twilight zone

I feel like I am in the Freaking Twilight Zone.   About a month ago I spent a lot of time (things were really boring that day)  going thru my so called Favorites and diligently click on them one by one and eliminated things that I had no idea why I had saved. A lot of them no longer existed.  

Guess What.....THE"RE  BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   I contacted the help wanted line at AOL and they gave me some off the wall (at least I thought so at the time and I was right)  solution.   At least typing in your problem I can avoid talking to some person 10,000 miles away and save myself the aggravation of constantly repeating "WHAT"   I know "Pardon me"  would be much more polite but I can only stand so much.    Anyhow I just clicked again on a few to see what exactly goes on here.    I know that for sure, if I had clicked on something that was vital to the Salvation of the World it would be gone from my favorites forever.

 

Wednesday evening

Now what exactly is Arial Narrow??    I wish that when I clicked on the font the font would appear on the bar as how it will be seen.   This would eliminate a lot of unnecessary steps.  Another mystery is how this font disappears mysteriously in the change of paragraphs.

Went to see the stock broker.   We jokingly call him The Teflon Man because he is so smooth.   He is one of those people when you are talking to him he is perusing the room to see if there is someone more important to run off and talk to.    He also has a perpetual  Cheshire Cat smile.   We do get a charge talking about him after we leave.  

It was freezing arse cold in the city today.   I woke up about 4 AM and thought the house would blow away.   What I really was surprised about was the fact that the electricity did not go off.    I was waiting for that.  For the electricity to go off in the dead of winter is really unbearable.   About ten years ago the electricity went off during a storm in the middle of summer.   It was hot and sultry; and remained off for three or four days.  I got tired of that rather quickly.

  It was like living during the 1900's, before the arrival of AC and you couldn't even use a fan.       We had the throw away all the food in our refrigerator and freezer.   The upside was that the stove and the hot water tank are gas powered, at least I could boil water to make a cup of tea.

Courage

"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen." - Sir Winston Churchill

wisdom

"The three great essentials to achieve anything worth while are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense."
Thomas Edison

This quote ought to be posted on bulletin boards across the nation.

Today was a busy day.   Sometimes your day can be busy and if all goes right it was very good.   But if something goes wrong it shoots the day.   I have never figures out how someday's something can go wrong with every case.    It just builds up with each successive think to irk you and puts a dark cloud on the work day.

The place where I work; in THE eternal wisdom of a donor, was given a lot of money with the stipulation to build a heart center.   So for the past five years or so all the work and money was spent and a beautiful wing was planned for the heart.   The OR's are beautiful.   They are so big you could play basket ball in there.  Everything is state of the art, it is beautiful.   There are also two cath-labs.   A huge preop holding, and a CT ICU.    The play was to hire about 32 professional to staff this place.    The ads were placed, and the people interviewed and guess what.  They aren't coming because the pay is lower than they are making now.   Who would want to leave a job with your seniority, weeks of vacation and probably at the top of the pay scale.     And I know for sure that if the unit is not busy they will be "staff leveling"    That is the euphanism for sending people home without pay if there are no cases going on at the time.   Who would want to come to work and be "staff leveled????"

Out of the 32 or so available jobs they have hired 6 people.   And believe it or not one of the things that is highlights to interviewees is "free parking"    Like that would get me to quit and go somewhere else.................WTF are they thinking.

The also want to have an outpatient and OR satellite and there are not enough pharmacists.   What is the Answer???  Hire more pharmacists.   WELL, THEY JUST AREN'T OUT THERE.    The people in administration must think you can pull people out of their butts.   There is a law of supply and demand and the supply is not there and the salaries that are being offered are lower than the city.......Well we are not the city and we have free parking..   What point am I missing.   

One thing I can say for sure is that I am glad I am on the retirement track.

Whirlwind

Today at work was so busy.   I was working in the GI Lab doing colonoscopies and gastroscopies.    We did so many I actually felt like a hampster on a wheel.  They are relatively simple/   For the dreaded colonoscopy I can say for sure that the prep is way mooooooooooore worse  than the procedure.     Especially with the newer sedatives.   I give a little narcotic and some versed and diprivan ..  This is a great thing.   It produces amnesia.   Now if any of you have been reading the news lately;  everyone is signing up for their exam, so, the insurance companies, in all their wisdom. have decided not to pay for the diprivan.  

Why you may ask, BECAUSE IT COSTS THEM MONEY.   The insurance companies are in the business to make money not to pay it to health care providers.   They want to keep all they have got.   Aetna is the one, who as of April (I think) will not be paying for it.    In their eternal wisdom have decided that it is not needed.     You better go and sign up for your soon. 

 

 

Wait to go out and eat.

I think I have developed bed sores on my arse for sitting here all afternoon reading other peoples journals.      I did take a break for treadmill walking. 

  I would rather walk outside but it is snowy and cold.   Not tooo  cold, just regular cold.     Regular cold is about 30, cold cold is in the 20's and too damn cold is under 10.     Under 0 F  you should just stay inside and figure out how to make hot mulled wine.   Hot mulled wine is VERY GOOD but I have never made it, just drank it.

What I was trying to figure out is when I connect on a site for the journal and it is dated 2005, is that the last entry.   What I wondered is why they quit????  I find it sort of cathartic writing, complaining and contemplating what is going on in my rather mundane life.    On the other hand by some standard, maybe my life is exciting.

What is the indicator if your life is boring vs exciting?????  I have to pose that idea for a while and will welcome comments on what others consider lives to be.  

 

 

Now that is boring, me trying to figure out how in the hell I got three pictures on thispage, and also where did the colored type go???

aoljaolPictureAdd, aoljaolPictureAdd_3

Still snowing but lightly

Yesterday I listened to the weather forecast and was planning to run my car thru the cheapie car wash.   This is great in the dead of winter and it gets all the snow and salt deposits of the car.......

I hate that part of winter when the snow starts to melt and you have the potential for using the whole bottle of windshield washer fluid in one week.      I have a Subaru and it is the best car ever.  Goes like a mountain goat.    I am surprised that more car manufacturers do not offer a AWD car as one of their options.  Subaru, however,  offers AWD on ALL its cars.   I think at one time they did not but now they do.   

 The first time I was convinced of its value was when I was driving on the WV I 79  and it was raining so hard you could not see anything but a glimmer of red  from the taillights in from of me.   AT this point any car would have been hydroplaning  but that car stuck to the highway like glue.    I was truly impressed and I do not think I would buy anything else.   There is not anytime I have gotten stuck in the PA winters for the past 10 years.

Tomorrow it is to go up to 40 for the daytime high, so I will get the car washed then.

Sunday and snowing outside

"A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience."
John Updike
-----
I know plenty of these.....

"Age is a very high price to pay for maturity."
Tom Stoppard

Oh.....To be 25 and know what I know now......

  This is a picture of me (in red) and my sibs.    I thought I could get it bigger but somehow the select size option didn't materialize     Now how to figure out how to put a picture of me in one of those side bars???????

Dog hunting

Today I took my friend Patty dog hunting.   She wanted a dog and had been to the Animal Rescue League and today we went to the Western Pennsylvania Humane Society.

Western Pennsylvania Humane Society

There were a lot of dogs but 95% of them were Pit Bulls and Pit Bull Mixes.   She said she didn't want one with a disposition to bite.   There were a few larger lab types but she also didn't want one who would drag her down the street.    I looked up Poodle Rescue and will give that to her.  She would like a smaller type dog.   

That was about the extent of my day.  The daughter worked and then went to help her Uncle and Aunt who are sponsoring a dance on the South Side of town.   She collects the money.....First there is a lesson and then the dance.  So far 30 people for the dance and then the dance itself.  She said just for the lesson they have broken even.

Doing a little genealogical research but no finds.  Here in the USA or Europe either.

Afternoon

I have come upon a dilemma of sorts.    I like to read the comments that people leave, as long as they are they are not the sort of thing a person would have to report as objectionable.      But, how do I reply to comments that people make except to reply in the body of this journal.

How I got started in genealogy.   This is something I wanted to do for years.  I  always had an interest in the lives of others and tales of people coming to this shore yearning to be free.....to paraphrase Miss Liberty.....My biggest regret is that I didn't get started till my parents were dead.   Why did I wait???  I haven't figured that out yet.  Guess I had some fantasy thinking that they would live forever.  I can remember my grandmothers and parents tales but I can only remember so much information in my childhood brain.  

When my father died (March 2004) we went thru his things and uncovered a treasure trove of cached  ancestory information.     I guess it reallu started from this.   The first thing to be done is write down what you know.   My mother and father had no living siblings.   My mother was an only child....The next thing was to go to the library and check to see if they have:

 Search Birth Records, Death Records, Marriage Records and US Census Records - Ancestry.com 

This is a paid site and a lot of libraries have them.   If you have an idea when they came plug in the nearest census.    It is hard on many accounts;  1)   you may not know the maiden names of female relatives, and 2) the 1890 Federal census was destroyed by a fire.    I was also looking in Ireland and the old census were destroyed in 1922 in Dublin  3) many records were destroyed during wars and lastly 4) the borders changed in Europe with the wars. A lot of records are kept by the churches and a lot of them are on microfilm and kept by the Church of the Latter Day Saints in Utah.   You can see where the nearest church and peruse their index and order them for your inspection.   I haven't doesthis yet.  Most people who have extensive information have been working on this for years.    I have only been working on this for about a year,  I think I have gleaned a lot of information in that short time.     I think I could have done a field in research or being a detective.

The county governments have saved a lot of information.  Will, death, marriage and birth certificates.   Some of the church records are in Latin; and a lot of records were not religiously kept before the late 1800's.   So the best place to start is the federal census.

I have names of three of four of my great grandparents.   I have a picture of the Schridde ancestors but I do not knew their names, except for my grandfather.     I have written to the officials in the town where he was born to request a birth certificate but haven't heard from them; I guess it is time to write another email or even letter.

 

Irked for the third time

This is the third start.   I started to write and when I tried to add a link, the body of the Add an Entry disappeared into neverland.

I have wasted at lot of time and psychic energy doing this.   But the real pain in the arse is that I had forgotten my witticisms that I had written the first two times.

My current quest is still geneaology.   I talk to people who have done this for years and I am amazed what they have uncovered.  I found a lost cousin (she was not really lost, I just didn't know her)  We are both researching the same line.   My Irish side the O'Rourkes.    With many kids it is a wonder that there aren't more out there doing work, or maybe, I just haven't found them.

One of the greatest places is the LDS website

FamilySearch.org - Family History and Genealogy Records

This is really plug and chug.   What I don't like is the inability to contact someone who has made a family history post.   I found my family and would like to contact them but there seems to be no way to do that.

 

Thursday

I am just sitting here and cleaning up my email in box.  If I am ever unable to go on line for one week I think there will be about 1000 by the end of that week....

"The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."
Dorothy Parker

The cure for curiosity is satisfaction about the thing that you were curious about..............

"A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.

"Martin Luther King, Jr

I think we are here now, all I ever hear is people with no original ideas who are telling you what they think you want to he

"If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astonish ourselves."
Thomas A. Edison

What astonished me is the number of people who spend a life trying to get out of work and planning how to get on disability.    And the complaint disappears the minute they leave the doctors office.

 

 

 

 

Saturday

Saturday morning and all is well...........I am on backup call so there is not much that I could really get involved in doing.   Nothing that require a definite commitment of starting and stopping.

I got my information from the Diocese of Pittsburgh.  The thing I wanted to know was not there.   It has been an ongoing mystery where Patrick O'Rourke and Ellen Martel were married.  I finally figured out by the way of the 1900 census that they were married in the USA.  That event was in 1874; they had emigrated in 1872,   Where they were from 1872 until 1875 is a mystery.  Their first child was born in 1875 and baptized  in Braddock.   This was a thriving community at the time.   Both sets of the Irish side lived in that area and worked at the steel mills.

Rumor has it they arrived in Boston so I check for the archives of the diocese of Boston, but the diocese is moving the archives to a new physical location and I can not request information for a year.     I guess I have hit the proverbial brick wall.

Tomorrow  Emily and I are going to the vegetarian buffet and then to see a Movie.   

I would really like to know how I consistently loose the curser on this page, how the size and style of the font changes and where does this stuff go with out any initiation on my part????????   It is making me crazier than I already am.

 

Wednesday

I am off today.   Spent the morning at the library and the grocery store.   Lucy has a growth on her neck, you can't see because of her fur. Looks like a wart. She is going to the vet.  Every time she goes to the vet she gets so stressed out that she defecates in the carrier.   It usually is a good thing if they are looking for a stool specimen; which is once a year and today is not the day.   It is cold outside and opening the windows will be a problem.  She does not like the  vet or anyone else, actually.  People have never seen her because the cats all hide when someone comes to visit.

Back to work tomorrow.   Tomorrow is a ten hour day.   Then Trivia is tomorrow evening.   I hope some of the guys show up.   You can't get a whole lot right with four people when the other groups have ten to twelve.

 

Birthday

I just realized today (when I looked at the calendar) today was my mothers birthday.     She has been gone for 13 years.   It seems like it was just recently.   I know that sounds like a cliche; but it is really true.

I guess a person always misses their mother, providing they had a good relationship.   She would have been 85 and my father 90.   

 

tuesday

What is the exact reason for the font list.   If they were reallly smart the title of the font would be written in the style that it is........

Worked for 16 hours yesterday.  I had a student for the first 5 and then I was on my own.   It really wasn't bad.   I got lunch, dinner and a few breaks. 

My last person was a  95 year old man with an acute abdomen.  After 4 hours and tuning him up he went up to ICU.   I wonder how he is doing today.    When they are as old as he there isn't much reserves to combat what ever befalls them.    He was mentally alert and walking and getting about before the onset of this illness.    I will find out on Thursday. 

Tuesday

"Explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize, or accept another's dogmatism."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

My daughter says I ask too many questions.    I do not think that is true.  I think she wants me to quit asking because there may be things she doesn't want to discuss.     This was mostly long ago.  

Another work of advice for parents is:   "Do not ask question  unless you already know the answer."    This has been useful on many occassions.

"There are two things to aim at in life; first to get what you want, and after that to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second."
Logan Pearsall Smith

I would have to add is enjoy before you die................

Glad you are back

Well, yesterday there was something amiss on this site.   I kept trying to add to my journal but the entry page did not materialize.  I initially thought some how I had screwed this up, this is definitely in the real of possibilities; but, I tried from another computer and that didn't work either.   SO I KNEW IT WASN'T ME.   

Went out to lunch with my friends yesterday.   It was a Bruschettas, a new restaurant in Murraysville PA

Bruschetta's Restaurant | Pittsburgh, PA

Words of advice.  Do not try a new restaurant in the first few weeks.   We wanted to order dessert.   They were out.   Then the manager came and told us that the desserts come in during the early afternoon.  (it was 2 PM mind you)   and they didn't have it.  Boo Hoo,  2  PM fits into my definition of early afternoon.   But never the less, I ordered an appetizer and a side of pasta.  The food was good.   Another problem I have when I eat out is getting a cup of hot tea.   I want plain, ordinary black tea.  I don't was pseudo infusions of other things.  (using cloying sweet or some other flavor)   Is is so hard to request a cup of black tea?    Guess I will have to stick to coffee........or bring my own tea bags......

Work is getting crazier.   Second call is every night.  For the past who knows how many years when we had second call the sign up form goes up the same time that the monthly schedule.   NOW it is a freaking problem.    People have day planners trying to figure out what day they want to take and someone has devised a rotation and if that day doesn't suit you, you need to find someone to swap.    This is reaching my TIPPING POINT......... I prefer Saturdays to Sundays and I would like to select what day I want.   I do have somewhat of a life........I think it is time to look for that surgicenter job.

 

Tuesday

Still relaxing.     Sort of busy morning, went for a check up at my doctors.   That was really uneventful.................had breakfast with Chuck.   That is about all that went down today.

Since the first I have been trying to walk religiously on the treadmill.   IT IS VERY BORING.   Even though I am listening to the iPod.  Michael Jackson's "Thriller"  has a tempo that is suited for a walk on the treadmill.

So, today was 66 and I went for a walk outside.  Had to take off my sweatshirt because it was so warm.   It was just about perfect conditions, sunny, warm and the kids were in school; that means no idiots goofing off on the streets.  I think I will combine outside and inside walking.  I like looking at everything while I am strolling.   I listed to Keiko Matsui  CD for this walk.   I forget what the name of the CD was. 

Back to work tomorrow.........I wonder what I will be doing????

Tuesday and off

"If you devote your life to seeking revenge, first dig two graves."
Confucius

Makes sense to me 

"I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure - which is: Try to please everybody."
Herbert B. Swope

I will never be acused of trying to please everyone...................

Wisdom

"You don't stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing."
Michael Pritchard

Guess I will never grow old.    I can always find something to amuse me and make me laugh.

It is Human supidity that amuses me the most.  Life is full of "WTF" and "what was he/she thinking????

Sunday, waiting for things to happen

"Eat a little of everything and a lot of nothing."
Anonymous

This is good advice for starting a new year.  I am convinced "diets" are failure.   What is needed is a change of lifestyle, what can we name it that it sounds like you would want to change your life and do this?

"The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities."
Theodore Roosevelt

Teddy was right, this is where we are headed right now; and the government is promoting this in the name of diversity....................

I am actually waiting for the morning to pass and the stores to open.  There is a list of thing I have to do and so, here I sit, writing in my journal...

Last week was very cold and yesterday it got warmer during the day and night too.  I think it is about 40 degrees out there.  (F)  The next two days are destined to be warm; record breakers, really.      If you watch the news the people in California and the rest of the West Coast are having a bad time. 

That weather is suppose to hit the East Coast sometime mid week, but the storm will be substantially milder by then.   I am doubtful about the global warming business.   I think it is a cyclical variation on the planet Earth.  During the Ice Age the glaciers were just about 75 miles north of Pittsburgh; and with all the oil in Alaska there must have been a warm climate and lots of vegetation at some time in the past.

 

 

random thoughts

I just happened upon this random photography web site.    The pictures are spectacular.

 Archive | Landscape photos | landscapes with a soul     click here to the left.

Click on the months in the archives and gaze away.

 

Now here is a real treat for those of you out there.  

BlackSheepAncestors.com

This is a search engine for black sheep ancestors.    You can go to the state you want and enter someones name.    Since I am in PA I  went to the PA site and got a list of everyone in PA who had been executed up until the date of 1962.

Who knows, maybe you can find that Uncle that no one would talk about...

 

Those three females are my sisters and I.  This was taken circa 1976.   Claudia is in the middle.    I haven't got a clue how the flowers got in there.  I have moved all my pictures from the stick to the new computer.  I still have to move my music.   I read today that some ass hole lawyer decided that it was illegal and an infringement of the copy right laws for a person to copy the music that they had purchased  A cd and move it to an MP 3 file of your own.    I think Shakespeare was right when he said to kill all the lawyers........................

PERSONALLY I FEEL THAT IF I PAID FOR THE DAMN CD I CAN COPY IT IF I AM NOT SELLING IT.........FOR POSTING IT ON A FILE SHARING WEBSITE.

aoljpictureUpload, aoljpictureUpload_1, aoljaolPictureAdd, aoljaolPictureAdd_1

Wednesday

I wonder how those size numbers are determined.  It says 14, exactly what does 14 mean????  We went to a movie today  Atonement; staring Kiera Knightly and James McAvery.   This was a retro film whose consequences stretched to the present time.  It was set circa 1935-1940.   

A lie was told and the ramifications altered many lives.....I would recommend it.   I wonder what will be the next film to be seen???

 

 

WOW

I have often wondered what those random buttons were for.   Well. down at the bottom is a little button that if you click it will highlight the whole page and you can copy it and paste. 

This is from the Refdesk, which is one of my favorite links.   It think this is because I LOVE TRIVIA.    My da ughter and I play Bar Trivia and it starts again next week. 

We have sooooo much fun and I suffer from Trivia withdrawl when the session is on hiatus.

Thought of the day archives.

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THOUGHT-OF-THE-DAY ARCHIVES
DECEMBER 1999

DATE	THOUGHT OF THE DAY (Feature began Dec. 6, 1999)
12/06/99	"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing." - George Bernard Shaw
12/07/99	"The greatest thing in life is love and the second is laughter." - G.Y. Morgan
12/08/99	"You grow up the day you have your first real laugh at yourself." - Ethel Barrymore
12/09/99	"Never flinch, never weary, never despair." - Winston Churchill
12/10/99	"The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere." - Anne Morrow Lindbergh
12/11/99	"Never mistake motion for action." - Ernest Hemingway
12/12/99	"Those who trim themselves to suit everybody will soon whittle themselves away." - Charles M. Schwab
12/13/99	"What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other." - George Eliot
12/14/99	"It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot, irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it." - J. Bronowski
12/15/99	"Go ahead and do it, it is easier to apologize than to get permission." - Admiral Grace Hopper
12/16/99	"Count not him among your friends who will retail your privacies to the world." - Publilius Syrus
12/17/99	"The most important thing in life is to see to it that you are never beaten." - Andre Mairaux
12/18/99	"We don't know who we are until we see what we can do." - Martha Grimes
12/19/99	"Anything you're good at contributes to happiness." - Betrand Russell
12/20/99	"Make the best of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens." - Epictetus
12/21/99	"Now that it's all over, what did you really do yesterday that's worth mentioning?" - Coleman Cox
12/22/99	"Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is the lightening that does the work." - Mark Twain
12/23/99	"Action is eloquence." - Shakespeare
12/24/99	"The season always gives me the blues in spite of myself, though I manage to get a good deal of pleasure from thinking of the multitudes of happy kids in various parts of the world." - Edwin Arlington Robinson
12/25/99	"Christmas is not a date. It is a state of mind." - Mary Ellen Chase
12/26/99	"Less advice and more hands." - German Proverb
12/27/99	"Before the gates of excellence the high gods have placed sweat; long is the road thereto and rough and steep at first; but when the heights are reached, then there is ease, then there is ease, though grievously hard in the winning." - Hesiod
12/28/99	"I don't believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates." - T.S. Eliot
12/29/99	"It's when you're safe at home that you wish you were having an adventure. When you're having an adventure you wish you were safe at home." - Thornton Wilder
12/30/99	"In Germany, the Nazis came for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I'm not a Communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak up beacuse I was not a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn't speak up because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I was a Protestant so I didn't speak up. Then they came for me. By that time there was no one to speak up for anyone." - Martin Niemoller
12/31/99	"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it ... This is the condition of children and barbarians, in whom instinct has learned nothing from experience." - George Santayana

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JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE

Popular New Year's Resolutions on USA.gov     Click on link to the left...

How much (OF OUR--WE THE PEOPLE)  money do you think that the Federal Government spent on how to make New Years resolutions?????

With our national debt in the TRILLIONS I am will to bet that Billions more are spent on  stupid things that are useless to the majority of the population.    This is right up there with the study of the sex life of frogs.......I think they should do a study on stupid spending and pork barrel spending.......

 

The thing that irked me the most was the section on how to get federal aid for foreign students.   This is on the section entitled GET A BETTER EDUCATION LINK.

  Because my husband and I both work there is NO FEDERAL AID FOR OUR CHILD.   And most of the population that is working in this country.........But we can give it to non nationals, non citizens.   

WHAT A FREAKING COUNTRY.

New years day

Just when I settled myself to do nothing we got a call that there was an appendectomy to be done.     He was a nice man, sort of had this vague abdominal pain but it was a hot appendix.

He came to the ER at 2 PM and we were getting started at 9 PM.   I can't believe it took them so long to diagnose and get him ready to do the surgery.  It had already ruptured, who know, maybe during the ER wait.    The case was really uneventful.   I told him he had a good chance of being in the OR till next year.  LOL  It hurt when he laughed.   

I want to get the decorations in the attic.  Emily's allergies seemed to be gone.  The culprit was the tree.   Glad we are getting back to normal with that.

  This evening I am cooking the traditional New Years dinner.  My mother cooked a pork roast and threw it in the sauerkraut.   There was no gravy with the mashed potatoes.    Well, I cook the sauerkraut separately and I have gravy for my mashed potatoes.   The sauerkraut is drained, add a couple tablespoons of brown sugar; add a few pearl onions, a sliced red apple and some raisins and bake it for 30 minutes at 350.   I use the sauerkraut that comes in a plastic bag and is found in the meat section.    Emily will eat fish.   

The tradition is to eat pork ( because the pig roots forward) and not to have chicken (because the chicken scratches back)    Sauerkraut is to insure good luck thru out the next year.   I really don't like sauerkraut but I hate to take the chance......................................................