MeridianDog

Arse,

I worry a lot about you. Hopefully everything is OK.

The six best (male) friends In my life all died.

First from high school died in a car wreck sophomore year of college. my first service as a pall bearer.

Best Boss I ever had at Baxter Healthcare Died of Parkinson's way too early. Was fine and eight months later dead.

Most likely the very best of all friends (BSA Troop Scoutmaster with me an assistant Scoutmaster under him) heart started giving problems, was found to be much larger than it should be. Six months later he was dead.

Best fishing buddy and work friend at Baxter Mountain Home discovered a lump in his neck. Less than a very bad year later he was dead.

I had two older cousins I sort of hero worshiped as a kid. Both died in their twenties. One was a horse guy and the other a car racer. Both were fine and then we got a nighttime call. Both died within twelve months while I was in college.

My last best friend has spent the last five years with one heart surgery after another. He is basically walking death. When the phone rings at night I figure it is his wife. He is a really good guy. We were Deacons together and I will miss him a lot. Hurts already, because he knows his clock is ticking.

I am in the stage of life now where everyone is dying including all of my high school buddies, college acquaintances, and guys I worked with or maybe they worked for me. I know it sounds weird, but I tell guys now I am unable to have good friends. We stand around and drink a beer, but why do I want to lose another three or four good friends before I die? Easier to look at a guy in a box and tell myself, yes, I knew him, but not that well.

Thanks Trump and RFK Jr. This is all on you. Worse is still to come.

"There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" ZeppaMaga 13:13.

Come and listen to a story about a man names Jed. A poor mountaineer, barley kept his family fed. Then one day, he was a'shooting at some food, and up through the ground came a bubbling crude.

Oil that is! Black Gold! Texas tea!

You probably know the series of 40+ crime novels Robert B. Parker and Ace Adkins wrote that featured the character "Spencer", a detective who lives in Boston.

Parker is dead now and Ace Adkins (an Ole Miss author) now writes the books under contract for Parker's estate. He does a good job writing in the style of Parker.

Anyhow, Spencer, whose first name is never given in any of the novels, loves Corn Muffins.

I always laugh when Parker mentioned them. I think h had a checklist when he wrote that included "Spencer has corn muffins". Until he mentioned Corn Muffins, his sidekick Hawk, and Spencer's Psychiatrist girlfriend Susan Silverman, He had not written a proper Spencer Novel.

Parker also wrote the Jessy Stone Novels. He was a really good writer, who write over 70 books.

I know a guy who would sell you a case out the back door, or maybe one that fell off the back of the truck, if you don't like conspiring to purchase stolen goods,

:pimp:

Pretty much all of my carpentry and mechanics tools are imperial. It would cost a fortune to replace them with metric.

And I worked my entire career in a metric-based science lab (Chemistry. physics, microbiology), or over a metric-based operation so I can think in both and convert easily from one to the other.

Sam's sells a box of 4 frozen Pepperoni Pizas for $11.88. For $14.88 they have a version with two Zs on the box labeling. Tragic that the extra Z on the box labeling costs $3.00. What's this country coming to?

:lol:

I have, several years after a Mitral valve replacement. Find a good cardiologist. I had Afib and atrial flutter, and was throwing two or three pvcs a minute. Got an ablation and then a pacemaker. Actually, ran out the battery on my first pacemaker after 13 years and got the second one last year.

You really do need to go see a good cardiologist because afib can lead to strokes. They may treat with betablockers like Toprol, which have side effects that you will need to deal with.

I take warfarin for my carbon fiber mitral valve.

I tool amiodarone for two years before my cardiologist took me off of it. The list of side effects for amiodarone is about two feet long in small print. :lol:

I was scrub tech for a mid-thigh amputation while at Womack Army Hospital at Ft Bragg way back when. The guy stepped in a bungee stick hole laced with fecal matter and got gas gangrene.

We had a new circulating tech in the room, and I had the guy's leg and turned away from the table to hand it off to her. She had a towel across her arms, and I placed the leg onto the towel. She looked at it and never slowed down, as she fell over backwards in a dead faint. The captain-surgeon said, "Well, that didn't work very well."

Be thankful you never saw and smelled a bad gas gangrene wound.

Peanut butter sandwich on toasted Kroger bakery bread,