Odds and Sods

So. We had ourselves a bit of a scare last evening in the form of a tornado warning…not a watch, but a real live “take shelter now!” warning…just after 1900 hrs or so. I was watching the WX Channel out of one eye and reading with the other when the “beep-beep-beep” noise of an alert coming from the teevee got my full attention. We had been under a severe t-storm watch most all of yesterday, and prudent people will keep an eye on the weather, if they’re smart (more about which, below). Ergo, I had the WX Channel on as background noise.

I immediately leapt to my feet, gathered up my cell phone and a couple of magazines and beat a hasty retreat out to the car and down the road to Roosevelt County General Hospital, which is the nearest shelter of any sort. As I left Beautiful La Hacienda Trailer Park I noticed that I seemed to be the only one leaving, and there had been about a five minute lag between the onset of the tornado warning and my departure. About which: less than smart. There’s a reason trailer parks are known as “tornado magnets,” and the reputation is well-deserved.

So… to make a long story much shorter: no tornado…at least not in our general vicinity. I spent a little over an hour at Roosevelt County General and then came on back home after the severe storm warning had expired. The National Weather Service never did cancel or otherwise rescind the tornado warning, which I thought a bit strange. But…oh, well. Sometimes it bees like that.

I also wish I had taken my camera with me last night. I’d forgotten all about daylight savings time and just assumed it was dark outside because it was, well, night. Wrong again, Bucko. It was dark because of the huge clouds roiling to the south and east of us… and the sky had taken on that greenish-black tint that’s often the harbinger of weather nastiness. But I wasn’t about to go back to El Casa Móvil De Pennington and retrieve the camera. Nope…I had someplace to BE. Someplace safe.

―:☺:―

I spent well over an hour at my dentist’s office today. We went through the work-up for my upcoming surgery, which consisted mostly of me signing and/or initialing a ream of disclaimers, acknowledgements, understandings, and releases. This, Gentle Reader, is a classic case of the very few poisoning the well for the great majority of us… our litigious society, and all that. I understand the need for all the paperwork, as one malpractice suit has the potential to wipe out a successful practice, be it medical or dental. So… medical professionals do the CYA thing, and I would, too. This IS America, after all. All that paperwork is still a right royal pain in the nether regions for all involved.

There were a couple of light moments, however. Micah (aka Mrs. Thompson), who handles the Good Doctor’s business-side, took my blood pressure and pulse at the beginning of the process… joking that she’d get a better reading before I wrote that big check, rather than after. She was right, too. I can’t recall the last time I wrote a check with five figures to the left of the decimal point but I’m quite sure it had something to do with buying a house. One thing I may suggest, though: use that nitrous oxide just before the patient writes the check. Laughing gas would help, considerably.

But we’re all done, except for getting my tired ass out to the base and getting a few prescriptions filled for drugs to be taken before we go under the knife. We’ll do that tomorrow, coz we don’t wanna go into task-overload, or anything like it. Heh.

―:☺:―

Yet another thing I didn’t mention over the course of the last few days… SN1 surprised me this past Saturday when he called directly after Philadelphia’s Umberger put a pretty goal in the net during the first period of the final (as it turned out) Flyers – Habs game. I was surprised because while SN1 rarely misses a Wings game, it’s rare for him to watch other teams play although it has been known to happen. So we chatted a bit, exchanged views on the chances of the respective teams and that was it. Until just after midway through the second period, that is. The phone rings and it’s SN1 again, asking “What the HELL happened? Montreal was up 3-1 when I walked away from the teevee to do something… I come back and Philly is up, 4-3!” “Well,” sez I, “Price just self-destructed. Imploded. Blew right the Hell up!” “I guess!”, sez he. And then we launched into a discussion about goalies being the keys to success in the playoffs, so on and so forth.

We also got off on a discussion about how different it is to watch hockey when you don’t care all that much about either team, one way or the other. “No dog in that fight,” and so on. I made a rather crude analogy concerning love and sex…which I won’t repeat verbatim in this space (PG-13, and all that)... to the effect of “it’s ALL good, but some experiences are waaay better than others…” We laughed, and that was the end of that.

But it’s true. I’m emotionally involved with the Wings. But I like to watch other teams play, as well, I'm just not invested...so to speak. As for that love and sex analogy...I never had that attitude about or towards women. Not all that much, anyway. And not that I’d tell you if it were that much, Gentle Reader. I have something of an image to uphold.

Such as it is.

(All images retrieved from these here inter-tubes using generic google searches. And that's not ME, to the left. You could be excused for thinking so, however.)