Still alive, still taking horse pills. Starting to feel a little better and let Joelle coax me into leaving the house to go get Indian for dinner, which definitely opened up the sinuses. I’ll be back in the saddle again tomorrow, I hope.
You kids be cool.
Medium Cool – Kid’s Movies & Young Adult Fiction
Joy in FL
Glad you’re feeling better, John.
I appreciate your updates.
Miki
I can appreciate Gene Autry, but I adore Marty Robbins singing El Paso. https://youtu.be/7UVVS5-9HvA?si=dZwZdrBpM6nCa2hX
different-church-lady
You kids be cool? You kids be cool?!? WHAT THE HELL IS THIS LAME-ASS SHIT?!??
lowtechcyclist
I miss having a decent Indian restaurant somewhere nearby. There used to be one in what had been an old farmhouse in Prince Frederick, and it was excellent. But the house burned down (my WAG is that the electrical systems weren’t up to the load of a restaurant kitchen) and the proprietors didn’t have the energy to start over again.
CaseyL
It’s always good to see your updates, John! Glad you’re feeling better. Joelle is a tonic, and so is Indian food :)
Have you two crazy kids formally tied the knot yet? You refer to each other in spousal terms, but I don’t remember hearing about an actual ceremony. I could definitely see you deciding to just do the common-law marriage thing.
I hung some blackout curtains in my bedroom today – way overdue – only to discover that I didn’t check the curtain’s measurements carefully enough and I need a third panel. Sigh.
Villago Delenda Est
Indian food? Be specific, please! We’ve got several good Indian joints in Tracktown, although one does (grab your fainting couch) offer beef as a protein option in some of their otherwise pretty Indian fare.
NotMax
Did someone say cool?
“Danger is my business.”
;)
BigJimSlade
You can stop taking the horse pills when you start to whinny and neigh.
MCat
John, good to hear that you’re feeling better. Those Indian spices will be help.
Lily
@Miki:
1980 Steve Martin, El Paso https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGNU5FkRz7g
(Tw: Hollywood-trained animals are used in this skit)
Sfinny
My sinuses are a mess, hope yours keep improving. Highly recommend spicy food to help.
Miki
@Lily: Bwahahaha!
Sure Lurkalot
I’m sure it’s nice to be with your lovies and have the menagerie of pets all together. If you’re feeling like I am, you’re trying to enjoy this 2 month interregnum for all it’s worth before the shitshow.
My SIL and I decided on a potluck “heavy hors d’oeuvre” Thanksgiving. I wanted to coordinate so we’d have a nice mix, so I sent a text telling them the small plates I was making and they responded…one is making gumbo and the other tikka masala.
PEEPS! THOSE ARE NOT HORS D’OEUVRES!
Should be interesting!
BlueGuitarist
Curtis Mayfield, Keep on Keeping On,
~ 3 minutes, 1972 Old Greg Whistle Test TV performance
“continue to live/For what you know is right…
keep on keeping on y’all”
https://youtu.be/rqK7Ck57nv0?si=gRpKre3p6YdPF81z
Geminid
The mentionn of horse pills reminded me of a recent late-night conversation here, about thick drinks that made big pills go down more easily. People mentioned apricot nectar, cream, yoghurt etc. I drank some V-8 today and realized it was thick enough to help a big pill go down easily.
Gretchen
@Sure Lurkalot: What are you making? We used to have appetizer night on Christmas Eve when all my kids were home, but haven’t done it since 3 of them moved away. But there will be three of them here this year, so we’ll be able to do it again! We always have deviled eggs, cucumber slices with smoked salmon and dill cream cheese, baby twice baked potatoes, cheese dip, meatballs. Looking for more ideas.
Since my kids were pretty fussy and mostly ate mac and cheese, I’m fascinated that one set of toddlers digs into the butter chicken and tikki masala, while the other loves Korean beef, but only if it’s mild. Accidentally ordered the medium once, and he complained that his teeth were hot.
danielx
@Sure Lurkalot:
Tell me you’re not complaining.
Trivia Man
@Miki: One of the great versions by the Grateful Dead –
https://youtu.be/bYeTm5srAzU?si=6ZAXI35RqfGBnETK
(Listen for Phil going wild on the bass)
rikyrah
Get better, Cole🤗
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@Gretchen: Parmesan Brussels sprouts: line a baking tray with parchment paper. Thickly scatter grated cheese and place parboiled halved Brussels sprouts on the cheese face down. Bake at 400 and you’ll have very cheesy Brussels sprouts that are best served with toothpicks because they are a bit greasy for finger food.
or just google Parmesan Brussels sprouts.
Jay
Chanterelle quiche tarts were always a big appy hit,
also tiny crabcakes.
Soonergrunt
John posted a few minutes ago, so I won’t big-foot him. I will say that I’m glad you’re on the mend, John, and take care of yourself. We don’t bounce back as quickly as we used to.
Also, I want to remind you all that the old firehose of bullshit that is intended to overwhelm you and push you to inaction and despondency is firing up again, but you don’t have to let that happen to you.
There are local races all across the country every year, and we have midterm elections in less than two years. There are people who need help today, and many of you have the ability to help those people in ways big and small. Find a way to be a helper.
The best day to do great things was yesterday.
The next best day to do great things was today.
The next next best day to do great things is tomorrow.
Don’t surrender to despair. Get up, and get to work.
Gretchen
@Soonergrunt: Postcards to Voters is doing a campaign for a Supreme Court opening in Mississippi.
Yutsano
@Gretchen: Ooh interesting. I doubt it’ll tip the make-up of the court, but at least the Democrats should make a run of it. If Kentucky can go majority Democratic maybe we should try Mississippi.
Sure Lurkalot
@Gretchen: little spinach pies (store bought), smoked salmon tartare on chips, spiced nuts, probably assorted veg/relish tray with dip (I was planning buffalo turkey meatballs with blue cheese before the crew said they were making stews with meat, so I’m still looking for meatless recipes). I’m also doing a cranberry gin fizz cocktail and I ordered a yummy maple pecan cake from a Paris Baguette bakery close by.
No one in this group of family particularly likes turkey and then there’s the other issues spread amongst us: don’t like lamb, don’t eat seafood, can’t do cheesy, hate onions or olives or peppers or spicy…arrrgggghhhh!
So we’re having snacks and drinks.
Gretchen
@Sure Lurkalot: I can relate: we have some gluten intolerant, some lactose intolerant (not the same people), a vegetarian, and someone who oddly hates potatoes. So there’s nothing to make that everyone will like, but a range of appetizers can get everyone something they’d like.
Trader Joe’s has a good selection of frozen appetizers that everyone likes, but they tend not to be gluten free.
The cranberry cocktail sounds good.
Jackie
@Soonergrunt: Sooner, thanks for your reminder elections are basically ongoing and we need to pull ourselves together, keep going, and never give up!
It’s so good to see you here, again! I was a lurker when you posted regularly, but I always enjoyed your even-keeledness – if that makes sense.😊
hitchhiker
I haven’t given up. I just needed a minute. Despair and exhaustion aren’t in the picture.
Unlike so many of you, I live in a place that could hardly be bluer. When I looked – finally – at the vote in my little precinct, it was 825 to 103 for Harris. And honestly, I have never seen anything to clue me about who those 103 people might be.
They lay pretty low, for obvious reasons.
And that means I only experience the whole America Is Polarized and Divided thing through various filters and media. In my calm, peaceful corner of the country, America is not polarized or divided. It’s gentle and friendly. You expect to like the people you run across every day, and you’re not disappointed.
But I have been disappointed, frightened, and livid at the idea that the very best we can hope for now is something like not too much damage done while we get through this. We had a great shot at so much better than that, and it’s gone. And the worst that can happen is unthinkably bad — like, we may not recognize ourselves when we get through this.
That’s a possibility. So no, I’m not giving up.
JaySinWA
Horse pills? My god, the Ivermectin posse has captured John.
Kelly
Is there an FDA standard for how big a pill can be? Seems like there should be and the standard should be a bit smaller. I’ve had prescriptions where I saved a high percentage of the price buying large pills and I cut them in half. That is just weird.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@hitchhiker: I think my precinct is bluer than yours, at 596 votes for Harris, 26 for Trump, 11 for other. Of course, my neighborhood is in indigo blue NYC
But yeah, most of this country is all one or the other. And I appreciate your refusal to give up. I’m trying not to as well.
Redshift
Horse pills today, back in the saddle tomorrow, hmmm…
Puts me in mind of something like “some days you’re the rider, some days you’re the horse.”
Kelly
@hitchhiker: My precinct in rural Oregon east of Salem went 74% Trump in 2016, 70% in 2020, 71% this year. I grew up here, earned my degree in Eugene, worked my career in the Portland metro, returned to retire in my old home rivers and forests. I was near enough all my to stay in touch but only after Trump did I realize how many of my high school friends are lunatics.
ArchTeryx
@Trivia Man: To continue from dead thread downstairs…
There were a LOT of things I liked, as an older adult and writer, about the Bartimaeus series.
– Barty started as a comic “Villain Protagonist” but Heel-Face-Turned through the series.
– He wasn’t just tooting his own horn, he was an entire orchestra. He could out-ham BRIAN BLESSED!
– Despite this, he was made a chump on a very regular basis. Dark humour was the very essence of the series.
– Stroud wasn’t afraid to go dark. VERY dark. Spirits routinely ate one another because they were, in fact, all one consciousness, and summoning them involved attaching a name to some piece of The Other Place and dragging it to the material plane. Once here they gained individual identities.
– But spirits that got loose or were given hit contracts… they preferred to dispatch their human victims by eating them, too. It was never made explicit what happened to humans eaten by spirits, but the screams did not inspire confidence. Some magickian traps and wards were even nastier; the Amulet of Samarkand and Gladstone’s Staff were two artifacts protected by wards that basically ate you like a nanobot swarm.
My favorite arc had to be the Bartimaeus and Ptolemy one. Ptolemy, contemporary of Pythagoreas and one of the librarians of Alexandria in this universe, summoned Barty like all magickians summoned spirits. But he didn’t BIND Barty very tightly – only enough to protect himself. He never used punishment spells. All he wanted to do was pick Barty’s brain, and in return, Bartimaeus was free to come and go as he pleased, to do things he never could do before, to live life on the material plane to the fullest, and go back whenever he needed to. At one time, he even took Ptolemy somewhere no man had gone before – to The Other Place.
He became quite enamoured of Ptolemy and eventually volunteered to be his bodyguard. To the present day of the novels, he wears Ptolemy’s form, for a reason I won’t reveal here.
Soonergrunt
@Jackie: Thank you!
Kayla Rudbek
@Kelly: I swear that the FDA regulations on size and content of pills are all written by a bunch of young white able-bodied macho dude meathead pharmabros who don’t have anyone in their families who are lactose intolerant or have any difficulty with swallowing. Food Allergies, Food Intolerances, and Swallowing Disorders 101 will be the follow-on course to the physical disability simulator course if I ever wind up in a job where I can set a STEM curriculum or work with an invention incubator program.
Jay
@Kayla Rudbek:
Once RFK Jr. get confirmed, all pills will either be suppositories, or instead of pills, it will be fecal transplants.
Chetan Murthy
@Kayla Rudbek: “young white able-bodied macho dude”
Well, as they say, that -is- the modal human body; all the rest of us are just deviations from the norm. We’re not male enough, not white enough, not young enough, not able-bodied enough, not healthy enough. We’re just not the norm.
ETA: re-reading that, I can see that my sarcasm isn’t coming thru. I remember reading that statement about “modal human body” in an article about the incredible lack of knowledge of the nervous system in and around the female vulva. Doctors would go in and cut and just destroy nervous infrastructure there thru pure ignorance. B/c nobody thought it was of critical importance to study it. Just amazing, given that we’re talking about critical organs of half the human race.
Kelly
@Kayla Rudbek: I have read many times that male college students are the main population drugs are tested with. They are sturdy and have the time but that does mean drug effects on women, elderly and children are kind of an estimate.
Kayla Rudbek
@Kelly: I think that they didn’t start including women in most drug trials until this century (and they probably only did birth control pill testing on women because they absolutely had to)
@Chetan Murthy: no problem, I could detect your sarcasm as soon as I read your first line. I think that this long-standing culture having so much funding for STEM coming from the military has created a huge problem in terms of sexism, ageism, and ableism that most people aren’t aware of.
Silicon Valley is also steeped in this as well; can’t change your initial username in too many employers’ computer systems, can’t get hired unless you’re under 40 and willing to work insane hours per week, the gender and race gaps in invention and VC funding lose the US economy about a trillion dollars per year https://inventtogether.org/facts/
And Leon Husk and Peter Thiel are the poster boys for everything wrong with Silicon Valley, and also the concept of computer technology being more important than biotech for the survival of humanity. Fucking nimrods have no clue that “all true wealth is biological” and that clean water and clean air and safe food are wealth, and gold is merely money. (Lois McMaster Bujold and Spider Robinson or Eric Flint, respectively).
NotMax
@Jay
SSDD.
//
NotMax
“”Rapid unscheduled disassembly” is not a plan.
NotMax
#42 – wrong thread.
JaySinWA
@NotMax: It seems like an evergreen post to me.
Joelle
New India Gate in Chandler, AZ. https://www.azindiagate.com/ My fav for India in the valley. The fella who owns/runs the place is just a lovely human being who loves what he does. He brought us out some masala curry just because they just made it and it turned out so perfectly he wanted us to have some. It was spectacular. We both had the lamb curry with peas, veg samosa, and this garlic shrimp appetizer that I gave JG some shit about ordering and ended up literally eating my words and having to tell him he is right and I stand corrected now please stop gloating long enough to scoop up and transport more of that garlic fragrant shrimp and veggies onto my plate now.