I have been living in a plague house for the past week. Everyone was healthy on the day of Christmas. Since then we have had four cases of diarrhea, three fevers, two cases of nausea and vomiting, and one case of strep throat. I am the only one in the house who has not succumbed to sickness, but I haven't had a good night sleep in a week. That is how I got to spend my Christmas vacation, I hope everyone else had a more enjoyable break.
I was the plague victim in our house, spent Christmas Eve morning vomiting (something I haven't done in over a decade) and spent the next 3 days in bed completely missing Christmas Dinner! Only got my appetite back properly a couple of days ago.
My kids were a bit sick after Xmas, but the pinnacle was yesterday when my son found a way to dig a hole in his head using the corner of a bed. We spent nearly 4 hrs in the ER of a town an hour from where we live, starting at 7 PM, just to have his head glued... Yes glued, no stiches but just a bit of glue... IIRC cyano glues skin pretty well... if only i'd knew i could have fixed it up myself
I really wish people would stop equating surgical superglues with regular hardware store stuff. ER doctors prefer it, too. Super Glues are not the same. "Super Glue" or Cyanoacrylate (CA) is an acrylic resin which rapidly polymerises in the presence of water. The principle component of commercial CAs (SuperGlue, Krazy Glue, Loctite) is either methy-2-cyanoacrylate or ethyl-2-cyanoacrylate, the original forms of CA developed in 1942 by Kodak Laboratories. (The discovery was made whilst investigating potential, high clarity, acrylics for the use in gun sights. Whilst not suitable for this application CA was quickly identified as a fast acting, low shear strength adhesive.) During the Vietnam war it was used in field surgery with good effect, however, despite the promising results it was not approved by the Unites States Food and Drug Administration due to the unknown toxicity and two significant side effects during the polymerization process: The curing process creates an exothermic reaction (heat) which can cause further tissue damage. The process releases cyanoacetate and formaldehyde - both irritants to the eyes, nose, throat and lungs. Medical Glue To overcome these harmful issues, new CAs were developed with the express purpose of use in surgery. 2-octyl cyanoacrylate (Derma+flex® QS™, SurgiSeal, FloraSeal and Dermabond) causes less skin irritation and increased flexibility and strength compared to traditional 'Super Glue'. In 1998 the US FDA approved 2-octyl cyanoacrylate for the closure of wounds and surgical incision and in 2001 was approved as "barrier against common bacterial microbes including certain staphylococci, pseudomonads, and Escherichia coli". n-butyl cyanoacrylate wound adhesives are available under the trade names: LiquiBand®, Histoacryl, Indermil, GluStitch, GluShield, and Periacryl (dental adhesive) Octyl ester, while providing a weaker bond, are more flexible. Butyl esters provide stronger bond, but are rigid.
Before you could get tiny squeeze-tubes of the surgical-grade CA, backpackers usually carried a small tube of standard CA in their first aid kits. Some people still keep standard CA in their first aid kits because surgical-grade CA is obscenely expensive in comparison.
Counterpoint: you won't bleed everywhere until you find a proper, approved tube of medical glue ;) I don't get it.
Hot cross buns are an Easter related bread (hence the cross) on the otherhand most shops in the UK now just sell them all year round, I generally have a toasted one lathered in butter as my breakfast to eat on the way to work when I'm bored of Crumpets, last ones I bought were in November.
Much like the aforementioned crumpet, hot cross buns (and their larger cousins the teacake) are just socially acceptable ways of consuming vast quantities of melted butter
They also contain fruit and are therefore clearly a healthier choice... The savoury crumpet however makes a noble mount for Marmite or Bovril which I would not suggest on a hot cross bun.
My former coworker fell for that trap at least twice - get a girlfriend's name tattooed and break up with them a month later. Maybe he should just stick to girls named Chardonnay or Bacardi or whatever the last one's name was. And just today I've learned he got a new job. I'm not sure if he lost his previous one or working 2 jobs, but he is now a delivery driver for a chinese takeaway. Problem is the car he's using was his Audi impulse buy. It's a saloon, and with the way he drives he'll be lucky to get 15mpg. He'll be losing money on this stupid job with all the fuel he'll be burning :/ Aside from that, the wife's family have been up to their weirdness over the festive period. Thing about them is that if my wife ever has a good idea, or does something mildly positive, they try to copy her. Like, they'll dismiss her business ideas (which are objectively good), then repeat them back to her a week later making like it's their idea and want to implement it as soon as possible. Well, since we've been having a good time with Shae-Konnit Dog, of course they suddenly had this bright idea of getting a dog of their own... Now, they have had dogs before, maybe 25 years ago, but they've forgotten everything about raising them. They speak to the poor thing as if they expect it to be born with a perfect understanding of English, so get angry when she doesn't immediately follow their verbal commands. At this point, the dog, Biscuit, is only a few months old and needs training - she has to associate commands with actions through repetition and reinforcement, but the parents don't seem to understand this. They don't like how she bites when she plays, whines when she's left alone, runs around a lot and generally has a lot of energy. Ultimately, they were expecting her to arrive with the same obedience, personality and mannerisms of Shae-Konnit Dog at 1 year+. How they treat her at times can be saddening; they get too angry too quickly. The most stupid thing is that they've always been telling us how they can't afford to do X, Y and Z; they can't go out, they can't buy new things, etc etc. If that is indeed the case then why, oh why would they buy a fucking dog...? Also, she's a poodle/labrador cross, and they thought she was going to grow up to be a small dog, maybe slightly bigger than SKD; a French Bulldog. Logic has failed. We'll see how it goes. Wife's faither has also started growing the chip on his shoulder, and has been having a go at wife, acting like she's stuck up. It's really fucking weird, and I don't understand it - it's like some inferiority complex which manifests every now and then. What triggered it this time was she said we were having sausage and mash one night for dinner. "Oh," he said, "I didn't think you'd ever eat something like that." After wife asked "Uhm, why...?", apparently he thinks we're far too upper-class to lower ourselves to such proletarian gastronomy. When she mentioned one of the ingredients was Toulouse sausages then that explained it all - no true, working-class Brit would ever eat such a thing; it's mechanically-recalimed, 30% sawdust and assholes sausages that proper people eat! Toulouse sausages must be stuffed with caviar, £20 notes, and silver spoons or some shit. They've just been going really fucking weird this past month and we hope it'll end soon.
So the thing they dislike most about their new puppy is literally all the fundamental properties of a puppy...
New house, new problems. We're renting, and the owner has another unit in the same building, rented for about 3-4 months. Today my GF goes to the Water/Waste company to get the contract in her name (i don't know the english term, when you change name on an active contract without actually closing and reopening it). It turns out that our Next Door SmartHead has taken OUR meter, so we have to plan two exchanges. One NDSH => GF and one Owner => NDSH. Now... I can understand that NDSH was happy with her water usage, but the owner should have received at least a couple of bills with am impossible consumption! We are the first renter of he apartment!!! Who the hell could have used 16 mc of water???
I saw the builders talking the air ducting into our new office and it looks neither strong enough or large enough for your average Bruce Willis to crawl through. I'm both disappointed, and worried that this poses a security risk.
