Tag Archives: cold

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Fuzzy thinking. I whore my brain out an hour at a a time. Clear thinking and the ability to assimilate large amounts of information into a coherent structure are sort of the baseline level expectation. I think one of the biggest reasons I’ll never be a “drug person” is how much harder it is to take on and process information even when just under the influence of fairly innocuous over the counter medications. Being stoned is fun an all, but I’ll be happy to trade it away for not having to will every single synapse to fire individually in order to get through a complete thought.

2. Taking ten minutes to tell a two minute story. If you have something to say, or if you think you have something to say, go ahead and get to the damned point. It’s bad enough that you’re calling me on the telephone, but when you don’t keep it to an absolute minimum amount of time required I’ve already tuned you out around the two minute mark.

3. A Day Without Immigrants. I don’t know anyone who is downplaying the roll immigrants had and continue to have on this country. I don’t know anyone who is arguing in favor of slamming shut the doors to American citizenship forever. What I do know, though, is the Day Without Immigrants protest refuses to make a differentiation between legal immigration and those who have arrived and/or stay in this country illegally. You can flail your arms and shout until you’re purple in the face and you will simply never convince me that I have a moral responsibility to provide for the care and feeding of those here outside the law beyond what is necessary to adjudicate their case and return them forthwith to their country of origin (or next convenient parallel dimension). So you can close all the big city restaurants you want for as long as you want, but I’m going to continue to insist that 1) legal immigration is a net positive overall and 2) illegal immigration should be stopped.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Mandatory attendance. If you want me as seat filler, just say so. Don’t pitch it as a great opportunity to hear some very important words if you’re just looking for asses in chairs. With more to do and fewer people to do it, spending two hours bored to tears hardly feels like the most efficacious use of limited resources, but I’m just a guy sitting here so what the hell do I know.

2. Stuff in my head. I’m feeling pretty good, especially considering how absolutely shitty I was feeling last week. I can’t seem to shake the giant wad of funk that’s taken root deep in my sinuses though. If I could get rid of the wondrous endlessly dripping nose and occasional hacking cough all would be pretty right with the world just now.

3. Paving. Roads need to get paved. It’s one of the few things I don’t mind paying taxes to fund. That being said, it would be awfully convenient if it could be scheduled in such a way as to not take place during peak traffic hours. Seems to me that there are large swaths of time in the middle of the night that would be useful for doing that kind of work that wouldn’t cause mayhem and chaos with everyone else’s schedule… but again, what the hell do I know about operations and logistics.

Man cold…

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Maybe it’s because I’ve lived on my own for most of my adult life, but when I see sitcoms or commercials making fun of the “man cold,” I really have no idea what they’re talking about. Sure, I stayed home from work, but given the shit ton of sick leave I’ve banked over the last 14 years I don’t exactly feel guilty about that.

My point here is that even if my breathing rattles like a steam locomotive, there’s mucus oozing out of every opening, and I sound like I’ve swallowed a bassoon, there are no enablers here. Meals needs prepped, dogs need tended, and there’s a household to run whether I feel great or not… so I do hope you’ll forgive me if I struggle to understand exactly how my gender is supposed to be debilitated by the average summer cold. Just color me confused.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to scavenge another box of tissues and another bottle of NyQuil.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Snap decisions. I remember the first time I bought a house – way back in 2001 – and it felt like a much more civilized process. Sure, there was an endless supply of paperwork to make the offer, go through the negotiating rounds, and square away financing, but it wasn’t clogging up my inbox every day demanding immediate attention. The agent or mortgage guy would call, I’d find some time to stop by their office, sign off on this or that, and then go on about by business. In this latest version of the game I’m feeling a little hammered by incoming rounds of email from inspectors, mortgage brokers, my agent, my bank, preliminary calls to insurance companies, and the call sheet from hell which lists all of the other services and utilities I’ll need to build new relationships with between now and (assumed) closing. I’m making a lot of snap decisions and I’m fairly sure I’m making good ones, but this could be awfully close to a full time job if a guy let it… and one of those at a time is more than enough.

2. Broken dream. I’ve always secretly thought Alaska might be a nice place to live. Lots of wide open space between me and the next guy. Plenty of food on the hoof. Not needing to learn a needing to learn a second language like I would if I washed up on an island in South America. However, consistent morning temperatures hovering between zero and five degrees have now officially led me to believe that I am singularly ill equipped to deal with sustained stretches of stupid cold weather. That dream is officially over.

3. The morning commute. I get it. You ended up in the left turn lane, but you really wanted to go straight. You know what you shouldn’t do? You shouldn’t just sit there in the left lane with your right blinker flashing in hopes that some kind soul will let you correct your mistake while the turn arrow cycles through its all-too-brief green phase and 300 yards of traffic backs up behind you. That’s especially true when your dinky toy car is too small to be seen around Big Red and people behind me think it’s just me sitting there like a jerk off holding up their day. Next time go ahead and turn left, pop a u-turn, and let the rest of us get along with our morning without paying the price for your asshattery and inability to manage basic driving skills. People like you are the only reason I’ve resisted the temptation to add a bull bar to my front bumper… because if I had it, I know I could’t resist the temptation to just nudge your dumbass out into traffic and be on my way. I’m just not caffeinated enough at 7AM to deal with that level of foolishness.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. The value of time. In the final episode of the HBO series The Tudors, an aging King Henry advised his closest friend that time was the most tragic of all losses, because it “is the most irrecuperable for it can never be redeemed.” So it is… and it would serve as a solid reminder for the great and the good to be mindful to start – and stop – their proceedings in a timely manner. While they may be lord high shits in their own collective minds, you can stake your last greenback dollar that I don’t value their time any more highly than I value my own.

2. Automatic Tire Pressure Sensors. I started driving back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and the only way to know the pressure of the air in your tires was to check it manually – which I mostly did consistently each month unless one appeared to be low or otherwise in need of attention. Flash forward to 2014 and I’ve got a handy little sensor in each tire now that blinks a bothersome orange warning light whenever one of the tires has fallen out of standard. To put more of a fine point on it, this event only seems to happen precisely at 6:32AM, in the dark, when it’s 6 degrees with the wind chill making it feel -10. I’m sure that three extra pounds of air I put in the tires this morning was important, but I’m just now starting to feel my fingers again. All things considered, the damned sensors are more trouble than they’re worth.

3. Online Ordering. For the second time in as many weeks I’ve called to check on orders with two separate companies only to find that “oh, there was a problem processing the payment.” That’s not a huge deal, of course, but it would have been useful if they had at least made an effort to contact me and let me know the thing I was expecting to show up wasn’t on the move to its destination. No email. No phone call. Not a word until I went sniffing around wondering why shipping a package out suddenly took almost a week. A little basic customer service is all I expect. Just a touch. The tiniest show of interest would be appreciated… but that’s clearly a bridge too far.

Public service…

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It’s going to be damned cold the next few nights. If you have critters that live outside, go ahead and make room for them indoors for a few days until the worst of the cold passes. Unless you have one of a few specific breeds, the vast majority of domestic pets aren’t built to handle this kind of weather.

I’m not suggesting you have to drag every animal in shouting distance to sleep at the foot of your bed, but a basement, barn, garage, really any place that’s heated to a civilized temperature, cuts the wind, and gives them a warm place to ride things out is perfectly acceptable. A nice blanket or good bedding material wouldn’t kill you either, ya know? If you’re too busy or indifferent to be bothered, might I recommend you stop reading now. Seriously. Stop reading. Forget you’ve ever seen my blog. Unfollow me. Unfriend me.

If you can’t be bothered to even take basic care of your animals, I have no use for you and no choice but to declare you a miserable excuse for a human being and a douchenozzle of the highest magnitude.

This concludes tonight’s public service announcement from your kindly Uncle Jeff.

Go forth and sin no more.

Precognition…

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So far today I’ve have the opportunity to enjoy all of my usual warning signs that some kind of head cold / sinus thing is in the offing. Itchy eyes? Check. Sore, scratchy throat? Check. Difficulty focusing on any activity lasting more than ten minutes? Check. Constant state of cold/shivers? Check. General feeling of “not quite right.” Check.

Usually my body is kind enough to give me these symptoms as a kind of 48 hour warning that I should wrap up anything important I’m doing and plan on spending a few days on the couch. Since my throat started tickling a little after lunchtime yesterday, I’m willing to bet that my noon-ish tomorrow, maybe as late as close of business, I’m going to feel like warm death. It’s not always a sure thing, but the signs are pretty consistent over time – consistent enough that I’ll be utterly shocked if I don’t end this week feeling like crap.

Thought I’ve often wished for the power to predict the future, I generally only want precognition for important activities like tonight’s winning Powerball numbers or the correct finishing order for a trifecta at Preakness. Going through life knowing with certainly when you’re about to get a cold feels like an awfully lame bit of foresight into the misty uncertainty of tomorrow.

A simple request…

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It was 60 degrees yesterday. I had the windows open taking advantage of a long awaited chance to air the place out – because face it, no matter how often you clean, living with two dogs and a tortoise is going to generate a certain amount of airborne funk no amount of spray cleaners and elbow grease will quite get rid of. Even today, with temperatures in the 40s, it’s a kind reminder than winter can’t maintain it’s grip on the Mid-Altlantic indefinitely.

Then, of course there’s the low rumblings I’ve heard that the cold weather may have a punch or two left in it this year. I’m studiously ignoring every television forecaster and website that’s trying to hype a mid-week winter storm. I don’t care whether it’s a full blown blizzard or just a glancing blow from something hitting New England. It quite simply needs to go away. I’ll be griping and complaining about the heat soon enough, but right now I really just need to feel temperatures in the 60s, hear the weekend hum of lawn equipment, and be able to leave the house in fewer than three layers. I’m a simple man and I don’t think that’s too much to ask from March.

Cold, colder, coldest…

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The media have made a great story out of the grave menace to our way of life posed by the Polar Vortex of Doom. Rightly so, I suppose. It is cold out there after all. But there’s gohomearcticyouredrunksomething that’s been nagging at me since the early hours of this morning. I mean aside from vaguely wondering if I shouldn’t have left a faucet running while I was at work.

It was cold last night – somewhere in the low teens when I took the dogs out for last call around 10PM. A little after 6 this morning, I took them out again and discovered that it was still cold. It was still cold to the tune of about 3 degrees. The wind felt like it was blowing at more or less the same speed from more or less the same direction. On both occasions, I was more than well aware that it was, by my own definition, cold as blue hell. However, I can’t say that 3 degrees at 6AM felt substantively colder than 13 degrees at 10PM. This all leads me to believe at some level cold is simply cold.

There’s probably some very scientific method of proving that people sense degrees of coldness in different ways, but based on my purely unscientific experience over the last 24 hours, I’d be hard pressed to confirm that. I’m willing to go ahead and make a concession that I would probably be able to tell -30 from 10, but in a narrower range, it all just feels like worse than average cold to me. Then again, I’m not a devotee of cold weather. At best I consider the cold something to be avoided, hidden from, and beaten back using all the home heating weapons at your disposal… but really, unless I’m going to be stuck in it for hours on end, I don’t need gradations of cold. Unless there’s a tragic accident, I’m not going to be in it long enough to do more than notice that “sweet baby Jesus it’s cold out here.” That makes discussions of cold, colder, and coldest pretty much academic by my standards.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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Well, it seems like the question really answers itself at this point, doesn’t it? But since I know nobody is going to let me get away with a simple “it’s self explanatory,” here we go…

1. The common cold. We have machines that can scan the human brain. We can replace human heart valves with pork parts. We can perform knee replacement surgery on dogs. But do you know what we can’t do? We can’t cure the common goddamned cold. Are you effing serious? Through the miracle of modern science, the best we can do is dope someone up on decongestants, antihistamines, and nasal sprays so that they’re too stoned to care how bad they feel. WTF, science? What have you been doing for the last 400 years? I think it’s amazing that you can cure a disease that one person in 100 million will actually contract, but it would be even better if you could track down a cure for the thing that 5 billion of us will catch once or twice a year.

2. Daytime TV. After two and a half days of not doing much of anything besides sitting in front of the television, I can say with some authority that TV pretty much sucks between the hours of 8AM and 8PM. I’m sure there are some people out there watching, but I can’t understand why they would think there wasn’t something better to do with their time… like sleeping, or possibly gouging out their eyes with sharp sticks. I’m thanking the old gods and the new that we live in an age of Hulu and Apple TV.

3. Being “medicated.” I despise the feeling of being medicated – that feeling you get when you’re taking lots of meds that make your head feel like it’s full of cotton and not necessarily attached to your body. Maybe I’m not describing it right, but regardless, I don’t like it. I’m not a billionaire, I’m not an athlete, and I have no practical skills like welding to fall back on. My brain is what I’ve got going for me and what keeps me from living in an overpass-adjacent cardboard box. When it’s not firing at full speed, well, I’m sure it’s bad… I just can’t quite articulate why at the moment. Stupid brain.