Babba finds the Mother Ship

After a show at the Fine Arts Theater, Babba and Mrs. Gi went out for a great vegetarian dinner at the Tupelo Honey Cafe. I had my favorite "sweet potato pancake". On a balmy August night we stopped at the drum circle. It was a beautiful time of music and dancing that helped to put our busy lives into perspective. The best part is that all this is just twenty minutes from our home in sleepy Fletcher. Too bad Bo wasn't with us to be part of the vibe. This is the kind of socialization he needs. We may make the Friday night drum circle a tradition to shake off cares of the week. Well I'm off to E-bay to bid on a Celtic drum called a Bodhran, so Bo and I can take up our position in the drum line.


Click here to experience the Chi of Asheville.

It's The BOMB!

Too bad we can't get DDT anymore. Those Insect Bombs are just that. Every once in awhile they will blow up a house. I thought by now they would do away with the flammable propellants. It's sort of like spilling a a cup of gasoline in your living room and waiting for the water heater to come on, or someone to flip a light switch. DDT was so much safer. It is completely harmless to humans (and eagle eggs). My Mom would spray the dog, spray us, sift it over our sheets like baking flour.

Chlordane, another wonderful insecticide, was banned a few years later. After you sprayed that stuff you wouldn't see a roach for 6 months. The NYC roaches would lift their legs up to bathe in the OTC products like RAID. When you live in row houses bugs are always a problem. Your neighbor paints and they launch the TET Offensive on your apartment. My friend's family were ahead of their time, they didn't believe in chemistry. I only ate at his house once. Roaches were everywhere, on the kitchen table, the couch, walking across the T.V. set, on the towels.

Growing up in NYC I learned to be a proficient ratter. Now Bronx rats are about the size of wood chucks. I had to find out where they were getting into the house. It was useless to put out poison and traps because NYC offered an endless supply of vermin. When the hole was found I plugged it with a mixture of concrete and broken glass. I preferred to use the 1 gallon guinea wine bottles. Then with the border sealed I methodically trapped and poisoned the ones inside (sort of like my illegal immigration solution).

In today's paper there was an editorial about DDT. It made me feel sentimental. Like the new GE light bulbs the new insecticides don't work well and are more toxic to humans. The latter half of the summer has been extremely hot and wet so we are now getting the insect invasion. Once every two weeks the ants mount a reconnaissance in force through our kitchen window. We put the little drops of Taro poison on little paper squares and wait 3 days while the window sill is turned into a grand buffet before all the ants leave for two weeks. A few puffs of DDT would get rid of them for the season. In our tiny back yard we have a spider web the size of a volley ball net. The other night I went out after dark to get Bo and I met the spinner. It was a brown spider about 3 inches long; it looked like a crab. From now on Bo doesn't go out after 8:30.

About 2 p.m on Wednesday at work I got a call from BP about the flea crisis. Yes, the joys of subletting an apartment. Well, as William Bendix would say in the 50's TV program The Life Of Riley, "Anyone can be a landlord, but it takes brains to be a tenant".

Sticky-Note From Hell

After 2 years of meetings and research the hospital has finally joined the rest of the country in standardizing pre-operative antibiotics. It seems the federal government feels the need to tell us what areas of health care need improvement. Congress has determined that all would be well with the world if we gave the appropriate antibiotics at the appropriate time. Other mandates include preventing hypothermia and normalizing blood sugars during surgery. That means I'll have to stop turning my patients into septic, hyperglycemic Popsicles. Which is a shame because I consider an infected patient with a blood sugar of 490 and a core temperature of 33 degrees C. to be a challenge.

The new standing order for antibiotic is:
Kefzol 1 gram IV 30 minutes pre-op. If patient weight > than 70 kg. give 2 grams of Kefzol IV 30 minutes pre-op.

Now this is pretty straightforward. That's what I thought till this Thurs. I had two patients arrive with two grams of Kefzol hanging for me to start. Then I noticed the sticky-note on the chart. It read " Do you want both grams of Kefzol? Patient 66 kg. (<70)". When I read the little yellow note, blood shot out of my right eye. Four years of college and the nurse can't figure out that 66 is less than 70. So I had to get the busy overworked nurses-aid to run extra dose back to the Out-Patient Dept. to be credited to the patient. Thirty years ago the O.R. head nurse would have walked over and fired that nurse on the spot. Don't laugh, this is some scary stuff. These are the people who are going to be taking care of you one day. It's at moments like this when I recall George C. Scott's quote from the movie The Hospital: "how am I to sustain a sense of meaningfulness in the face of this?"

Thank You Al Gore

I decided to save some money while decreasing my carbon footprint. I
went and picked up an eight pack of GE Energy -Smart bulbs. I thought this way CB could relax when all the lights are left on in every room of the house. The package promised me they would last five years and save me $300 over the life of the bulbs.

The first thing I notice is that two of these 13 watt/60 watt equivalent bulbs are not as bright as the the two 60 watt incandescent bulbs I replaced in the kitchen. There was an eerie glow in the kitchen that was reminiscent of a Coleman lantern . So I go out and buy a three pack of 26 watt/100 watt equivalent bulbs just for the kitchen. I put the other 100 watt equiv. bulb in the living room lamp that seems to burn 24/7 like the eternal flame, and then I spread the other 8 bulbs throughout the house.

It's been about 2 months now and so far two of these 5 year bulbs have blown out. Now disposal of these bulbs is akin to disposal of plutonium. They contain mercury vapor. A person in Maine who broke one of these in her child's bedroom incurred a $5,000 Haz-Mat clean up bill before she could place her child back in the room to sleep. I don't get it! When I was a kid we loved to break fluorescent bulbs. We used to go behind the super-markets and try to get the big 8 foot ones to hurl at our enemies in gang wars. The garbage-men would let the kids toss the tubes in the truck for them. What's the big deal? My Mom once broke a mercury thermometer in my butt. Maybe that's why no Nobel Laureates came from my neighborhood

I'm suppose to go to this web-site. to find out how to dispose of these WMD's. I think I'll just send them back to G.E. What would happen if a semi loaded with these crashed. It would be a catastrophe on the magnitude of Chernobyl.

I suspect most of these cures to energy and environmental problems will be worse than the diseases. I know ethanol (government subsidized food burning) has caused the price of milk to increase to $4.50 a gallon. It also threatens the economy of Mexico, because the bottom is about to fall out of the tortilla market. I read that Sylvania bulbs have a more pleasant light, but till I solve the problem of the plutonium in my garage I'm just saying NO to Green. I'm already doing my part to save the planet. I gave up using deodorant two years ago, honest, just ask CP.

Babba's "Hot August Night" Holy Land Tour

I had a few days off so we jetted to the Holy Land for a quick tour. Here we are visiting the temple. One senior in our group got his own personal scapegoat. Our Korean High priest is shown here instructing him on how to transfer his sins to the lamb. This is followed by a quick slaughter (no animals were injured in the making of this atonement). After leaving the outer court we then proceeded to the Holy of Holies where I got these neat pictures of MP and CP. The sign in the back is Hunter Subaru so we conveniently were able to get MP's oil changed. Please click on the following link to find out more about the great opportunity to see a real Mosaic Temple; right here in Hooterville N.C. Where manna meets grits.