JamesSlusher.com

Medtronic, the company that makes my Minimed insulin pump, just plain rocks. I have been doing mail order prescription stuff for five years now. Merck-Medco, who handled all of my injection supplies, were invariably a pain to deal with. Medtronic makes everything as easy as possible and automatically ships the stuff to your house when you need it. Merck never provided that level of service and would do everything they could to make it as time-consuming and irritating as possible to get your stuff.

I haven’t dealt with any other insulin pump companies, but if you are an insulin pump user and are dissatisfied, check them out. I highly recommend them. This is yet another way the Medtonic Minimed Paradigm pump is making my life better.

By the way, I recently got an A1c check done and it came back 6.2. The previous one (while I was still injecting) was 7.8. Normal levels are between 4.3 and 5.5. So I’m headed the right direction and will only get better as I learn some of the nuances of insulin pump therapy.

I’m a moron and I’m not afraid to admit it. Which makes me a brave moron. I must be a brave moron, because I’m not scared of terrorists. If you aren’t afraid of terrorists you are either stupid or brave, I’m both.

I’m pretty sure that it would be nigh unto impossible to hijack and fly a commercial plane into a target these days. You might down the plane but I doubt you could hit a target. I think everyone on board would rather fly it into the ground before they would let it hit a building and other innocents. So I’m not worried about that.

Dirty bombs and the like would be close to impossible for me personally to detect before they go off, so worrying about it is goofy. I will leave that up to the authorities. I’m relatively sure that they are working on stopping such things. If not, well, I’m counting on luck because I don’t have time to oversee such things.

I’m a big statistical nut, too. So I look at it in terms of odds. Let’s assume that before 9/11 there wasn’t much focus on domestic terror attacks. I don’t know if it is true or not, but let’s just assume for the sake of argument. Thus, with little focus on terror attacks inside the U.S. we have had a grand total of roughly 3,200 casualties. That’s in the last decade. I’m including Oklahoma City.

Now let us compare that with this from imaginis.com:

It is estimated that 40,110 women and 470 men will die from breast cancer in the United States this year.

So with a little mathematical evaluation, I personally have a 293% better chance of dying of breast cancer this year than I do of a terrorist attack. A random woman has 25,000% better chance of dying of breast cancer than terrorist attack.

So I’m too stupid and courageous to be scared of terrorists.

I am, however, terrified of this mole on my chest.

I was so excited to see how many of my posts had replies today only to find out that many of them were spam. I have gone through and altered them so they won’t take you to where it originally intended, because I have no desire for them to get an increase in traffic because of spamming techniques. That will only encourage them. I’m going to have to talk to Dave about ways to combat this.

Spammers suck.

I’m not sure what I expected that herbicide to do in 24 hours, but so far it doesn’t seem like it has done much. What I wanted it to do was kill off all the weeds magically. Just vaporize them. And then I wanted the grass to fill in over the following day or two. By the end of the week, I wanted a pretty lawn.

I want a beautiful lawn. I want one so pretty that I could walk out my front door on a spring day and find women in hoop skirts with parasols on their shoulders picnicking in my front yard. I want men in white linen suits playing croquet in an effort to catch the ladies’ eyes. I want Hootie Johnson to drive by and remark on the wonder that is my lawn. And then design a hole after it. I want it to be so inviting that I catch Tommy Chong trying to roll it.

That’s what I want. What I’m willing to do is put in a sprinkler system, overseed it next year some time and hope for the best.

I have been reading quite a few blog entries and comments about John Kerry’s participation in a demonstration by Vietnam veterans that included the throwing of their ribbons and medals onto the White House lawn. It is getting attention from the right and from the left. One blog entry is from Kevin Drum and it has generated 112 comments at the time of this post.

The GOP attack dogs have made so much ado about this, I have one simple question for them:

If a young man, serving valiantly in Iraq today, came home tomorrow and did exactly what Kerry did, would you heap the same criticism on him?

I think not.

Okay, I’m somewhat obsessive about things. After applying the herbicide this morning I have been going out to look at the weeds every couple of hours. I’m not even sure what I’m looking for. Some signs of deteriorating health, I guess. Maybe I’m hoping to hear one cough or wheeze. I’m going to have to physically restrain myself from going outside and looking at them.

At least until tomorrow.

I know a little bit about many, many subjects. I can dabble in almost anything involving home repair and improvement. I’ve completely demolished and rebuilt rooms in my house. So when it comes to maintaining a home, I got it covered.

Except for one thing.

I know almost nothing about lawn care. What I do know can be boiled down to this:

1. Grass should be green.
2. I don’t like to cut it.

That’s pretty much the extent of my knowledge. In fact, because of #2, I don’t cut my own grass. I have a guy come every few weeks and cut it for me.

Because of this sad state of affairs, my yard looks like crud and #1 isn’t even happening. To compound matters, my neighbors’ yards are beautiful and lush and wonderfully manicured. People should be playing croquet on them.

In an attempt to right this wrong, I sprayed Weed Stop (It Kills Weeds, Not Lawns!) to kill the numerous dandelions in my yard. Now that I have thought about it and the herbicide is already down, I’m thinking “uh-oh, what if there are big bare spots after the weeds are dead?” I would assume that I should spread some grass seed in those spots. Then I wonder if I should get it to match the little grass that is already growing. Which entails the need to know what type of grass that is.

I’m so f****d.

I one-hour photoed them just because I was too curious to wait and, sure enough, some of the pictures were almost 7 years old.

In one of the darker episodes in my life I sold Kirby vacuums and here is photographic proof of it. Notice the extraordinary leanness that comes from starving to death.

I also used to own an 8 foot long orange sofa. I got it for $7.50 on half price Tuesdays at the Salvation Army.

One of the more amusing pics was not even mine, apparently my aunt’s camera got mixed in with mine. This is the original shot:

And this is what I think it should say:

First, I’m okay and the shed is a little cleaner. No reinforcements necessary.

I have found 5 different disposable cameras in my shed and house. I used up the last of 2 of them taking gratuitous pictures of my house.

I have to admit to a certain amount of trepidation over getting this film developed. I have no idea what is on them (except the house pics). A couple of them look OLD. Like 6 or 7 years old. Who knows what horrible pictures may be on them. If I’m not arrested on ugly pr0n charges, I will post some of them when I get them back.

I have decided since it is rainy and I’m not doing anything else, I’m going to try to organize my shed. IF I’M NOT BACK IN 24 HOURS, SEND HELP.

Just kidding, it’s not that bad. Close, though.