Good morning. Hello. How are You? #832
Allergy meds, the FTC's OTC conversion list, Biden's strike-breaking mistake, Warren's stellar losses, OP'd vinegar,
Good morning. Hello, there friend. Have a nice weekend? All well? I do hope so. All’s well over here. Lovely weekend. Quite busy, actually. Lots of chores. I do love chores. Made waffles and tom yum bone broth and did Daddy-Jane dance party and tried to keep up with Spanish as quickly as my five-year old daughter is learning it which is very hard! Appliance repair man came and said our fridge was in a sorry state and he cleaned it all out and said we should see an impact on our electric bill so that is… somewhat eye-opening. Doesn’t matter how “on it” you are, doesn’t matter how good you are at owning a house, there is something you’re not doing right. When I was a kid playing in my play house, or making little houses outside out of wood and cardboard, inevitably being disappointed when they succumbed to the elements, I thought there must be something magical about actual grown-up homes, the way they don’t succumb to the elements. But nope. They will basically fall right over if you don’t keep taking care of them. Really is something.
Emma and I were talking allergy medicines — because pollen season is imminently upon us once again. It’s that time of the year we all must do battle with the little green blobs that cover the earth and infect us and make us all sick and miserable. I, myself, am in a pretty good place with my battery of allergy medications: azelastine, flonase, claratin and the custom-formulated sublingual drops. I was encouraging Emma to get the drops, or the shots. Her mom get the shots. Jane is having problems too, and Emma was thinking they should maybe just go get the shots together. Man. I do not remember my allergies starting so young, but I do remember then being pretty bad at, like, ten or so, and also it was the seventies and Alaska and no one cared about anything like that I mean they were still spraying DDT in the neighborhood for crying out loud.
Anyway, Emma was kind of jealous that I sort of have my allergy plan of attack a bit more better than hers, and she was asking about my Azelastine, what is it, does it help, etc. And she Googled it and it turns out… that my prescription Azelastine is just a generic version of the OTC medication Astepro? I mean, did you know this??? I did not know this. I guess it’s been OTC since 2021, but, then, I’ve been using it since at least 2018 so I guess no one bothered to tell me. Also my prescription version is like $25 cheaper than the OTC version so I’ma gonna keep buying it at the pharmacist. But suddenly we didn’t feel too guilty about giving Emma one of the three spare bottles I have.
I would totally subscribe to a Substack that was just a description of every new OTC Medication that would be awesome.
Oh but look! I did just find this OTC Switch List that the FTC publishes. Shit. Maybe I’ll start that Substack.
And look! Seven of the last ten medications to switch to OTC — including Astepro — are all allergy related. Damn. This is so exciting. A ragweek specific one! Alcaftadine! Woo!
Man that really does drive home how bad everyone’s allergies are. Nationwide allergy pandemic, huh?
You know, I was not overly-enamored with Biden’s decision to strike-break the railworker’s strike prior to the 32 Nasty derailing in East Palestine. But I confess it was somewhat difficult for me to parse my feelings in the matter: was it my Socialist and Labor sympathies that vehemently desired Biden to stand with the rail workers, or was it my privileged rich-guy position where I figured that the ensuing major commerce disruptions would be no skin off my back and what did I care if inflation was turbo boosted? I couldn’t tell, really, and had a sneaking suspicion that I should maybe care more about price increases and their effect on the less well advantaged. So for whatever reason, even though it felt wrong in my bones to break the rail strike, I gave Biden a pass on it. A grudging one.
But man. Time has proven that was a horrible, horrible mistake, both on my part and on Biden’s part and it totally fucked him on the politics of East Palestine and he’s muddling through okay but he really did do this to himself. It now seems abundantly clear that a disaster like this was only a matter of time, and the railworkers were screaming this fact from the rooftops, and in the end our president decided to overrule them. Not cool, Joe.
Also, his major investment in a railroad along with his twenty two billion dollar loss this year has really taken the bloom off of ole Warren Buffet a bit this year. Damn sure does make me feel better about my crappy portfolio performance last year. Do I have it in me to read his investment letter this year? Is it going to be another milquetoast, cheerleading “never bet against America and the power of capital” kind of thing? I wonder if papa Warren will experience some sort of deathbed conversion and finally admit that maybe there are one or two times it might be, just maybe, not a completely stupid move to bet against certain aspects of the America capitalist system, just maybe.
Oh bee tee dubs I did my podcast this weekend. It is not my finest work, but if you want to hear me go on a fair amount about trying to learn Quickbooks in a week to support a contracting company as a hobby on the side of a fairly intense job, and a long low-energy meandering bit about the complexities of choosing where and how to school a five year old, this might just be the podcast for you.
Topics include: Doing quickbooks for the neighbors, friends visit, Jane, allergies, picking schools, Going to NYC, drug and alcohol interactions my doctor didn’t tell me about whoops, wet january, work craziness, gardening, the house next door, car shopping, My Little Pony the Movie, Tar, Pina, Tampopo, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, The Whale, Women Talking, Judy, Kieslowski’s Three Colors, Where’d You Go Bernadette, James, Johnette Napolitano, Sylvan Esso, Hamered Hulls, Tindersticks, Aubern Lull, Yo La Tengo, young Fathers, Mogwai, Air, Medicine, Rex, Chisel, Black Belt Eagle Scout, Post-dreifing, JT IV, Drowse, sadness, Alex Winston, Smashing Pumpkins, O Children, Harsh Symmetry, pictoria Vark, SUUNS, Pearla, drdmm, UNI and The Urchins, Zero La Creche, Sweet Homé, Knifeplay, Animal Ghosts, Caroline Polacheck, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Runner, lilac Queen, Giles Corey, The Ting Tings, Celer, Bvdub & Netherworld, Mariee Sioux, Death Valley Girls, Algiers, Star Wars Bad Batch, The Last of Us, Letterkenny, Legend of Vox Machina, SNL, Poker Face, Task Master, State of the Union, the Super Bowl, Wolf Pack, GBBO The Pros, Wakanda Forever, Babylon, Jung-E, Somebody I Used to Know, People’s History of the United States
I spent an extraordinary amount of time this weekend looking for vinegar. Somehow, somewhere, Emma bought this gallon of magical vinegar. The white vingar you may keep in your kitchen or pantry is maybe 6% acidity. The Zep Industrial cleaning vinegar, while it does not specific exactly the percentage acidity, is, by all accounts, somewhere around ten percent. The strongest cleaning vinegar one can find near us is at Lowe’s and it is 30% acidity. Emma’s vinegar was forty-five percent acidity. I learned all of this in the course of trying to buy another gallon of it. Two trips to Walmart and a trip to Lowe’s and I came up empty-handed. Zep industrial cleaning vinegar is a joke, and the 30% acidity vinegar at Lowe’s was out of stock, even though their app told me it was in-stock.
I did all of this between 6 and 8 AM since I randomly woke up at 5 AM Sunday and decided to just roll with it, but even though I obtained no vinegar, I at least learned a lot about vinegar, so I don’t feel like it was completely time wasted. Also I got Bojangle’s, so, that was nice.
Finally, I would like to leave you with a product idea: some sort of custom-fit tray that you put over your sink for when you shave with an electric razor or clippers. How, exactly, is this supposed to work, shaving? I mean, if you use a hand razor (which I do, for certain parts of the face: a pink Ghostly/Harry’s collaboration razor in a nice little Ghostly stand), no problem, you can do it in the shower. But when I’m using the electric clippers… what? Can’t use em in the shower. Need a mirror so can’t do the whole haircut thing of letting all the hair fall on the floor then sweep it up. Gotta be by the sink. And then the hair gets in the sink. And I try so hard to clean all that hair out and not let it go down the drain, but I am constantly clogging my trap. It is so annoying.
So give me a little tray I can put over the sink, please. I think that would be just dandy.
Got a goth mix for you, all new (to me) goth bands. O Children and Zero La Creche are not actually new, and I did not know the Ting Tings got kinda goth on their last album, I mean, maybe that’s a stretch but it works for me. This is a great mix there’s so much good goth right now it’s kind of crazy. I mean they’re probably not all wearing pancake makeup or eye liner (well probably a fair amount of eye liner) and I guarantee they’re all wearing a lot of black.
Until tomorrow!