Hahahahahaha! You Should Have Seen The Look On What’s Left Of Your Face!

Guys, check this out. I put a fake gun in the middle of this here shelf full of real ones. When Stefan comes in, I’m gonna grab the wrong one and blow his fuckin’ face off by accident! It’s gonna be great! We’re all gonna laugh so hard! Except for Stefan, naturally. He’s not gonna have a face and will also be dead. But he’ll be smiling or whatever he can manage right along with us from wherever he goes, trust me.

A South Carolina gun store owner faces an involuntary manslaughter charge after police said he shot one of his employees in the face in an attempted prank.
Jon Whitley, who owns Coastal Firearms in the Wando area, was arrested Monday nearly a month after the death of Stefan Mrgan.

Authorities found Mrgan inside the store’s lobby with a gunshot wound to his lower face on Nov. 2, news outlets reported.
A police affidavit states that Whitley placed a replica Glock BB gun among real firearms in the store with the intent of pranking Mrgan. Instead, Whitley mistakenly picked up and fired a real gun at Mrgan, according to an incident report.

Why?

  1. Why is my iPhone suddenly obsessed with getting me to mute notifications, especially ones from apps and conversations I tend to look at more than not? And why does hitting the “not now” button cause nothing to happen? Oh, and when I say obsessed, I’m not joking. The damn thing literally just tried to get me to mute a missed call notification. Settle down, Apple.
  2. Why do online calendars allow you to double book yourself? I’ve watched Carin do this by accident a couple of times and she’s mentioned coworkers doing it. None of this makes any sense to me. You’re a computer. that seems like the exact thing you should have the capacity to prevent. Like how hard would it be to throw up a message saying “hey, you sure you want to do that? You already have something else in this spot.”?
  3. Why is checking your work or your assertions such a foreign concept anymore? If you tell us that forms are pre-filled with all of our information and all we have to do is sign and return them, for example, why are we discovering that this is not true? Perhaps that’s a question we can get answered when we return them and are forced to bother you to help us fill everything that was supposed to be filled out out.

    Or maybe you’ve taken out an advertisement that may one day run on a site as prestigious as the currently half broken Vomit Comet. Why would you pay decent money to tell us all about your business and then implore us to “Shop No”? Come on, man. Thirty seconds of editing is your friend.

Thought You’d Like To Know (A Place For Gill’s Smaller Health Updates)

Gill has another health update.

I haven’t had this experience firsthand, but I have watched someone close to me go through the you’re not in the book runaround and that’s plenty frustrating enough.

As always, best of luck with everything. Hang in there.

Here’s the latest frustrating detail on my health.

Yesterday I phoned my specialist to see when I would get my next CT scan, and found out much to my consternation that I am not even on the waiting list. Not only that, but they had not bothered to send the paperwork.

This morning I was woken up to my regular physician’s office calling to let me know that my appointment was canceled.  I called and sat on the phone for the better part of twenty minutes only to also find out that there were no appointments available.

Symptoms Update

As I mentioned in an article last fall, I’ve been losing weight.  Last summer size 12 was slightly, but not droopy drawers baggy on me, size 10 was comfortable.  I’m well aware that women have killed for this, but I am not one of them.  This last trip to my folks my mom and I went in to this neighborhood boutique, and size 10’s now borderline droopy drawers and 8 is comfortable.  Mind you I had not been size 8 since 11th grade, and that was 25 years ago.

My appetite has reduced a bit. No longer am I able to eat a super-sized portion, or even a larger than medium with out feeling like I’ll burst.

As for the pain, it comes and it goes.  The day before my last visit to my folks I felt like someone had taken a Louisville Slugger to my left kidney region, and had nursed the whole concept of going to the hospital.  I killed that notion, as I didn’t want hospital exhaustion when my sister and I were hanging out.  So I did what has seemed to work, I called a church elder, we prayed, I drank some tea, and went to bed early.

That’s all for now, but thank all of you for your prayers and thoughts.  God bless all of you.

Update:
Just received this, which sounds much more positive in a things moving somewhere sense.

Well, things have changed in 48 hours.  The doc phoned yesterday, and said he had some time to talk over the phone this morning.  I brought up my symptoms, and well, there’s a chance I may be going in a different direction.  He has agreed to get a fire lit under the specialist, but because of the pain and weight loss a consult with a general surgeon is also in the works.

Update 2:

Here’s an update on the health front.

Bad News

The reason for the delay in getting my CT paperwork going is the clinic switched from paper to digital at the start of this month.  Somehow my paperwork got lost in the shuffle.

Good News

My blood and urine tests came back normal.  They are fast tracking my CT scan because of the pain and weight loss.  I will be receiving a phone call next week.

Thank you all for praying for me.  Thank you also to Carin and Steve for putting up with my freak outs.

I’ve got it!  This Friday after much waiting and frustration I will finally have my long awaited CT scan.  It’s at nine-thirty, so I have to get up early, but it will be worth it.

Hey Again!

Well today I had my CT scan to look at the cyst on my adrenal gland.  What they typically do is put an intravenous in your arm, bring you in to a dark room, lay you on a table.  Then the techs take pictures with out contrast dye.  When you are on that long narrow table you’ll feel like your at the car wash because they pull you in to a smaller darker room.  When and if they need to put the contrast in they will put it right in your IV.  Luckily today they saw what they needed to see, so no contrast was required.

Thank You

Shout out to the staff at the diagnostic imaging center at the Hamilton General Hospital, the care I received was second to none.  Thank you to a good friend of my mom’s for being close enough to be of moral support.

On The Cyst Front

Great news, the cyst on my adrenal gland is benign.  Bad news, yours truly’s not the brightest stoplight on the block and forgot to ask why the pain and if it was growing.

Here’s Another Short Update.

My endocrinologist’s office called about an hour or so ago, and I have an appointment for Wednesday September 14.  So guess whose questions will be answered?

Hi readers!  I hope all is well with you.  Here’s a little news break on me.  I saw my endocrinologist today, and the cyst has not grown or shrank. As for the pain, it’s more abdominal than adrenal.  I also found out that a chest X-ray’s to be ordered as a small collection of fluid is on my right lung.  Suspect no. 1 for that is covid.  That’s all for now.

Doctors would rather have a field full of horses when they listen for the familiar hoof beats.  Zebras, though interesting, leave even the most seasoned medical professional curious.

Last night around six I got this excruciating pain all throughout my stomach.  Mind you, many tests I have taken have come back clear.  I ended up calling an ambulance around ten last night, and went to the hospital again.

Clear Tests

I spent the better part of four hours waiting on a physician only to have them tell me to return in the morning to get an ultrasound.  So that’s what I did.  Unfortunately I had to spend a majority of my Sunday in uncomfortable chairs waiting for what turned out to be clear ultrasound results.

Shout Out

Thank you to the paramedics, nurses, and doctors, not only for putting up with the likes of me, but doing what you do.

When I Said Call A Waaaaambulance, I Didn’t Mean Right Now

If you think the people who complain about Amber Alerts waking them up in the middle of the night because they can’t be bothered to mute their phones are total shitheels (they are, for the record) get a load of this guy. Man alive.

If you’re like me and can’t read the message in the tweeted photo, here’s what it says as best I can scan it.

Can you explain why you decided to fly at 1750 ft from St Mary’s Hospital to Southampton General Hospital at 4 am over residential properties – waking occupants. Inconsiderate i think, will NO longer be donating to your cause.

That’s right, buddy here is yelling at an air ambulance for being an air ambulance too loudly in his neighbourhood at the wrong time of night.

Luckily I have no pull with anyone who runs the air ambulance service, because if I did I would strongly consider using it to convince those people to write down his name, address and phone number and then helpfully provide him with a “you are calling outside of regular business hours” message should he ever need anything.

Seriously, fuck off, mate.

A resident who complained about being woken up by an air ambulance has been called “selfish” by social media users.
The unnamed person wrote to Hampshire and Isle of Wight Air Ambulance to ask it to “explain” why they had been flying at 04:00 in the morning.
Twitter users said they were “gobsmacked” at the complaint after the service shared a screenshot.
“It is not our intention to disrupt your evening, but rather save someone’s life,” the service said.

Negativity For Everyone!

Since Carin and I both mentioned testing positive for COVID, it only seems right to let you all know that we’ve both recently tested negative (her on Saturday, me on Wednesday). I would have known about mine sooner, but between trying to fend off a headache while she was testing and a couple days of some seriously out of hand allergies, I really didn’t feel like sticking that stupid thing in my nose for no good reason.

I’ll let Carin talk about her own experience in detail if she wants, but basically we each had a couple crap days, but came out the other end just fine. We talked about it, and agreed that while we certainly don’t recommend getting it, we’ve both had plenty of things over the years that had us feeling much worse than COVID did. Thank you, vaccines.

About Those Website Errors

If you’ve come here recently and experienced extreme slowness, gotten messages about critical WordPress errors or seen anything else that pretty well screams oof, that’s broken, yeah, we know about it. but just like a few years ago when similar things were happening, there’s not a lot we can do. Like then, these appear to be issues on the hosting level. Back then it took them performing upgrades to a bunch of machines to finally put things right. Hopefully things are simpler than that this time, but who knows. Anyway, if you do happen to get an error when you visit here, just refresh the page until it goes away. Irritating, but effective.

These issues are also extending to email. There have been delays for over a week now, and judging from the updates that have been coming and going on our host’s status page, they’ve been a struggle to sort out. So if you’ve sent something that would normally get a reply, hold on, send elsewhere if you know how or try sending to the Comet emails again. And if your problem is comment notifications gone missing, just check the site now and then assuming you can frigging get there.

You Have One Job

Another thing I can agree with Gill on. Every building I’ve lived in has been pretty terrible about this, and it doesn’t matter how long I’ve been there. I know employee turnover is part of the problem, but nothing turns this fast. I don’t even mind being forgotten about when I’m new. Things happen. But once I’ve been there for a little while and you’ve seen me around, there’s no good excuse short of an emergency where nobody gets any warning for you not to call and give me a heads-up about stuff like water and power outages. I should not have to find these things out by chance when a friend or some rando in the hall says “hey, did you know that X is happening next Tuesday? There’s a note on the wall about it.” I should also not have to discover that we need new keys for one of our main doors by getting locked outside with an armload of groceries only to be saved by some nice lady who couldn’t believe they didn’t bother to tell us this was happening. It’s kind of disrespectful, actually. As if somehow my blind people money isn’t as good as everybody else money and I’m not entitled to the same courtesy.

As an apartment dweller, I love the convenience of having people to fix stuff as needed.  I don’t have to pay an electrician or plumber, so more money stays with me.  The thing that really walks the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade over my final set of nerves, though, is the lack of warnings.  As someone rather anal about hygiene, I do not appreciate not being warned that the water’s going to be off, only to find out that “there was a note on the cork board” downstairs.  This is one time people forgetting I only have 3% vision annoys me.  Yesterday someone actually brought a slip of paper. Still useless to me, but less potato boiling because I can get it read and then get up and do what needs doing while there’s still time.

Lettuce Is Not A Sandwich Topping

I am very much in camp Gill on this issue. Lettuce does not belong on sandwiches. I’ve softened my stance on this slightly over the years, but finding lettuce on a sandwich, especially a cold sandwich, is just about the worst. I say just about the worst because tomatoes exist, and they are the actual worst. Even when you can pick them off, that gross raw tomato taste is still all over everything and it can be hard to choke down what is otherwise a perfectly good sandwich. Barfity barf barf, no thanks.

Sometimes I absolutely love going out for a sandwich or a good old fashioned burger.  Although no one BBQs a burger like my dad, some restaurants do it fairly well.  You probably are wondering why I’m even talking about this?  Wonder no more.

You Know What Boils My Potatoes?

I go to a restaurant and ask for a veggie burger, grilled chicken sandwich, or something of that nature.  I ask the server “for the love of all things good and holy, don’t put lettuce anywhere near that!”  Sometimes they may not hear it (restaurants and cafes are busy now that folks have gotten the message that vaccinations save lives), so sometimes, just sometimes, a great big chunk of “this isn’t how God intended!” winds up on my burger or sandwich.  My mom didn’t raise me without proper etiquette, so I pick it off as quietly and genteelly as I possibly can.

Fun Story

My mom, dad, sister and I were at that Red Door Pub two weeks ago when this exchange happened.
Sis- “why don’t you like lettuce on your sandwiches or burgers?”
Me- “God never meant for that to be that way.”
Sis (now laughing)- “but you eat salads?”
Me- “because that’s where lettuce belongs.  If God wanted lettuce to be anywhere close to sandwiches He wouldn’t have made it so soggy.”
Dad- “but salads are ok?”
Me- “that’s right.”

Question

What food sin annoys you the most?

Some Friendly Advice From Renowned Travel Expert…Me!

Unless someone important has died far away and left you with no choice, perhaps before you go on the news to bellyache about how long your passport application is taking to process thanks to the gigantic pandemic backlog and how you might have to cancel your trip because of it, consider not booking a trip before you have your passport in your hand. It will save you, and also me, a whole lot of irritation and frustration.

Note: I am not a renowned travel expert. I hate traveling. If I can avoid going as far as the next town, I will. I am merely someone who has been served rather well by making use of the thinking mechanism housed inside of his head.