Wombat Rampant

Went to the Shoppers to stock up on staples for the next fortnight (lunch meat, bread, eggs, etc.) and was surprised by a small gang of kids P's age...not that they were there, mind you, but I kept hearing bits of half-remembered vocabulary. They looked like they might be...nah, maybe they're Serbs, i thought. Serbian sounds a lot like Russian, just different enough to mess you up. The closer I got, though, the more I wondered. So I asked.
"Vy Russkii?" I asked one of the boys.
"What?" he responded, clearly surprised.
"Are you Russians?"
"Oh! Yeah..."
I nodded. "Thought that sounded familiar. Been a while since I'd heard it." I moved on down the aisle past them, but heard some subdued talk behind me. Yeah. Russian. Too bad I haven't kept up on it much, or I wouldn't have had to ask, I guess.

Made it to the library, chucked out some garbage and made some progress on cleaning the kitchen. Cleaned the tub, which really needed it. Spent a lot of time horizontal readng Grant Moves South and Grant Takes Command.

Next couple of weeks are going to be tight...not only did that business with the tires mess up the cash flow, but I lost track of things in the checking account and got burned with overdraft fees I could ill afford. Well, I ought to be back on track by the end of next month, barring any further hideous occurrences.

I think instead of driving around buying stuff I really don't need, today would be better spent cleaning the kitchen, throwing out garbage, putting together another bookshelf, and otherwise just kicking back. Leg hurts a lot, which is supposed to be indicative of healing going on. I sure hope so.

Via Ace, awesome steampunk figures a la Justice League, The Avengers (no, unfortunately, not the one with Mrs. Peel) and retro WW2 Star Wars figs to boot. Also, a link to the infamous Slublog's photoshoopery. Worth seeing for "Obama Beats McCain!" alone.

Elsewhere, Captain Ed notes that Senate Republicans have grown a pair and told Harry Reid that nothing's going to pass the Senate until this drilling thing is settled the way the GOP wants it settled. I figure since Harry "Oil makes me sick. Coal makes me sick." Reid is no King Arthur and Mitch McConnell is more ept than the Black Knight, we may see the Donks forced to allow drilling or go home empty-handed to the rage of their constituents in November. To quote Ace, "There's blood in the water here. The GOP can either feast or starve."

The FBI doesn't have Tesla's death ray. Also, there aren't any X-files. Of course, this isn't going to convince the Tinfoil Hat Brigade...
(Instapundit)

Professor Death also links to a Yahoo! news item that mentions the continuing drop in crude prices, which (they finally notice) is showing up at the pump. I myself paid just $3.99 for regular this afternoon, and outstate it's down as low as $3.65. Now, imagine how much it would drop if Pelosi and Reid acted like statesmen and not like partisan hacks. Yeah, I know, it hurt my brain trying to imagine it too.

belindabird provides a tasty link from a blogger who attended the "Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog" at SDCC. Lots of good news. Go and look.

Was going to put together a mix CD tonight but unfortunately that required re-ripping the Front 242 CDs as MP3 instead of M4U Winamp files, and said CDs are nowhere to be found. Which means I'll be forced to clean the kitchen. :(

So since that project is on hold, I fired up EVE, went online and waited to hang out with qob, who unfortunately couldn't stay on long and even more unfortunately has a client issue that prevents us from having private convos. Which means every time I try to give him advice, another half-dozen n00bs proceed to shit up local. Ah, well; I'll give him all the advice and spare modules I have laying around, and hopefully he'll like the game well enough to hang around a while.

Work was what it was. I got the essentials of payroll taken care of - bashed out the necessary checks and got them in the mail, tended to 401k stuff, u.s.w.
The first hour and a half was a little slow, but once the paychecks arrived it got busy very quickly. I'm sure there's something I forgot. Was thinking of going out for some kind of dinner tonight, but ran out of energy once I got home and satisfied myself with grapes and a sandwich instead.

I find that I can deal with Megan McArdle (the blogger formerly known as "Jane Galt") in her new digs at The Atlantic better when I don't read the comments. In contrast to the crowd at Asymmetrical Information, the commenters at The Atlantic are a bunch of ill-mannered fuggheads, but I repeat myself.

( Some of her recent posts that caught my attention )

Short and largely unproductive day at work, ending at 1430 when I headed off to my ComfortCare appointment. Slow traffic was slow going into and through DC; I'm not sure that taking 395 up to New York Avenue and over to US 50 was any better than the usual slip & twist on South Capitol Street to the Anacostia Freeway, but it got me there only 5 minutes late. This was good, since I'd forgotten my cell phone and couldn't call ahead. :(
Measurements didn't take much time; by 1630 I was headed south on Riva Road looking for Central Avenue. Followed that east to 301 and since that didn't look nearly as fubared as the last time I'd seen it, I decided to head down that way and see if I could surprise a friend of mine who lives in the Surrattsville/Clinton area. Unfortunately it's been a few years since I'd been to his place, and his neighborhood looks to have had a lot of changes with streets added, houses torn down for a watershed reclamation project, etc. In the end I wrote the attempt off as fail and went home via the Woodrow Wilson, which like 301 was mercifully unclogged.

Going to have a light dinner and go to bed early; tomorrow is payday, with all the fun that entails.

Currently reading: Bruce Catton, Grant Moves South.

Actually I just need to cut back on the Cowzilla use when I get home, considering that I spend most of my day either bashing the keyboard and scribbling with a pencil in ledgers. It's not like I really need to get anything done online in a hurry, or keep up to date on the elections. As usual, it's a lot easier to find out what's going on in the race that affects me the least (The Promised One, Lord Obamessiah {PBUH} v. Some Old Dude Who Was In Vietnam Not Named Kerry) than what's happening in my congressional district or even the race to replace John Warner in the Senate.

Stopped at Harris Teeter to pick up some yogurt and wound up with a pound of sliced roast beast, horseradish sauce for same, grapes, Fig Newtons, (which were BOGO) and some Crystal Light, which was buy one get two free. So now I have something to moderate my Diet Coke intake besides water, ehich gets kind of old after a while.

Got the blood testing and insulin injection schedule squared away today - I need to stick my fingers 4x daily and theoretically could wind up injecting three times a day. Weehu. Feel my (lack of) enthusiasm...maybe I should stop looking when I do the injections. Tomorrow it's off to Annapolis after work so I can get measured for the CircAids like I was supposed to the first time. Should be an interesting drive if we get the thunderstorms the weathermen are promising for tomorrow.

( EVE stuff )
Senior controller was busy with the stuff that came from the auditor, so he didn't have me do much for him except fill out some USPS forms and write up ledger entries which I'll probably be entering tomorrow. Which is to say work was kinda slow.

Leg continues to improve; it appears to be drying up since the amount of drainage into the surgical sponges has dropped off a cliff since I started the Omnicef. w00t.

New hope for the Ryugong?

Renegade parents and teachers fight back against "fuzzy math". Good on 'em, I say. (Joanne Jacobs) Also via Joanne, the WSJ says a college degree isn't always a ticket to success. Big surprise there, eh, Loyal Readers?

New York Times caught with its nose up Obama's ass again. Wow, big surprise there. (Ace. along with just about everyone else in the world)

Coyote explains the Democrats' dilemma on drilling, and also has a post about why wind and solar alone aren't up to the job of replacing coal and oil. As if that weren't enough, he points us to (via John Scalzi's blog) a new Scalzi short story in the universe of Old Man's War and a new Charles Stross short that's sort of a sequel to the awesome Atrocity Archives. Both of these are up at the new tor.com site, which looks every bit as nice as Scalzi says it does.

Speaking of the Tor site, did you realize that there's a port of Civ for the Nintendo DS? Apparently it kinda sucks, though. Think I'll stick to Civ III on my desktop and laptop.

Time: This afternoon about 5 PM
Place: Kingstowne Sunoco, right down the street from the Wal-mart

This particular Sunoco station tends to play music over the speakers when they're not telling people to pay before they pump, and on this particular day they were playing some Old School R&B. I come out of the station to pump my gas, and there's this dude at one of the pumps who could pass for Matt Hoffman's twin brother. He's just singing along to the music, which is no big deal, but as I finish pumping in my $30 "Shout" comes on - and he goes nuts. Not only is he singing at the top of his lungs, he's doing a full-tilt dance number over there. On the other side of the island from me, there's a young black dude watching this with a disbelieving "WTF?" smile. I lean over and call out the passenger window to him, "I sho' do like to watch them sing and dance." Dude cracks up, and I drive off.
Mission accomplished. :D

Didn't realize that Doctor Horrible was only going to be available for a limited time, and so missed Part III by not watching it yesterday. Meh. I'll be buying the DVD when it comes out anyway, and in the meantime I can cultivate patience.

Found enough change in my pants and the quarter cup to do a full laundry run, so I did both baskets and got it over with.
Aside from that, internet spaceships and experimenting with the bread robot (cinnamon-honey oat bread, which for some reason finished with a hole in the middle, wtf?) it was a pretty slow day.
( EVE stuff )
The Frank Miller graphic novels are pretty much what I expected after seeing the movie. I'll have to check the catalog and see if they have more of Sin City in their collection.

( cut to spare those disinterested in EVE )

(h/t to onsenmark for the title)
Missed the bank, which is okay because I think I have enough quarters to do the required laundry anyway, and there's always tomorrow.
Hit Borders to take advantage of a 30% coupon, which was used on Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols, which I've been faunching after since seeing Greg Gutfeld's interview with Johnny Rotten in Vegas. Features a country version of "Pretty Vacant", which justifies the bandwidth all by itself. (Look for "Viva Las Vegas" in the Video section.) Also picked up a Case Logic CD case that will allow me to carry more mix CDs in the truck, which is good because I've pretty much memorized the ones I have.

Returned books to library, checked out two graphic novels by Frank Miller (The Hard Goodbye and The Big Fat Kill) along with the last Turtledove American Civil Wars novel, In At The Death. I don't expect it to be very good, but I want some closure, dammit. Also picked up Hot Rocks by the Stones, which ought to fill my remaining Stones needs; TMBG's Flood, which became increasingly annoying as it went on; the soundtrack from O Brother Where Art Thou?, which was too scratched to play; and Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. The opening cut on that one still makes me feel the way I did when I first heard it back in junior high school. Brrr.

Got meds from Kaiser, chikuns from Popeye, and then went home.

This time for Firefly.
( Who do you say that I am? )
Ganked from Snarkybytes, which got Instalanched for this post on Project Orion - the real one, not the not-so-cheap and crappy substitute NASA is trying to palm off these days.

Went out to Fairfax last night and met up with P for dinner at Moby's, which I won't be doing again soon since two hours later my blood sugar was still over three hundred. Holy crap. I blame the rice. Six units of insulin and eleven hours of sleep later, blood sugar is down to tolerable levels (i.e. not requiring a fresh hole in my torso) but still not great.

So: make a deposit at Suntrust, pick up drugs at Kaiser, drop off books at library, throw out more garbage. And watch part III of Dr. Horrible after everything else, because it is SO COOL. Except for Wonder Woman, is there anything Joss Whedon does that isn't awesome?

Is it still TV if it's only on the internets?

Test results came back from the wound culture yesterday, and after much e-mailing back and forth about cost, location, timing, and other annoying intrusions into the wonderful world of medicine I turned thumbs down on the IV antibiotics and went with an oral antibiotic yclept Omnicef. I am told it will not make me break out in hives or die of anaphylactic shock, despite being a third-generation penicillin derivative; I'm going to pick up some Benadryl anyway. Just in case. The reason we're switching to the Omnicef is that, having killed off the Staphylococcus aureus from last time, the Cipro isn't making much headway against the remaining Pseudomonas and Streptococcus, and the Sulfameth is complete fail. Could have fooled me; the wound looks like it's getting better and there's a total absence of yellow crap in there. However, IANAD.

On a closely related topic, the therapist who I suffered three hours of hellish driving to reach a couple of weeks ago called to let me know that her choice of compression garment had been vetoed by Kaiser on grounds of cost. That, and it wasn't what they asked for anyway. So, since the measurements for the CircAid are different from what she took, I get to drive up to Annapolis again. Welp.

Well, actually, he doesn't, but he does explain why he doesn't do the USS Clueless thing any more. Post is very much worth reading, along with the comments which mostly revolve around the issue of alternative energy and why (Algore to the contrary) it's not going to have much impact on the US energy supply unless something unforeseen -like, say, a breakthrough in solar that makes it 500% more efficient- happens. I'm not holding my breath.
I stopped reading den Beste's new site Chizumatic some time ago since his taste in anime is different enough from mine that the reviews were becoming annoying.

Worthwhile links for those short on time:
Den Beste's original post on alternative energy and its problems.
Neo-neocon discusses the Pickens Plan, WRT the above post.
Why putting an assload of solar cells on your roof won't get you free from the power company. (Select "Electric Bill Too High" under "Reference Material".)

Finished my filing, posted & disbursed yesterday's manual checks, did up the daily bank reports and ran tapes on today's Portsmouth deposits. So I'm outta here, all the more so since I don't much care for Sean Hannity and have no other reason to hang around the office.

It's 93 degrees out, 44% humidity, dewpoint of 68. That's nothing.
Windows stay down, a/c in the Sportage stays off. . :)

Slept very well last night, had good sugar this morning, and had enough time to pack lunch. Which is good, since the heat is supposed to be on this morning and the humidity with it. Unfortunately, I completely forgot my meds this morning. Well, since there's not much to do around the office today (since the senior controller is out and the boss is on the road to Portsmouth) I may just take off early and have a late lunch at home.

In other news, the spinach egg & cheese thing we used to do a lot in Minnesota also works well with chopped broccoli, although admittedly it's a lot harder to stir the eggs into the broccoli than the spinach. I should probably be eating more stuff like this and fewer sandwiches/hot dogs.