Specialist

Some years back, I lived in Dallas for several years. Scarborough Faire, a local Renaissance fair, was held every year. There was a glassblowing shop, doing goblets, wine glasses, plates, and the like and I got to know the glassblowers, to the point that they remembered me and called me by name, even though we only saw each other a couple of times a year. (The fact that they were my go-to guys for wedding presents probably didn't hurt any.) One day, someone said something about "recycling", and he pointed out that basic glass was nothing but sand and energy, and the best way to "recycle" glass bottles was to wash them and reuse them, as that was a LOT easier and cheaper than crushing them, melting them down, and making new bottles out of them.

T minus 27 days and counting. Arrive BKK 1 Sep 10:40 PM (unless delayed landing...). DEROS 16 Sep.

From memory: I go down the escalators from the Soi Cowboy side of Asoke, and I'm looking West, going under Asoke, toward lower Sukhumvit. The subway station proper extends off to the North. There didn't USED to be a way to go South. There was a secondary corridor on the South side, going West, that seemed to end quickly, but I've never really looked. Are you saying they've cut another tunnel and opened a portal to the South, to cross under Sukhumvit?

I must have missed that when I was in town in April. How do you get to the southeast corner from the northeast (Soi Cowboy) corner? I've been crossing under Asoke on the north side, to get to the Skytrain, for years. Crossing Asoke on the south (even-numbered soi) side is relatively painless, but about the only occasion I've had to do that was walking from Los Cabos to Soi Cowboy.

Yes, definitely please continue to keep us updated.

T minus 26 days and counting... Arriving late night 4 July, DEROS late night 16 July. I might actually find myself going TO Suvarnabhumi in broad daylight. (The blizzard that blasted Chicago and iced Dallas a few months ago delayed my arrival some ten hours, and made me fly the other way around the planet, so I actually arrived in broad daylight, and still made it to the hotel in time to get breakfast.)

Three weeks from tonight I drive to the airport, to catch the Dawn Patrol flight. Ten days in Bangkok. The seminar was cancelled, but I already had plane tickets, with Biz Class upgrade confirmed, and NONREFUNDABLE hotel reservation. So I'll just have to find something to do to keep from being bored out of my mind while I'm in town 5555555555...

I'm not sure about that 5555555555. I remember escorting one of the greeters at Shark in for a drink. She wound up being a non-starter the one time I pulled her, and now only goes short-time, while I strongly prefer only long-time. Cute, yes. My real stunner stories have all come from NEP, all along.

T minus 2 months and counting. Airfare is in place, trans-Pacific Business Class upgrade confirmed both ways, seminar fee is paid. I still have to decide which hotel I will use and make the reservation. Probably Royal President.

T minus 2 weeks 9 hours and some minutes to departure.

T minus five weeks and counting.

Troy, the "Drippy Dick? I Wish That Was It" thread in the Health area contains the details. I land late Sunday night the 12th.

Dude, he said coumadin (warfarin) tabs, not Viagra.

No, the club T-shirts for one of the most exclusive organizations on the planet: The DVT/PE Survivors League. It started as an in-joke between Hugh and myself: There are no meetings, there is no newsletter, there are no T-shirts, and we've already paid our dues. Now that there are three of us on here, and it looks like two of us will be in town at the same time, it might be good for a laugh to get the T-shirts made. To become a member of the League, you must survive, and recover fully from, a Pulmonary Embolism that stemmed from a Deep Vein Thrombosis. We do not recommend you try this: Pulmonary Embolisms are usually fatal. It is a weak attempt at black humor, laughing in the Grim Reaper's face.

Ditto. HH Hm. Maybe we are going to have to get those T-shirts made...

T minus 6 weeks and counting.

This is for a one-week vacation trip. I go back again in February, for a seminar, for about ten days or so. The funny thing is I'm looking forward to easy access to Thai food as much as I'm looking forward to "other things"...

It depends on who you talk to, whose statistics you believe, and how gullible you are with regard to those statistics. If you take the African numbers at face value, and you agree with their claim that the problem is AIDS, then, yes, it does so rank. If you look at the African statistics, you find two things. First, in the vast majority of the African AIDS cases, NO TEST FOR THE VIRUS WAS EVER DONE AND NO OBJECTIVE EVIDENCE EXISTS THAT THE DECEASED WAS HIV+, MUCH LESS HAD FULL-BLOWN AIDS. The diagnosis is based on a pattern of disease that looks a lot like malnutrition and other poverty-related conditions, that have been and continue to be pandemic in the African continent. Second, far more important: Africa has always had ugly life expectancy and death rate statistics. AIDS is a NEW disease. As far as can be told, it did not exist in the wild, in any measurable fraction of the population, prior to sometime in the 1970s or so. As a new, lethal disease, the introduction of AIDS to Africa should have made an obvious, visible change in the life expectancy and death rate statistics, since NOTHING ELSE WAS CHANGING and the old causes of death were STILL killing people, at the same rates. To oversimplify, with a contrived example: Suppose that Machine Gun Kelly is killing 100 FBI men per year. Baby Face Nelson moves into Kelly's turf, and starts killing 100 IRS men per year. Assuming an adequate supply of G-men, Uncle Sam should now be doing 200 funerals per year: 100 FBI and 100 IRS. If, however, Uncle Sam is only planting a total of 100 men per year, then someone needs to explain what has caused Machine Gun Kelly to hang up his guns. This, basically, is what the African statistics show. Despite the addition of a new, lethal disease to the mix, the African life expectancy and death rate statistics have not changed in a way consistent with expectation. It is not possible to find an uptick, or a before/after corner in the curves, that show that AIDS has become a significant player in the African Death Game. This calls the African AIDS statistics seriously into question. Once you question those, and you look instead at first-world data, you find that AIDS is a very small bit player indeed. Heart disease and cancer are MUCH, MUCH worse. So, for that matter, is influenza.