I’m Mailing My Tea Bag, Are You??

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Leaving…Not On a Jet Plane

I’m outta here folks.  Will be gone for a week.  BUT since I often don’t post for that long, you probably wouldn’t have noticed I was gone anyway!

Won’t be around a computer or cell phone or nada for the week.  Headed out with a group of high schoolers from my church on a (localish) spring break mission trip.

Will catchya when I get back.  Maybe have a story or two to tell with a wee photo here and there.  We’ll just hafta wait and see on that.

Enjoy the first full day of spring today!  Feeling like spring here in Colorado, that’s for sure…but we never really got winter.  That aint right…

Ciao, for now.

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Photo Friday – “Photo Gadgets”

This week we are revisiting photo gadgets on Photo Friday.  I really wanted to Obamafy myself, but was unsuccessful with my attempts.  And I love the Warholizer, so I decided to revisit that as well. 

Recently, Becky (from my Malawi team this past summer) came out from PA to spend a couple of weeks with me.  The day that I had planned for us to drive up to the summit of Pikes Peak it unexpectedly snowed.  So I dragged her to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo instead.  It was cold, but clear.  We pretty much had the place to ourselves.  When we left we were informed that we were visitors number four and five to the zoo that day!  In total, there were only seven!  The animals that weren’t indoors because of the cold (like the zebras) or in quarantine because of a new arrival (like the elephants) were pretty much out and about.  The tigress was one of those animals.  I’ve never seen the tigress except for a brief glimpse of orange and black and white through the brush before.  She is a glorious animal.  Her name is Helga. 

And Warholized:

Here’s Mr. Linky:

You know what to do!

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Bernie Madoff With A Whole Buncha Money

Bernie Madoff pled guilty in federal court last week to all counts against him.  Bernie’s legacy will be that the Ponzi scheme should now be called the Madoff scheme.  Ponzi only wished he could have pulled of what Madoff pulled off.

Madoff did a very bad thing and he should be held 100 percent accountable for his actions and misdeeds.  He probably has accomplices who will be found out and will be finding their way from penthouses into big houses as well.  And so they should.

But…BUT…I think there’s plenty of other blame and responsibility to go around.

Like the SEC.  They should have been paying closer attention.  Madoff’s portfolio “made” big money, steadily, year after year.  It didn’t seem to be following the same ups and downs that other funds were experiencing.  This should have put a blip on the SECs radar.

And the investors need to admit that they are complicit to a certain degree as well.  Madoff’s fund was too good to be true.  You had to have a lot of money to even qualify to buy into it.  It was a status symbol to be able to get into his fund.  And it guaranteed double digit annual returns.  One has to look just a little bit askancely at that sort of promise.  Buyer beware, right?

Plenty of greed here to go around.

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Photo Friday – “Unlucky”

“If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all” – George Jetson

In “honor” of the second of three Friday the Thirteenths we will have this year, today’s Photo Friday topic is “unlucky”.

Recently my friend Donna visited me from California.  It was her first time out here.  We had a GREAT time!  This visit, though five days long, was about a month too short.  We never have enough time, no matter how much time we have!

A reasonable and lovely drive’s distance away from where I live is a delightful little Victorian mining town called “Cripple Creek”.  They have legalized gambling there.  It’s like a little Las Vegas, really.  All the lights, and bells, and clangings of Vegas, but at about a millionth the size.  Donna loves her some Vegas, so we, along with my sister Whitney, decided to make a day of it and go throw some money down a rathole.

I say throw money down a rathole, because I never, NEVER, EVER win at gambling.  So I try to make my 20 or 30 bucks last as long as possible while I watch other people win!     BITTER!!!!  Donna in the end didn’t lose too much, but she did win during the course of the day.  Whitney it seems won at every machine she played.  I think she won the most on the penny slots, which is crazy, but true.

Here are Donna (left) and Whitney (right) in fronto of the Brass Ass…

If you’re playing, don’t forget to add your link to Mr. Linky.  If you’re not, please visit the other players and drop a comment!

Coming up on Photo Friday:

Friday 20th March 2009: Author’s choice: Photo Gadgets (back by popular demand! Author herself!) Photos you’ve gadgetised or photo-shopped etc!

Friday 27th March: Author’s choice: FRIENDS, I HAZ ‘EM! (a  selection of photos of friends – you could use a mosaic maker if you choose – or any other photo gadget if they don’t want recognisable pics of themselves on the internet)

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Found On Road Dead

This is what my friend Donna, from the Detroit area, and always a purchaser of FORD vehicles, says F.O.R.D. stands for.  The vehicles just seem to not be the best buy out there.  But she gets a good deal because of a family member’s connections with the company, so she takes adavantage of that.  A Ford has never been on my list of cars I would want.

I don’t think that “American” cars are a good value.  I drive a Honda.  I do support trying to “buy American” when it is reasonable.  Therefore, I purchased a Honda which was built in the United States.  Because it was a good value.  It’s been a great car.  I’ve had it for 13 years and it’s still going strong.

I am not in the market for a new car, but if I WERE, I would now consider buying an American vehicle.  Not ANY American vehicle, mind you…a FORD.  Why?  Because the company has refused bailout money.  And I appreciate that.  And would reward that with my wallet.  No company that I find out has taken bailout money will be the recipient of my economic stimulus. 

There just might be a whole lot of other people out there who feel the same way because Ford seems to be increasing its market share.

Bravo, Ford, bravo.

Take government money and you’ll deal with the strings that are attached.  I prefer to deal with companies which are still “free” from as much government entanglement as possible.  TARP grinds my gears.

L’aissez-faire, folks, l’aissez-faire…

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Prime Minister Brown Gets a Crappy Gift

Recently England’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown made his first state visit to the Obamas.  It is customary for gifts to be exchanged.  I remember the press having a field day over the bomber jacket that G.W. gave the normally very formally dressing head of state.  Not exactly something that he would wear, but come on, who in their heart of hearts doesn’t really want a fur-lined leather bomber jacket, even if it just hangs in the closet unworn?  I’d love it, and wear it.  It’s cool.  Not a gift I’d give a head of state though.  Bad gift number one.

But bad gift number one is probably looking pretty good these days!! 

For his first visit to the first black president of the United States, Prime Minister Brown clearly put a great deal of thought into the gifts he brought for the Obamas, and for their children.  The gift I believe shows the depth of his thought the most was an ornamental pen holder hewn from the timbers of the 19th century Royal Navy anti-slave ship HMS Gannet.  In 1909 the HMS Gannet was renamed HMS President.  A poignant and relevant gift all the way around.  There’s more though.  In the oval office sits a famous desk which was born out of the timbers of another famous ship, HMS Resolute.  The Resolute was a British ship which sank in the Arctic and was retrieved and returned to Queen Victoria by Rutherford Hayes.  The queen had the desk built from its timbers as a thank you.  PM Brown presented Barak Obama with the framed commission for the Resolute.  The Gannet and the Resolute were sister ships.  Man, he really knows how to gift a gift!  Oh, but he wasn’t done YET!  He also gave our newly minted president a first edition set of Sir Martin Gilbert’s biography on Winston Churchill.  Whew.  Those aren’t gifts you can run down to 7-11 and get on your way to the party. 

But he still wasn’t done.  Mr. and Mrs. Brown also brought gifts for the Obama girls. 

Sasha and Malia an outfit each from Topshop and six children’s books by British authors which are shortly to be published in America.

And what did President Obama give as a gift to the leader of the country who stands the strongest next to us?  He gave him bad gift number two.

A set of 25 DVDs.  Yeah.  DVDs.  As if the gift itself lacked thought, as a general rule, DVDs made in America don’t even work in UK DVD players.   I can only hope that at least whoever did the actual gift set purchasing realized this and purchased a set that would play in the players of that region.  Or maybe someone did their homework and found out that the Browns DVD players are all region players, but boy, do I doubt both of those scenarios…

And what did the Obamas get the Brown kids?  Replicas of Marine One helicopters.

Embarrassing at best.  Insulting at worst.  Either the Obamas put a great deal of thought into the gifts and thought they were appropriate….embarrassing.  Or they put a great deal of thought into the gifts and knew they were inappropriate and were intended to send a message…insulting.  I’m not sure there’s an in-between.  Unless they let some intern pick up the gifts which just shows the lack of interest the Obamas have in treating the leader of a country who has been our greatest ally and friend.  To me there’s just no good reason for these pathetic gifts.

The media in the UK is reportedly appalled.  They should be.

No gift at all would have been better than the ones that were presented.

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“Screaming Mary Jesus” – Not a Religious Post

The first time I heard this phrase I was working in an Emergency Department in Los Angeles.

Me:  “You brought your child here because you think she might have whaaaat?”

Mother:  “I think she might have screaming mary jesus.”

(Yes, that’s what I THOUGHT I heard her say!)

Once I determined WHY she thought her daughter had what she thought her daughter had, I put the pieces of the puzzle together and the light went on.

Spinal Meningitis.  She thought her daughter had spinal meningitis!  Hard to maintain one’s composure and not LOL at something like that!!!!

Over my tenure in the ED I was exposed to lots of cases of meningitis requiring that I (and everyone else exposed) be treated with Cipro (a powerful broad spectrum antibiotic) in order to protect from contracting the disease.  Being exposed to infectious diseases on a daily basis was one thing I wasn’t going to miss about being in the ED when I left it.

Segue to today….

Today, while working in the MRI suite, a man was brought over from the Emergency Department for a brain scan.  The chief complaint for this patient was ”altered level of consciousness”.  It was believed he might have had a stroke due to his atrial fibrillation (an irregular and less effective heart rhythm which can lead to the formation of clots in the heart which can then be shed up into the brain – a stroke).  In chatting with the nurse, it seemed to me like he had something possibly very different.  He had an altered level of consciousness, yes.  But he hadn’t been feeling well for a number of days.  He was running an elevated temperature, and he had been up vomiting in the night before his altered mental status became apparent to his wife.  When she helped him back to bed she noticed purple dots on his legs.  All of these things, to me, added up to “maybe we should be suspicious that he has meningitis”.

Which he did.

FORTUNATELY the patient was intubated, thus greatly reducing the potential for the introduction of bacteria into the air as meningitis is spread by contact with nasal and oral secretions.

UNFORTUNATELY the ventilator did NOT have a filter, therefore increasing the potential for the introduction of bacteria into the air.

So, all those people in the ED who had contact with this patient would be getting Cipro to protect themselves (nurses, doctors, EMTs, RTs, phlebotomists, Rad Techs, etc.)  And off to the Workman’s Comp clinic for the three of us imaging employees who were exposed.  More Cipro for me!  Yay!!!  Only two doses though.  No big deal.  I just thought those days were behind me…

AND I have missed the last two Photo Fridays.  Dang.  I need to manage my time better!

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