…8/6-09: build something special

73º in ABQ; 41% humidity at 6A…GAQ; toxic substance leaked from truck, forcing police to shut down HWY 550, E of I-25; maybe a mini–monsoon?; man found guilty of raping nine year old girl; Duke City man never ordered to register as sex offender; water in the Navajo Nation has been fully cleaned of contaminants; Castle APT complex fire burned until 5:30P yesterday PM…but this AM, firemen were still at that location: the cause was accidental & electrical; funding for NM State Fair Park & Ride has been found; Farmington has a 7.8% jobless rate; time for an ‘economic renaissance’ in NM education; Brad made Leek & Potato Soup, and Key Lime Custard; Chris painted our bedroom ceiling; new downtown Prisoner Transfer CTR planned; one of the outdoor stairways can be accessed again; PM showers at The Beach [very little];

staff meeting at 9:30A cancelled; finished Rounds by 7:15A; Code Purple at 6:30A; Brent was out yesterday; no PICU Admits; worked with cardiac catheterizations pseudo codes, it’s different, and fun!;

tornadoes in the N Rockies; ABQ temp mentioned on ABC AM News; NYC showers; temps from 70s to 110s; storms from Philly to Raleigh, Dallas & OKC; excessive heat for TX & OK; storms toppled TX radio tower; nine people injured in RI after lightning struck a tree; wet along parts of I-10 & I-95; fire danger in the Rockies & the W Coast; Category 4 hurricane heading towards HI;

‘Cash for Clunkers’ program will end on Labor Day; US researchers have decoded the HIV virus; thin ties are in; USPS reports a $7 billion loss; sometimes the pulse is so faint, people are pronounced ‘dead’, then resume normal breathing; Brad Pitt supports same-sex marriages; Burger King does not allow barefoot baby into restaurant; Sotomayor, the next US Supreme Court Judge, the first Hispanic Associate Judge on the bench, and the one hundred eleventh adjudicator; politician who hid cash in his freezer has finally been convicted of accepting bribes; 240’ MI water slide; window washers dangle 37 stories above Boston street; eventually, 50% of homeowners could be ‘under water’; CT woman staged her own ‘Nurse of the Year’ award party…but she wasn’t a nurse!; attack the server: Twitter crashed by hackers, who also caused FaceBook to crawl; $60 for a pizza at the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium; 34.4 million Americans are on food stamps; 1976 flu vaccine killed more people than the disease itself; July sales were ‘sluggish’;emissary vs. envoy; British women like ‘real’ men, not ‘metrosexuals’; gold is $967.20 an ounce; oil is $70.85 per barrel; 64 years today since the first atomic bombs were dropped on Japan; ferry boat sinks off coast of Tonga; Argentina has the second highest death rate from the H1N1;

…8/5-09: embrace what you love

75º in ABQ; 38% humidity at 6A…Code Yellow: Moderate Air Quality, for Ozone; now the lower level A/C in the APT is not working!; FASTING for Michael!!; look, don’t touch any food, Michael!; think water, Michael!; it reached 99º yesterday!; APT fire on 1500 Central near downtown Duke City burned into the night, leaving at least thirty people homeless; 800 acre fire burning S of Silver City; no Park & Ride services for the NM State Fair, blame the bad economy; 100 jobs available at KAFB; ABQ home sales on the rise; NATL Night Out took place; now the great debate moves to the best Bond movies & songs; two tenants who lost their homes from last night’s APT blaze may move into the Beach; our A/C blew a fuse, and a call was placed to fix the problem; at 4P, firemen were still hosing the Castle APT complex, one of the oldest in the city…because the structure is pancaking, the building keeps smoldering; ABQ father found passed out in his vehicle after having smoked marijuana, taken Valium & shot up with heroin, a child was also inside; the APT downstairs from us [214] has the same A/C problem;

Hell Week Day 2.5; finished Rounds by 7:15A; drew blood, splattered onto my white shirt; Red Line R/R routed onto Lomas, then went S of Sixth, then E on Gold; Code Purple at 12:30P; went home on the Red Line R/R, down Central, one lane near the blaze;

Dallas heat advisories; Louisville, KY floods, ruining library books, storms ignite structures in that city, four inches of rain fell in a period of only several hours; E Coast storms from NYC to Orlando; MT T’storms, also in MS, AR, TN, NE and along parts of I-40; Gulf Coast rain; wildfires near San Antonio, TX; voluntary evacuations have been issued as multiple blazes in CA shut down several roads; more wet weather for NY & New England; temps from the 60s to 110s;
man kills several people at a fitness club near Bridgeville, PA, then turns the gun on himself; MI fuel storage fire send thick black clouds into the air; [R] still don’t trust or approve Sotomayor; stimulus money only helped 9% of US homeowners; GOVT INS health plan would cover abortions; the $100K hybrid; CA, ME & NJ have ‘major’ H1N1 outbreaks; the American Psychological ASSOC should not tell their gay clients that they could become straight through therapy, or other treatment; engineer let passenger drive a double-decker train into NYC from Long Island; the DOW ended down; Radio Shack joins with T-Mobile to become ‘The Shack’; burglary into Buffalo home turned deadly, two people inside were killed; Klamath Falls, OR woman had a three foot diamondback rattler in her engine, the animal fell out, and was decapitated; the ‘gym killer’ had planned this shooting since last summer, published his intention on his blog, and fired 36 shots; Capitol Hill jets for junkets, it’s their money, too;the Swine Flu Survival Kit; billions at risk for getting this diseases, there have been over 1,100 death reported around the globe, as many as 188K reported cases; oil is $71.97 per barrel; Putin: the ‘fit’ Russian leader; Chinese citizens trust prostitutes more than politicians; the breast feeding doll for young girls; gold is $966.30 an ounce; N Korea, and its ‘gesture of goodwill’; current Iranian leader sworn in for his second term; passengers were told to exit a plane when one of the engines caught on fire as they were ready to taxi on the tarmac; Clinton considered a charismatic, powerful force: the only American to have recently seen the N Korean leader; Susan Boyle gets another makeover; Bolivia has the largest salt flats in the world, these contain lithium, which will help power electrical cars;

…8/4-09: be with the force that may let you

76º in ABQ; 29% humidity at 6A…Code Yellow: Moderate Air Quality, for Ozone; police car chase turns deadly in Carlsbad; 81% of ABQ schools fail to make the grade; no revving motors in any area of the Duke City; man killed woman with a rock in ‘our’ Las Vegas; renovated Carlsbad restaurant & hotel; abducted CO girl found in ABQ; Verizon still needs more workers at its Duke City Call CTR; debit card problems delay unemployment payments; light pole severed by yesterday’s accident near The Beach; with our thanks to Warren, we have another phone; gas is $2.55 per gallon; rollover crash on I-40 near Clines Corner; ten year old boy struck by a car near Central & Tramway; Santa Fe business fined for advertising some items as ‘Native American’, when they weren’t; woman shot at boyfriend’s computer, nearby a child was sleeping; two woman sentenced for helping eight inmates escape; current NM GOV praises former PRES Clinton for his actions; 9% humidity at 5P; low altitude rocket launched from Spaceport;

Hell Week, Day Two; today, NICU; MGR on the warpath; who knows what Data Entry enters; that time of the month; finished Rounds by 7:15A, took the early bus; confirmed lab request for fasting; has someone pried into another worker’s medical files, or those of her children?; showed Jenny where to get her bus pass; no contact allowed with Data Entry, on any level; at the Grand Canyon, campfire sparks results in third degree burns; another child swallowed lithium; upper MGMT on vacation again?;

temps from 70s to 110s; excessive heat in OK & TX; 100s in OKC; Pittsburgh & Tampa T’storms; wet along parts of I-35 & I-70; rain, hail & lightning for NE, IA, MO, IL, IN, KY, OH; stormy in St. Louis & INDY; excessive heat warnings for TX & OK; floods in KY;

Ford unveils the ‘new’ Taurus; 86 year old woman steals anti-wrinkling cream; there are fragrance fountains in some Dept. store lobbies; today, Obama turns 48 years old, the third youngest PRES; gas has risen five cents per gallon; consumer bankruptcies jump 34% from one year ago, the highest level since October, 2005; Cyber Security Director leaving her White House job; Black & Decker recalls 200K grass trimmers; 27 million Americans take antidepressants on a daily basis; man struck by 300K volts of lightning, and survives with ‘only’ burns to his body; will Ground Zero ever be rebuilt?; good times for salvage dealers; OH family traveled to 52 zoos in 52 weeks; Lake Erie is the most shallow of the Great Lake: Lake Superior, the deepest…and Lake Michigan does not share a border with Canada; socialized health care for Americans?;

Bangkok jetliner crashed into an empty air traffic control tower on Thai island, the pilot was the only reported death in the incident, seven of the passengers were hospitalized; two Russian subs in INTL waters off the W Coast of the US; ‘when’ will more US troops be sent to AFG, and how many; Hillary Clinton is in Kenya, on a seven nation tour of Africa; Bill Clinton to the rescue in N Korea, spoke with that country’s leader…and the two journalists received a ‘special pardon’, there was no message from Obama, this was considered a ‘private trip’: as the current leader of the Asian country played host to a former leader; can he do the same in Iran?; Nissan premiers its first electric car; oil is $70.91 per barrel; gold is $969.70 an ounce; bomb explodes at Argentine airline office, injuring several people; Australia uncovers a terrorist plot on an army base; ‘special K’ is the latest Hong Kong drug;

…8/3-09: simply Goth!

75º in ABQ; 34% humidity at 6A…Code Yellow: Moderate Air Quality, for Ozone; try to find dining room chairs at thrift shops; will the A/C be repaired today?; new early childhood CTR opens in Bernalillo; Brad made a Vanilla, Chocolate & Butterscotch Combo Pudding this weekend; were ‘Baby Angel funds’ inappropriately spent?; tailgater is stopped by police, crystal meth is found in his vehicle; it will cost $350 million to rebuild the Paseo at I-25 interchange; should transportation tax money be used to pay for the renovations; YDI needs volunteers; learned some of the lyrics for ‘The Living Daylights’; tonight, we ate Faux crab cakes…no taste, no crabs; early evening crash at Central & Tingley; only 54% of NM students graduate students graduate; sixteen vehicles burglarized in Santa Fe neighborhood; lane will be added to Tramway;

Hell Week, Day One; smoking restricted to designated areas across the UNM campus; early bus today; finished Rounds by 7:15A; good morning chat with Leslie; patient admitted while his sister was arrested; Mind Research Network & UNM will form a partnership to improve neuroscience technology; met with Cardiology today; JoAnn & I agree…when a baby is moved into a ward, the first visit should be coded as an initial service; Cyndee stopped by the PEDS DEPT?; at one point last week, 470 beds were occupied;parts of TX prays for rain; NM storms mentioned on ABC AM News; storms from WI, upper MI to NE, especially Omaha & OKC; Carolina coastal rain; Philly flooding & power outages; high waves hit HI; wet in the Twin Cities & Chicago, St. Louis, and along parts of I-44; temps from 70s to 110; damp in the N FL panhandle & Orlando;tax increase for everyone?; people not as optimistic as politicians regarding the progress of the recession; new GI Bill would pay the full tuition at a state college, plus housing costs; NYC student suing her college, after spending $70K for tuition, the school was not able to find her a job; 108 skydivers set new freefall record; chocolate covered bacon on a stick?; Northwest Airlines plane blew five tires when landing at a Twin Cities airport, no injuries were reported; 26 passengers are injured when Continental flight encounters turbulence; maybe, no middle-class tax hike; USPS may close 1K post offices around the country; even in bad times, some crime statistics are lower; noxious fumes from a New Bedford, MA [my home town] trash disposal facility sent over 100 people to the HOSP; weird: TN man shot his daughter, their neighbor and then himself; now there is a divorce video set to the tune of ‘Forever’; VP Lady Jill Biden is an English PROF at NO VA Community College; Phys. Ed. Injuries have increased by 150% from 1997 to 2007; three gay priests nominated for position as Episcopal Bishop of Los Angeles; Bank of America fined for giving bonuses; MA mother sees baby for sale on website; children have a VIT D deficiency, due to lack of sunlight, and only 4% take supplements to counteract this shortage; do people want a car payment plus higher INS?; what happens when everyone has a new vehicle?; [R] may oppose, but the extra funds for the program will be passed by Congress; the NATL AVG price of gas is $2.56, cost is going up; corporate business taxes went down by 57%, no one is buying; MX quake shook Phoenix structures, its epicenter was 460 miles to the W; an airport for AK town, population: 150;Americans strayed over the Iranian borer, and into an INTL incident; were there clear marking, or did they ignore warnings: their trek started in the Kurdish region of Iraq, being charged as CIA agents; 6.9 quake rocks the MX near the Gulf of CA; the Gaza Surfer’s Union, open to both Christians or Jewish; Chinese town sealed off after two of the city’s 10K inhabitants test positive for the pneumonic plague;

…8/2-09: recycling moisture

70º in ABQ; 49% humidity at 6A…the discussion continues about the best Bond women, songs and movies; Brad’s painting continues; second Espanola car dealership to close, this will hurt that city’s economy, and force people to travel to Santa Fe for repairs; 40 kilos of marijuana, valued at $80K, was confiscated at Gallup Port of Entry; overnight, four hikers rescued from the Sandias, one man fell thirty feet, injuring his head & leg; one person eventually found his way out of the Jemez MTN; fatal shooting in Hobbs; Duke City police car ran a red light, traveled across an empty lot, smashed into a wall, then ended inside a home at Unser & Bridge in SW ABQ; female body found in land near Santa Teresa, NM, a town near the Tex-Mex border; twenty-five year old died after his vehicle slammed into the back of a semi; Val Kilmer [who will no longer try his luck as a politician] owes $500K in back taxes; Carson NATL Forest will be closed to traffic; black bear found roaming near Unser & Atrisco; Goodwill is having a 50% off back to school sale;have we reached the bottom of the recession; new & improved benefits for GIs to attend college; more injuries from Chicago gunfire; Montana Fried Chicken?; this is a ‘slow, jobless recovery’; more & more of America is feeling the effects of the current recession; downpours & flooding from Boston to DC; llamas are the new caddies at a NC golf course; what happens if the Cash for Clunkers program does not receive additional funding…the owners have to return these new vehicle, their old ones may have been sold for parts or demolished, so the buyers no longer have their original vehicles, the dealerships still have their inventory, and the economy suffers; the Patriots do not want Michael Vick; neighborhood Monopoly game turns into physical assault; in terms of revenue, both the summer movie season, and the year to date are down as compared to last year…another ripple of the recession, and the economy; fewer people are also going to see films; Sesame ST is forty years old; as of today, the Red Sox are in second place, one game behind the Yankees; law officers seized all skin sanitizers from UT company; FED GOVT disapproves tourist cities, such as ‘the’ Las Vegas & Orlando, as convention sites; a partly cloudy economic forecast until 2011; Cash for Clunkers program has been suspended again, at least for a week, until Congress approves more funding; renovate MI or KS prisons to hold GITMO detainees?; toxins from meth labs remain in house, causing respiratory problems for the entire family, but mostly children; Felony Franks in Chicago…the home of the ‘misdemeanor wiener’: where food is so good, it’s criminal: its workers are former felons, who contribute to the company's profit sharing plan; three year old boy drowns in OH indoor water park;plane carrying fifteen people is missing in Indonesia; one person has died after a stage collapsed in Alberta; a new HIV strain has been discovered in central Africa, another simian to human variant; the US is now a ‘coalition of one’ in Iraq; Benjamin Franklin & his ‘air baths’, he would walk around his home in Britain in the nude; three US citizens are being sentenced as spies for crossing into Iran; two Mozart pieces of music were found in Austria;

…8/1-09: do you cyber exist?

65º in ABQ; 50% humidity at 6A…a Four Corners Cherry Chipotle Sandwich in the finals of the ‘Regis & Kelly’ cook-off contest; the collapse of Affiliated Foods SW, INC leaves people from NM & ten other states without any money from their investments in that company; dorms at NM Highlands UNIV open earlier than scheduled; I was sick during the night, felt as if I was going to heave; jurors, not judges should determine if an adolescent should be tried as an adult; Sunday Rail Runner service may start on Labor Day weekend; off duty officer vs. truck driver in Duke City road rage incident; July was a warm & dry month for NM, and August may continue the trend; last ABQ Summerfest weekend; Duke City Film Festival this weekend; new Santa Fe Rail Runner stop opens in the City Different, at Rte. 599 & I-25; the ‘new’ Eclipse Aerospace may rehire some of its workers; Nancy’s car got ‘dinged’ in The Beach’s parking lot; missing vinyl records found in local DJ’s home?; someone when outside the normal YouTube reply area to send me a quick response to my ‘Bond Girls’ comment; watched ‘Watchmen’: incredible; homicide at Copper & Texas; more jobs at the Columbus, NM Port of Entry;texting can lead to hacking into cell phones; flights rerouted, concourse evacuated at LaGuardia Airport when a bomb [proved to be fake] found in man’s luggage: the suspect appeared to be homeless, was flying to Oakland, he was possible drunk, and disrupted flights from Canada to DC…so far, his motive is UNK; first Navy vessel to be named after a Marine who was killed in Iraq; the ‘Halloween’ series of movies are being remade; DC home of famed artist Peggy Cooper Cafritz on Chain Bridge RD goes up in smoke & flames; suspect in gay soldier’s death commits suicide; more US missile defense tests in the Pacific; 20K transaction crash cash for clunkers website; best stock market month in twenty years; seventeen foot python found by boy in FL; another weird: another person threw another pet from a high-rise…this time, a one year old dog from the sixth floor of a NYC APT complex; 3.2 quake rocks SE TN, W NC & N GA: so far, no injuries or serious damage reported; Michael Phelps breaks record in the butterfly swimming event;
teen drug abuse in Hong Kong; Puerto Rico: the fifty-first state?; three people killed in an Israeli club for gay teens; three US college students captured in Iran; African terrorist group in Somalia could spread across the continent;

…7/31-09: no guns, no bullets, no bombs

63º in ABQ; 67% humidity at 6A…Code Yellow: Moderate Air Quality, for Ozone; another mobile meth lab found: this time, brewing in a backpack; man & woman stole surveillance cameras, their thefts were ‘caught’ on film; on the other hand, if the first repairman had not quoted such a high estimate, we would not have Freon in the A/C that was added by the second guy; while NM lottery sales are down, scholarship money from the tickets sold are up; Heinrich: the NM hunk on Capitol Hill; SE NM flood advisories; first female fire chief for Santa Fe; one NM resident has bought a ticket for the flight from Spaceport; the last chance to vote for the new license plate design, honoring the City Different turning 400 years old; another radioactive waste dump site near Carlsbad planned?; will a Santa Fe parking garage ever be completed?; three patrol cars guarded a sinkhole on Louisiana, just S of Menaul; Eclipse Aviation could be back in business, and not bankruptcy; pit bull attacks girl in her own backyard; Rail Runner will run on Sundays; anonymous ‘first buyer’ of space ticket;

meeting with Neurological Psychologist; Code Purple at 6:30A; patient’s ‘drug of choice’ is heroin; finished Rounds by 7:15A; took early bus; worked on another Coder’s TES edits during the PM, left work at 3:45P; got the #5 to the #8 bus, back by R/R, arrived home slightly after 6P;

temps from 70s to 110s; tornadoes struck five states; storms from NY to MS; rain for parts of TX & Louisiana, in DC, Houston, ATL, NYC, Boston; a mild tornado season so far; wet along parts of I-20 & I-95; downpours for the FL panhandle; heavy rains in Providence, Philly & New Orleans; wild weather & flood warnings for W TX, TN, KY, WV;Michael Jackson: drug addict?; being the sole resident in a 32 story, 300 unit FL high-rise; teen arrested after painting Smiley Faces on CT high school; tame tiger found a backyard of a home in ‘the’ Las Vegas, had escaped from circus; ‘Cash for Clunkers’ has run out of gas, will continue through this weekend…hope for another $2 billion from Congress to keep the project going; paperwork jams, taking five hours to complete forms; Honda recalls 440K more vehicles; no apologies at ‘beer brew’, but the professor & the policeman will meet again for private lunch, where they won’t be in the media spotlight; GM may reopen some of its dealerships; as the jobless rate rises in OH, Obama’s popularity gets lower; more than 350 deaths in the US from the H1N1 virus; what is it about MA?…mother locked her three year old son in a hot attic when he misbehaved, and her family supports the woman’s actions; Frigidaire recalling 35K washers which could ignite as lint gets clogged in a drain pipe; the PT Cruiser will be built for one more year; toxic dirt in the White House garden; five more banks fail in OK, FL, OH, IL & NJ;declare victory in Iraq, and leave!; presenting, the super yacht!; good chance for Endeavour to land in FL this AM, and the space shuttle made a successful landing; former Philippine leader Corazon Aquino has died at the age of 76 from cancer; Cuban economy getting worse;