Saturday, February 2, 2013

Pre-Owned and Creaky

 Fly by the Wire : EasyJet.com and Mont Blanc : Photo copyright: Janet M Kincaid, 12/12

I'm getting old(er). I'll be 45 this year. Things are starting to creak and I end up with pains from innocuous things like sleeping. For example, I woke up yesterday with a sore right shoulder. Last night, while getting out of bed to get a drink of water, I did something to further aggravate the shoulder. It's everything I can do to type this. I think I've pinched a nerve or dislocated something. The bummer is, I'm right-handed and currently have a very limited range of motion in my shoulder, which makes doing things difficult. At the very least, I have a whole new appreciation for one-armed individuals.

Without health insurance coverage at the moment, though, there's little I will do about it except try to spend the weekend engaged in minimal activity. I even cancelled dinner plans with friends, because pounding out pork shoulder to make schnitzel seems impossible and may make things worse. If things aren't better by Monday, though, I guess I'll drag myself to the doctor and pay out-of-pocket.

Anyway -- enough about me and my woes. Remember my mention of the Super Bowl yesterday? Tomorrow's game in New Orleans won't come cheap to anyone. America's obsession with this game results in some pretty big outlays. An article in USA Today gives the math. The 47th annual Super Bowl by the numbers.

And, getting back to the matter of illness, it seems this year's influenza outbreak is particularly vicious. One journalist takes a sarcastic, but slightly hilarious tone about this year's epidemic as it plays out in Washington, D.C. Here is Scenes from the Illiad: Flu outbreak causes epic tales of woe across Washington region.

That's all I've got today. It's all I can manage with my gimpy shoulder. Here's a painful toast to all of my one-armed friends out there. You know who you are! xo

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