Ryan Jones

Not sure how many of you still work or how long a commute you have if you do but I'm curious about the traffic in your area. I tend to go to the casino at 2am or so and generally come home at 6am. Almost to the minute every day. It's about a 18 mile ride to either of the two casinos, in almost exact opposite directions from my house. Lots of weeks I'll go every morning so I see the beginnings of rush hour in the DC area. It's weird but it seems like there's always more traffic on Wednesday morning than any other morning. I can't really figure out why that is the case but it is. How about in your area?

Went all Halloween this morning at the casino. Got up at 2am, decided to wear Halloween socks and my Converse skull shoes. Also I have a egg sized carved pre Columbian skull so took it as a card protector. Forgot about the skull and for the first hour didn't win a single hand. Brought out the skull and rested it against my chip stack and that's all it took. Two hours later, $1850 up. Left around 6am and ended up profiting just over $2000. All hail the skull! Hope everyone else has a good day too!

I found out something interesting recently. If you watch your local news telecast via their website rather than on television you don't get ANY ads. During the commercial breaks the feed just goes silent. This can be very handy in the US during political campaign seasons. I live in the DC suburbs, in MD. VA though is having one of those "spend millions for months" governor campaigns. Now the other races are jumping in with their ads. So I just sit my laptop on the dining room table and skip all the ads. It makes my digestion easier!

So far I haven't found anyone who has a good thing to say about amlidopine. Makes me wonder if the doctors are being paid off to prescribe it. My sister takes metoprolol 100mg/day and it's working almost too good. Might have to go back to 50mg and see what happens. The only medication that increases my heart rate is Adderall. Of course it's amphetemines so it's supposed to do that. Otherwise I stay at ~60. In resting mode of course. I do have one thing I'm trying to decide if I need to see a doctor about but I'm not sure how to phrase it so it doesn't sound like bragging and not an ailment.

Yeah, I had no issues at all with it. My sister couldn't take it, I've known others who had issues. You should never assume the doctor knows best. Do your own research first if it's not an emergency and go in with all your facts. Don't let them just prescribe anything for you. The new doctor changed mine to Chlorthalidone 25mg and I stay around 105/60 which is what I'm now used to after having this pressure for the last 10+ years.

You might want to invest in a blood pressure machine for your house. Get one with a cuff on it, they give more accurate readings. Not very expensive. You should check the pressure regularly to make sure the medicine they gave you is working right, not too strong, not too weak. I had no idea my blood pressure was high. I was being evaluated for a study for a medication to treat enlarged prostate, when I went in and they took my BP it was 190/100. Immediately went to doctor, told him no new expensive pill (not that it matters about cost because I have great insurance), give me a nice old pill. He gave me lisinopril and 2 days later I was at 100/60. You can tell one difference with pressure like that, you're going to be a lot colder than you used to be. I was wondering why I was always so hot when I had the high BP. Oh and if you have any issue with swelling, anywhere, don't let them give you amlidopine.

Happy Birthday youngster! hahaha Hope the knee is diagnosed and it's an easy fix!

Do any of you know who Troye Sivan is? A little background for those that don't. Troye is a 26 year old singer and occasional model. He started out on Youtube as a 12-13 year old and got well known for that and for his role as the young Wolverine and a few Spud movies in South Africa. More background on Wiki if anyone is interested. He came out publicly as gay in 2013 and after that his musical career really took hold. Over the years as he's gotten older and, I assume more confident about who he is, his videos have gotten more and more sexualized. He's got a new video that just dropped yesterday. If you're interested, the link is below. While there's no nudity in it I'm not sure you'd want random mundanes wandering by during some of the scenes!

Just do like I did. When you get together take him to the backyard and point out how fantastic those flowers are growing. When he asks your secret you can casually mention that ex boyfriends make great fertilizer! (Kidding) (Maybe)

I got a check from the state of Florida for some land that the state bought up to create a large wildlife area that I thought my father had disposed of. This was 15 years AFTER he died. Even made out to my father. I had kept his name along with mine on one of the bank accounts (it was that way when he died and I was too lazy to change it) so it made it easier to deposit it. So I'll just keep his name on that account forever I suppose.

Went to a Bar Mitzvah today for the oldest son of my god daughter's brother. I've always called them my "Catholic" family despite it being a Catholic wife and Jewish husband. It's hard to believe it's been that long, I can remember being my usual "bad influence" self and giving his dad the leftover half bottle of wine after a Thanksgiving dinner and watching the 14 year old chug it down. It's like most family situations. While the parents and grandparents were still around we'd all meet on Easter, Christmas and Thanksgiving. Once or twice I got invited to a Seder dinner but I'm a very picky eater so those didn't do too well for me. Also other cookout type holidays like July 4th, Memorial Day, etc. I've only seen this family twice in 5 years until today, both were at funerals. It was good to see everyone in a more celebratory setting. This was only my second Bar Mitzvah and the other one was 40 years ago. That one was a huge party, went on and on and seemed to have every 13 year old in the area. This one was really more for the family than the boy, he only had 5 friends with him at his table and they all disappeared as soon as they finished eating.

My family in Amsterdam have never had issues with the medical care there. At least not that I've ever heard of. The waiting times seem to be everywhere now though for tests, or specialists. Took me 2 months to get a gastro appointment and another month to do the endoscopy. My sister needed an epidural for neck pain issues and the doctor she was referred to was doing December appointments. The only quick appointment I had was with a urologist.

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Facebook and Instagram are down. Is this the long awaited alien invasion? Almost 2 hours now. I may have to rewrite that acid trip from the bible, revelations, to cover this scenario!

I've always been a little weird about everything. So birthdays have been no different. When I turned 50 I was given the usual party with the black balloons, like a funeral. A wild party but the general idea was that I was on the "downhill" slide. So I decided that 50 was as old as I was going to get. I let all my friends and family know that from now on, each year on that date, I was going to go backwards a year. When I reached zero, I'd start back up. Had a fantastic party on my "second" 40th birthday and this year I had my 30th birthday once again. Thankfully the covid restrictions had eased so we could have a real party. The weather cooperated and we had it outdoors with tents. It was amusing to see the +1s of attendees when it turned out the 30th birthday party was for me. Their faces had those puzzled looks until they were provided with an explanation. In two years Justin and I will both be 28 (him for the first time) and we're already starting to plan that party!

@kbois Well done on the 50lb loss! I have to admit a real lack of willpower when I try to diet. I've found that the only times I've been successful in losing weight have been with the use of chemical enhancement. First time was with a product that had ephedra in it, lost 40lbs quickly. It worked perfectly as advertised but I used it as directed. Then idiot baseball player for the Orioles overdid it and died, before you knew it they took all the products off the market. They even said that if you used it as directed it wasn't harmful but because they have to "protect" the dumbasses from themselves, responsible people have to suffer. Second time was in my 5 day a week poker playing. Using generic Adderall for better focus (prescribed by my doctor) and I lost about 1.5 lbs/month Then came pandemic, stopped playing poker, stopped taking the pills, gained all the weight back to where I had started from at 198lbs. I'd try a food based diet regimen but I'm too picky an eater and I'm too old to change!

Had one of those. Now I just break out the food processor, use the correct blade and let it do the work. I actually did slightly slice a section of a thumb also, about half way through. So I pushed it back together. The area looked about like you described. It's amazing how much blood seems to erupt from the smallest of slices! My thumb did heal up just fine. The area that I pushed back regrew together with no long term injury.

I can relate to the weed odor. It's weird, when I'm in Amsterdam I don't notice it. I guess because I'm too busy smoking it to notice. Especially when we had the coffee shop. Now though the weed just smells different. When you exit the casino to the parking garage the odor usually hits you like a ton of bricks. My guy doesn't do well under the influence so I don't partake here. Or in Amsterdam unless my grandson is around to make sure Justin doesn't wander off into traffic, or a canal. I feel like I need to put one of those baby leashes on him to keep him under control!

Thanks for the responses. I'm lucky since I own my house and it's paid for. I do still have property taxes and insurance which is slightly over $6500/year. So that's approximately $550/month although I pay it all at once so it seems a lot more. That bill just came due this month. Putting central heating in my old (built in the mid 1930s) house was cost prohibitive. It really would have made more sense to just demolish the house and build a new one instead. If I ever move I'm thinking of doing just that, the houses is my area have jumped about $200k in the past five years. While it's great that they went up, it's not so great when your property taxes are based on the assessed value. There's been a big surge in tearing down these 1930s houses and rebuilding what appear to be kit houses. They all seem rather alike, with maybe 4-5 different styles. Haven't checked yet on the actual costs involved but I know that the difference between offers on a friend's old house and the price paid for the new kit house was close to $350k so I am assuming he made a lot more on it.

I'm always curious about other people's utility bills. We have natural gas, electric and water. Water is about $50/month, summer gas bill $45/month, electric $275/month. I have an old house with radiator heating so I think our cooling is pretty inefficient with window unit air conditioners. How does that compare with your overall bills? In the winter it's about the same amount just take a lot of the electric bill and change it to gas. March/April and October/November are probably our cheapest months since a lot of days we don't need heat or ac. Anyone else?

You know what's annoying? When you've decided for the first time in months to write something real only to have 25 pages of porn spew out of your mind and fingers in about 3 hours of writing. Why doesn't the nonsexual writing come that easily? lol Hope everyone's day is good. Had a second cousin report that all 3 of his kids have contracted covid. Both him and his wife were vaccinated, so far they haven't tested positive although they are quarantining. It doesn't seem serious with any of the 3 kids, they are ages 11, 10, 7 so not old enough for vaccination and they were back at school doing in person learning. Seems they all have fevers, one has a headache also. It's been 3-4 days and the symptoms are getting slightly better each day.

The same cold front that went through Indiana is now coming through the DC area with extremely heavy rain and marginal (under 30mph) winds. Temp has dropped from 75 at midnight to the mid 60s. Rain should clear out by noon at the latest and the weekend will be high temps in the low 70s with little humidity. Perfect weather for the DC area. Of course with the rain the traffic is horrendous. Now that schools are back in and a lot of companies have started working from offices again our traffic is worse than it was before the pandemic. Part of it I think is that people got so used to having no traffic that they all left later for work. Plus those who hadn't driven in DC traffic for over a year due to working at home are finding out again how bad it can be. Not to mention the flooded out roads and the idiots who try to drive through and then have to get rescued. I often wonder if their car insurance covers stupidity?

A quick trip report. Umm, sorry it turned out to be a LONG trip report! Left Friday at 3am, it's 300 miles, so about 4.3 hours the way I drive. Can't go as fast as I'd like in the middle of the night because you're pretty much alone on the interstate and in Virginia if you're caught going over 80mph they can take on a reckless driving charge in addition to the speeding ticket. Speed limit is 70. Got to my 88 year old aunt's house around 730am, I hadn't seen here in 2 years. She's like my surrogate mother, when I was born she was 18 and came to DC and watched me for a year so my mother could get back to work. I've always felt closer to her than anyone and when I'm not with Justin I stay at her house. Since Justin was with me we stayed at a hotel in Greenville (NC, not SC). Mask wearing is about at the 50% level it appeared. More women than men wearing them. The rural areas around the city are hotbeds of infection, even Greenville itself is bad. In the past month two of my aunt's friends have tested positive, no serious effects but one of them was sick for about 4 weeks at home. All older, all fully vaccinated. I went to meet my cousin Danny on Friday around noon. He's a cousin who is the same age as me, within a couple of months. We had a sexual relationship as teenagers, well, it depends on your definition of sexual and relationship. It was just me blowing him whenever he wanted but I wanted to do it so it was okay. He got married at 19 and we hadn't had a real conversation since his marriage. Spent 4 hours there Friday afternoon and we talked about everything in both our lives. Was really fun, told him we shouldn't wait another 50 years to talk again. Justin and I ate lunch with my aunt, visited with her awhile then back to the hotel. Saturday we ate lunch with my aunt then visited my two surviving uncles. One is in seriously bad condition with Alzheimer's and mesothelioma. In the two years since I've seen him he's gone from a normal 6' 190lb man to maybe 120lbs. Looks almost skeletal. The other uncle lost his wife last year, he looked good but complained about being in solitary confinement in his big empty house. Left around 715pm and once I got past Richmond there was enough traffic to ignore the 70 or 80 speed limit and motor along. I put on the Enigma MCMXC a.D. release and zoned completely out. By the time the album came to the end I had traveled an extraordinary distance. I think I must have teleported. Anyway, I have about 25 first cousins and an uncountable (at least by me) number of second and third cousins. I'm hoping to get someone in NC interested in hosting one more complete family dinner before the last aunts/uncles are gone. Sorry again for the length of this. It just spewed out, I didn't plan it. Oh, one last thing. I was surprised, shocked even. I didn't see ONE Trump sign driving through all those rural areas of NC.

@rickproehl Hope you and your brother are doing good. Also, Justin and I are planning a quick trip to the Land of the Lost aka rural Eastern NC. Where the Civil War loss is still a painful remedy so you can imagine they are: A> Not over the fraudulent election claims. B> Think Covid is a hoax and that's even with family member dying from it. C> Masks are infringement of their right to kill others if they want. That being said the aunt I'm going to visit (she's 88) and the two surviving uncles (both in early 80s) are relatively normal people so none of the silliness with them. The worst part is my cousin Danny, not sure what happened to him but he's actually college educated, was a teacher for his career but still fills Facebook with all the right wing crazy fake news. I'm supposed to meet up with him tomorrow afternoon. Just leaving at 3am, driving there and we'll spend Friday night in a hotel. Visit mostly with my aunt until it's around 9pm Saturday then come back home. Haven't seen any of them since the pandemic started.

I try to sleep on my back but for some reason I can't seem to go to sleep that way. Not from pain or anything like that, I think it's where I'm breathing too good. I sleep on either side, doesn't matter. I'll tell you what I fixate on and it's kind of stupid but I can't seem to break the habit. When I lay on my side I only breathe through the nostril that's facing down. The other one is blocked by gravity closing the airway. There's nothing wrong, I've been tested. The doctor is tired of hearing me talk about it. A lot of times I'll put my hand against the top of my face, that pulls the top back open. Of course I can't go to sleep with my hand tugging on my face either. lol I keep thinking about getting some kind of tape that won't harm my skin and using that to keep things open but I'm exceedingly lazy so haven't gotten to it yet! Oh well, last night was a good night. Woke up to pee at 130am, then not until 530am. Somehow missed the middle bathroom call at 330am!

This is a good idea. What position are you sleeping in? What strength melatonin do you take? I asked my doctor about it, she said that most people take way too large a dose of it, that they should start with the lowest available dose and work their way up. Like @1brokNangel I was told not to take ibuprofen. I'm not sure what I'd do if I ever slept 5 hours in a row.