Jeffrey D. Tharp's Blog, page 8

The most insulting loss of all…

I had a whole post teed up from over the weekend. It should have been sitting here safely waiting on me to do some final edits in Word before dropping it over into WordPress for publication. However, it’s currently not sitting anywhere on my computer. There’s no record that I even edited or saved any documents over the weekend. It’s also not in WordPress. Not in my drafts, not sitting in my scheduled posts file, or anywhere else.

It has well and truly disappeared. And frankly, I don’t have the energy to put into trying to recreate it from scratch.

As of a couple of weeks ago, I’ve officially made 4,000 separate blog posts dating way, way back to February 2010. I say 4000, because that’s how many I’ve written – well, 4,004 including this one. I’ve only made 3,989 of them public. Believe me when I tell you the ones that are sitting there in private mode are some real humdingers. Most of them won’t see the light of day until after I retire, if then. They’re the few examples of times I couldn’t tell the story while obscuring at least some identifying elements slipping through. 

In any case, after 4,000+ posts, you can count on one or two fingers the number of times I’ve simply had one of them eaten whole. That’s the entire reason for my workflow of writing everything first in Word. I don’t expect this to become a common occurrence, but it does mean I’m going to have to take some time coming up with a better failsafe. I’ve got too many things sitting here in various stages of draft to worry that they’re going to randomly start disappearing.

At least I’m not getting paid for this, so all I’ve lost is time… though that may be the most insulting loss of all. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

1. Tax return. The half a ream of paper I’m sending over to my accountant is an absolute absurdity. I have to think my taxes aren’t particularly complex. A W2, mortgage interest, some basic investments, and a few other random deductions to itemize… and yet it’s a stack of paperwork that I’m going to pay an expert hundreds of dollars to go over in hopes of being sure I haven’t gone astray of our Byzantine tax code. 

2. Smart tech. As I was sitting here on a day of the week I’m always scheduled in the office it got to be around 9:30 and I realized it had gotten cold as blue hell in the house. I’d utterly forgotten that I’ve got the thermostat set to lower the temperature after I should have left for the day. All the smart tech, from my phone to the thermostat didn’t realize or couldn’t react to the fact that I was, in fact, home when I’m normally not. It feels like by now this is something the “smart home” tech should be capable of sorting out before I get unnecessarily chilly.

3. Motor Vehicle Administration. So here we are, two months after buying my fancy new vehicle and four days until my second temporary registration expires. Why in seven hells it should take two months for the State of Maryland to process some paperwork so I can bolt license plates already in my possession to my own vehicle, I will never know… but here we are… again… with no end in sight. 

Bait and switch…

Back in July of last year, when the medical appointments were coming fast and furious, the doc advised me to, among other things, drop 100 pounds. I weighed in at 330 that morning. I can’t argue that I hadn’t been carrying around too much weight for too long. 

At last week’s follow up, I tucked in about 8 pounds short of the goal. I was feeling reasonably proud of myself for not immediately reverting to old habits the moment I started feeling a bit better. 

That’s when the old boy did a bait and switch on me. 

I know we talked about an even hundred, he said, but I want you to take it down another 30 from there. 

Two hundred pounds flat is where they want me now. I’ve been trying to play along with all this like a good little trooper, but fuck me. 

I was close enough to taste a meal that didn’t have to have every ounce of joy sucked out of in an effort to stay under an 1800 calorie daily limit while not being ravenous enough to ponder gnawing off my own arm. And then they moved the fucking goalposts. 

I woke up this morning with 33 pounds left to drop instead of the 3 I was expecting. Bet I’m not just a little bit salty about that.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

1. Plant based. I like my GP. I’ve been seeing him since I returned to Maryland and in that time I’ve never felt rushed or blown off. As I’ve started losing weight though, he’s gotten a bit fixated on the “value of a plant based diet.” I’ve had to remind him repeatedly that I’m not in any way on the cusp of going veggie. I like beans and lentils well enough, but not as an absolute substitute for proper meat. Chicken features prominently and I’ve dramatically cut down on red meat and pork, but I need this guy to come to terms with the fact that every so often I’m going to have a cheeseburger or a good slice of roast. I’m willing to compromise and adapt, but I’m not entirely forgoing the best things in life indefinitely. Otherwise we’re not so much prolonging my life as just making it feel longer while every ounce of pleasure is sucked out of it.

2. Egg whites. I like eggs and used to eat a lot of them. A three or four egg omelet wasn’t unusual for breakfast. Because of the seemingly unsettled science of dietary cholesterol I’ve made an effort to cut back to just 3 or 4 eggs a week. But, they say, you can use egg whites and miss the cholesterol completely. Sure. I tried that. It’s hard as hell to turn egg whites into dippy eggs though. Egg whites make the worst egg salad I’ve ever put on a plate. An egg white omelet. Hard pass. I’ve given it the college try but I’m so very much not impressed with cartoned egg whites. They may be “better for you,” but in my estimation they’re not worth needing to clean the damned skillet.

3. Star wars. When I was a kid, one of America’s great presidents stood up and proposed a Strategic Defense Initiative to shield the United States from Soviet nuclear missiles. Never mind that the technology wasn’t there. Never mind the incredible cost to deliver it. Never mind that it would take decades of research to deliver on the promise of securing America from the ballistic missile threat. The very existence of SDI made the Soviets absolutely nutty and helped send them into a spending spiral from which their already questionable economy never recovered. So when, in 2024, I hear vague news reports of Russia wanting to put missiles in orbit, all I hear is history rhyming. I still like our chances of being able to spend this new Red Menace into oblivion if it comes to it.

The Deep State always wins…

Well, here we are. The day after the Super Bowl. I haven’t had the news on yet, but I assume that means that we’re now firmly under the rule of the Deep State after the Kansas City Chiefs won the game and completed the greatest PsyOp in human history. 

Sadly, since it was a work night, I went to sleep before they showed Taylor Swift crowning Joe Biden Intergalactic Emperor for Life on the 50-yard line following the presentation of the Lombardi Trophy. I’ll have to pull up the pictures of that later. I’m sure it was a quiet tasteful ceremony. 

In any case, I’d like to formally congratulate the Deep State on winning Super Bowl LVIII. 

If there’s anything the red-pilled, basement dwelling, faux-alpha right wing should have learned by now it’s that, in the end, the Deep State always wins. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

1. Insurance. For the most part I have had very good luck with my health insurance provider. Presently, though, they’re picking a fight over the bill for the 30-day heart monitor I got to enjoy last year. “Not medically necessary,” they say, though the cardiologist who called for it seems to disagree with their assessment. Just now I haven’t been billed for anything yet, so I’m on the sidelines while Phillips, my doctor, and Blue Cross throw shade at each other. I assume at some point they’re going to fling a $9,000 bill at me just to see if maybe I’ll pay it on spec. Being a professional bureaucrat, though, I’m entirely prepared for whatever paper drills may come. Hopefully, though, this doesn’t devolve into a full-blown pain in the ass… but I’m not overly optimistic.

2. Clothing. I almost never have a reason to do something like put on a dress shirt or, god forbid, a suit, but almost isn’t never. What I’ve discovered this week, while raiding my closet looking for something to wear is that even the suits I held over from my long ago time working in DC no longer fit. In fact most of them have me looking like a kid trying on his father’s clothes. One or two of them might be salvageable, with a tailor who knows their business, but otherwise, I’m going to have to go shopping for clothes… and there’s honestly no variety of shopping I want to do less.

3. Congress (and the average American). If it weren’t tied directly to my ability to make a living, watching the ongoing fuckery that is the United States Congress would be entertaining as hell. There seems to be no hope of passing a budget. Republicans in the Senate just shot down the most conservative border security bill proposed in my lifetime. Republican leaders in the House of Representatives can’t manage to muster votes from their caucus to do… well… anything at all. It’s certainly the most dysfunctional government I’ve lived through – and it has no real signs of improving any time soon. But, we’ve gotten the government that the American people, in their wisdom, have voted for… which I suppose just goes to prove how deeply stupid the average American is.

On normalcy and not hitting the panic button…

For as long as I can remember, every medical professional I’ve encountered told me that I’d feel better if I lost weight. Having lost a not inconsiderable number of pounds, I think they may have sold me a pig in a poke. The fact is, as far as I can tell, I don’t feel any better in February 2024 than I did in February 2023. How much of that is reality versus looking backwards with rose tinted lenses, I couldn’t tell you with any degree of accuracy.

I can say with some confidence that I’m feeling better today than I have since the end of June when all my latest health fuckery kicked off. I’ve worked myself off of being medicated for diabetes. I suspect the next time I see my GP, I’ll be instructed to start back off blood pressure meds. The anxiety, which at times was just about debilitating, has receded into a background hum which mostly crops up when I have the occasional odd ache or pain or when some vital sign pops off with an outlying reading.

Since none of my extremely well credentialed doctors seems to be unconcerned beyond “continue to monitor,” trying to get my head into a place where I don’t hit the panic button on a daily basis is probably the right thing, but it’s been challenging. Being someone who as a child was perfectly capable of worrying himself sick, this is a bit of a work in progress.

Even if none of that were true, I know I’m feeling better than I was in the summer and fall because my reading pace is picking up. Instead of sitting here in the evening holding a book and idlily flipping pages and being entirely distracted, I’m actually reading, comprehending, and burning through pages. My attention span is coming back. I’m intensely grateful for that… it’s been a long time coming.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

1. Metrics. One of the things the medicos have had me doing for the last six months is a much more frequent bit of at home tracking. Blood sugar, heart rate, blood pressure, blood oxygen, everything gets tracked. It’s a fine bit of trivia and something that could theoretically be helpful for them, but all it seems to have done for me is generate a new obsession and a lot of fresh anxiety when a rogue value pops up or I see an unanticipated trend develop. While I don’t dispute the value of knowing a more granular level of detail, I can tell you with certainty that even though I was certainly less healthy six months ago than I am now, I absolutely felt better before I knew any of the specifics.

2. Time. By my calculation, it should be December 29th. Somehow, though, the calendar says it’s February 2nd. That can’t possibly be right, can it? I don’t know exactly the age I was when time started to speed up, but I seem to be noticing it speed by at an almost alarming pace these days. Oddly, it doesn’t make the work days seem any shorter, but the pace of moving from one week to the next is getting quite out of hand. I have no idea how one cuts back on the throttle there, but something must be done.

3. Taxes. I switched my Roth IRA from one institution to another this year. During the transition, I managed to add in about $50 more than is allowable by law. The penalty, if left uncorrected, is something like a 6% fine for every year the extra money remains in the account. It was easy enough to fix with a call to the company who holds the account, but the real absurdity is how little our common Uncle Sam will allow you to put away to grow for untaxed future withdrawals. There are articles posted regularly decrying how the Average American will be woefully unprepared for retirement. It seems to me that one way to get after that issue would be to dramatically increase the amount that people can legally shelter from the long arm of the tax man.

Like art and pornography…

I really didn’t know what to expect when I cut down the blog from something I posted every night to just two days a week. I’d been five-a-week for so long it represented a surprisingly significant change in my evening. One thing I didn’t expect though, is how much of an embarrassment of riches it would yield in terms of how many things I had the option to write about in any given week. 

This week, for instance, I thought about taking on the federal government’s continued fumbling of border security, the Iranian backed attack on US troops in Jordan, my MAGA-led county government’s ongoing efforts to gut the local school system, and some additional thoughts on my ongoing efforts to be vaguely less unhealthy. Any number of those topics could stand alone as a single post, or even as a series of posts. Each and every one of them is its own particular brand of shitshow. 

I assume that’s why, when it came time to sit down and start writing, that I couldn’t get past the first sentence or two. They’re all big issues in their own way, but damn am I tired of picking apart all the great foibles of the 21st century. I’m even more tired of spending my free time pondering the vagaries of health and diet.

With all that said, I decided I didn’t have it in me to write one of those posts just in the name of it being Monday. Being an election year, there will be ample opportunities to delve into the absurdities of contemporary American politics. The Middle East seems determined to go hot again at any moment, so there will be plenty of time to go through that meatgrinder. I’ve got a few doctors appoints stacked up over the back half of the winter. I’m sure that will be the topic of at least a few posts after the fact. 

I’m feeling a need to branch out a bit, although I’m not sure in my own head exactly what that means. In any case, I need some fresh topics to get my hands – and head – around. As for what form that might take or even what those issues are, I don’t have the foggiest idea. Like art and pornography, I suppose it’s just something I’ll know when I see it. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

1. Apple Watch. I’m not 100% convinced that my Apple Watch is helpful. Cardiology recommended it because of the quick ability to run a simple EKG if my heart rate ever takes off at a running gallop for any reason. Otherwise, it’s just becoming a repository for a whole bunch of new data that I can obsess and crank up my anxiety about. A true double edged sword. Days when I’m busy and don’t check my heart rate or oxygen saturation or any of the 300 other data points it serves up at the touch of a button are fine. But the days when my brain isn’t occupied and has time to dwell, things get a little froggy. I’m not entirely sure vital statistics wouldn’t be better left in MyChart and collected only at periodic doctor’s visits. At least there, things are in context. Living on my phone, though, they’re just an invitation to deep dive Reddit threads and lose hours on self-diagnosis.

2. Bureaucracy. The Defender’s first temporary registration was slated to expire on Saturday. Land Rover overnighted me a new set of temporary plates without any trouble, but asides from kudos to them for making it relatively painless, this shouldn’t be something that even needs to be discussed. None of this would be an issue if we weren’t working through the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles to get things processed through the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration, both state agencies well known for the speed with which they process taxpayer requests. I wish I was surprised that something as dead simple routine as issuing new license plates apparently takes more than 30 days, but here we are, not surprised but thoroughly annoyed.

3. The MAGA party. I’m sorry, but in the year two thousand and twenty-four of the common era, I’m finding it increasingly hard to believe this is even still a thing. I know the philosopher said “you can fool some of the people all the time,” but at some point, it simply becomes less a case of misdirection and something more like willful disregard for reality. I try to mostly tune out the noise, but the fact that it exists at all is wholly absurd.