Deviated September (Monthly Mini-Rants)

The BBQ Pit
341

I frequently order stuff from Amazon and I love their delivery service – it arrives when they say it will, and they just leave it on the front porch. All an Olde Fart like me has to do is take a few steps to pick it up. But for the first time in years, my current order says that it was shipped by Canada Post (expedited parcel service). It was as if we had gone through a time warp and were now back to 2010!

WTF? The Amazon deliveries here seem to have been by third-party contractors and not actual Amazon trucks, so I assume that some contract was discontinued for some reason. What a PITA!

Due to the Sacred Rites sworn by the post office, Canada Post will never leave a package on the porch. If a signature is required, they’ll ring the doorbell and if no one is home the thing goes to the nearest post office. If no sig is required, they’ll put it in the community mailbox which is half a block away. In case it’s not obvious, half a block is a lot farther than my front porch, and will be a PITA in the winter.

I hope this change is just temporary. But Amazon being the inter-galactic entity that it is, it will be impossible to find out until I see what happens with my next order. I wonder if this might have something to do with Amazon incessantly pushing Prime (which I don’t have)?

342

We’re in the middle of a two week UK vacation and my wife has run out of one of her prescription meds. She thought she packed more than she did, but she was kind of careless when she packed and she just dumped all of her meds in a snack-size zipper bag (as opposed to me, who carefully counted out everything I was going to need for the trip and put them in old prescription bottles so I knew what I had). So anyway we’re spending our last day in Glasgow trying to get ahold of a doctor on the non-emergency NHS number so they can call in a prescription to a nearby pharmacy, rather than doing shopping and museums and fun stuff.

343

Years ago I lived in Panamá for 3 years w USAF. I had little Spanish when I started down there. Eventually I got better, but it’s since atrophied. Sigh. Anyhow, listening to local FM radio was a similar trip. I liked the local music, and most of the ads were 100% “blablabla” to me. Streaming was decades in the future, so the choice was local entertainment, or no entertainment.

Now and again a familiar American tradename would come through pronounced all Spanish-style. I can still remember them saying “Casa del Whopper”. But Whopper sounded more like Woper. Think “wiper” but with a long O sound and a little h slipped in between the W & o. Kinda fun.


FYI you can buy fresh clean prescription bottles in a dizzying array of sizes for next to nothing on Amazon. Here’s one example among dozens: Amazon.com: Plastic Medicine Pill Bottles.

Having traveled for work for decades I found making up each day’s pills in a suitably-sized bottle was the easiest and least error-prone way. Gone 5 nights? Make up 5 bottles. To me that worked better than e.g. 1 bottle of pill As, one bottle of pill Bs, etc., once your daily pill count got above 3 or 4.

I started out as you did, using old bottles. But once old turned into old and ratty, I switched to buying unused ones. IME they’re good for about 5 years of hard use before they’re getting gross. My current set may last the rest of my traveling life, but I doubt it.

As my related rant: Sadly the other thing that changes over time is how many pills you eat per day. Which means the compact bottles that used to hold 1 or even 2 days’ pills now do not. We’re gonna need a bigger bottle! Sigh.

344

It is of course the algorithm, which means no one knows why. Every now and again, I get ads in Spanish (I’m in the middle of the US). I got a gentleman’s “C” in three semesters of college Spanish 45 years ago, but that is the last time I made any serious attempt at the language.

345

At Planet Fitness this morning, there was a naked guy standing in front of a mirror, shaving his balls with one of those personal groomer tools. He was really getting into it too. I averted my eyes before hysterical blindness set in, but couldn’t avoid the sound of the groomer as it labored through those pubes while I retrieved my bag from the locker and got the hell out of there.

346

I was up way too fucking late last night, I just had a lot of anxiety and was simultaneously deep into a novel I ended up reading to the end. I dunno where the anxiety is coming from because this week is going to be the easiest week I’ve had in months (knock on wood.)

Something is just giving me the heebie jeebies. I had to get up in the middle of the night for a snack. Then I was wired all night. This morning I was nervous getting into my car which was parked in my locked garage so what the hell was I worried about?

Just sleep-deprivation nerves? Reality collapsing in on itself? (It was a trippy book.)

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do before bed if not read, but damn it, the books I’m reading are just too interesting. I need reading material that is mildly interesting.

I decided I don’t want to die young so I’m trying to figure out what that means. Today it means a grilled chicken sandwich instead of a burger. And I took an extra trip up and down the stairs before I left the house today. It’s sad that this is progress, but we start where we start.

347

Thanks for all your sleuthing. We got the generic and it was cheaper than my own meds, so we lucked out I guess. I think the copay was $15.

He’s doing well so far on the meds, too. Still very much himself but also much harder to upset. I was feeling tense this weekend and we were playing chess (his favorite thing right now) and he would not stop goofing around, so I was finally like, “I can’t do this right now” and left the game. This would ordinarily cause him to lose his fucking mind, but it seemed like barely a blip on his radar.

I guess I really have been feeling tense all weekend. What gives? I just landed a major grant, and I don’t have any pressing deadlines this week. There’s no good reason for me to be this high-strung.

348

There’s a good reason, you haven’t been out of its grips enough to get clarity on what it is. Hang in there.

349

My YouTube ads are still in English, but a lot of them have closed-captioning in Arabic lately.

350

Me too, have to constantly change them back to English - not just the ads, but the video closed captions as well.

351

Replace YouTube with Apple Podcasts. And replace French with French, German, and Italian.

I used to get ads from the U.S. Which are mostly useless to me. Now I’m getting Shopify ads in French, German, and Italian. I’m listening to a podcast from the UK, my Apple account is set to American English, and I only understand German. I will soon be able to recite the Shopify ads in 3 different languages.

352

Following up on my previous post. What a frustrating day. The pharmacist we talked to this morning told us to call 111 to talk to a doctor who could send a prescription to the pharmacy. They advised calling from a landline phone since 111 often doesn’t work from a non-UK mobile number. (My wife tried. It didn’t.) She tried calling several times from the front desk at the hotel, the phone would ring and ring, connect, she’d get a message about how busy they were, and the call would disconnect. Even if she wanted to wait on hold, she couldn’t.

Around noon she did some Google searches and AI told her there was a walk-in clinic of sorts nearby. So we walked over there, but they were closed. (Today is some sort of holiday in the UK) Then she decided to try to get an online appointment, jumped through a bunch of hoops to complete the request and got a teleconference with a doctor scheduled for 1:15.

She got on the zoom call, the doctor asked her a few questions, and told her that for them to call in a Rx for something she was already taking, they’d need a copy of her doctor’s Rx. So she fumbled around on her phone to go to her patient portal, couldn’t take a screenshot (blocked by the app) so I had to take a photo of her screen and send it to her so she could attach it to the chat, but we couldn’t get chat to send the attachment. Next thing we knew, her teleconference ended (or was cut off).

She tried to schedule another teleconference but was having trouble getting another one scheduled. Meanwhile housekeeping kept banging on our hotel room door every five minutes asking if they could clean the room. So we finally let them in and headed down to the lobby.

She was finally able to set something else up with another doctor’s office. They were supposed to call her at 4, so we went and got some lunch then came back. 4 o’clock rolls around, no call. About 4:30 she called them, finally got through to someone, they pulled up her information, asked her a couple of questions, and said a doctor would call her back.

So here we are an hour later (5:30), still no callback. We both seem to remember that the pharmacy closes at 6 (because of the holiday) so it’s starting to look like this isn’t going to happen. Tomorrow morning we are getting on a train to London to close out the week, and I’m guessing we’ll have to go through this all again once we get there.

353

I just had the same thing happen. I had ordered three pars of drawstring pants which were supposed to be delivered over the weekend. When they weren’t left on my porch I checked the Amazon tracking site and saw that they were delivered by the USPS and put in my mailbox. Knowing the probable size of the package it must completely fill the mailbox. With my mobility issues, going out to the curbside mailbox to pull out the package and bring it up my driveway and front steps to get it into the house is going to be a major PITA.

354

Hey coworker can you please stop helpfully saving important grant documents on my drive “for” me by creating entirely new folders for things that already have folders and completely ignoring the actual places where I put things? Please just send it directly to me and I’ll file it in the folder I already made when I submitted the grant, for the love of God.

355

Been there. Still been awake after dawn. No t-shirt. “I stayed up till stoopit o’clock, and all I got was this lousy tshirt!”

I’ve found audio “adult sleep stories” to be helpful. (Youuu-Tooob has a bunch. Stephen Dalton is my favorite, but there’s others.)

The “adult” part doesn’t mean sehxy, it just means less on the unicorn-fairy shit, and more on gentle flowers, and waterfalls.

They’re quiet audio about walking in a forest, or sipping tea by a fireplace on a rainy evening. One walks you through a slow amble to the post office, complete with a multi-minute, calm, loving description of the postmasters cardigan sweater. (“It’s verrry .. soft.”) Lots of calm, evocative language to help you visualize the breeze in tree leaves, the soothing crackle of a gentle fire, a warm blanket, etc.

356

Get yourself a copy of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. I don’t think I ever got past the first 15 pages of that book. Nothing put me to sleep faster.

357

Haha, I’ve read that one. I liked it but I wouldn’t do it twice.

Dickens is not a bad recommendation though.

358

So funny. I LOVED Bleak House, and when I read it a few years back it was often just before bed…until I realized I was making a BIG MISTAKE. No, I can’t put it down NOW, what’s going to happen next???

Funny how different books strike people in different ways.

359

LOL, I was pretty sure there would be at least one response like yours! I like Dickens, but for some reason, I just couldn’t get into that one. I should probably try again. If nothing else, I might get to sleep faster! :wink:

360

I read it in a context where I had to finish it, otherwise I would probably have DNF because I get distracted by other books really easily. But I was doing an editor certification thing, and we had to analyze three books, so I chose The Haunting of Hill House, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Bleak House. They were all good in their own way, though Jackson’s little book was the runaway favorite.

But yeah my history is full of half-read books. That might be why I have trouble knowing how to finish my own books. If I just read more endings…!