I will double that. Many people refuse to take anything to their detriment and possibly to the detriment of everyone around them. So what if you waited, you’re doing the right thing now, so good for you. 
Hotdogs can be a blessing or a curse. A good hotdog that I like is a Sabrett… but everyone likes a different brand. Buy the brands you know ( and know you like ). Hotdogs are one of those things which can really suck if you get the wrong cheap brand.
Newsome Wins!
Fuck You, GQP…!
( I now return you to your previously written thread… )
Congrats California! I was starting to worry for y’all.
A big “WHEW!” from the entire country.
WTF, Patagonia?
I bought a Patagonia summer hoodie that was advertised as SPF 50+. It was expensive, but it’s nice not having to slather on my SPF75 all the time. I have vitiligo, so I need protection. Then I got an email from them:
We recently discovered that customers who bought certain styles from the Capilene® Cool Daily or Tropic Comfort product lines at REI may have purchased products that did not meet the 50+ UPF (Ultraviolet Protection Factor) rating that we claimed for them. We’ve pulled our existing inventory and halted the distribution of the affected styles until we can fix the problem. Our tests confirm these products have a range of 17–45 UPF instead of 50+, averaging 34 UPF. If you own one of these styles, please know: Even at 17 UPF, the products block 92% of the sun’s ultraviolet rays. They still offer solid UV protection. It’s just not as much as advertised.
You’re free to keep using your product, but if you’d like to make a return, click the link below to get started.
Disappointed.
Got up super-early this morning to make sure I had the garbage set out by 7:00 AM. I don’t like setting it out the night before in case animals get into it, which happened once and made a minor mess.
So I take it out and there’s some fucking asshole parked too close to my driveway entrance again. I set out the garbage can in its usual location, and it sort of crossed my mind that the fucking asshole’s car pretty much blocked the garbage from being seen from the road.
I should have paid more attention to my instincts and set it out in the middle of the driveway, because the lazy inattentive bastards missed it. Got my neighbour’s, but not mine.
I called the city and they made conciliatory noises and said to leave it out and they will notify the contractors and call me back. But I know exactly what will happen: nothing. It will have to come back to the garage and sit there reeking and rotting until the next scheduled pickup. I’ve been vaccinated against COVID but not against the bubonic plague, FFS.
Alternatively, I could take it to city hall, the place that collects my exorbitant property taxes, and dump it on their front lawn.
Yuck. The one positive about my business is the dumpster. Every morning when I leave for work, I do a quick check on garbage in the kitchen, basement, garage, and barn. Any that are close to full or the least bit smelly get taken to work with me.
I totally missed an opportunity at the car rental return. I dropped it off, the rep asked about our experience. I said fine but the car smelled like cigarettes. He said I’d like you to be completely satisfied is there anything I can do? Sure 
I said how about a small refund? He said if I deducted $50 off your rental would you be satisfied? Wow yeah that’d be great! As he adjusted the bill on his handheld he asked 3-4 more times will you be completely satisfied, I want to make sure you’re completely happy.
So there I was reverse bargaining against my own interests, I was getting a clue by 4 from him to keep negotiating down my bill and I was standing my ground saying yes I’m happy! Fuck me I should’ve started with how bout a free rental, or even $100 bucks off. Instead I take the first offer and failed to counter after he wanted to make sure it was satisfactory. It was so weird!
I had open-heart surgery nine years ago. In addition to quadruple bypass, they replaced my aortic valve with a bovine (cow) valve. These valves are supposed to last 10-15 years. Mine has already acquired a murmur.
So I saw my cardiologist yesterday, and he prescribed wearing a Holter monitor for 24 hours. So I wore it, and now it’s off. I have to return it to my cardiologist by UPS, then await the results.
Time will tell when or whether I’ll need another surgery. Now they can replace an aortic valve in a less invasive manner, pioneered by the very hospital I go to.
On July 15th I woke up in pain from my lower back to my right toes. I managed to hold off going to an ER until Monday when I could go to my normal clinic and was diagnosed with sciatica. My PA (physician assistant) immediately set me up with Physical Therapy and a prescription for gabapentin (which didn’t do anything for me). DH took me the first day because I could not drive plus I was afraid I would fall.
I did the exercises, loved the Tens Unit enough to buy one for myself, bought a cane and really liked the “I’m going to pull your leg now”. But after 13 visits I was really tired of being in pain. The acupuncture and cupping were ok as in they didn’t hurt but didn’t really seem to help much.
So I called up my PA and she went about getting me into a Pain Clinic. It took them a week to call me back to set up a visit. Oh, excuse me, “Initial Consultation”. Uggh! It’s not like there are many options: steroid shot to the affected area or surgery. Oh, and the appt. has been set for Sept. 30th. Who knows when I’ll get the shot and, fingers crossed, if it will actually work.
Sciatica sucks. So, so much. I had it so bad that I couldn’t lift my foot and had to drag it like a zombie. I couldn’t even use a cane until I got a cortisone shot. Physical therapy and time were the only things that got it worked out. It still comes up now and then but hasn’t crippled me again (yet).
Well of course. Brushing you with a magic feather or rubbing a healing crystal also don’t hurt and are equally effective. When you have a medical problem it’s usually best to treat it with medicine rather than fantasy.
The effects of acupuncture on the brain and body and how best to measure them are only beginning to be understood. Current evidence suggests that many factors—like expectation and belief—that are unrelated to acupuncture needling may play important roles in the beneficial effects of acupuncture on pain.
In general, the effectiveness of standard treatment (medication and injectable therapies) is supported by much stronger scientific evidence than acupuncture, including large clinical trials with thousands of subjects. For those averse to medications, physical therapy is a great alternative — one based on actual human anatomy and scientific principles. My patients often complain that they do not feel significantly better after the five to 10 sessions of physical therapy that insurance companies typically approve. I advise them that the true benefit of physical therapy comes when the stretching and strengthening routines taught by the therapist are continued at home on a long-term basis.
There’s at least some data suggesting that acupuncture may have some real effect on pain treatment, but it’s not conclusive. Relief is often short-lived and it’s not certain how much of the relief is due to any real physical change or if the patient feels better because they expected to feel better.
Cupping, on the other hand, is straight up woo. There is far less evidence for its effectiveness than even acupuncture.
There just aren’t any high-quality studies available to show that cupping does anything. It’s a waste of time.
I didn’t mind the cupping (basically a hickey on my butt) because after the cupping came the deep tissue massage! The acupuncture was only did once and I just shrugged and said it didn’t do anything so was never offered it again.
It would have been nice if my PA had prescribed some muscle relaxers. I’ve been self-prescribing lots of booze.
As long as you don’t overdo it that can help. I speak from experience. It can help relax your muscles which goes a long way toward relieving that pain.
I really do feel for you though. I’ve had really bad kidney stones and my sciatica was even worse than that.
It’s just straight up bruising the victim, er patient.
Funny, similar issue for me recently. My next door neighbor’s adult son has been staying ( living? ) there for the past month or so, and so as to not block his mother’s car from exiting early, parks his SUV on the street in front of the right side of my lawn…right where I’ve always placed my roll-out trash and recycling containers on pickup day. It’s not that the collectors can’t see the container, but they can’t access it via their robotic pickup jaws on their truck, due to said SUVs interference.
Next time I see her I’ll ask that she has him park his SUV on the other side of their driveway ( and in front of their yard ).
So after my lumpectomy surgery , by boob filled with fluid. It became huge. Surgeon drained it, happened again. I don’t know how women with large breasts handle it.
Are you in a position where you can experiment with marijuana? From my experience, it does not stop pain. It does relax me and can make it so I don’t care how much I’m hurting, but that doesn’t mean it is stopping the pain. It just means I don’t care. Some of the hybrids are strong enough to put me right to sleep, which helps as well.
Our across the street neighbor bought a new car. Now they have a car they don’t drive, but runs and they needed to park it out of the way. They backed up against the house, on their property instead of leaving it out on the street. All is good and proper, right? NO! It’s parked at just the right angle for the sun to reflect off the windshield and blind me for an hour every morning. I can’t really pit the neighbors for this because I know that all I need to do is tell them the issue and they will move their car right away, the issue is that they are working when the sun is bothering me and then the sun moves so I forget about it when I see that they are home.
There’s a big animal rescue in my area whose strength is very much in sensationalizing and exaggerating every story and going for publicity over real good work. You know- the sort where every sweet pit bull they take is a “rescued bait dog” even if there’s zero evidence to suggest that they were ever anything other than a pet. It works for them, of course, even if it’s often really dishonest. Their thing today is a hoarder house complete with video of the house and a screed about how heartbreaking and disgusting it is.
Thing is, the people who surrender their animals to you are people too. Some of them, yes, are assholes and idiots who should never have had an animal in the first place. And some are people in a tough situation out of their control who are making a heartbreaking decision in order to keep their beloved best friend safe. And most of them are some combination of those.
Hoarders, though, are delicate. Hoarder house rescues come with large numbers of animals at once who often need a lot of vet care, which is costly. And if you want to, you can really play up the story and people will eat it up and donate. The squalor. The neglect. The cockroaches and soiled furniture. Oh, how could anyone? Oh, I hate people! Oh, what a monster!
But it’s counterproductive if what you want is to be able to rescue hoarded or neglected animals or prevent it from happening in the first place. Because most of these people aren’t monsters. They’re not perfect and hoarding animals is indisputably a bad thing and it doesn’t happen without some bad decisions and irresponsible pet ownership, but for the most part, they’re overwhelmed. It’s more a lack of money, education, resources, social support, and so forth. The hoarders themselves are generally living in the same conditions as the animals, which should tell you it’s not something they do out of malice.
Anyway, the thing is, they don’t always realize it’s too much until it’s too much, you know? Especially if they weren’t in a great place to begin with and couldn’t really afford the first animal. And at that point, especially if they’re on social media, they know that if they call for help and allow rescuers into their houses and allow other people to see what’s been going on, they may end up with photos of their home all over the internet with a caption about how the heroic rescuers saved all these beautiful innocent animals from the torture of living with such a disgusting evil slob. Along with the accompanying comments about how they’re scum and they make people sick and how they should rot in Hell and how people are in tears just looking at the pictures.
So. You can either walk a delicate line, trying to raise donations for the animals you brought in while still having some compassion for and respecting the dignity and privacy of the owner and any other potential owners who might be hesitant to ask for help or allow someone to ask for help on their behalf… or you can stoke the flames for your own benefit, which will get you some sweet, sweet money and publicity. And encourage those hoarders to keep on hoarding until they die or until the house gets condemned. It makes a better story that way.
I don’t know how they stop handling it.
(I apologize for being a boor, that was uncouth of me, I couldn’t help it, and I sincerely sympathize with your plight, that seems very uncomfortable at the least.)
I was given Morphine the first time I had a kidney stone and that is exactly how I felt. I was still in agony but stopped caring.