Friday Night Lights

(Editor's Note--This blog post was going to be a part of the blog post below this one.  The one below became too long so we decided to make another one.  You might want to read the one below before you read this one.  That's one of the trouble's with this blogging platform.  You can't rearrange the order of the posts--they are "set in their ways" and are totally chronological.  If someone knows a trick to trick Google's blog feng shui into letting me rearrange the posting order, please let me know.  THX)

OK, LBR's where were we?  Oh, yes, Friday.  Luckily, Susun did all the snow shoveling so I got off scot free. Friday at the office was dragging along at the Speed of Molasses until Susun brought lunch.  There's something about a great home made lunch hand delivered with love and smiles and hugs that really energizes a guy's day.  Thank You, Sweetie!

Anyway, I made up Kudo Cards for everybody in my division and a few others as well.  My employer has this outdated and not-so-quaint schtick with little funky things called "Kudo Cards."  If someone does something cutesy or nice, you're supposed to dutifully fill out a Kudo Card and hand deliver it to the person.
The person then drops the card in a box and once a month, they have a drawing and you can win some sort of a prize--usually some pocket change.  I have mixed feelings about these cards--on one hand they seem to be nice but when you reflect further, you realize they are a devious trick by the employer to absolve them of any need for "employee recognition" and appreciation.  Whenever I've complained that the employer does nothing to show the staff they truly care, they always say, "Well, YOU have kudo cards to do that."  Meanwhile, all of the sorority girls downstairs in Head Start swap kudo cards like kids swap baseball cards.  They give each other a kudo card if some giggles or has a nice hairdo.  I often think that's all they do down there is write little kudo cards to each other like high schoolesr pass notes back and forth (er, TEXTS, excuse me).  Anyway, you get the picture.

Anyway, despite my long running "issues" with kudo cards, I decided to make one for each and every member of my division.  I even typde them out--a first in the history of the agency.  No one had ever received a typed kudo card before.  Luckily, we have an antique IBM Selectric in my office so typing was the only way to fly.  Then I went around and passed them out to everyone I could find.  I think I actually got to connect with maybe 10-12 people--Friday's aren't fully staffed.  They were all happy to receive them and one staffer said she hadn't rec'd a kudo card in almost a year.  That's the difference between us old codgers and those young lassies down in Head Start.  They are practically fresh out of high school and we are all counting our days remaining to Medicare.

One of my co-workers inadvertently (and luckily) brought in a flyer on a workshop next week on bidding for gubmint contracts.  I noticed something on it that intrigued me and, by and by, I had Googled my way to an arcane division of state gubmint over in Boise.  One thing led to another and, believe it or not, I actually stumbled onto a bid solicitation for the NVUM process in the Sawtooth National Forest in 2010.  I may overuse this word but I was truly stunned--practically stuttering in speechlessness.  This discovery played a big role in the remainder of the day.  Hum...if I ramble on here about it, then THIS post will be too long, too.
Gee, I better reserve a separate post for the NVUM discovery.  OK?  OK.

After I got out of school (er, work, I mean) I had to hotfoot it to a doctor's appt.  I arrived 5 minutes late.
That may not sound like much but it is to my Doc--I call him The Minute Man.  He charges by the minute.
I kid you not.  He charges a $2.18 a minute.  How he arrived at that figure is a mystery to me.  Anyway, he's a renegade doc and I love renegade docs.  He hates the insurance industry and won't deal with ANY insurance, Medicare or whatever, fuggetaboutit.  He operates out of a hole-in-the-wall in his house.
Man, lemme, tell ya, when you are being charged by the minute, you want to show up on time and get back outta Dodge as fast as ya can.  Today, he only charged me for 17 minutes or $37.  He added $4 for some anti-fungal meds and I chipped in another $4 as a tip so the total came to $45.  I got three prescriptions and 28 days of fluconazole on the deal.  The Doc is a hoot and he's such a throwback.  He won't even set foot in Yellowstone or The Tetons because he can't legally take his pistol inside.  Hilarious. 

I actually wanted a kenalog steroid shot but he wouldn't give me one--he says the side effects are too dangerous.  Instead he gave me a script for a nasal anti-allergen mist.  Nah, I don't have no allergies right now--but you can bet I sure will in Arizona in the springtime!  We shall see if the nasal stuff works.  he laughed when he wrote the script and said, "Hey, John, if it don't work, just drive 1600 miles round trip and I will give you the shot."  You gotta love a Doc with a sense of humor.

After leaving the Doc's place, I went to Wally World on a hunch.  Our bathroom sink drain clogged up Thursday and no amount of messing with it would clear the blockage.  I tried cheap-o drain cleaner Thursday and I tried two different snakes and nothing worked.  So, I knew I needed something much more wicked to clear the drain--something that would destroy my carbon credits--SULFURIC ACID! (Cue applause for acid.)  Man, I'm telling ya what--sulfuric acid can open a danged drain!  POOF--just like that.  Yea, verily, that's just what happened and now we don't have no mo pro-ble-mo.

We ran a few more errands and did some shopping and got home at the obligatory 5 pm beginning of Wine Time.  We're trying to master the new "arcanities" of post mail forwarding.  As the Post Office moves slowly into modern civilization, the Neanderthals who run the place are becoming somewhat more conversant with each other.  We have learned, for example, that it MIGHT be possible for our post office to actually communicate with the Sedona post office.  Wouldn't that be a novel idea?

The evening was spent discussing the NVUM discovery and also discussing the karma of the NVUM discovery and what it means in the whole big overall scheme of things.  Those who know us know that we can become quite immersed into very esoteric details of the whole "chain of karma" stuff and how this relates to that and that relates to this and on and on forever.  I finally hit the wall about 9 pm but Susun watched all four hours of the Olympic Opening before she finally retired.