Another Day Of Missed (mostly) Connections

Slept okay. Up with the alarm, was out on the road just after 8, should have gotten to Kaiser by Lab opening at 8:30 but Central Expressway was all clogged up, I didn't arrive till 8:45, and there was a wait. Filled three small vials with blood and drove to work. My morning Hgl was low - 73 - and I was starving so I'd left a snickers bar on the front seat to eat on the way to work. It helped. Hgl reading there was 115. Still low but okay.

Next door engineer's laptop was in my way, I expected him to claim it around 10, but he didn't show up until after lunch, and then he had some other project which took priority. Luckily Boss was working from home (vacation made her sick) and with the James Bond machine borked there was no work I could do.

Lunch was Thai coconut chicken, had the break room to myself after a gaggle of middle aged ex football players messed around at the espresso machine. One very shapely but tiny Asian visitor grabbed a drink and left. Amazing figure.

Am reading Life on the Mississippi and admiring Mark Twain's sense of humor. Though the language is often dated, the number of times it sounds current is educational. This is the book where in a roundabout way he tells how he got his pen name.

No break, was too busy being bored. My usual routine is to look at the front (web) pages of AP, UPI, BBC, NBC local and ABC local and all of them were all Houston Flood, top to bottom. Local news was all Houston too. As if the whole world stops because they have this peachy story with 237 angles to cover it from. NE Thailand has been under water for weeks, not a word. There was one little box on each about N. Korea shooting a missile over Japan (my guess is the missile was defective).

It sounds crass, I know, but I have no shits to give about a flood in Texas. The same way Texans would have no shits to give about an earthquake here. Another example of monkey see newscasting. It isn't journalism, any fool can go to a disaster area and find 20 things to report. From what I can tell, Houston local, Texas state and FEMA/National Guard have done, and continue to do the jobs the taxpayers pay them to do. And of course the Red Cross is there doing what people and corporations pay them to do.

Won some games of online solitaire, and since Doc mentioned it, I shopped online for better fitting shoes. Found what I was looking for, I think, a brand called SAS (San Antonio Shoes, I think) which are prescribable for Medicare and for diabetes. They are appropriately expensive, and I would get to pay full price since my toe damage has nothing to do with diabetes. SAS's web site said Beck's shoes sells that model. There's a Beck's in Sunnyvale.

Home, traffic was heavy all the routes, the IFH took two full 7-minute rotations to get past. Plugged in the car knowing it would not be for long.

Delivered was an Amazon snack grab bag I'd forgotten I'd ordered, and a pair of suspenders to replace the ones which broke a clip the other day.

Had one of the snacks, peanuts and chocolate or something, in a trail mix like tube. Not bad, not good enough to buy more of.

Watched some Tivo - my Peace Corps buddy and cookbook author Nancie McDermott was on one of the Hallmark stations showing how to make a recipe from her latest book, and she was brilliant as usual, and to add to the fun each member of the whole cast of the show, about 6 of them, had a plate of it in front of them and they were digging in like it had been a week since they had eaten. Obviously loved it. She did a fusion thing, pork chop in peach chutney. She looked really at home, and the hostess loved her.

Next up was a little more of the 49ers game from Sunday. Then I put on socks and real shoes and drove to Beck's. When I showed him the model I was looking for he said it would have to be special ordered, but I said okay to trying some alternatives. Jose is a fireball, he was serving three of us at once, including a woman who had never bought shoes in a shoe store for her elementary school aged son. She asked all the right questions, all 4,387 of them, and Jose gave her good answers. He tried real hard to find something to sell me, instead of something I wanted to buy, so in the end I found out that my measured size is shorter and narrower than my shoe size. It took him a while to understand that "no laces" meant "no laces", and he never did get it that the one pair with laces which he tried on me I'd have bought in a minute in that size & material with hook&loop fasteners. Clark makes a quality shoe, very nice leather.

After an hour we were both done, especially when he said a special order would take a month, when I know I can get it online in days.

Walked across the parking lot to the Boudin place, bought a sourdough clam chowder bowl to go. To-went, and that was dinner while watching more of the football game, which is now paused just where the Vikings might turn the tables and win (after being behind the whole game). I have not looked at the news to see who won.

Kaiser has posted my test results, and it looks like my Fe readings are low, compared to prior tests. Within the OK range, but at the lower end of it. I bet Doc will have me add iron supplements. The B12 supplements are working (that was from the last go-round).

Got a lovely email message from Royal Caribbean thanking me for giving them the opportunity to pass my thanks to the tour guide & excursion company. It looks like they have enough to go on now.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Boss probably won't sync, if she was too sick to come to work today
Home