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Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Flu Vax

‘Tis the season for flu shots - at least in the Northern Hemisphere. Chuck’s Doc told him that cases have already been reported in California. He recommended this year we get our flu shots sooner rather than later. We did that on Saturday. It was at a “Flu Clinic” in our doctors’ offices. The situation was not handled all that well. Turns out, we had some options, which we weren’t expecting.

First off, the Flu.gov website is still statically operational. But thanks to the Republicans in Congress, for the foreseeable future, it cannot be updated. That said, it really does have a wealth of useful information. Likewise, the CDC site has a great deal of information. But it too is only statically available.

Here are some of the choices you may face when you go for your flu vaccine:

Trivalent, Standard Dose, Intramuscular
Trivalent, Standard Dose, Intradermal
Trivalent, High Dose, Intramuscular
Quadrivalent, Standard Dose, Intramuscular
Quadrivalent, Standard Dose, Intranasal

Honestly, there may be even more options than I have listed here. But I wanted to mention these so that you have the opportunity to do a little research and be better prepared than we were when we attended the Flu Clinic. It’s also quite possible that where you go may have just one variety available.

Because there are a great many age and health related recommendations for who should get which vaccine, please visit the Flu.gov and CDC websites to learn more.

Bottom line: Everyone 6 months of age and older, who is eligible, should get some one of the flu vaccines.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

You Had ONE Job...

So, the Federal Government of The United States of America has been shutdown.

Thank you Republicans.

The members of the US House of Representatives get paid $174,000 a year. (Some have argued that they aren’t paid enough. The theory being that if they were paid even more, then they would be less vulnerable to big-money, deep-pocketed lobbyists and corporations.) So there they are, getting paid handsomely for their time, as members of an extremely elite group, who have the power to make things better for not only their constituents but for all the citizens of our country and, often, for the whole world.

Did the Republicans do that one job? No. They worked very hard and very steadily to shut down the government. They started working on that job ages ago. Sorry guys (and it really is mostly older, white guys) that wasn’t the job description. That wasn’t what the Founding Fathers you claim to revere had in mind and it sure as hell wasn’t what the voters had in mind when they went to the polls last November.

Now that you Republicans have had your hissy fit, your temper tantrum, your break with reality, your frat-boy kegger at our expense, do what Democratic Congressman Jim McGovern of Massachusetts said: Put on your big boy pants.

You have one job fellas. Do it.

Hello Blog! I Really Have Missed You!

For the last few months I have been unable to get Pink Granite to reliably load as a webpage. I Googled around and tried all sorts of tweaks to troubleshoot it, but nothing helped. The last thing I tried was deleting some of the items in the sidebar, especially one called a “blinky” which rotated images. But no joy. Then tonight I was going to Tweet out a distress call over on Twitter to see if anyone could diagnose the problem. I came over here to copy the URL and poof - the blog loaded right away!

So while the Blog Gods are smiling on me let me say how much I missed being able to gather my thoughts and post them here. I’m on Twitter, which I love despite a recent “hiccup” - more on that soon. And I’m on Facebook which I don’t love. I’m also on Happier - more on that too. But despite my addiction to expressing myself in 140 characters or less on Twitter, nothing beats the time and space to construct an entire paragraph - or five - and post them here.

When I first began this blog in 2006 I assumed I would be off in a little corner of the internet, pretty much all alone with my private thoughts being quietly made public. But soon I “met” lots of people. Both the local members of the Worcester Blogging Community and folks from all corners of the world, some of whom I am humbled and grateful to call my friends.

So here’s an early Happy Blogiversary to Pink Granite!

And now I must figure out what I need to offer up to the Ethereal Gods of the Blogosphere - perhaps a snazzy thumb drive or maybe reams of binary code printed out on green and white lined paper via a dot matrix printer, then burned as a symbol of my commitment to all things digital?