I went to the doctor and surprise! I have bronchitis. Antibiotics for me...of course, with my history, I have to be very careful taking any medications so it always makes me a bit nervous taking anything these days. She also got my results back from the CT Scan. The good news being my kidneys look good, the bad news is that the scan showed a growth on my liver. While it may be nothing, I will need to undergo a few more tests to confirm what it is. It threw me totally for a loop though. My doctor assured me that it will work out ok (of course not, lady, it ain't happening to you!) and that worst case scenario is they'll lop it off. (maybe not those exact words, but whatever.) I haven't started googling yet. I figure I have lots of time to obsess about it.
In the hour I was out though, I was accosted no less than 5 times to give to the Tsumani fund. Is this happening everywhere? I mean, it's like you can't walk two steps without someone asking for money. I went to the doctor's office and outside was a Salvation Army dude with the bell and bowl, to the pharmacy where there were signs on the cash register, to Blockbuster who were very helpful in asking me to donate $1 to be added to my bill for the movies. I declined, saying I had already given and got a nasty look from the clerk. Then I went to the bank, and the ATM had a little advertisement that the bank was matching donations to be given to the fund. Finally, and of course, I should have known better but I went to Starbucks and was bombarded for the 5th time in an hour. I don't mean to take away from the cause, but holy hell, people, give it a rest! It really makes me wonder where all this money is going, and how is it handled? This $4 Billion and growing fund obviously isn't just sitting in some bank account gaining interest, but who handles it? Are there money managers? How is it doled out to each country and who has the say?
A local news story brings the Tsunami story home, about a girl that was found by her boyfriend in the morgue after he had been relentlessly searching for her since the waves hit. They've been on the news here most every night since it happened, and I feel so bad for him. He finds his love, by identifying her tattoo (and sadly, she would not have been in good shape by now), and now he has to deal with the red tape of bringing her home. I realize things need to be dealt with appropriately but isn't a positive ID enough? Why do they have to add to his and her families grief by having to check her DNA? When my cousin's girlfriend died overseas (Australia) in May, they ran into a lot of difficulties as well. She was horribly burned by a tiki-torch that got knocked over (the oil ran all over her and ignited). She had to be flown to another city, as the burns were so extensive and for a month, she hung on until she contracted an infection similar to flesh-eating disease. By that time, my cousin and his mom had flown to her side as well as all of her family. They were with her when she passed, and expected to bring her body home immediately. However, the government had other ideas. Because the bacteria that killed her was considered contagious, they would not issue a permit for her body to return to Canada. She was Catholic, and her family felt very strongly that she should be buried, but the only option they were given were to have her cremated or bury her in Australia. They finally consented to her cremation so at least she would be in the same country as her family and could come home. When everyone flew home, they were quarantined in case they too had contracted the disease. It was such an incredibly emotional time and to have to run into all these difficulties just made it nearly unbearable. I guess reading about this poor local girl just made me think about it....
I watched a bit of news this morning, and saw that the trial of the Abu Ghraib guard is off to deliberate his fate. What hits me though is the guy slept with at least two of the women, this Megan Ambuhl and Lynndie England, with whom he fathered a child. Sounds like real prince.
A friend of mine in England had been watching a show there about the crazy weather the world has been experiencing and he wrote this:
I saw Horizon tonight about Global Dimming, something I didn't knowThings that make you go hmmmmm......
about. Basically pollution in the air is blocking ~10% of sunlight
reaching the ground compared to 50 years ago, which in turn reduces
evaporation and also reduces temperature. The effect of that can change
monsoon patterns, and this could be responsible for the big Band Aid
famines and droughts due to lack of monsoons. There were two scary
thoughts...
1. Global warming is happening, but Global Dimming was actually slowing
it down. As we reduce "opaque" pollution the dimming is reducing -
woohoo - although that allows the Global Warming to run un-checked and
therefore faster.
We need to take action agaist both Global Dimming and Global Warming
side by side.
2. Planes create con-trails, the exhaust that spreads out in the sky
that you can see. That's pollution and trails are visibile from space,
and satellite photos of the US show just how covered the US sky is in
con-trails. We're talking up to 50% in some urban areas on the west
coast. Those trails reflect sunlight back in to space and stop it
hitting the ground. This was all theory, unless you can get all planes
to stop flying for a few days and see what effect that has.
Cue Sept 11th. Three days with virtually no flights and no con-trails
over the US. In some of those west coast regions the average
temperature (over the daily range of temperatures) was over 1C higher
than the norm over those 3 days, which is the biggest deviation in the
last 30 years. Just 3 days of no planes increased the temperature that
much!
Scary thought.
