Home Free

Happy New Year! As I write this, the clock is just hours away from 12 AM on January 1, 2020—the first day of the new year and new decade for people who use the Gregorian calendar. There are about 40 calendars in use around the world, but it’s the Gregorian calendar that sets the 1st of January as the beginning of the year. And I bet a lot of people think there’s something special about January 1. Nope, the first day of the year is just a decision made by Julius Caesar’s calendar maker in 45 BC. January is named after the Roman god Janus, the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings. And now it’s time for that song. You knew it was coming.

The song of the day is Auld Lang Syne performed by a cappella group Home Free. (A version sung by Lea Michelle can be found here.)

Pneumonia Shots

I am writing this blog post as a public service. I have information on pneumonia shots that was not exactly easy to acquire. So I want to share it. If you don’t care about pneumonia shots, you’re welcome to read any of the previous 1,369 articles I’ve published here.

A few weeks ago I went for a routine visit to my doctor. During my visit, she asked me if I had gotten a pneumonia shot. I told her I had. I had gotten a Prevnar 13 shot a few years ago. It protects against 13 strains of bacteria. Then she asked if I had gotten the follow-up shot. I said, “There’s a follow-up shot?” That was news to me.

But indeed, there is a follow-up shot and it’s called Pneumovax 23. It protects against 23 types of pneumococcal bacteria. You’re supposed to get the second shot at least one year after the first shot.

The first thing I wanted to do was to verify that I had gotten the first shot. My memory can be flakey about medical issues. I called my primary insurance and asked them if a pneumonia shot was in my records. I was told it was not but, at that time of the evening, they didn’t have access to all my records. So I called again the next morning. I was able to verify that I had gotten the first pneumonia shot four years and one month ago.

I went to my pharmacy to get the follow-up shot, and the pharmacist told me that since the Prevnar 13 shot was so long ago, I needed to get it again, then wait a year before I got the second shot. That information just defied logic to me. Both shots are good for life. Why would I have to get another Prevnar 13?

I called my doctor’s office and I was told the same thing. Get another “first shot” and wait a year. Although the doctor and the pharmacist agreed that I should start over, it still defied logic to me. I didn’t believe it.

I went to another pharmacy and explained the situation. This pharmacist told me she didn’t think another Prevnar 13 shot was needed. I agreed. We discussed it and she finally took out her phone and went to the CDC website for prescribing information. She probably spent 10 or 15 minutes reading about the two shots before she found the relevant information. You’re supposed to wait a minimum of one year after the first shot, not wait exactly one year. In fact, the data collected by the CDC showed that the longer one waits before getting the second shot, the more effective the first shot becomes. So waiting 2 years is better than waiting 1 year, and waiting 3 years is better than waiting 2 years, and waiting 4 years is better than waiting 3 years. That’s as far as their data went. So I told the pharmacist, “Let’s go with the Pneumovax 23.”

And that’s what we did.

Christmas 2019 Part 2

After eating a tasty (that’s actually questionable) Christmas Slaw Dog for breakfast, I ate a second one for lunch. I spent most of the day at my PC. I connected with cousin Betty in St. Pete and video-chatted with CyberDave in Roanoke and with Linda in Roanoke and with Ralph in Costa Rica. I slowed long enough to nuke a frozen entrée mid-afternoon. And of course I wrote and published a blog post (the previous post) plus this second post. In between events, I watched some YouTube.

The day’s temperature got up to 55°F (from 25° at 8AM). There was a weak winter sun that brought little cheer. I do not have the words to express the ordinariness of this holiday. I know it wasn’t always thus. There was a time long ago when it was special. I have special memories of those Christmases.

For example, one Christmas when I was a teenager, my dad sent me out to get a Christmas tree. It was nighttime and he was drunk, so he didn’t want to go out himself. He gave me the keys to his big Buick Electra and I drove to a nearby Christmas tree stand. The man operating it was an off-duty cop. I selected a tree and popped open the Buick’s trunk (boot, if you’re a Brit). I had momentarily forgotten that dad was an alcoholic, and the trunk (or boot) held dozens of brown paper bags. Inside each bag was an empty Four Roses Whiskey bottle. I knew that, but I didn’t know what the cop thought. He said nothing, but loaded the tree into the Buick and I took it home. I told you I had special memories of Christmas.

Memories beget other memories, and the memory of the Four Roses bottles brings forth another memory. Dad was driving us on a country road, and he raised the whiskey bottle to his mouth and finished off its contents. He rolled down his window, cocked his drinking arm, and hurled the bottle toward the other side of the road. Unfortunately, the bottle didn’t clear the window, instead slamming into the vertical metal bar between the car window and the vent window, which acted like a powerful spring that propelled the bottle around the inside of the Buick like a rocket, ricocheting off various windows and panels until its momentum was gone. That was exciting.

And now it’s time to call it a day. I’ve got a routine doctor appointment in the morning, and no doubt she will quiz me about how I got a black eye. Should I tell the truth or make up a story? Would she believe a Christmas party champagne cork? Probably not.

Christmas Day 2019

I awoke at dawn and knew that this day was Christmas Day 2019. Or as I call it, Wednesday. I didn’t want to get out of bed so I ignored the pressure in my bladder for a while. Finally, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood up. I must have “slept wrong” because my back hurt. I hobbled to the bathroom and then to the kitchen to take my assortment of morning pills.

I was vaguely hungry and I decided it was time to eat my Christmas breakfast. I went all out and prepared a Christmas Slaw Dog. A Christmas Slaw Dog is the same as a regular slaw dog, except it can only be eaten on Christmas Day. If you don’t know how to prepare a slaw dog, it’s simple. It’s just like a banana dog, except you use a hot dog wiener in place of the banana and you use coleslaw in place of peanut butter. Presto, a slaw dog! What a wonderful time to be alive.

Christmas used to be a special day to me, but that was years ago. The day has evolved into the culmination of Shopping Hell, in which innocent civilians such as myself contend with the hordes who have decided to do their Christmas shopping on the last few hours of the last shopping day. I had to make a run to Home Depot to buy a tube of caulk, and I passed the hordes on the road. I saw the long lines of cars turning into the shopping center. People must enjoy Shopping Hell, inasmuch as so many people participate. But on this day, Shopping Hell is on hiatus, as shoppers take a break in order to rip into the fruits of their shopping. Tomorrow it resumes.

My memory may be faulty, but I seem to recall that on Christmas Eve, TV programming once included Christmas-themed shows, like “Miracle on 34th Street” and “It’s a Wonderful Life”. There was nothing like that on the TV last night. I downloaded and re-watched my own beloved classic from 1970—“Kelly’s Heroes”. There’s nothing like sitting in front of a softly glowing computer monitor, sipping on a drink and watching people get shot to pieces in a WW2 movie. And what great characters, with names like Big Joe, Little Joe, Crapgame, Oddball, and Cowboy. A real Christmas classic.

It’s time to hit the Publish button and then go brush my teeth. It being a special day, I might blog again before the day is done. Have a Merry One, y’all.

Celtic Thunder

The song of the day is Christmas 1915 by Irish singing group Celtic Thunder. The song is about a Christmas truce that occurred on the front lines during World War 1. Joyeux Noël (Merry Christmas) is a war drama film about that same Christmas truce.