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Warning: Excessive ranting follows.

I’ve been sick since before Mardi Gras. Since the last week in February. It got really bad when I got home on March 1 and I went to the doctor. I couldn’t see my regular doctor, so I saw some old guy in the same office instead.

At my first mention that I went home to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, he quit being friendly with me and gave me the “Well that’s what you get for going to participate in that sort of thing” treatment. I’ve gotten this a few times before, most notably my old boss at a contracting company which formerly employed me. This doctor prescribed some antibiotics and some cough medicine and sent me home. Not once did he ask if I was exposed to any mold, fungus, or who-knows-what-else while I was in New Orleans. Not once did he ask about my family, even after I told him my parents lived in New Orleans.

I chaulked up the shoddy service to this guy being an asshole and took the antibiotics.

The cough never went away.

So I went back to the doctor, a month later. This time I was able to get an appointment to see my regular doctor. Calling her my regular doctor is funny, since I have only seen her once before, one year ago. Since then I have seen two other doctors at the same office, but never the doctor listed on my insurance card as my primary care physician.

I walked in and went to the check-in desk. Here’s how the conversation went:

Me: Hi, I’m hear to see Dr. X.

Recptionist: Hi, I see you were hear at the beginning of the month to see Dr. Y.

Me: Yes, I haven’t gotten any better since then.

Receptionist: So what are you in for today?

Me: (louder) I just said I haven’t gotten any better since the last time I came in.

At this point, she got offended. I really didn’t care. She wasn’t listening to me anyway.

Continue reading On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your pain?

In 2 week’s time, we shall be at Disneyland Paris!

I’ll say hello to Mickey for you all.

Haven’t stayed in France for quite a few years – travelled through it a lot, but not stayed in about 15 years I guess. Going to have to dust off my very bad French accent. Still, my limited knowledge of French nouns is enough to impress Chloe 🙂

Six year olds are great. They think their Dad is the cleverest person in the world and can’t be dissuaded from this. I’m enjoying it while it lasts.

Internet connection has been up and (mostly) down all week. So, I finally get to relate this on Friday!

We had a huge heath fire down here on Sunday, and if it wasn’t for the skill of the firemen and a bit of luck with the wind, a lot of houses (possibly including ours) would have been toast. We were lucky in our cul-de-sac in the end – the fire was brought under control about 15 metres (15 or so yards) from the fence at the end of the road, which is I guess about 100 feet from our house. The next road down from us got it worse – their fences were scorched; the fire reached the edge of their properties.

100 or so people evacuated – we were probably the last ones left in our little cul-de-sac. Had the car loaded up with kids, cat, fish and insurance documents and were ready to go when the fire was brought under control.

Pictures here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/4823640.stm

Buzz, if you remember back to when you were here, if you look at from the front of our house to the end of the road, that’s where I’m talking about. It’s all burnt out over that fence now. Picture 5 on that series above was taken from basically outside our house, it shows what I mean. In fact if you’re eagle-eyed, you can see Sarah in the picture. That was taken after the firemen had started to get it under control – half an hour before that, the flames were huge and sweeping down that hill towards us.

Try this:

5ives.com

5ives is a collection of lists of five things. Dave’s Top Tens has some serious competition.

Yesterday and the day before that I went sledding.  I couldn’t find an actual sled, so i bought these car-floor-mat-sized peices of vinyl.  It turns out that there is this bitching hill for sledding in park behind my house.  In two days of sledding, I have established the following list of pointers:

 1) Get an actual sled.  I know this is self-explanatory, but I cannot stress enough the feeling of security one gets, knowing that they are not going to spin around and end up going down a hill at 45mph while looking the other way.  This is especially true when there is a tree centered in the middle of your hill that will likely kill you if you hit it.  I assume the spinning while sledding phenomenon has been addressed and solved by those who make actual sleds. 

 2) Drink first.  This helps on 3 fronts:  Pain mangement, Cold Tolerance, and Courage.  

      Pain – Sledding hurts not only your butt, but your arm, if you accidentally slam it against a chain link fence. 

     Cold – Your butt gets so cold.  

     Courage – Thanks to my friend scotch, I was able to talk myself into going down headfirst. Which was stupid. 

 3)  Be aware that smartass indestructable kids build ramps on the hills that you cannot see, because you sled at 10pm.  When you hit those ramps you will go flying off your makeshift sled and proceed to slide down the rest of the hill on your back.  Which is fun, but leads to more butt pain, and butt coldness. 

4) Try to double-up on the “sled”.  This takes all the earlier issues, and makes them twice as bad, because you are going much faster, and your partner is you fiance, meaning one false move will kill you both and cancel your wedding.  Which means you don’t have to worry about planning the food for the wedding anymore.

Happy Sledding!