{"id":18777,"date":"2016-06-08T18:33:07","date_gmt":"2016-06-09T01:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=18777"},"modified":"2016-06-08T18:33:07","modified_gmt":"2016-06-09T01:33:07","slug":"the-blahs-mitigated-by-events-in-the-public-sphere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=18777","title":{"rendered":"The Blahs, Mitigated by Events in the Public Sphere"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Little to report.\u00a0I felt feverish and headachy after Friday morning&#8217;s workout at the gym, then\u00a0worse as the day went along. I begrudgingly\u00a0accepted the obvious\u2014I was sick\u2014and bailed out of Saturday&#8217;s social activities. I drank a lot of water,\u00a0ate very little, and Saturday\u00a0night\u00a0(judging by the condition of the sheets Sunday morning), sweated it out.<\/p>\n<p>Along with the mysterious, short-lived illness came a toothache, which persisted. Our\u00a0dentist was able to work me in Monday\u2014he discovered a dead tooth, one of my upper left molars\u2014and referred me to an endodontist for a root canal. I endured that lovely procedure (my first) Tuesday. The tooth and the jaw around it is still sore, but that&#8217;s from the shock &amp; awe done to it\u00a0yesterday, and will fade away in a few days. Otherwise I&#8217;m well again.<\/p>\n<p>Poorer, though. Remember me raving about my new movie star front teeth? Turns out that exercise in\u00a0vanity maxed out my dental insurance for the year, so Monday&#8217;s emergency consultation and Tuesday&#8217;s root canal were out-of-pocket expenses. Show of hands: how many of you have any kind of dental insurance? I ask because I keep meeting people who don&#8217;t have any. They go to Mexico when they have to have anything expensive done.<\/p>\n<p>If you read this blog you know me well enough you won&#8217;t be surprised when I tell you I felt sorry for myself and whined\u00a0about all this\u00a0on Facebook. One friend in particular was sympathetic and supportive. I suddenly remembered he and his wife nearly died in a car accident a few years ago. Her injuries were horrific but his were horrificker: they had to keep him in a medically-induced coma for days, and when that was over he\u00a0spent weeks in an inpatient rehab facility, followed by months of physical therapy.\u00a0I wrote back and said: &#8220;Yeah, but I have a TOOTHACHE!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Well, enough about me! How are you today?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m pleased Hillary Clinton has the delegate count sewn up\u00a0and is the presumptive Democratic nominee. I wasn&#8217;t willing to acknowledge it\u00a0until today, since it was only early this morning the California Democratic primary results became official.<\/p>\n<p>Monday evening the Associated Press announced that Hillary\u00a0had the magic number of delegates required to win the nomination, but their count\u00a0was based on telephone calls to\u00a0officially-unpledged superdelegates or some such, not on primary results, and it felt to me the AP had thrown\u00a0a sopping-wet blanket over the citizens of\u00a0six states who&#8217;d been\u00a0planning to vote in primaries\u00a0the next day,\u00a0Tuesday.\u00a0The voters, thank\u00a0goodness, ignored the premature AP announcement and turned out anyway, and now Clinton&#8217;s delegate count seems rock solid:\u00a0we can safely plan on her winning\u00a0the Democratic Party nomination on the first ballot.<\/p>\n<p>But, but, you say: Bernie Sanders! To which I say: Who? Let&#8217;s move on to the general election and get this shit over with! By the way: yay, California! I love you!<\/p>\n<p>I could not have written that Friday or Saturday. I really must be feeling better!<\/p>\n<p>Donna&#8217;s at a Tuesday through Saturday sewing retreat at old\u00a0Hilton (it&#8217;s something else now) a few miles from here;\u00a0the critters and I won&#8217;t see her until it&#8217;s over. She goes every spring, then spends the rest of the\u00a0year planning for\u00a0the next one. I&#8217;m happy when she&#8217;s happy, and she&#8217;s happy with her sewing (read &#8220;sewing and wine-drinking&#8221;) friends.<\/p>\n<p>Polly&#8217;s home with me and making dinner tonight: meatloaf,\u00a0mashed potatoes, corn. I&#8217;ve been outdoors all day in 100\u00b0F-plus heat at the air museum, so letting Polly do the cooking sounds good to me. Plus I get to catch up with all the violent and scary streaming TV shows Donna won&#8217;t watch with me. Life is good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, enough about me! How are you today?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,2,8],"tags":[2121,2035,2122],"class_list":["post-18777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-personal","category-politics","tag-dental-insurance","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-root-canal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18777"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18794,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18777\/revisions\/18794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}