I've got a few things going on, from family visits, to catching up on various tasks, to some software upgrades various places that need to be made.  I'll try to post at least once a day, but this is by no means guaranteed.  Light posting might last through the rest of the month--it all depends on how everything shakes out.

We've received nearly five inches of rain in the past day.  Hello, Dolly, indeed.

I had to take a couple of inches out of our pool . . . it was getting close to overtopping and possibly flooding the entire neighborhood.  Oh, the humanity!

 

It's probably tendonitis . . . just on the outside part of my left foot, towards the heel.  I hurt it about ten days ago, and it was getting better.  But I got cocky I guess and re-injured it yesterday.

It doesn't hurt as much as it originally did before I gave in and went to my podiatrist, but walking is darn uncomfortable.

I just thought I'd share that with everyone.  Because misery does love company.

A sharp Medary.com reader (I have readers!  Who knew?) spotted my post Say it with me, say it together and quite correctly called me out with an e-mail on my erroneous use of the word "primate."  I meant "simian" but that just makes the whole thing worse.

I'll go sit in the corner of Teh Intertubes for my full five minutes of penance.  Mea culpa.  I'm so sorry.  So South Central Rain sorry.

My simian-blogging cred is now in the toilet.  Guess I'll go eat worms.

Terry Pratchett talks about his early-onset Altzheimer's Disease, Harry Potter, the British National Health Sevice, and the existence of God, in this interview from the London Sunday Times online:

“The day after I had been diagnosed I was working in the garden and I suddenly realised I was whistling, and I thought regretta-bly there is this sort of inner well of humour or good nature, there is some kind of insuppressible source of good humour that I can’t actually manage to get rid of.”

He was genuinely angered, however, to find that he and others of his age are too young to get the Alzheimer’s drug Aricept on the NHS.

“If I ate myself into obesity I could get pills for that for nothing. If I wanted Viagra I could get that for nothing. But I can’t get a drug that gives me that little bit of extra edge. I can afford £90 a month, of course, but there may be someone who can’t in his fifties with early-onset Alzheimer’s with dependants - anything that gives an extra edge must be worth it.”

Last week’s Sunday Times story that patients who paid for their own cancer drugs would be denied NHS treatment enraged him. “In the early days of the NHS, if someone had a bit of spare cash they would hand it over to their doctor and he’d say thank you very much. I cannot see how paying for their own drugs undermines the NHS.”

A typically wide-ranging interview covering lots of ground--just like his novels.  If you like reading, you'll probably like Pratchett (if you can get past the trolls and dwarfs and the like--hey, they're just people, too!)

Australian style, that is.  The Breakfast Blog.

Hat tip to Wretchard at the Belmont Club.

Now this is one impressive spring storm! Image credit:  NOAA

 

Stacy London, resident makeover snobbette on TLC's What Not To Wear, has branched out . . .

To cell phones . . .

With Sprint.

More evidence of the apocalypse?  You be the judge . . .

Music boss: we were wrong to go to war with consumers

The boss of Warner Music has made a rare public confession that the music industry has to take some of the blame for the rise of p2p file sharing.

Speaking at the GSMA Mobile Asia Congress in Macau, Edgar Bronfman told mobile operators that they must not make the same mistake that the music industry made.

"We used to fool ourselves,' he said. "We used to think our content was perfect just exactly as it was. We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and file sharing was exploding. And of course we were wrong. How were we wrong? By standing still or moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find and as a result of course, consumers won."

The thuggishness and disdain with which the music industry (and, frankly, most of the entertainment industry) treats their customers is breathtaking to behold.

Oh, on a tangentially related note, how is Lions for Lambs doing at the box office, anyway?

The good news is that the Royals are replacing their 70s-era Jumbotron for next year. The better news is that Snookums won me a cool denim shirt and a jacket for herself.