I’ve been neglecting this blog. I’ve been posting pretty much daily on the other one. Posting has been confined to political rants inspired by the criminally inept response to Katrina by our administration. Time Goes By has been covering similar territory, possibly in a more organized way.

There have been other distractions, too.

Techno distractions

While the big things were happening, the revamped Opera Community opened up. Opera now offers full featured blogs, photo albums and a lot of other community features. After resisting for a day or so, I gave in and started a blog there just to see what it was like. It’s a nice inferface, but with a lot of limitations for the moment. One thing that’s a bit off-putting is that it seems that you have to be registered with Opera Community to post comments on the blogs. That’s a big limitation. Of course it’ll stop comment spam. I don’t seem to be able to find a balance with this blog on that issue. I really don’t want to make comments subject to moderation before they’re posted. I tried that and didn’t like it. Sometimes it’s hours before I get back to the blog and sometimes I miss them altogether. There’s a spam filter plug-in but I’ve gotten false positives with that. On the other hand, I have had to delete quite a few spam comments and trackbacks and close a couple of old posts to comments and pings.

Personal distractons

It’s been a medical kind of week. Nothing unusual about that, these days. I went to the dermatologist for another follow-up. He increased the Targretin to the full dose of 300 mg. That meant going to Bay Shore to get it. Targretin is hell on one’s triglycerides so the doctor increased my Lipitor prescription to 40 mg a day. That’s a lot. I started getting more pronounced pains and when I stopped at my primary care doctor’s office to get orders for bloodwork in a form the insurance company would accept he expressed a lot of concern about the pains. If it’s the Lipitor that’s doing it then it’s a serious thing and I have to stop taking it right away. Now it’s Sunday and I woke up with severe pain all up and down my left leg. I’m not entirely sure what to do. I have to call a doctor tomorrow. I’m not sure which one. And I’m not sure what I should take or not take today. On top of that, I’ve developed a stubborn itchy rash in the last few days. A couple of years ago that wouldn’t be worth noting, but now it kind of freaks me out.

In other personal concerns, Rudy the bassett hound, who is a granddog of mine, is at the vet and under the weather. We’re all hoping that Rudy has a swift and complete recovery. He’s a lovely dog.