Here are some new items mixed in with old items:
01. 2010: Solution to the monetary crisis: Even though the State of Missouri is having so many financial problems, they feel good that they have figured a way out of the situation. They will deduct $1 every week from their Governor's salary to invest in PowerBall, or whatever that Lottery is called. All money won will be used to pay down Missouri's debt.
02. 1998: Diabetes: CBS reports that an insulin inhaler is being developed. (Was it developed? I think that they already had the "pump" at that time.
03. 2010: Carotid clearance: A study has reported that a stent procedure to clear a clogged carotid artery works just as well as an operation. (Why didn't they tell me that two years ago!)
04. 2010: "Chips": In Britain, they are trying to develop a "chip" made out of meat. (Would that be a "potato chip" or a "chip" as in Britain's famous "fish and chips"?)
I wish I could find a place to eat true English fish and chips! You can get it back in New Bedford, Massachusetts, but I have not found the same thing anywhere in the Mid-Atlantic. The closest was at Arthur Treacher's Restaurant, but they closed down all of those places anywhere near where I live. I think there might be one left in Maryland somewhere, but I haven't found it yet.
05. 1998: WOW Chips: Speaking of "chips", in 1998 the FDA gave a "thumbs up" to Olestra. Products using it were supposed to be still high calorie, but have no fat grams. I tried some of them at the time and found that they did not like my digestion and haven't tried them since, knowingly. I guess you can still get Olestra products in the Super Market.
06. 2010: Mr. Toyoda: I have wondered why the head of the family-based car company doesn't have the same name as the car. I heard today, somewhere, that it is because the stroke for "T" is not as lucky as the stroke for "D" in Japanese ideograms, so it was changed.. (maybe they should have changed the stroke for the car name also, and they might not be having so many problems.)
Incidentally, I took my RAV4 in to the Toyota dealer for my 5,000 maintenance, and while I was there, they did the recall fix for the accelerator.
By the way, to graduate from a Japanese grammar school, a student must know 881 characters (ideograms). To graduate from High School, a student must know 1,850, and to read at a college level, a student must know 3,000.
All of these characters are built up from less than 300 elements or pictures. These pictures were drawn by the Chinese similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics. The Japanese borrowed these characters from the Chinese over 2,000 years ago.
07. 1998: Leo Buscaglia: One of my favorite people passed away on June 12, 1998. Leo Buscaglia was a California professor who taught a class in LOVE. In addition to his class, he gave televised lectures on the subject and wrote a number of books about love.
Luckily, I taped his presentations whenever I found them on TV. His whole life was built around letting people know what love was all about. At his lectures, everyone was hugged by him before they left. His death was a great loss to the world, in my opinion.
My cousin, Charlie, and his family live in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and attend a Baptist church there. The preacher, until a few years ago, was from Baltimore and had a Bethlehem Steel background. I visited the church a few times and the preacher always had a line waiting for him after the services. They were waiting to get a hug from him. What a great idea! I don't see or experience many hugs any more. Perhaps it is because of a fear of the flu. I have read that hugs are good medicine and buttress our immune systems.. maybe after the flu goes away, we can get back to hugging.
08. 2010: Cartalk definitions:
Lymph: To walk with a lisp.
MacAdam: The first Scotsman.
09. 1998: Airline crashes: Tom Snyder (Remember him? The 6'8" Late Late Show host .. replaced by 6'8" Conan O'Brien!) said that statistics showed that more people are killed by donkeys each year than are killed in airline crashes. (Let that be a lesson to you!)
10. 2010: Healthy flies: A college professor has developed a method for exercising fruit flies so they will be healthier for use in experiments.
Time flies like the wind,
Fruit flies like bananas.
11. 2010: Accident: It had to happen. Two police segways crashed into each other. (By the way, did you know that the first automobile accident in the U. S. occured in Baltimore?)
12. 2010: Vital statistics:
The most dangerous food in the U.S. is the hot dog. (Apparently, children choke on them, and scientists are trying to change their shape to make them safer.)
The laziest people in the world live in the United States. (Maybe that fruit fly professor should come up with an innovative way for everyone to exercise.)
Bonus
1998 and 2010: Words: Back in 1998, I read where no word rhymes with month, purple or orange. I have been trying since then to find words that did complete those rhymes. No luck, yet. Perhaps my long-lost brother Joe (if he is reading this) may have found some already since he is a noted word expert.
Can you find rhyming words for month, purple or orange?
Showing posts with label carotid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label carotid. Show all posts
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Friday, April 17, 2009
My Carotid is Clear and all's right with the World
On Wednesday, I had the carotid endarterectomy procedure and now my risk of stroke has diminished and I have more time to sit in my rocking chair and enjoy old age, or so I'm told.
Carotid endarterectomy is a procedure where plaque is removed from the major arteries in the neck area. That plaque sometimes causes the brain to get starved for nourishing blood and sometimes part of the plaque breaks off and causes a stroke. I was very nervous about having this done because there is some risk of stroke during the operation, and I definitely do not want to lose any of my brain faculties, such as they are.
Well, the procedure is done, and now my brain is getting more blood than it has been used to for some time. I'm anxious to see if my puzzle-solving ability is enhanced. Elaine seems to think that it might help me stop forgetting things, like names. I doubt it.
I had the operation done at Mercy Hospital in Baltimore. The people there are very solicitous and tried every way to make my life comfortable. My only complaint was with the breakfast on the morning after the operation. They advertised home fries, and scrambled eggs. Instead, I had two long slivers of shaved ham which was almost all fat. If you cut off the fat, you were left with only one inch of skinny meat. And the potatoes were kind of cool and uncooked. The coffee did not deserve the name. But, I didn't really expect much so I wasn't disappointed. At lunch time, the meal was much better.. barbeque chicken and vegetables.
At the hospital I had one experience that I wasn't prepared for. A young lady insisted on giving me a bath. She was from Capetown, South Africa and she was glad that someone was finally interested enough to talk to her about her home town, that she obviously was very homesick for.
I won't be able to shave for two weeks.. maybe I'll grow a beard. All I have right now for facial hair is a Wilfred Brimley mustache. My beard of a few years ago was supposed to make me look like Captain Ahab.. or at least, the Gregory Peck version. I like to think that I was a "trend-setter" in facial hair.. in high school when none of the other kids had sideburns, I did. Then when they began to grow them, I shaved mine off.
My son-in-law, John and Mat L.S. can both grow different types of facial hair very quickly. And Sam, the mayor of New Windsor can grow his annual Santa Claus beard very quickly also. There is a nice lady clerk in the area who has a luxuriant black mustache. I always have wondered what she would look like if she shaved it off.
My late wife and I were fans of the Alligator Man and the Monkey Lady. They were a nice married couple who traveled around in so-called Freak Shows. When he put on a suit, he covered up his alligator skin and nobody knew about it; however, she had a full beard and mustache that could not have been hidden. Maybe she used a mask when she went out.
XM Radio broadcast a 1950's Twilight Zone radio show that involved masks. A family was visiting the patriarch of the family who was dying. They wanted to make sure they were in the will. (a little like the opera).. The family consisted of the father who was completely avaricious, the mother who was a hypochondriac, the daughter who was only concerned with her appearance, and the son, who was cruel to small animals and children.
The visit took place in New Orleans and the patriarch asked a Juju priest to make 4 masks for him. Now the patriarch told the family that if they kept their masks on until midnight, they would be able to share all of the money in his estate. Because they wanted the old man's money they agreed to do that. They did not in any way care for the old man.
The father got a mask that showed the face of a distorted Silas Marner or Ebenezer Scrooge. The mother got a mask that showed the face of cry baby. The girl's mask was of an ugly old woman. The boy's mask showed a cruel ogre. While not happy, they wore their masks until midnight, when the old man died.
The masks came off quickly and as they started to think about all the money they would now have, they found that their faces had taken on the looks of the masks and they would have to live with that for the rest of their lives.
Well.. got to go.. time to see what's happening on Facebook.
"Martha, who was that masked man?" "Why, it must have been The Lone Ranger.".. roll the tape of the William Tell overture.
Carotid endarterectomy is a procedure where plaque is removed from the major arteries in the neck area. That plaque sometimes causes the brain to get starved for nourishing blood and sometimes part of the plaque breaks off and causes a stroke. I was very nervous about having this done because there is some risk of stroke during the operation, and I definitely do not want to lose any of my brain faculties, such as they are.
Well, the procedure is done, and now my brain is getting more blood than it has been used to for some time. I'm anxious to see if my puzzle-solving ability is enhanced. Elaine seems to think that it might help me stop forgetting things, like names. I doubt it.
I had the operation done at Mercy Hospital in Baltimore. The people there are very solicitous and tried every way to make my life comfortable. My only complaint was with the breakfast on the morning after the operation. They advertised home fries, and scrambled eggs. Instead, I had two long slivers of shaved ham which was almost all fat. If you cut off the fat, you were left with only one inch of skinny meat. And the potatoes were kind of cool and uncooked. The coffee did not deserve the name. But, I didn't really expect much so I wasn't disappointed. At lunch time, the meal was much better.. barbeque chicken and vegetables.
At the hospital I had one experience that I wasn't prepared for. A young lady insisted on giving me a bath. She was from Capetown, South Africa and she was glad that someone was finally interested enough to talk to her about her home town, that she obviously was very homesick for.
I won't be able to shave for two weeks.. maybe I'll grow a beard. All I have right now for facial hair is a Wilfred Brimley mustache. My beard of a few years ago was supposed to make me look like Captain Ahab.. or at least, the Gregory Peck version. I like to think that I was a "trend-setter" in facial hair.. in high school when none of the other kids had sideburns, I did. Then when they began to grow them, I shaved mine off.
My son-in-law, John and Mat L.S. can both grow different types of facial hair very quickly. And Sam, the mayor of New Windsor can grow his annual Santa Claus beard very quickly also. There is a nice lady clerk in the area who has a luxuriant black mustache. I always have wondered what she would look like if she shaved it off.
My late wife and I were fans of the Alligator Man and the Monkey Lady. They were a nice married couple who traveled around in so-called Freak Shows. When he put on a suit, he covered up his alligator skin and nobody knew about it; however, she had a full beard and mustache that could not have been hidden. Maybe she used a mask when she went out.
XM Radio broadcast a 1950's Twilight Zone radio show that involved masks. A family was visiting the patriarch of the family who was dying. They wanted to make sure they were in the will. (a little like the opera).. The family consisted of the father who was completely avaricious, the mother who was a hypochondriac, the daughter who was only concerned with her appearance, and the son, who was cruel to small animals and children.
The visit took place in New Orleans and the patriarch asked a Juju priest to make 4 masks for him. Now the patriarch told the family that if they kept their masks on until midnight, they would be able to share all of the money in his estate. Because they wanted the old man's money they agreed to do that. They did not in any way care for the old man.
The father got a mask that showed the face of a distorted Silas Marner or Ebenezer Scrooge. The mother got a mask that showed the face of cry baby. The girl's mask was of an ugly old woman. The boy's mask showed a cruel ogre. While not happy, they wore their masks until midnight, when the old man died.
The masks came off quickly and as they started to think about all the money they would now have, they found that their faces had taken on the looks of the masks and they would have to live with that for the rest of their lives.
Well.. got to go.. time to see what's happening on Facebook.
"Martha, who was that masked man?" "Why, it must have been The Lone Ranger.".. roll the tape of the William Tell overture.
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