The Kalashnikov is Mightier Than the Pen

I know we are all Charlie, but today's massacre proves that an automatic weapon or two can silence a dozen satirists in a matter of seconds. This despite the publication's offices allegedly being guarded by Paris' Finest, two of whom also bit the big one.

One of the ironies is this is also the anniversary of Gabby Giffords' shooting.

The world is full of crazy people. No one is safe.

But the only way to live is as if no one is in danger. The other route leads to madness.

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Results of my blood tests started coming in early this morning, and one by one they showed in the normal range. 24 blood tests, 4 urine tests. The last two blood tests were off the scale, blood sugar. The fasting one is usually high, so that was only a mild surprise but the long-term one was way up there, one of the worst on record, and I am not sure why, since my morning readings are nowhere near that high.

The urine tests are also alarming, probably means I'm eating too much salt. Which I am.

I don't eat healthy but I don't eat junk, either. Except for the ho-hos.

There was one pair of blood tests which, while in the normal range, one is toward the bottom and the other is toward the top and together they may mean anemia or something related to it. Which would account for all the symptoms I've been having.

Doctor will probably call tomorrow, or at least comment on the tests online.

This is all prep for Tuesday's MRI. Have I mentioned how much I hate MRIs? Horrible noises, loud, for way too long. Why can't they just do a CAT scan?

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Work was mostly meetings today. Boss' Boss' meeting was too many people in the room, but it's the largest conference room we have. If I heard correctly, we were told that the deadline we thought was March was actually May. And we were told we would finally get a new build today.

Second meeting was just my team, and was mostly about concerns with the craptastic test tracking software Loud Guy foisted upon us. He totally fails to understand that the bean counters will use the data it pumps out showing how much time each test took to execute, compared with how much time it was expected to take. Which is why he put in insanely short values for the latter.

We finally got the build a little after 6, I waited for it because I needed to run an overnight test and the previous build wasn't stable enough to last overnight.

Straight home, I set up the new little Samsung Blu Ray player which replaced the probably defective old Sony. I put in the DVD of Water For Elephants and watched enough of it to know the disk is fine, the Sony wasn't. Skipped through chapters and FFed to my favorite scenes, and everything played just fine, and looked lovely in Blu Ray. Reese Witrherspoon is actually pretty good and very pretty in it. Hal Holbrook is great too. The younger male lead, Pattinson, looks too much like a young Paul Newman.

Plans for tomorrow:
Put melchar's calendar in the mail
Work
TGIF

And I Shall Fear No Weevil

Last night I vacuumed the kitchen thoroughly, slurping up a lot of what I finally had identified as rice or grain weevils, which had been committing suicide in Spook's water fountain. I had sprayed Raid under the microwave cart where they were holding an Occupy Howard demonstration, and a couple of dozen others had crawled into the floor wash bucket and died (probably the Pine Sol residue did them in). I had also previously zip-lock-bagged the infested half a bag of rye flour which was still out on the counter from my long ago sourdough experiment, and had Clorox sprayed the area and wiped it down.

Then I Swiffered the whole kitchen with the orange anti-bacterial liquid, and thought I was done with the infestation.

But this morning, when I opened the fig newtons to pack some for work, weevils had taken over the container. I shoved that into a gallon zip-lock bag and put it in the trash. And again I thought maybe I was done. But the web sites said to look into every package of grain-like substance which was not sealed in plastic, and I found the almost full bag of white flour in the cupboard was also dotted with them. That got bagged and tossed too.

Everything else seems to be okay, but I sent away for some traps, which are incredibly hard to find (they are mostly sold wholesale to granaries and animal feed stores) and I also poured a little water and pine sol into the bucket since that worked in the past.

According to the pest control sites, the weevils are harmless, don't bite, don't carry any diseases, don't attack pets or people. But they are ugly, and they swarm and they breed like mad.

Oddly, they did not infest the partially open package of Oreos (same lame closure as the Newtons) or the folded-closed bag of devil's food, chocolate coated donettes. Twinkies would probably also be safe.

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I had plenty of snacks for work. Chocolate covered macadamia nuts, blueberries, string cheese, American Singles, a croissant, pistachios.

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The last two lab tests came back, and my A1C is horribly high, does not jive at all with the morning readings I have been getting. And the creatinine level was also very high, my kidneys are not doing well. No feedback from the doctor, but the tests were mostly for the MRI Tuesday. They will only be looking at my brain, so I don't think any of the test results will put the brakes on that.

Work was much more productive today, the new build from last night stabilized the machine so I was able to run my long-term tests, and look into a couple of the bugs they reported as fixed. One of them raised another bug - I wasn't able to test the original issue because something they messed up prevented me from even setting up the test. Bummer. Project manager came over to my cube in the afternoon to get some data from my machine, and was unpleasantly surprised at how quickly I was able to reproduce the error.

Lunchtime I headed for Specialty's, and I am so glad I did not order online, because there was no parking anywhere nearby. The whole block behind them is under destruction, and the side entrance is blocked off as well as the whole street it is on. And even though there are big signs forbidding construction parking, I bet there was a significant amount of that.

So I punted and went to Togo's. Disappointed they have changed their soup schedule and did not have clam chowder, or anything I would call edible. Since when is chili a soup? 

After work traffic was back to being miserable, so I went to the nearest massage place. Have not been there in months, and there's a new therapist who was amazing. I want to have her babies.

Home, Spook attacked my pants legs. Silly kitten. While I was in the bathroom she came in and tried to fight with something underneath one of the bath mats. By the time I was done she had the mat all the way across the room, and was halfway underneath it.

Plans for tomorrow:
Watch football.
Maybe some of that will be on the exercise bike.
Watch the news from France and Indonesia