also funny pic

I recently turned 49, and to be honest, I’ve done a piss poor job of taking care of myself from a healthcare perspective. I’ve always tried to watch what I eat, exercise, all that stuff. I just didn’t care for going to doctors unless I was sick, so I didn’t. Well, after a recent health scare, I was motivated to get caught up. Went yesterday and got some lab work stuff done, and they weren’t terribly impressed with my blood pressure. Went back today and spoke to my new PCP, and I’m officially on blood pressure meds now (amlodipine to be specific). They are also doing some more lab work to see if I have arthritis, I have psoriasis and my hands and knees frequently hurt.

Getting older sure is fun, but I guess the alternative sucks.

Well, do you?

At 53 years old, I am being stalked. I managed to live through the time when the only way to stalk someone was to drive by their home or place of work, or call on a landline phone and hang up. I am living through the age of cell phones and social media and have not yet been stalked (that I am aware of.) Cologuard has the best stalkers upping their game.

I have been emailed, texted, and called multiple times. They even called the night before Thanksgiving hoping I would eat a lot and send them a brimming box of poop on Black Friday? I was also offered a $25 gift card if I sent it by 12/13. I am waiting them out to see if they offer more. I do not poop on demand, Cologuard! Nor do I take phone calls asking me to send poop in a box. Scratch that...I do not take phone calls unless someone's arm has fallen off, etc.

I tagged this as whatever because the tag color was brown and this could be considered a rant, existential crisis, or heath. Whatever...catch me if you can, Cologuard! 🤣

Have yourself a Heavy Metal Christmas!

Read a statistic the other day that I'm still thinking about. Apparently, around 20 percent of people over 60 who take a fall and break a hip die within a year. Do your strength and flexibility exercises, folks.

Did you know there’s shading in the iOS thumbs emojis and the detail in my iOS games suddenly improved — weird uh?

Does anyone remember as kids, little mom and pop museums dotting the countryside on family road trips? A dozen cars in a converted barn, a place commemorating an old Native American settlement, fifty or so old tractors and farm equipment in a few machine sheds, whatever happened to them? I miss just stopping in the middle of a ride with my parents to spend an hour crawling through somebody else's memories. https://dayoopers.com/ This little gem is 5 minutes from our new home and https://lakenenland.com/ is 30 minutes away. This is why I moved to the U.P.

I watched Bohemian Rhapsody for only the 2nd time this weekend. The films not accurate but the music is still awesome! IMHO Queen's music has aged so well. Any bands come close to their originality after the loss of Freddie?

Has anyone else had the experience of hearing a song from decades ago that they thought sucked, but now the song resonates with you? I think the new music is so blah and uninteresting in comparison. Also, the old tunes are connected to so many memories. It's a weird mind-swap: Air Supply, and Foreigner and Travis Tritt, all of whom I once considered dreck, now make me misty eyed. Even "We Built This City" of all things gets me going.

Time is a Mother

Ashtrays in hospitals.

You're next.

My wife has me adding a scoop of these collagen peptides to my coffee every morning.

I guess they are supposed to help my joints hurt less or something?

I’m not sure what a peptide is. But these peptides were ‘grass fed and pastured raised’ by a company that is ‘living consciously’.

Which all sounds very nice. And knowing my awesome wife, expensive (because more money = better).

Even though I’m not sure what a peptide is, I have this vision of them frolicking in a green field, a lovely rolling pasture, bounded by a sun dappled forest at the far edge. It’s heart warming. My peptides look a little like goats having fun, except the goats are made of a bunch of hexagons to look like representations of chemical compounds with stick legs.

The only problem is these peptides are hydrolyzed.

I’m old enough now to know that my memory isn’t what it used to be and realize that nutritional recommendations change as often as Taylor Swift on stage for a show. I’m looking at you Mr. Egg. I’m glad you’re incredible and edible again!

But I thought hydrolyzed = bad. Like that was why we couldn’t fry chicken or make pie crusts with Crisco anymore. It clogs your arteries and causes a bunch of other uber bad stuff.

Am I misremembering? Has nutritional science changed- er - advanced again? Or maybe, my little peptide friends have some magical ability to make hydrolyzed stuff good again? Especially when it gets into my creaky joints? I just want to enjoy one of my last remaining vices, so I’ve got to know.

Help me Gen X… You’re my only hope!

(Well, sure. I could have googled, but visions of happy little peptides has me amused and I wanted to share that little dopamine hit.)

Were you one of the weird kids with Intellivision like me, or one of the other not Atari or Coleco systems? I wanted Coleco, but that never happened.

Ok so I have never used much cologne or hairspray.

But now when I am around it, it's instant nasal congestion z sneezing, and swelling eyeballs (they feel swollen but don't look different).

It's to the point that I actually utterly hate cologne and hairspray. When I see a cologne commercial I want to strangle the marketing team.

I had an older lady (big blue hairdoo) walk past me as I stood in line at the grocery.....she must have had a lot of old school hairspray because the smell was overpowering. Before I got to the cashier my nose was running and eyes feeling swollen.

By the time I got to the car my eyes were watering so much that I had to just sit parked for a while until it passed, I couldn't see well enough to drive.

Here's the strange part. Where I work we spray a lot of solvent based varnishes. I do NOT work directly with it and am normally not exposed to it. But when I am, I have no reaction whatsoever. I've actually stood in the spray booth spraying it myself without protective gear (minutes, not hours) and still had no reaction. This stuff offgases xylene, toluene, acetone, and trace amounts of formaldehyde. Yet, I never ever react to it.

But get me around whatever the hell any random "playa" wears and I'll have a reaction.

Whatever the hell they put in cologne and hair spray, it's worse than solvent based varnish.

I just set up my old Hotmail address in Outlook and in flooded a ton of old emails. The most interesting thing I found was a folder containing communications with girls I was seeing around that time, from about 2003 to 2011. Not gonna lie, it's a bit of an ego boost seeing the talent that I somehow managed to pull. Some lovely girls that I totally fell for and was severely heartbroken after breaking up with a few. It's crazy how we live in the minute and then suddenly it was 20 years ago. Happy holidays everyone.

I heard this song so much in my youth that I flat out refuse to listen to it. But I when I hear D’yer Maker from the same band; I crank that shit up. What is your song that deserves the immediate skip.

I had a dream about this last night. No idea why, but core memory unlocked!

I was so easily entertained.

I don’t care what anyone says, Toni Tennille had a lot of depth for a pop singer…those were some deep lyrics she wrote for The Captain.