Ode to the Zombies in the C-Suite

CEO pay is a problem. The administrative costs of running healthcare have increased because we’ve added so many layers of complexity and bureaucracy that have nothing to do with healthcare or outcomes.

The hospital and insurance industries are fighting against Medicare for all or any largely single payer system. They have stolen the money from the people who need healthcare. They use this loot to harness the power of lobbyists to write and promote legislation to keep their advantages and privileges away from the masses who might benefit from being able to afford medicine to stay alive.

How do they make so damn much money? They cut costs like crazy, and big costs like staffing are the first on the chopping block. CEOs are not considered healthcare staff. They don't contribute to health, or care. In fact, they operate against it. You don't need a heart, and certainly don't need empathy, to run a healthcare facility. All you need are pure, driven, focused, sociopathic tendencies. Just be a Zombie, and you'd make a perfect CEO.

On Nurses’ Week, let’s also remember the other people who do work in healthcare, including non-clinical workers. Understaffing is a widespread and dangerous practice, whether you work in direct patient care, take out the trash, provide security, or transport patients around the hospital. None of us can do our jobs without the others.

You cannot run a hospital without keeping it clean. You cannot run a hospital without people to move patients from one room to another or from their room to a procedure, changing lightbulbs, sterilizing equipment for surgeries, emptying sharps containers, and all the other things that are taken for granted but are crucial to safe and complete operation of a hospital. You can’t short staff the people who maintain the medical equipment or stock the supply shelves. You can’t short staff security, because there are actual and potentially violent individuals who enter the hospital.

You can’t even have short staffing for human resources, if you need to keep hiring people all the time due to your high turnover. Of course, you can try underpaying everyone, and in a low unemployment market, you can blame your inability to attract new employees on flaws of the existing staff. It certainly couldn't be the fault of anyone higher up.

By relying on as few staff as possible, you end up burning out the existing employees, who have to run at a faster pace, are more likely to miss details or make mistakes, or have to cut corners in order to get all of the work done in the time they are allotted. They can’t go on vacation because there’s no one to take their place. Doesn’t matter how much vacation time they’ve accrued, they can’t use it. And the shorter staffed they become, the more stressed the workers become, from the bottom up through consecutive layers of management.

Until you reach the C-suite- where they are somehow insulated- they can avoid and escape the chaotic and stressful everyday environment. And even if their worst stressors materialize- low patient satisfaction scores (gasp!)- they can apply pressure downward and no harm will come to them in their suits- they rack up bonuses and extra perks, and even if they are fired, they have a golden parachute coming, to keep them wealthy as they navigate the revolving door of the close-knit executive world.

Yet this is the model on which the executives expect the hospital to run. The mega-corporate near-monopolies have limited competition, driven prices up, and contributed to our plummeting outcomes and skyrocketing costs compared to every other industrialized country.

Blinded by data, the Suited Scourge wanders through the back hallways away from patient rooms, haunting management with blood-drenched HCAHPS printouts. Wide eyes bulging and bleeding from their sockets, insisting on hearing the magic “yes” to every demand. Keep downstaffing and don't stop until there is just one employee covering each floor, responsible for every patient, dust bunny, and soiled washcloth 24/7. Get those products patients in and out fast, to maximize revenue. Crank up the speed on the assembly line, the robots staff will have no choice but to keep up. If the products patients live long enough to beat up the robots staff, sue 'em for property damage to reduce the replacement cost.

Then, and only then, will the Zombies be satisfied, as long as the patient satisfaction surveys come back in the 90th percentile, and dripping with blood.

Goodbye...Newman!

Our nearly two month-long saga with the post office has finally come to an end.

This week they poured the concrete and yesterday they installed the new mailboxes for the neighborhood. No more trips to the post office two or three times a week, waiting in line for the bonehead clerks and their perverse brand of customer "service". #postalnazis

No more mid-afternoon trips to avoid the long lines at lunchtime, disrupting my schedule. No more feeling like you need to take a shower after seeing the disgusting clerk on the left leering at every woman under 30 with long hair in shorts. No more rude brushoffs when you ask a question. No more watching the exasperation on the faces of the 20 or more other people waiting in line at the same time when two clerks are working but neither one is present at the front counter. No more Zombie Apocalypse.

I'm just so glad to be able to have the mail delivered again. My running route can now be changed to avoid midtown traffic and I can plan my days without the extra trip. First world problems, I know, but I can also do without the rudeness and toxic energy that the place creates, another reminder of what it was like to work in a toxic organization, which I don't need.

Breathe easy.

Gone Postal!

Lately it's been getting to be too long between posts here. Sorry.

I've been busy. Suddenly got an uptick in interest in my business, and I've been trying to become more of a social media butterfly, which doesn't come naturally to my introverted self. I have been scrambling to get a lot of work done while I still had my student around. She graduated this weekend.

Life's been pretty boring from a running point of view, but I feel like there aren't enough hours in the day when it comes to work and getting my workouts in. I did manage to get over 70 miles on my feet this week, but only about half of that was running.

I spend a lot of time walking these days, doing my brain crunching exercises. Most of the work I'm doing now requires a lot of thinking and creative ideas, and I do that best while walking.

I am considering doing a long run next weekend, it could be some creative adventure but I haven't had time to think about it. So it will probably be unannounced until I post about it.

Nurses' Week
I've had some fun too. It was Nurses' Week and I wrote an opinion piece in the local paper. So nice to be able to speak freely. I got a lot of positive feedback via email and private messages after that one. Just another indication of how fearful nurses are.

Going Postal

I've been entertained, sadly. I hope none of my readers are postal employees who are genuinely good people and hard workers. Unfortunately there are a bunch who give y'all a bad name.

Maybe I shouldn't laugh at this, but we have a community mailbox in our front yard. About a week and a half ago someone left a note on the outgoing mail slot saying that mail was not being collected. "Mailbox broken" written in sharpie on a post office slip.

After we didn't get any mail for three days, and none of the neighbors were getting theirs either, I called the post office. It took four different numbers before I actually spoke to a human being. Then the human being gave me another number to call, which lead me to a dead end.

It was a voice mailbox, but the greeting said no one is checking this mailbox. Hell of a lot of good that does! So I called the human being again, who reluctantly gave me the mail carrier phone number at our post office.

I called the carrier line and they told me that the lock on the back of the box was broken and our mail was being held at the post office until the box is replaced. I asked how long it would be. "Could be a week, could be a month. They have to come up from Denver to fix it."

Helpful. I asked why no one had informed us that this was the situation and she didn't have an answer. All we got was a notice that the outgoing mailbox was "broken" but no one left a note about the incoming mail.

A week ago Saturday early in the morning I decided to brave the line at the Post Office. It felt like I wandered into the Zombie Apocalypse. They have blank looks on their faces, and only speak to give expressionless greetings. All that's missing are blood and brains. There are four people working behind the counter, a line out the door, but only two are serving customers. The other two don't even look up from their gaze at the desk or whatever they're doing back there. One of them was sitting there working on passport applications.

Don't they have the sense to go in the back to work on that so people don't feel like they are being ignored? I guess customer service is a concept that is completely unheard of.

When they walk back to fetch somebody's mail, they move at a snail's pace. Someone needs to give these people a racewalking lesson. They obviously do get paid by the hour, in a very protected job, and it shows.

Just when I got to the front of the line, the customer in front of me had paid for something with a check. He filled out the check and put the amount in the little box, signed it, but didn't write the amount out on the line. The doofus postal worker looked up in my direction with a blank stare on his face, and said, "That guy didn't fill out his check." He looked around, as if asking for divine intervention. I said, "Did he sign it?"

He looked down at the check. "He signed it, and he put the amount in the box but didn't write out the amount on the line. I need to go ask my supervisor." He turned around and high-snailed it, like he had lead orthotics in his shoes, to the unknown territory of the giant back room.

OMFG.

Requirements for postal worker counter employment:
1. No independent or critical thinking skills, or initiative
2. Emotional intelligence= ZERO
3. Slower than dog snot
4. Personality of a piece of discarded gum on the sidewalk

And they love to wait on the customer in front of you, get finished, then walk away without making eye contact or saying anything. So you have no idea if they are coming back, or if it's down to one worker serving a long line of people waiting.

Finally the guy came back and called out an emotionless "Next." I felt like I was in the line for the Soup Nazi.

By the time I walked out of there, I felt like this.

I think I'll just pick up my mail once a week until this is over. It's too creepy and unpleasant in there.

I called one more time to the carrier line to find out if they had an ETA on the new mailbox. The following Wednesday, this sign appeared on the front of the box, with the dead end voice mail number (I checked again). Oh so helpful.

So we're in mail limbo, until who knows when.

Iris's 14th Birthday
Last Wednesday was Iris's birthday. She was so happy to be the queen for a day. Not that she ever is anything less than a princess. I baked pupcakes and we had a little party for her with the student I've been working with. She and Iris have become quite fond of each other over the past semester.

Iris got a new orange Frisbee. She has the energy of a dog half her age. I'm so lucky to have these two around after 14 years and still doing so well. Every day is a celebration with them, from butt rubs first thing in the morning to cuddling at night in the bed with us, and all the walks, singing, dancing, playing, talking, chasing, spying, and begging in between.

And Your Point Is...? Bombs, Boston, Blizzards, and B.S.

Yesterday was a weird day all around. It started out weird. We woke up to 10 inches of heavy snow before work, that we had to shovel out of the driveway to get out to our never-plowed street. Driving to work was weird, you would think that in Colorado people would know how to drive in snow, but it turns out they're not much better at it than if a blizzard dumped a foot of snow in Phoenix.



I went into work and it was a bizzarro day, is the only way I can describe it. We got some weird characters at work. They were not patients, but people who accompanied the patients. It's already crowded enough in our work space and then you sometimes get these annoying people who occupy more space, make noise, and find other ways to encroach on our foot space while being rude and loud and sometimes invading the privacy of our patients. When people don't feel well, they want to be alone, or with their own carefully chosen family members or friends.

All this crap makes me question the sanity of our human existence. I felt extremely irritable all morning and I was busy. Fortunately my own patients were easy to work with, none of them had been affected by the mid-April zombie apocalypse, or whatever weird phenomenon occurred that ate so many people's brains prior to April 15th.

By 1 pm or so, the irritation had worked itself out, or gone home for the day, I was lightheaded and my hands were shaking. I got someone to cover my 1 pm appointment and I took off for lunch. Our soon-to-disappear, already undersized breakroom was full and I needed quiet, so I ate my lunch in the report room, which was empty. I turned my phone on and started scrolling through Facebook, and then I saw the bit about an "explosion" at the Boston Marathon.

By the time I had to go back to work, it was apparent that it was not just an explosion, but a deliberate bombing. I thought of all the people I know who were at Boston, either as runners, spectators, or support. The rest of the afternoon, whenever I could, I checked Google News to see the developments of the story. All my coworkers were checking, too.

I hate to get sucked into the porn of a tragedy, I tend to never follow these things and wait until the dust settles with more information. I don't have TV at home, either, so I don't get exposed to the dramatic and overblown newscasts, and I don't watch them on the computer. I prefer to read about it after more information is available. So, I tried to avoid the video coverage and the graphic pictures that were coming out.

When I got off work at 6 pm, I saw my e-mail and some posts on Facebook that all the local runners were safe, and that ultrarunner Tammy Massie, who had gone to Boston to cheer people on and spectate, was safe, and reports were coming back about people being killed and critically injured.

What I want to say to the perpetrators is, "And your point is?"

How cowardly and pathetic that someone has to resort to violence to attempt to get some point across, I do want to know who and what their motive was, to choose a large gathering of people at this event. It seems that it was timed to coincide with the largest number of finishers and spectators at the finish line area, around 4 hours into the race. Somebody knew enough about marathons, or Boston, at least, that they figured that out. But I also think to coordinate this many bombs, they had to be an organized and funded effort by a group.

We have seen so many violent events lately, with the mass shootings and bombings, that I think that somehow this bombing might be connected in some way with someone with an extreme agenda regarding the massacres we've seen lately involving guns. I'm not sure if that's even right, but it's what pops into my mind these days whenever there is some kind of mass violence. Some frustrated, crazed sociopathic freak of a monster like a Timothy McVeigh. Who knows, it could have been anything, but I get the feeling it's homegrown and related to that domestic political issue. I might be way off, but it feels that way to me.

What scares me about this incident is that it seems like every time we have a violent event, it is followed by copycat events. It could have been any sporting event, a baseball game, or anything where there are crowds of people. No one ever thinks something like this would happen in running, except maybe at the Olympics.

I heard they had some kind of tribute to the people of Newtown, Connecticut at 26 miles on the course. I imagine there were plenty of people who experienced that horror and were also at Boston. Double traumatization. The people who were actually injured, or killed, and their families and social circles, are the ones who can never have justice.

I hope the crime is solved soon, I want to know, but no matter what happens to the people who plotted and carried this out, there is no justice in these situations, not for the perpetrators, and never for the victims. Justice doesn't exist. They will have to live with it forever. The only thing other people can do, other than supporting the victims, is to refuse to act out in violent ways and to solve disagreements through words, and peacefully.

There are too many people out there who feel that terrorizing other people is a way to get the message across, we have this horrible way of sensationalizing it in the media. Sometimes there is no message, it's just a mentally deranged individual. But in this case, it's more than that.

It always amazes me when I read posts in social media coming from individuals I think are just regular people, who run, go to work, have children, and lead fairly ordinary existences, don't commit crimes, wish to live peacefully and safely, and wouldn't endanger other people on purpose or want to traumatize anyone.

Then they spout things that exacerbate polarization and violence, and support the outrageous assertions of groups like the recent statements coming from the NRA leadership. I suppose that by pointing this out I could be just as polarizing to them, but I really think what we hear coming from those groups is crazy fringe nonsense and doesn't do anything to help solve the real issues we have with guns and violence.

Our so-called "elected" representatives, who are really bought, don't do anything to help these situations because they are so polarized. They set a horrible example for the people. They don't get anything done, they just obstruct each other and waste the taxpayers' time and money, while working to advance the agendas of the lobbyists' organizations who pay them much better for it than we taxpayers do.

There are too many people who are just freakin weird. Like the latest idiocy coming out of the Westboro Baptist Church, the hate group in Kansas that likes to blame everything bad that happens on God's wrath due to something to do with gay people. These crackpots are grabbing media attention by saying they will boycott the funerals of those killed in Boston.

Really makes you wonder about humanity. But I still think that the overwhelming majority of human beings are not bad people, and I think it's time that the good people harness their power and drown out the voices of the tiny minority of crazy, evil ones.

Regardless, we go on and move forward. We will run more marathons, and ultras. We will continue to have large events with spectators lining the streets. It won't stop runners. It will change the way some of the larger races are managed, and it will probably increase entry fees due to in the increased cost of security, but it won't stop people from going about their business as usual. It will leave people with an uncomfortable, eerie, nagging thought in the back of their minds when they remember what happened at Boston in 2013.

Magnolia Road Sunrise Run

Lately I've been talking about how much I enjoy running at night, and I don't do enough of it. I have also been getting slightly burned out on my usual running routes. I've been seeing way too much of the Power Trail and the Spring Creek Trail.

So when Shannon (aka Wheaties Boy) brought up the idea of organizing an early morning run on Magnolia Road above Boulder on Friday morning, starting at 4 am, other than the fact that I'd have to get up by 2:15 am and drive to Boulder, I was all over it.

Then I thought about it. I don't have to be at work until Monday, I have no important plans other than running some low key 5Ks this weekend, it's my easy week for running, and I can sleep whenever.

I knew Shannon would have to go to work and I'm not as fast as he is, but I really wanted the chance to run the entire 15 mile run, all the way to Peak-to-Peak Highway and back. I decided I would stick around until at least sunrise, so I could take some pictures. It sounded like some other people might run, too.

It's been a full moon and the weather has been perfect, not too cold, not too windy, and in Colorado, you need to take advantage of those times.

A few times I wondered, am I absolutely out of my mind?

No, this is a mini-adventure run. Yes getting up that early does border on the insane, but sleep is like money, and it ain't everything. It's a renewable resource and you can always find more of it, somewhere.

Magnolia Road has its own story, it's been written up in Runners' World, it's been written about in stories about the University of Colorado Buffaloes cross country and track teams, it's well-known as a training run for many of the elite atheletes who come to Boulder to train from all over the world.

I had never run on it, it's not a long enough run that I can really justify it most of the time, because it involves a two-plus hour round trip drive from Fort Collins, and the run itself is only 15 miles. It violates that rule in the stone tablets: Thou shalt not drive longer than thou shalt run. Something to that effect.

But I had plenty of reasons to do it, plus the fact that I am actively working on becoming less of a cold weather wimp, and running at 4 am through sunrise in the mountains of Colorado at 8700' in the winter is perfect for a cold weather wimp like me. I told Shannon I was going to wear 5 layers.

When we got there, it wasn't even that cold, but there was a stiff breeze when we started. It never got cold until right around sunrise, for about an hour, and then it warmed up again. So much for cold weather training.

So I got my stuff together, set my alarm for 2:15 a.m., just enough time to swill some coffee, take care of business, get dressed and drive to Bouldah. Shannon would have to go to work afterwards so we planned to drive separately.

As it turned out, I woke up at 12:30 am and couldn't go back to sleep, so at 1:30 I got up. Didn't get much done at that hour, but at least I wasn't rushed. I was so worried about getting up at the butt crack, and here it wasn't even the butt crack yet. It was the tail end of the full moon, and there were stars visible, partly cloudy skies and 32 degrees. Nice weather.

Driving down I caught up to Shannon in Longmont, we left only 2 minutes apart. I followed him up to the parking area. You have to drive through Boulder and up Canyon Blvd, up the canyon toward Nederland a little ways past the tunnel, and then turn left on Magnolia Road. It's about 4 miles to the top of a steep, steep climb where the pavement ends and there's a little parking area. Really small. Like, big enough for 2 cars.

It turned out to be just us two, no one else wanted to get up that early. As we got started, Shannon said, "You know, this really is borderline crazy." But those are always the best runs.

We got going, I brought an extra heavy shirt and wrapped it around my waist in case I needed another layer. I only wore one layer, though, plus my running vest. I was proud of that.

At first I was having a hard time seeing, my eyes weren't adjusting to the moonlight, which was filtered by the clouds. I brought my wimpy road headlamps. I love my little Petzl e-lites for road races like Badwater, or for running in town at night, but on dirt roads they aren't strong enough to illuminate the road surface. It was a lot of washboard at first, finally it evened out. Shannon stopped and switched headlamps with me after about a mile and a half. That was perfect. I needed my stronger headlamp, which I left at home.

Then we got going. I told him not to worry about me, we both had our phones and I didn't want to slow him down. There was very little traffic, only 3 cars passed me before the sky got light. The road is 7.5 miles each direction, and climbs about 750 feet each way on the rolling hills, low elevation is 8300', high is 8700'. The hills are not bad at all. Good for someone like me, who has slacked off on the hill training.

I took it super easy and slow, there are some good climbs but not very long. I thought about putting my music on but I was content to run under the moon without it. It seemed like it was taking me forever, but at the same time, I was enjoying the shadows across the road, the tall lodgepole pines and spruce and the bare branches of the aspen trees in the moonlight. The wind was barely noticeable.

Finally I saw Shannon running toward me. He was only 3/4 mile past the turnaround point. I thought I could hear the highway but didn't want to be disappointed if it was far away.

We talked for a few minutes and then he took off, I went to the turnaround, and at that point I started taking pictures. There was just barely a hint of light on the horizon.

Then I got serious about photo ops. It's more downhill on the way back, so I'd run in between photo ops. I took almost 200 pictures. First there were a few purple and pink streaks in the sky, then the oranges appeared, then different shades of lighter lavender, peach, and blue.

Eventually the sun came up and then there were more pictures to take, of the light illuminating the rocks, fences, aspen and other tree trunks.

I finally got back to my car around 7:45. I was starving.

I drove down into Boulder and stopped at Whole Foods to see if I could find something for breakfast real quick and get out of there. I encountered some really weird people in there. Whole Foods tend to attract a few oddballs anyway, and Boulder is full of them, so I must have picked the right place for people watching. Except I didn't care to watch people. I wanted food and to go home. I bought my food and went over to sit down at a little bar set up in front of the window overlooking the parking lot. There were about 10 chairs and only 3 people at the bar including me.

Suddenly the chair right next to me got pulled out, scraping across the floor and startling me. This woman, maybe 60 years old, fairly well-dressed, bundled up in a big sweater, jeans, and boots, sat down right next to me, while I was eating.

She got up real close, a lot closer than I prefer to have a stranger sitting, especially with my food open there. I looked over at her, and she gave me the evil eye, evil stare. She didn't say a thing. Then she got up and went somewhere, but left her bag sitting open on the bar.

Then she reappeared, this time, muttering to herself. She was speaking English, but I couldn't understand the words. I looked over at her again. Same evil stare.

I realy didn't want to introduce myself. I finished my food, but before I could finish, this man sat down on the other side of her. I don't think he knew her, but he sat down next to her the way she had done with me. I looked over at him for just a moment and saw that he was making some weird facial movements, like exaggerated chewing motions. He didn't say anything, just sat there chewing.

It was time to go. I tried to get out the door and the door wouldn't open. There were a few people behind me and they all tried the door, too. It was stuck. So I went over to the main entrance and left that way.

Very weird. I almost got stuck in the Boulder Whole Foods with some Zombies, I think. Perhaps the Zombie Apocalypse has come to Boulder already.

I drove home, body intact, and the Buffaloes greeted me at the door. I unpacked, got in the hot tub, went through my pictures, and took a nap.

A mini-adventure run, borderline crazy, close to home, well worth a few hours of lost sleep.

Work Hangover Wednesday: Zombies Ate My Brain

Happy Halloween. What a beautiful day it is here in Colorado. We're lucky to be here, with all the destruction of the storm on the East Coast.

I only worked one day this week, which was yesterday, but it feels like a work hangover today. I'm exhausted. It was another insanely busy day, with a Halloween-induced run on the blood bank. We did at least 8 blood product transfusions yesterday.

Seems like all I did was run up and down the stairs to and from the blood bank all day. At one point I almost took a nap down there while sitting in a chair waiting for one patient's blood that took extra long because of a screw-up in the paperwork.

I never even took a break until 3:30 in the afternoon, and I'd been there since 8 am. That almost never happens where I work, but yesterday it was just one of those days. It must be the convergence of the full moon and the zombie apocalypse, everyone needs blood and platelets this week, they're all bleeding!

This morning was my first run since the race. I'm not sore at all, feet didn't have any swelling except after the drive on Sunday. I do feel tired in my legs, but not bad at all. I ran an easy 6 miles and then went for a short, easy bike ride.

Tomorrow I'm running with Wheaties Boy, and I'm signing up for a 5K this weekend. The Heart Center 5K in Loveland. Usually I'd do the half marathon but I don't want to set myself back in my recovery, when this should be my easy week.

I'm making a major change to my racing plans for December, I've switched races at Across the Years. I'm going to do the 24 hour race on December 31st instead of the 48 hour. It will take me too long to recover from 48 hours, and I want to get back into training sooner this winter. As I work toward my goals of increased speed over the next year or so, it doesn't make a lot of sense to do a 48 hour run now.

I've been looking ahead at next year and I see a few races on the horizon I'm thinking about doing. I'm searching for a couple of good 50 mile road races at some point next year. I haven't found one yet. I'm already looking at Delano Park 12 Hour in Alabama in March. And I'm seriously thinking about doing the Cornbelt 24 hour again in May.

I also want to throw a few road marathons in next year. One race I'd like to go back to is the Deseret News Marathon on Pioneer Day in Salt Lake City. I'm looking for no-bullshit races. I was lucky to stumble on two great events with no bullshit this past year, the Cornbelt and 24 The Hard Way. I'm looking for more road events like that.

By bullshit races I mean 500 gazillion people, side circuses along the course, overpriced entry fees, Rock N Roll Marathon events come to mind. Really, in a marathon, I just want to run the damn race, get my time, and get out. I have other shit to do. I don't need all those frills and all those people. And I certainly don't need Elvis or a squad of cheerleaders to tell me that I can do it...

I'm going to spend some time on the bike this week, and as long as the weather holds this fall. I need to get some cold weather riding gear. I keep procrastinating. These 70 degree temperatures are teasing us, it means next week it will dump snow.

I'm hungry. I need to go get some food before I scratch the eyeballs out of the next person I see.

One Pissed-Off Chick!

Time for a rant. I'm pissed.

The election season is getting to me. I've been trying so hard to maintain an opaque outer shell and keep my mouth shut. I even posted something on Facebook last week encouraging people to do something for others when they feel like they want to spout crap about politics.

But I'm really pissed off and I'm so tired of the parroting of unsubstantiated lame-ass bullshit coming from people who have no clue whatsofucking ever about how we came to be in the mess we're in. And the reason they don't have a clue is not because they were born without brains or lack the basic education to be able to think critically, but they refuse to use the organ that resides inside their skull.

I have a family gathering coming up on my husband's side and most of them will be among the parroters, and I am absolutely dreading it, because I want to smack them down on their ignorance but I'll keep the peace by telling them simply not to go there with me, then spitting out the shredded pieces of my own tongue afterwards. I'm going to be civil to keep the peace with my in-laws.

But this is my blog and I don't feel like being a damn bit civil, except for saying we're dealing with unreasonable children here and they need guidance! But you know as well as I do that tactic won't work. Not in these times.

This morning the editor of the local paper wrote about how he'd been barraged with angry phone calls by people who claimed "liberal media bias" because the local paper covered Obama's visit to town and didn't cover much of the RNC convention. The editor said few of them wanted to listen, they just wanted to be heard. And that he explained that because Obama's visit was local news, it was covered extensively.

If a Republican president had come to town, they would have received the same coverage. He said that next week's DNC convention will get equal coverage to the RNC. Which is, not too much. Fine with me. I can get that on the Internet.

So Josh Awtry asks, Is there no room left for civility in conversation? My answer is, you cannot have a civil conversation with people who refuse to deal in reality.

Last week I already had the nauseating experience of having to work while an all day patient of mine was watching the Republican convention pageantry on the little TV in her chair. I was hearing bits and pieces of the B.S. they were dramatizing. One little snippet I caught was when someone in the little box mentioned repealing Obamacare. The patient was nodding like a bobblehead to all the crap they were saying.

Wah, wah, wah, Obamacare, Obamacare, like it's the devil and is to blame for all of our ills, as if everyone who is alive now and needs health care can blame their personal health woes on Barack Obama. As if Obamacare has been around for generations. As if Obamacare is the Zombie Apocalypse incarnate. Give me a fucking break.

It's really hard to be exposed to that shit raining down while you're held hostage, taking care of this patient, enduring the noise coming from the little box, and thinking, those people in that little box don't care that you can't afford the treatment you're getting, they don't even care if you can get it at all. They'd rather throw you out on the street and let you die.

Sometimes I think I should get hazard pay for this, exposure to toxins on the job. Sort of makes my chemo cart look like a lemonade stand.

Interesting little snippet of entertainment is Fareed Zakaria on CNN interviewing Grover Norquist, the Grand Wizard of all Taxophobes and probably wears a white sheet when he's not on TV. But mostly, Norquist is just a fool. A fool that an entire political party would take seriously enough to have based their own platform on his juvenile ideas.

We have a system that DOES NOT WORK. It is not working for us and we are getting deeper in trouble and we need to do something about it. And no, Barack Obama isn't going to be able to fix it, and neither is Mitt Romney or Ronald Reagan or Jeb Bush or Ron Paul or Jesus Christ or any one person, or any one Congress. It just doesn't work that way! We have dug ourselves into a hole and we need to dig ourselves out. And relying on politicians to do that for us is the dumbest idea since...Grover Norquist.

It is absolutely long past time the grownups put their foot down and explained to these cognitively-impaired zealots that when you spend more money than you have, you have to borrow money, and then you're in debt. And the cost of that debt gets bigger and bigger, in addition to the amount you borrowed.

If you don't make everyone pay enough taxes, you can't raise the revenue you need to make things work. You have to borrow money. Trickle down economics does not work and cutting taxes does not work to increase economic growth. All it does is secure the rich people's fortunes at the expense of everyone else. Vouchers end up putting money in some corporate pocket, not in the U.S. Treasury where it can be distributed more equitably among citizens and our infrastructure.

And that is precisely the problem we're having, because these taxophobic morons cannot stop lying to the public, which is also cognitively impaired and unable to do simple math and has a short memory. People who would rather let those in power think for them and tell them what to think.

If Mitt Romney makes $100 million a year, and he's taxed at 14%, then he pays 14 million in taxes. If he's taxed at 50%, he'd pay 50 million in taxes. He'd still have $50 million dollars left! Whatever he does with it, please explain to me how that is conscionable when people are scraping bottom everywhere? How can you spend $50 million dollars?

If a middle class family makes $100,000, and has to pay 15% in taxes, that leaves them $85,000 for the year. And that much money will provide a fairly comfortable existence for a couple, without any extravagant spending. They can probably pay the mortgage, a car payment, save a little money, and stay out of debt, but add a kid or two and that $85,000 won't go very far. And then what about the millions who live in poverty? Don't you think that some professional athletes' contracts and CEO bonuses could be distributed among all of those people and give them maybe a few dollars to live on?

Meanwhile there are gazillions of people such as those CEOs and professional athletes, making huge sums of money and not contributing their share of the cost of running this country. Wealthy people are citizens too, they have a stake in society just as much as middle class and impoverished people do. But they're getting off too easy.

Call me Socialist, Communist, Marxist, whatever the hell you want to, but there is enough wealth to go around for everyone in this country to have a decent standard of living. Unfortunately it is being sequestered in places like the Cayman Islands by a relative handful, of a very large hand, of wealthy people who are not being good citizens. They need to pay it back.

I laugh when these barfbags of the same party call themselves patriotic and fly their little American Flag lapel pins. If you're so damn patriotic, then take your money out and put it into the US Treasury and invest in your own damn country! Why doesn't the RNC platform change to "I've got mine, fuck you."

And don't think for a second that there isn't a contingent from the Democratic Party who does the same thing. They are lying hypocrites and I expect fully to see their hypocrisy dramatized in little talking boxes at work this coming week. And I'll have my own choice words for the party for which I usually vote, unless they can start acting like grownups and start the honest conversation rolling.

As if that would ever happen...and monkeys might fly out of my butt!

I wonder if it's going to come down to outright civil war in his country. Which is pretty scary because the one side tends to be a little more enamored of guns than the other, and I belong to the other.

Maybe I feel a little better, but I'm still pissed off.

Zom-B-Gon!

Much better day so far today. It was cool and cloudy this morning. I took Iris for 2 miles and then did a total of 8 miles for my morning run. Then I went to the sauna, which thankfully, I had to myself most of the 45 minutes while I sat there and drank three liters of water. I checked all the corners and in between the boards. No zombies in there. The sauna was safe at last. I remembered to bring my Zom-B-Gon.


Starbucks Via instant coffee is the best thing since...the iPhone? I'm not going to say sliced bread, because that might not pass the Mickey Check.

I started making my lists for South Dakota, started making piles of clothing and supplies for the trip, signed up for an online review course for oncology certification which I plan to test for later this year, and made a special trip to Starbucks for a package of the good stuff to take on the trip.

This afternoon I'll do a bit more packing and hope to get a nap in. Then I'll do my evening run. Maybe another 6 miles with some strides.

It's weird being in this non-training state, it's a maintenance phase. Next week is just a long week in the woods, a 5 day fun run. I'm looking forward to it, but I'm also wanting to get beyond the recovery phase from this because I am so excited about picking up the speed and training hard the second half of this year to do some serious damage to my 48 hour PR at Across the Years.

It just occurred to me that yesterday was National Running Day and I didn't even run. Ha! I like that. As I've said before, if everyone is doing it, I'm not...

I didn't even plan that one and it worked out perfectly.


Yesterday afternoon I did a bike ride and felt so much better afterwards. I was talking with a friend about cycling yesterday and it reminded me of one of my old mountain biking buddies in Crested Butte, back in the late 80s. Carole and I used to do long bike rides year-round, and here's a picture I found of us, riding our bikes to ski up Washington Gulch above Crested Butte in 1987.

That was back in the days before iPhones, widespread use of personal computers and the Internet, and Starbucks on every corner...but we still hit it hard every day and made our own adventures. I've tried to continue living my life like we did back then, 25 years ago. I feel like I've done a pretty good job of it.

Carole is no longer with us, she died in 2002 from brain cancer. But she lived her life fully every day and pushed herself to her potential. You never know how many days you have, so make the most of each one!

Work Hangover Wednesday: Towanda! vs. the Zombie Apocalypse

What a week. The Zombie Apocalypse is making news headlines. It's an election year and we're more interested in reading about people eating each others' faces than we are about the issues facing the nation and how to solve them intelligently. The Merikins continue to drink the zombie kool-aid (pictured here).

I'm feeling pretty snarky today. In fact, I feel extremely, dangerously, over the top snarky, and really bitchy too. I'm starting to wonder if these face-eating zombies might be perimenopausal women.

Just this morning in the grocery store parking lot, I was having a Towanda! moment. It was all I could do to keep myself from verbalizing the thoughts going through my head. "The world is being taken over by f***ing idiots!" People are completely OBLIVIOUS to what's going on around them.

I wanted to back up and smash into the driving school car that stopped behind me, basically, parked, just as I was trying to pull out of my parking space. It looked like the teacher and the kid were planning to park right there, at a 90 degree angle to me, just having a conversation, OBLIVIOUS to my reverse lights.

I'm older and I have more insurance. And furthermore, don't teach the kid to do stupid things in the parking lot. I was really tempted to Towanda! them. Instead I got out and walked toward the instructor's side of the car, finally she realized what they were doing and looked apologetic and made the kid move. Hel-lo?

By the time I got to back out of my parking space, then I had to deal with the clueless mom jabbering on her cell phone, walking with her two kids down the middle between the parking spaces, OBLIVIOUS to the cars that were trying to get in and out.

The past week or so I've been in a funk and it's most likely hormones, but I feel like I'm about to become someone else. Like somebody who walks the street downtown ranting and raving about whatever the voices are saying to them at the moment.

By the time I get home Tuesday nights, after two busy days at work and listening to a lot of people who need more than just IV therapy, there are times when I start to feel like I need therapy myself. I'm not even being sarcastic about that, there are some sad stories out there. Sometimes I can barely get away before the tears start rolling down my face.

What brings out the snark in me are the people who create their own problems and refuse to own their own crap, and try to blame everyone else for their victim attitude.

In the midst of the national paranoia about government taking action on something that might actually help us, someone is finally stepping up to take action. I'm glad to see it. Long overdue.

Our zombies who continue to eat recreationally with their own faces stuffed full of bad food, and allow the manufacture, advertising, and sales of bad food, in the face of an epidemic of fat kids who are growing into even fatter adults and soon will be getting IV antibiotics for their non-healing diabetic foot ulcers and having amputations at age 30, continue to lead sedentary lives hypnotized in front of the TV where they can be sold the next sugary excuse for food.

Someone is doing something about childhood obesity, and who ever would think it would be a huge entertainment corporation, but Disney is taking action. Soon there will be "Mickey Checks"- meaning if the product is mouse-approved, then it gets the thumbs up for advertising on Disney.

Recently I had an opportunity to try GoGurt. It's sold as a healthy snack for kids, but it's full of sugar. It's enough to gag anybody. That's why they call it Gogurt- because the kid goes on sugar until he crashes.

We'll see if this anti-obesity effort catches on, but good for Disney for being willing to make the first corporate move.

Time to stop bitching and talk about what I'm excited about. Number one, I just made all my reservations for my trip to Death Valley in July to be on the Badwater medical team again. I can't wait!

And next week we start the Double Mick.

Time to get busy packing, and maybe later I'll actually get my butt out the door and go running...