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Praetorium Honoris

Saturday, April 6, 2024

No, Really. I'm Fine ...

(Source)
Well ...

Spent most of the past week at home with yet another cold-like ailment. Stuffy sinuses, hacking cough, and a general feeling of ennui¹. I expended three days of PTO in order to stay home and recover. I worked Thursday, that's it. And walked away with a "why am I still doing this?" feeling. Ah, because The Missus Herself says so. I get it, I really do, I just don't like it all that much.

On the upside, my new computer desk arrived, five days earlier than predicted.

On the downside ...

Saturday started off with me in abject misery, which as any woman knows, is guy-speak for "I don't feel well." I had The Missus Herself cancel a dinner engagement we had for that day. At an Italian restaurant, that's how sick I was. (The last time we had a dinner scheduled there the bridge on I-95 was closed due to deterioration. It's like the Fates don't want me to eat there ...)

So it was Saturday, I felt like a blivet² and I'm minding my own business watching Brooklyn Nine Nine on my computer³, when The Missus Herself announced that my computer desk had arrived and was sitting out on the deck waiting for me.

So of course, I decided to put the thing together. First though, I had to make space for it .(You do remember what that corner of the Home Office looked like, right?) That task started early Saturday afternoon. Around 2200 local, I decided that I would finish the desk on the morrow. The pictorial instructions, while good, were subject to some misinterpretation by the sickly.

Yes, after breakfast Sunday morning I went back to the desk, and had to undo a large portion of Saturday's work. I hadn't noticed that the instructions went from the frontal aspect of the desk, to a rear aspect and me, being hepped up on NyQuil, hadn't noticed.

But the desk eventually was finished and it is a magnificent thing to behold.

C'est magnifique, n'est-ce pas?
OAFS Photo
Now I need to haul off all the stuff I moved in order to put the new desk in. There are, shall we say, piles of stuff that are not going to move themselves.

Sigh ...

Why am I still working?

I did get my taxes done while I was away from my place of gainful employment. Once again Uncle Sam gets a check from me to squander on things. (Why does it always feel like I just gave a twenty to a homeless guy sitting outside of the liquor store, every time I do that?)

On the upside, Little Rhody will be sending me a check this year. I had heard a while back that the state was going to slowly back away from taxing military pensions, at something like 25% each year until they didn't tax them at all. So I went looking for that provision, turns out the state legislature went "whole hog" the first year. So I got to deduct all of that from my state taxes.

I did like their reasoning, the state wants to attract military retirees to the area. Seems we have lots of knowledge and a proven ability to follow instructions, the sort of things employers look for.

Well done Little Rhody, well done.

While I am starting to feel much better, it amazes me just how much phlegm the body generates with a viral infection. Seems like it's going to take weeks to clear it all out. On the upside, I am keeping one or two tissue manufacturers in the green (no pun intended). Yes, boys and girls, lots of facial tissues being expended in this new effort to clear my lungs, throat, and sinuses. Why, I'm sure someday I'll be back to breathing normally.

That is all.




¹ Which is one way the French say "boredom," but which I translate as "feel like shite."
² Five pounds of shite in a ten pound bag. An expression attributed to the Aussies on New Guinea during WWII.
³ While I do have a beautiful big TV downstairs, I tend not to wander from my computer room. The big TV is for when we have company. I stream most (read "all") things on my computer.

54 comments:

  1. You keep going to your job at least partially because you are male. Men need to feel useful and productive, at least most of them. Most women do not have the same emotional attachment to their career, They can feel completely fulfilled by other parts of their lives. Retiring tends to feel like giving up some of your worth as a man, no matter whether you need the income or not. I retired in September twenty twenty due to health issues at seventy and had all of the usual feelings about it. There are positive aspects to not going to work everyday, but it always feels a bit like I have lost something important.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have to admit that regular work (a job) is a hard habit to break.

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    2. Any Mouse - Yes, I figure that's part of it. But I'm also getting to the point where I feel like I deserve to "down arms" and take it easy. I will miss a lot of the folks I work with, OTOH, a number of them are retiring at the beginning of summer.

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    3. Rob - It will take some getting used to.

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  2. Whole chicken soup friend. Roast the chicken, rip off all the skin and meat shred. Then boil the carcass for the good stuff in the bones. Cook the veggies and meat in that. Pasta optional but I like it. Just before serving ADD live culture Kimchee as much as you can handle in it. Don't Cook the Kimchee.

    Keep a few boxes of tissues at the ready and a large trash can. You will be clearing out a lot. Hot tea is nice.

    That's how my KATUSA soldiers (bless them all) got me over a "I WANNA DIE" Flu in Korea. My GoTo whenever I feel a bug creeping up.

    Kept me healthy working at various hospitals through many major bugs like Avian Flu and H1N1.

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  3. If the half track has to go to make room for the new desk, Amanda Dragonimov says you can send it to her.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That track ain't never leaving!

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    2. Amanda says, " OK. be that way! "

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    3. Note also that the halftrack is on a shelf above the desk. No need to move it. Sorry, Amanda, but halftracks tend to draw fire anyway.

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  4. New desk.....pretty spiffy, lots of room there now. Have to finish my taxes this weekend and see if the tradition of Uncle paying me back continues while the state wants some of my blood..........aaarrgh! Good to hear you're feeling better Sarge.

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    Replies
    1. The new desk is pretty nice. Trying to avoid cluttering it up will be a challenge.

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  5. The desk looks super spiffy Sarge! They all do, before all the old stuff has to get organized...

    I have been dragging around a low level things for at least a week now - no idea of if it is allergies or a cold, but it is incredibly annoying (any sinus thing seems to last well over a month any more). Best of luck in healing up!

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  6. The office with new desk sure does look good!

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  7. I'd druther give $20 to a wino than any amount to this feckless regime; it' d be better spent. My preference at tax time is dinner-and-a-movie either way, payment or refund.
    Coming up on five-year anniversary of ending my Federal Indenture; VERY glad I did. Plenty of work to be done, meaningful work with minimal impediments rather than the industrial-strength ones of my former employer. True I can no longer be a spendthrift and now actually do the math in the checkbook, but that's a grownup thing to do. We lack for nothing, merely have to be conscious of our inflow/outflow.
    Ending my indenture allowed me to assist a friend in editing a very good novel, among other things.
    Boat Guy

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's the youth movement at work which concerns me. Seems like more and more young, very bright but inexperienced engineers are being put in positions of authority. Not through any perceived leadership or management traits but that they will do as they are told as long as it's some sort of "process" and won't ever rock the boat. They're also cheaper and easier to replace. I don't like the path we're following on the job.

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    2. Your project is doomed anyway, just like the LCS dreck. Regardless of how much time and talent goes into those ships, they are simply not viable. Sorry. Calls 'em as I sees 'em
      BG

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    3. Concur and the reasons for that are many - some Navy, some contractor. There's plenty of blame to go around.

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  8. Crusty Old TV Tech here. Bienvenidos desde el pais de la primavera eterna. Off visiting family in Guatemala, catching up on Johnny B's series now. Funny you mention throat/sinus/lung wheezy drippy crud. I've got the same damn thing, have had it for ~2 days now. Have to agree with Michael, soup with kimchee will cure any viral crud known to man. Here, taking lots of strong local coffee, and a shot or two of Jack helps...very nice desk Sarge. And, same thing at home for me, I have what my Base Commander calls my "Baticueva" (Batcave) with all my comm and IT gear, that's where I mostly hang out. Must be a guy thing.

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  9. Sarge,
    Two questions about the desk. 1) How sturdy is it? Any racking problems? 2) How was the construction thereof? Good directions? or standard Chinese attempt at English?
    Ok, that was five questions. Guess I should have said two categories of questions.
    OOPS, one more, what's your opinion on the cloth drawers?
    Looks great however. I'm a bit jealous.
    juvat

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    Replies
    1. It's pretty sturdy, wooden desk tops, metal skeleton. It was fairly simple to put together, though the Chinese managed to use all pictures for the instructions (so no weird English!), you had to really pay attention as to which way you were looking at the beast. These manufacturers always seem to think you've got a gymnasium as a work space so everything is easy to get to. There was quite a bit of crawling around on the floor during construction. At 20 to 50 that's fine, at 70? Not so much.

      The cloth drawers concerned me at first, though they look and feel like cloth (and they are) they are fabric-covered hard plastic. SO they're more substantial than I would have thought. Time will tell as to their durability.

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  10. Hope you're feeling better soon, although retirement could be a remedy. 😉 I'm glad we were able to give you some time off at the Chant company offices! Did you know the S-3 had a blivet in it's armament? Made it look ugly as sin.

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    Replies
    1. I've convinced myself that retirement is the remedy, I could be wrong but I am tired of the grind. They are trying very hard to make work "not fun." More meetings, more mindless process which accomplishes nothing but allow the bean counters to more easily count the beans.

      S-3 with a fuel blivet? Yeah, that must have been "pretty."

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    2. Storage blivet- for parts, mail, pax we don't like (hahaha)

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  11. Nasal congestion. You might check out the Navage pump. (Navage.com) Works for me.

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  12. Taihei-ki Eiyu-den
    portrait of Ishikawa Sôsuke Sadatomo
    http://www.kuniyoshiproject.com/Heroic%20Stories%20of%20the%20Taiheiki%20(S62),%20Part%20I.htm
    from the series:
    Heroic Stories of the Taiheiki (Taiheiki eiyû den, 太平記英勇傳)
    by Kuniyoshi
    though my mentor's (Kyoko Iriye Selden, Senior Lecturer, Department of Asian Studies, Cornell University) favorite from this series was
    Number: 19 Amanaka Shikanosuke Yukimori

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  13. My sovereign for The Crud, along with homemade chicken soup (i debone, cube the meat, brown it, remove, sweat the mirpoix, add water and the bones, BTBRTS*, removebones after half-an-hour, add back the meat, includingwhateveri can pull off the bones, seasonto taste at each step), is equal parts cider vinegar and honey, cut to taste with hot water in which ginger has been boiled. Mulled wine also works. The heat and aromatics help loosen things up.

    *Bring to boil, reduce to simmer.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If I was serious I'd drink some ginseng tea. Did that my 4 years in Korea whenever I started feeling crappy. Of course, being in my 20s had a lot to do with that as well.

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  14. Regarding retiring. It seems your displeasure at work is making you sick. Please talk to The Missus and explain that the work is literally killing you and you don't want to die in the saddle, so to speak. Especially with the revelation that you made up higher in the comments that your uber-bosses are hiring jackwagons that can't/won't do the job properly and more and more responsibility is falling on your shoulders.

    Make it plain. You can keep getting sick and most likely die while working or you can retire and spend many many happy and healthy years with her.

    Seriously. I'm worried for you. You need to change something, and the only thing you can really change is your work situation.

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    Replies
    1. That's a possibility. Something I'm taking very seriously.

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    2. Your new desk looks very nice there in your "command center".
      I had to put together a walker the other day by the pictures, and found that I needed to pay attention to which was front and which was back, like you said.
      Wishes for you to feel back to 110% soonest...you are the third person I have heard from today that has the crud...making warding off signs. When I was sick last October, I thought I should buy stock in Kleenex I was going through so many! That recipe of Michael's sounds like it would be very effective! Although I usually substitute a stiff dash of cayenne pepper, lots of garlic and a moderate amount of ginger...anything that says it's anti-viral when I make mine. And tea with honey and lemon in it for sure!
      Gramma Harris always put a good stiff slug of whiskey in her "flu tea", but then again, that's an Irish thing to do.
      Feel better!!

      Suz

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    3. It's also a Scottish grandma thing to do!

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    4. And right now, the urge to retire is very strong.

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    5. Sarge, Bean's comment "die in the saddle" can be more aptly put as "die in the harness" or "die in the traces".

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    6. Yes, if one is a plow horse. I, most assuredly, am not.

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    7. Touche, Sarge (where is that French marking). A year or two before I retired, I was bestowed the exalted title of "Senior Research Scientist" (titles didn't cost anything except the new business cards [Being humble [I was kind of embarrassed by it]), I explained to people that the title was given just before I was going to be put out to pasture.

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    8. The little French marking is, hold down the Alt key, then, using the number pad, enter 0233. Gives you é.

      😎

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    9. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    10. Um, you do know I am part French, no?

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    11. My apologies, Sarge. I used a foul word posting. Just realized it a minute later. Sorry.

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  15. Congrats on the desk, condolences on the crud.
    JB

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    Replies
    1. Ah yes, the crud, one must get through it I suppose.

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  16. I missed all the comments yesterday, must have missed checking the box...
    When I feel a 'something' coming on I take Airborne, works for me...
    Retirement is scary... When you go in on Tuesday you can tell them you are done, it is ok to do that.

    Now that I've caught up on the missed comments I can look at your Sunday blog.

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    Replies
    1. I want to retire, but that has to be a unanimous decision, the better half isn't ready for that.

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Just be polite... that's all I ask. (For Buck)
Can't be nice, go somewhere else...

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