and way too many situations that call for finding a least-bad choice that no one really likes, then please leave and go try out for a "reality" TV show, because you are unsuited for real life and entirely unsuited to be one of the frickin' legislators trying to keep the chaos of the fed.gov functioning.

     If you're one of the nasty few who got into office to try screwing the whole thing up or lining your own pockets, then there is no hell hot enough for you, and I sincerely wish your peers would put more effort into rooting out the rot.  The House and Senate have Ethics Committees, but they appear to mostly spend their time tut-tutting instead of checking for cheating and incipient Caesarism.

     And if all this sounds harsh and unfair to my readers, well -- it is.  We've let Congress get away with far too much for far too too long, and they've gone from sneaking cigarettes and reefer in the cloakrooms to all manner of slacking off and genuine vice.