Category: FWIW

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Do NOT Make YOUR Problem MY Problem

You won’t like it if you do.

Well, the rumbles I’ve been hearing about Fedex deliveries in recent months going from average/poor in service to execrable have another data point. Call from Fedex Freight. Nope, the package they accepted to deliver to me? Nah. They can’t get here from there, not with the truck they want to “deliver” it with. . . And it is too big for our vehicles. Oh, and it’s a gig they accepted from another freight company–Pilot Freight–that accepted the package for delivery, then decided to fob it off on Fedex. Now, the original company says it’ll “try to work something out.” There is no try. There is only do and do not. Neither one did their due diligence, and neither one wants to be troubled to deliver the package they accepted to deliver.

Ain’t it grand when folks make a commitment w/o doing their homework and with little apparent intent to fulfill it? *shrugs* Next up: the company that sold me the product. We’ll see if it intends to earn its money. (Just to be clear: I kinda enjoy holding folks’ feet to the fire when they try to back out of fulfilling a commitment. Makes me smile. 🙂 “YOU took the gig. Don’t make it MY problem that you don’t want to do your job.” *heh*)

Progress. Called the retailer. The retailer’s the 500 pound gorilla in this. Retailer kept me on while conferencing in the company that accepted the original contract to deliver. Ruh-roh. Response: “I’ll fix this,” and a promise to call me back with a delivery date/time. We’ll see, , ,

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Really? Do Tell. . .

I saw a social media post recently cursing at God because one of the writer’s musical icons has COPD. It’s God’s fault, apparently, that this musician’s lifestyle, which includes some pf the leading risk factors for COPD apparently contributed to his health problems, but apparently God made him engage in risky health practices. *shrugs* ‘S’all right. God has big shoulders. Curse Him if you will (for all the good it will do anyone, which is zero). *sigh*

The main causes/risk factors of COPD are:
Smoking
Air pollution
Occupational exposure- Intense and prolonged exposure to workplace dusts, chemicals and fumes
Genetics
Infectious diseases such as AIDS and tuberculosis increase risk of COPD

Heck, even the musician himself “blames” an occupational hazard, viz.,

[Ian] Anderson noted that he has not had an exacerbation for a while, an improvement he puts down to living in the pollution-free English countryside – and blamed on stage smoke machines for his ill health.

“Today they’re (smoke machines) referred to as ‘hazers,’ as if they’re somehow innocent and not damaging to your lungs,” he fumed. “I really do believe that’s a very significant part of the problem that I have.”

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Another View of Faith

I have posted before that our part of faith =~= trusting obedience. Today, a streaming video study of Psalm 32 cut out shortly after verse 9 had been read, and it seemed propitious, as it spurred me to recall moments with horses that allow me to expand on that verse:

Psalm 32:9 “Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee.”

Several things popped out at me when I read this this AM. . .

Yes, ordinarily horses need to be controlled via external means such as a bit and bridle, for guidance’s sake for both them and any person around them, but. . .

There is much more to control of an equine than a bit in their mouths and a hand on the reins controlling them through that bit. There can be relationship, as well, and teaching/training, and. . . trust.

The relationship between the horses and their trainer in the video above are a good metaphor, IMO, for the relationship God desires with his people: a relationship of trust and obedience. Know this full well: those horses would not be so very compliant had their trainer not well and truly earned their trust through consistent and judicious care.

While I have never experienced that level of trusting obedience from a horse, I have had glimpses of it, brief moments where the trust a horse placed in me were humbling, engendering an even greater desire to be trustworthy. If we could but grasp a bit of that for our relationship with God, we would find Him completely, over and abundantly, worthy of our trust.

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Affliction Becomes Benefit

Some folks are more prone than others to vertical ridges in fingernails as they age. Oh, anyone can experience them because of nutritional deficits or some physical malady, but mine are apparently age and genetics related. I can recall as a young boy times spent with my maternal grandfather’s mother. Spending time with Great Grandmother was an enriching experience for me in many ways, but one lil thing has remained fascinating to me over the years: her hands. She was always doing interesting things with her hands: needlework, paging down pages in her Bible as she read (sometimes aloud for me, though I was close and reading along), sharpening her always-at-hand pen knife, and even trimming her nails with that very sharp pen knife.

And then there were her nails. Yep. Ridged just like mine are now, like Dad-Dad’s (maternal grandfather) were, like my older sister’s are. I have dealt with mine by checking my nutrition (no problems there), by making them less brittle with applications of different kinds, and. . . by trimming them as short as possible in order to minimize the real problem with ridged nails: frequent splitting and chipping.

And how has this become a benefit in recent days? Ease of keeping things really clean under my fingernails (because there’s hardly any “under my fingernails” to clean, for one thing).

So, a lil piece of heritage coming around to being a benefit.

Sweet!

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That’s (Self-Isolated) Entertainment

One cat (Ye Olde Pharte) just sitting and watching youngest cat play–wildly–with imperceptible bits of fluff (or whatever), while “middle cat” sits staring at me over my laptop’s display.

*munches popcorn-sips beer* Now, THAT’S entertainment. . . *heh*

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Mystery Project

Inspiration struck when I was cutting off the first plank of a fairly large diameter, 10′-long sycamore log today. I visualized a perfect application for the 2”-wide planks coming off the log, though I modded that thought immediately and reserved the last couple of feet to make 4”×4” pieces for part of the “inspiration.” I’ll update on this mystery project as it develops.

And yeh, in the interest of simplicity, I’ll be using exact measurements, not “nominal” lumber sizes.

Continue reading “Mystery Project”

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Hand Sanitizer — My Fav Formula

NOT a hard and fast formula, because your available ingredients may vary from mine. For example, I list “melaleuca alternifolia oil,” but what I use is 100% melaleuca oil refined to T36C5, meaning 36% terpinen-4-ol (the active anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-viral portion of the oil), 5% cineole (the penetrating fraction of melaleuca oil). The “aloe vera gel” I use is also just what is available to me.

In a one ounce bottle:
25 drops of melaleuca oil + aloe vera gel to the 1/4 bottle mark
Everclear™ (95% ethanol).

Shake well before each use.

The resultant mixture should exceed 70% alcohol (CDC, et al recommend 60% alcohol in hand sanitizer that uses alcohol), plus the antiseptic properties of melaleuca oil and the skin conditioning of the aloe vera lotion. Then, of course, there is the pleasant (to me, at least) aroma of the melaleuca oil.

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Sometimes Too Much of a Good Thing. . .

. . . is just too much.

Semi-sorta-annual checkup yesterday (my “permission slip” visit for a lisinopril scrip). My BP and pulse were up a tad, probably due to both recent disruptions of sleep pattern (exigencies calling for me to be up ~0300-0430, at the least, for example) and pain from dislocated knee (it’s getting better w/o physician intervention, but OTC pain meds are ineffective). But still, PA thought it’d be a good idea to try some metoprolol to at least moderate the pulse rate.

I’m not sanguine with metoprolol use, in gweneral. The first warning is “Do not stop taking this drug all of a sudden. If you do. . . in some cases heart attack may occur.” Yeh, I told him it brought about a dependency. . . Oh, well. I know how to taper it off if I have to.

Added 25mg (HALF the dosage prescribed) to my regimen today, and. . . my heart rate is now so low I can barely keep my eyes open. We’ll see how that goes.

“If I should die before I wake. . . ”

*heh*

Oh, good night’s rest last night (before I began the new drug regimen), no 0300 call on my time today, and my heart rate and BP had already fallen into an acceptable range, despite the continued knee “discomfort.”

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Spreading Disinformation?

Some folks are touting the virucidal action of plain old soap and water, “Soap and water kills viruses!” Yeh, but not unless agitated for up to SIX MINUTES (OK, depending on variables in the environment where they are found, from two to six minutes). (Yeh, the much ballyhooed paper on soap and water killing HIV doesn’t see that lil factoid make the press. Yeh, I read the paper.) Count on the finger of one hand how many folks you know who are going to spend two minutes, let alone six, vigorously washing their hands with soap and water. Is it less than one? (The key is the physical action slowly working to help the soap break down a secondary, minor component–lipids–of virus capsids, since virus capsids are primarily protein, unlike bacteria cell walls, which are heavily linked with lipids enabling killing of some bacteria easier by similar vigorous and time-consuming application of soap and water).

This is why THE key benefit of proper hand washing is washing microbial materials OFF and rinsing them away.

(BTW, that infamous paper demonstrating that HIV can be “inactivated” by soap and water showed even longer times to effectiveness when some variables were changed, and agitating the solutions was still key. That’s because physics and chemistry–fill in the blank. Go ahead. Look it up. *heh*)

Oh, BTW, I use the term “kill” above referring to viruses, but of course I do not mean “kill” since one either “deactivates” or “destroys” viruses, because (OK, admittedly some controversy/gray area) viruses are not really alive to begin with. so cannot be “killed.”