“When they told me I was going to see the Dalai Lama,
I just
thought
they meant …
The VA makes me sick
This morning I made it only an hour at work before having to tell my boss that I just didn’t feel well enough to make it the rest of the day. Over night I traveled in bed through alternating waves of chills, fever and being bathed in sweat. I slept most of the morning after getting back from work. I feel somewhat better at the moment.
Looking back, I feel I must have been sick yesterday to not rant about my latest skirmish in the Department of Veterans Affairs’ personal war against me. Going through a particularly rough financial spot — even more than normal — lately I had expected yesterday a mileage reimbursement check to appear in my account electronically. That happened but the amount was slightly less than half the amount I had anticipated.
It didn’t take long to determine that the scum-sucking VA hospital in Dallas had — without any warning whatsoever — my federal reimbursement offset (a euphemism for garnished). Other than this being quite disturbing it became even more infuriating because I knew the VA hospital in Dallas and I had reached an agreement over the money I had owed them for co-payments that I should not have been paid for to begin with. After a short time I had talked with VA people from both Dallas and their outsource billing office in Kansas. Both had no idea why I had money stolen from me by the VA.
After all these years of realizing that life isn’t fair, it still rankles me that the VA can all of a sudden without warning and no reason take my money. But I just bet when they straighten all of this out, it will take them much, much longer to give me my money back.
I still don’t know what I will do. I mean, I know I will be eventually repaid by the VA but something needs to be done to stop the VA from continuing to steal money from veterans who need to live. And I am not the kind just to sit back and put up with such stupidity.
Blogging a fever, starve a blogger
If my scribbling sounds a little less coherent than usual, I would have to point at fever as being one of the problems. I woke up this morning with a slight chill. The same thing happened one day last week. Both times I popped a couple of Tylenol and I was soon sweating like a chihuahua locked in the same room as a pit bull. Okay, maybe that’s not the best analogy. Needless to say, my fever broke but unlike last week I felt crappy all day long today and had to take sick hours from work. Also unlike last week, I took my temperature this morning and this afternoon and got a reading of 99.9 and 100 F respectively.
I don’t get sick very often and so I probably am annoyed more about it than many. Nonetheless, I will see what happens over the course of the next few days. I had used mosquito repellent on a fairly constant basis before I go for walks down here — most times in shorts most of the year — in the mosquito lands of Southeast Texas. But I have backslid as of late so if I get through this without it being West Nile or something mosquito-borne, I think I will make dousing myself with DEET my normal regimen again.
Peace, man
Never did I imagine that Al Gore would win the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on global warming. I always thought he should get the science prize for inventing the Internet. That’s a joke son.
On a more serious note, Al Gore would be nuts to run for president. Hopefully, he has realized that he can do more good outside of office than inside. And just think how the presidency ages a person. Then again, I don’t care for any of the major Democratic candidates. Too bad Mike Gravel and Bill Richardson are lost causes.
From our (sort of) international desk
As you might notice from what is now two posts, I am stretching out a bit with format and appearance, insofar as the text area of the blog goes. This is carried out through Google Docs and if I learn how to use it to my maximum advantage then I could possibly make the blog look better. I’m sorry though, I can’t do anything about the writing.
In the photo above are statistics and graphics from my StatCounter page which shows from which countries the last 100 visitors to EFD hail and what percentage that is of the total visitors for the period of time, which is about 48 hours. As you may notice, I’m not burning up the blogosverse but some of the flags are pretty cool.