Oh, I Think So

Due to my decision to get all things medical and dental done in the first six months of the year, I've entered into a contract with my savings account and my body that I won't have a great vacation this year.  I am using days for gum grafts, colonoscopies, and hand surgery.  My gums may be revisited in the fall so it's best to save days for that.  I like to get out of town on an airplane.  I treated myself to global entry three years ago so when I go to O'Hare, it's less trauma for me.  Even if they change the configuration of the aircraft and change my seat, I can still get in the TSA pre-check line; I just have to strip down, take off my shoes, and show my bottles, all of which are fine with me.  Where it go is another issue. There are several places where I can get really inexpensive airfare but when I get there, there aren't any affordable hotels to be had.  I can get good hotels at a great price but then the airfare makes my eyes bug out....

I was in Michaels, the craft store, yesterday looking for picture frames that were on sale.  A great sale!  One day only!  Fifty-percent off all ready-made frames!  While I was walking to the frame department (always in the back at every Michaels), I passed by the kids merchandise.  Someone -- and whoever you are, I admire your particular brand of insanity and we will always be friends -- decided the lions would be eating fresh meat.  I agree.  They would be. Dinner is served  but watch out piggie!  You are NEXT! We all know that the lioness is usually the one who hunts and kills the prey and the lazybones male enjoys her work but for the purpose of Michaels on a Saturday, it is perfect. There was also a pterodactyl ingesting a mother pig and all her piglets but it just didn't photograph well, which I find is always the problem with flying dinosaurs.

In early April I had gum surgery.  They harvest skin from the roof of the mouth and fashion that into gums.  There was some pain but they give you nice painkillers which do the job for the couple of days that you need them.  After that's it's just annoyance while waiting for the gum graft to take and the stitches to dissolve.  There is some ultra-antibacterial mouth rinse with a hyperactive mint flavor which I liked but after the surgery you can't rinse the usual way as you could dislodge things.  You have to shake your head back and forth and I am not kidding!  Thirty seconds of nuclear mint!  Again, I liked it. I have uncooperative brows and as I get older I've sprung the odd hair or two in wrong places.  It is what it is.  I'd been going to a Brow Bar at one of the Ulta stores or one of the Macy's stores but that isn't cheap.  It's pretty quick for the lip but the brows required weird measurements but, sigh, I did it for years....

As I contemplate life, I find myself doing only that in my spare time. The blog's back next week!

The weekend before last  I was in the northern suburbs doing northern suburban things, all of which were shopping.  At one of the strip malls I visited, a goose was sitting on eggs right in the parking lot.  Geese can be terrifying and ferocious and do great harm to a human when they're cheesed off.  (Swans are worse.  Years ago my parents took me to an area in an office park that had nesting swans and I decided I had to have a picture. They got so close to me that my parents ran and got in the car, happy to sacrifice me to my own insanity.)  I have gotten more cautious and respectful of the power of nature so I just drove up next to the goose and snagged a picture of Mom On Nest.  She checked me out but then realized I was harmless, just an idiot papparazzo, and she left me to it. Giving me a wary look, in the middle of the strip mall parking lot. "Shoot my profile then, beyotch."  See all the down under her?  The example of "feathe...

Last year, Mayor Rahm Emanuel managed to persuade the NFL to bring the extravaganza that is the NFL Draft to Chicago.  With the NFL Draft comes Draft Town, an annual fanfest.  He gave the NFL all kinds of stuff they wanted like security and ease of access and in return, the NFL couldn't charge for admission to Draft Town.  They've only ever done this in NYC and they charged $25 for the privilege of attending.  The cost to those attending last year and this in Chicago is exactly zero. As reported last year, I went.  It was about 42º, windy, and very, very sunny the day I went with a coworker.  Because of the way they set it up, the setting sun was blinding people 50% of the time.  There was very little swag -- I think we scored free yogurt and a pen -- and there wasn't that much to do if your very soul hadn't been tattooed with the spirit of the NFL which I figured out quickly was the case for me. The City of Chicago has been busily closing streets ...

This week I heard a news item about Donald Trump.  He said two of his children, Ivanka and Eric,  had called and apologized.  They'd failed to register to vote so they wouldn't be able to cast their votes for him in the New York Presidential Primary.  He said he understood; they're busy people.  He didn't want to guilt them out. I do not understand.  These are grown adults.  Why weren't they registered to vote before this?  Did they think voting was something only common people do? My parents were from Poland.  They met in Nazi Germany when they were both guests of the German government, working as slave laborers near Ulm.  They certainly weren't given the opportunity to vote there; in their native Poland, there weren't many opportunities either.  They came to these United States of America in 1946 and became citizens five years later, which was the amount of time they had to wait in those days.  As soon as they became citi...