Revisitations

One of the things I do when my brain is too sleepy to concentrate but sleep is not an option is re-read my old Usenet posts.

Today I came across a discussion from early 2001 in which a person for whom I used to have some degree of intellectual respect asserted the equivalence between "both sides" by drawing a direct parallel between, on the one hand, John Salvi's murder of two receptionists at two clinics which provided abortions, and, on the other, "Somebody burned Bush Jr's boat."

Of course I was instantly struck by the wretchedness of equating a spree-killing with a property crime. But I also asked if he had any evidence of the context of the arson of the Bush family boat. He of course did not respond, and I let it drop. But today when I re-read our exchange, I fired up The Google. I wasn't able to find any follow-up about Bush Jr's boat, but I found that Bush Senior also lost a boat to arson, in 2003. That latter arson was pretty definitely a teenage prank gone horribly awry.

Anyone have any details about the burning of Bush Jr's boat?

Health update

Nothing too grotesque.

I finished the first course of antibiotics (two weeks) and was off them for less than a week when I determined that the infection was definitely not gone. I'm now on a second course of antibiotics, which are giving me even more side effects than the first course, including symptoms mimicking an infection in another part of my body and a heightened sensitivity to caffeine. The former cleared up very quickly, fortunately--I'm drinking lots of cranberry juice--and I seem to be okay with one or, occasionally, two cups of coffee per day. The antibiotic is keeping the infection from bothering me much, but it's not finishing it off, not completely.

When I saw the doctor on Sunday for a followup, he was vexed that the infection wasn't gone. For some reason, he decided the next step was to determine whether the infection is being harbored in the bones of my leg. (The skin over the tibia is very thin, so this isn't a completely insane hypothesis.) So today I took a day off work to get a bone scan at the Nuclear Imaging department of my local hospital. I didn't get superpowers--heck, I wasn't even perceptibly radioactive--and I won't get the results for two days. Then followed up with an appointment with an orthopedist, who took one look at my leg and said, "You need to see a general surgeon or a vascular specialist, not an orthopedist." She said there's really no reason to assume the infection is harboring in the bone, not when I have obvious venous insufficiency causing stasis dermatitus. What I need is an Unna boot; she spent about ten minutes searching the office to see if she had the supplies to make one, but she didn't, so I'm seeing a vascular specialist tomorrow.

More updates as they become updatable.