Rants

Big ass thunderstorm rolled through Aiken tonight about dinner time. I yanked the plug on the computer, both power and phone line and it may have been a good thing I did. While eating dinner a really close lightning strike! seemed like right in the front yard, everyone jumped. The TV in the living room went silent. Uh-oh. Went over and tried to turn it back on and nothing. So I started checking the other stuff in the entertainment center. VCR – dead. Receiver – works. DVD – dead. Pulled the DVD player out and opened the cover to see if a fuse had blown. The fuse was fine, but power wouldn’t come back on. The same was true for the VCR, fuse good, but it wouldn’t come on. Didn’t try the TV, it is a 32″ and weighs about a 120 lbs and I figured I would get the same thing. Must have been like a nuclear explosion, no power surge, just a kick-butt Electro-Magnetic Pulse.

For the heck of it tried some other stuff around the house. Donna’s mom’s 3-way touch lamp as on and that is all it do, no changing levels or even turning it off. The 19″ TV in our bedroom (it was off) is dead. But the 13″TV/VCR combo her mom watches works fine. No TV so we were bored, Donna suggested we head out to Wally World and shop some prices. Guess what? The garage door opener got fried too, we had to go out the front door!

The damages are adding up. I wonder how State Farm deals with this, we have a $500 deductible….

This is the stuff that the doctor has me on to lower my BP. One site I found that talks of the drug says that the normal dosage is one 40mg tablet a day. I am taking two 80mg tablets and that sounds like a lot to me, but what do I know. I do know that I am feeling normal more often now. I still seem to tire easy and I have had a heck of a upset stomach for most of today. I need to go back and check to see if that is a side effect or what. It also seems like I can hear my knee and hips when I walk, weird huh?

Sometime last week “Fight the Fututre” premired on FX and has been shown about 12 times already. Came in part way today and watched all the way until Mulder’s little trip to the Antarctic to save Scully. The middle part of the movie plays like a TV episode, which is fine. The last hour is like Hollywood blockbuster/action pic with big special effects, yeck. When Mulder climbs around inside this supposedly cavernous alien spacecraft it never seems big due to the crappy lighting and the hanging by his fingers thing just seemed so tossed in.

The TV show ended a few weeks back and of course coincidently there was an article in that week’s TV Guide about the show. Somewhere in the article someone mentioned that they were thinking of doing another movie – please spare us.

Thank’s Lewis for explaining yesterdays question of the day, “What’s the half circle mean under the basket?” It’s an offensive foul amnesty zone. They can’t call an offensive player for a charge in that circle, it is always going to be the defensive player’s foul no matter if he has been standing there for weeks.

Been a while since I followed b-ball. Was a big fan of the Celtics back in the day. Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish, Dennis Johnson & Danny Ainge, that’s how long ago. For nearly the last 2 decades the Celtics have been bottom dwellers and I’ve stopped watching. But this year they have made the Eastern Conference Finals, so I have jumped back on the band wagon. Well that’s not entirely true, I can’t name any players and I have only started to check the score to see if they win or lose, so I’m not on the wagon but I know where it is parked.

Watched them get beat tonight by the NJ Nets in between watching some of the X-Files movie on FX, oh well, next year maybe. Couple of observations: 1) Hey NJ! What’s up with gray uniforms? Hoping maybe because they aren’t bright the other team will have a hard time keeping an eye on you? and 2) What’s that other half circle in the paint? Like a hockey crease? Can only stay there for 2 seconds as opposed to 3?

Nearly normal today, I guess the BP medicine is doing it’s job. I even had some moments where I felt quasi-normal this afternoon. The PA called this evening with the results of my CAT scan. There were no traces of kitties – she said there were no abnormalities! OK, so why did my BP go sky high? Blood work fine, which eliminated liver or kidney problems. CAT fine, no tumors or weird internal things. I have a stress/echo test scheduled for the 18th (soonest I could get in) to see if my ticker is malfunctioning. If that is clean, that only leaves like one thing, my head. No new stress inducers have been applied. So is it 46.5 years of aggravations have building up to a meltdown? I would have thought that ranting here would be taking care of that. Or male menopause? Or a gene that mutated?

I guess it was just a matter of time. Stumbled onto an infomercial this morning on cable somewhere for a penis enlargement pill called Extenze. Porno Old-Timer Ron Jeremy was the “Moderator” of a panel 3 folks who were also probably in the adult industry. I guess that is perfect demographic marketing, the folks who watch a lot of porn probably have size issues and would be easily convinced that this stuff would work.

At least TV hasn’t advanced so far as that we could get before and after pictures from satisfied customers….

Had the nurse at work take my pressure this morning. Down a bit, but not enough, so I called the Doctor’s office and they said take 2 a day of the medicine they gave me. Tomorrow I get a CAT Scan of my abdomen to see what they can see. I want to take the test so we can find out what is wrong, but then again I don’t want to know, you know.