One of my favorite comics is George Carlin and even though he is gone, his words will live on.

Speaking of words, one of his routines was on words. Specifically, words you never hear like "hand me that piano."

Well, last night my wife said something to me that no straight woman has ever said in a certain context.

My wife wanted ice cream and McDonald's was out so we went to Wendy's. The lady at the drive through handed out the frosty and my wife said,

"Oh, that's bigger than I wanted."

It is kind of bad when you don't even remember what the heck you were talking about.

I looked at my first post and I don't remember what movies I was referencing with the thread title.

I am a little worried right now. No, not about the memory thing. About something else.

Several years back, I ignored abdominal pain and two days later I was in the hospital coming within about twelve hours of dying. Thank goodness for a stubborn wife (then my fiancee) who made me go to the hospital. It was my small intestine and it had ruptured.

A couple of years ago, my gallbladder went bad and had evidently been bad for awhile because the surgeon said he had never seen one that bad before. Again, I was very close to dying.

My mother was ill and didn't go to a doctor until a couple of months after first feeling ill. When she did go, she was diagnosed with the lung cancer that eventually took her life less than a year later.

Now, I am having health issues, but I am putting off going to the doctor's because I am going back to Vegas for what might be my only solo trip. I have never gone solo before.

For anyone still reading, should I go to the doctor before Vegas given that it might be something that would prevent the trip or go to the doctor after Vegas with the knowledge that delay could be fatal.

I guess for my wife's sake, I shouldn't be selfish and go before hand, but darn it. I want this solo trip.

Thanks for reading my rant.

Although my car is under five years, I don't have one of those collision avoidance systems and even though I didn't ultimately need it today, I found myself wondering if it would had worked.

Coming from my right, a lady pulled off the highway into my path so she could turn left. I didn't have time to make sure there was no one behind me and had to push my brakes as far down as they would go. I ended up about two feet from her car.

I honked at her several times before I got stopped.

When I started again, I quickly glanced at her as I passed and she was staring straight ahead.

normally i would just say yolo but with that medical history you're clearly unkillable. definitely go. and if there's a medical emergency there are plenty of hospitals and ambulances in vegas, it's not the space station. you'll be fine.

Thanks. Part of me thinks if I am a cat, I am on life number ten.

I should go out during Burning Man as when I die I want to be cremated so if I do go out during Burning Man, they would have a real burning, man.

recreational weed is legal in nevada too, man. you could be burning, like, herb and stuff, if you know what i mean. i'm talking about marijuana. smoking it, eating it, vaporizing it, it's legal. you can get high. and with all the colorful flashing lights in vegas, i "high"ly recommend doing just that when you're there.

People would say I'm already screwed up enough without adding federally illegal drugs to the mix.

And I agree

Is medicinal federally illegal in the US?

yeah it's medicine, bro

The feds still consider it an illegal drug.

I phrased my statement to indicate I haven't done even marijuana.

If I had said I had never done illegal drugs, people might mistakenly think I had smoked marijuana as it is legal in many states.

Just got back from the theater after watching the Doctor Who episode, "The End of Time". This was the last regular episode featuring the tenth Doctor, David Tennant.

Fourth or fifth time seeing it, but first time seeing it in a theater.

Still entertaining.

Darn you, Tropicana.

When in Vegas, the wife and I liked eating at Stripsteak at Mandalay Bay and Bacio at Tropicana. In fact, they were always our first two dinners.

I was really looking forward to them on my solo trip.

Well, I see Bacio is now a breakfast only place!

Again, darn you.

Elsewhere, I have spoken of my wife's health scare and I thought everything was okay, but I forgot about the procedure she is going to have to have on a regular basis starting soon.

Frankly, I am concerned as it sounds like a pretty complicated procedure.

If you are a praying person, please pray. If you aren't, please keep your fingers crossed at least.

Thanks.

In OOT, there is a thread about memories that make you cringe. Well, I have told so many I have made at least one person cringe. Since I have this blog, I am going to talk about any more cringe worthy memories here and not there.

I was a big comic collector and once had 10,000 before I got rid of them during my second marriage.

Since that marriage ended, I dipped my toe back in but haven't really followed any comics on a regular basis and I haven't collected much of anything as none of the books have interested me enough to justify the price.

But I am really excited by the new Marvel series House of X and Power of X. I am hoping they put out collected works when they are finished.

Found out more details about the treatment my wife will be undergoing and it is potentially going to be life altering.

She told me as far as she knows after the initial once a week treatment, after the third week, she will go on an every two week schedule and has to do that for the rest of her life.

I can keep my job by using intermittent FMLA, but if I can’t work something out and have to take regular PTO, there goes vacations because my accrued vacation days will be eaten up by taking her for treatments.

I don’t mind taking her in for treatments, but I also wanted to go on vacations with her.

Better stop before I depress myself further.

A little story I call "Why I Don't Drink. "

In high school, I was not known for drinking and actually I could count the times I drink in high school on one hand.

I was so not known for drinking that I shocked people by asking for a beer when I got to senior skip day. Me, "Give me a beer." Fellow attendee, "[My real last name] drinks?" Me, "You bet your ass."

When I got to college, I discovered two things. Girls, actually one girl in particular, and alcohol. More about the girl later as this story is about my love affair with alcohol in college.

When I was in college, the drinking age had been raised to twenty-one not that long before. But that didn't stop underage boys and girls from trying to buy alcohol. That included me.

The first weekend at college I went with my roommate and a bunch of other guys to a bar where we proceeded to get hammered. Different people had been buying all night when I was told it was my turn. There was one big problem.

Even though other eighteen year olds had been buying all night, I looked fourteen and the bartender refused to serve me. He even confiscated the empty pitcher I brought up to the bar to get refilled.

My roommate and I drink so much we were not only legally drunk, we were probably legally dead. That first night, we were in the back of a car being driven back to the dorm when we bailed and walked the rest of the way back. We were literally stumbling drunk. This sort of behavior went on regularly on weekends.

I liked beer, but I loved Jack Daniels. One night some guys and I went to a local park to drink. I had a hip flask bottle of Jack which I drained in nothing flat and followed that with a beer. I was quickly feeling no pain.

Time came to leave and we had to park some distance away from the dorm and there was a Greek sorority between the parking lot and our dorm. I reached the Greek sorority, slid down the side of the building, and all I wanted to do was sleep. It was winter, but I wasn't feeling the cold. It was cold enough to eventually kill me had I fallen asleep, but a friend made me get up.

I get to my room and hurl outside in the hall. I then get in the room and plop down into the bed. I then sit up, lean over, and hurl again. My roommate wasn't there, but I hear him in the hall about ten minutes later.

As he is approaching my bedside, he is telling me that someone threw up outside our door. Just as he is finishing what he is saying, he steps into the vomit by my bed.

And that was the last night I took a drink.

As I was worried about what would happen at my wife's first treatment, I was misleading as to when it was taking place.

It took place earlier today and we are home now.

For four hours, she was seated while her blood went out one arm, it was filtered, and then went back into her body through the other arm.

There are only two places in the country this treatment is performed and I feel very blessed we live in one of them.

After she has had the treatment for a few times, she believes she will be fine to drive herself to there and back.

there's a strong possibility that in the next several years doctors will be able to grow a patient's human kidney using their dna, inside of a pig. you alter the pig's dna and a specific patient's dna code for a kidney gets expressed inside the pig. slice the thing open, and it's a free organ that's almost guaranteed to successfully transplant.

but here's my question: if you or your wife, let's say you, needed a fresh new organ for your insides, and they created a chimera pig/you hybrid organism, grew your kidney inside it for a year or so, would you eat the flesh of the pig/you hybrid organism? would you allow others to eat the remains of the pig/you chimera?

it would be creepy because every cell in the pig's body would include a single organ-encoding stretch of dna from you. in a way they'd be eating you. or you'd be eating you.

would you be cool with that? i mean the pig's body should go to good use, somebody should be eating it imo

Well, if they made it into bacon....

I told the wife your scenario and she was grossed out by the thought of eating any part of a pig used to grow a new human organ.

Over in Zeno's blog, he was talking about the animal mole. Not having any in my yard, I googled to see what harm they cause.

I used my wife's tablet to research and didn't close out properly somehow, but when she got on her device the search results were about moles on your skin and not yard moles.

She leapt to the wrong conclusion, thought I had secretly gone to the doctor, and had found out I had skin cancer.

Thankfully for both of us she was wrong.

I found the plot of House of X/Power of X intriguing enough that I went to buy a copy of House of X #1, but they were sold out.

I found an online source for a first print, but they wanted $175!

No way am I paying that much for it.

Waking up early is so kicking my ass on the backend. I am actually in bed for the evening already.

ok, i expected this type of reaction, but would she let other humans eat a pig with her dna edited into it? does friends/strangers make a difference?

or, and here's a scenario i only just now thought up, would she prefer the pig-you chimera organism to be eaten by pigs? i think that's interesting, i like that one. for me, when i get all-new pig-grown organs in the future, i'm having the chimera corpeses fed to pigs lol