The Daily News

1  Happy Wednesday!

2  Hope you're all getting through the week.

3  I got the wheezes and the sneezes. So far, they haven't been too bad. 

4  Enjoyed the pitching performance of the Giants' Johnny Cueto last night. 

5  On the post game show, they went outside the stadium to talk about this and that, and one fan had a sign that said "Johnny Cieto" on it. 

6  Are we allowed to roll our heads?

7  Nice gesture, I suppose, but isn't the spelling immediately at one's fingertips?

8  Yeesh.

9  Ah vell.

10  Why did I bother asking?

11  Moving On, Part One: Congrats to Warrior's coach Steve Kerr for receiving the Coach of the Year award. It's a day late and a dollar short, but howzbout that one?

12  We'll leave that question for the ages. Congrats Coach, and congrats Dubs.

13  Moving On, Part Two: Between watching the game and adding more walking miles, my nose started running last night.

14  Everyone and everything is into the exercise thing, I imagine.

15 

16  Let's pretend I never said that.

17  Here's something most people don't know about me: I don't often get colds, or allergies, or anything like that.

18  My theory is that because I taught for all those years, my body possibly built up a resistance to all that stuff.

19  Call me Captain Science.

20  Consequently, I never carried a lot of cold medications. Once in a while I would go through brief periods where I would get the sniffles and stuff. It was usually due to exhaustion from worry and a lack of sleep. Very rarely was it a cold, and when it was, I would just stay home. When it wasn't, but I still had the symptoms, I had an ally, a remedy, if you will. 

21  My remedy always was Sudafed and 12-hour nose squirts. And sugar-free cough drops. And call me in the morning. 

22  That nursed me through a lot of tough times. If I would get extra sick, I would stay home, but I always hated getting substitutes. It really caused me more work, drawing up lesson plans, getting handouts printed, flying down to the school and dropping them off, etc. As long as I wasn't sounding horrible, I would go in. 

23  Interestingly, I would also get irritated by students who would come to school deathly sick, and then sneeze and wheeze all over the place. 

24  Look. Anywhere you work, if someone has a cold, you're already exposed to it. It shouldn't be that big a deal, but once YOU get a slight cold, it can be murder. 

25  And there's no point telling anybody, because nobody, and I mean NO-BAH-DEE gives a hoot you're sick. In fact, if anything, they probably want to shoot you for showing up to school or work.

26  So last night after I settled down from the game, and from getting a little exercise, I lay down, and my nose ran, then got stuffy, and then... 

27  All the medicine we had was down in Vegas, so I went through every room in the place searching for Sudafed and 12-hour squirts. 

28  There was nothing. I even found a storage container that had my stuff from when I cleared out my desk, and that stuff was already gone. I think I threw a lot of it away, saying in a cocky fashion at the time, "Ah, if I need it, I'll buy more!" That dog wasn't gonna hunt last night. 

29  First, it was already too late. AND I still JUST moved here if you see the infrastructure of the place. Finding things remains an ongoing mission. So even if I HAD the stuff, I would never have been able to locate it anyway. 

30  The stores were closed, so I had to rely on a few cough drops and endless glasses of water. 

31  I'm pretty sure Sudafed can't even be purchased anymore without a prescription. Here is the closest thing I could find online late last night. It's a review of Sudafed, or some variation on the same theme. The generic name for Sudafed is this: "pseudoepherine." Here is the Pseudo Yelp review:

This is the best on the market

Pros: works better than anything else

Cons:  have to get from the pharmacist and

its hard to fi

Age: 35 to 44

Gender: Female

Here is the definition of "pseudoeferine" broken down by the Oxford American Dictionary:

pseudo |ˈso͞odō|

adjective

not genuine; sham: we are talking about real journalists and not 

the pseudo kind.

ORIGIN

late Middle English: independent use of pseudo-.

pseudo- |ˈso͞odō| (also pseud- before a vowel)

comb. form

1 supposed or purporting to be but not really so; false; not genuine:

pseudonym | pseudoscience.

2 resembling or imitating: pseudohallucination | pseudo-French.

ORIGIN

from Greek pseudēs ‘false,’ pseudos ‘falsehood.’

Ephedrine is a medication used to prevent low blood pressure during spinal anesthesia.^[1] It has also been used for asthma, narcolepsy, and obesity but is not the preferred treatment. It can be taken by mouth or by injection into a muscle, vein, or just under the skin. Onset with intravenous use is fast, while injection into a muscle can take 20 minutes, and by mouth can take an hour for effect. When given by injection it lasts about an hour and when taken by mouth it can last up to four hours.^[1]

Common side effects include, trouble sleeping, anxiety, headache, hallucinations, high blood pressure, fast heart rate, loss of appetite, and inability to urinate. Serious side effects include stroke, heart attack, and abuse.^[1] While likely safe in pregnancy its use in this population is poorly studied.^[2][3] Use during breastfeeding is not recommended.^[3] Ephedrine works by turning on α and β adrenergic receptors.^[1]

^{So...the generic version of Sudafed is defined by the Oxford American Dicitonary as a "sham" drug that has horrific side effects up to and including hallucinations, high blood pressure, fast hear rate, inablility to urinate, AND strokes, heart attacks, and abuse.} 

   And even its non-generic name is clearly an off-shoot of       those two words. 

32 

33  AND, according to some Yelpy gal, it must be prescribed AND is hard to fi. 

34  Sorry. I hate things that are hard to fi.

36  Welcome to 2016.

37  The entire year is broken.

38  It's okay.

39  We all have coping mechanisms.

40  Yes, that last photo was Mr. Naismith, the founder of basketball. 

41  Here, a bit I copped off the Source-That-Nobody-Wants-To-Use-But-That-Everybody-Uses-Anyway Wiki:

History of basketball - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_basketball

Wikipedia

The history of basketball began with its invention in 1891 in Springfield, Massachusetts by Canadian physical education instructor James Naismith as a less injury-prone sport than football.

Note: The scratched-out adjective is the word "Canadian" with the word "Wikipedia" mysteriously attached to its topside.

42  "...as a less injury-prone sport than football..."

43  Thank you, Mssr. Naismith. 

44  So there you go. 

45  Wednesday, pared down. 

46  Thank goodness.

47   It is before midnight. <yawn> I realize it is morning NOW, but when I wrote this, it was before midnight. 

48  My nose cleared up when I had a glass of water. 

49  I may get a good night's sleep.

50  So yup.

51  Been great.

52  I gottago.

53  See you again.

54  Have a GREAT day.

55   Peace. 

~H~

fin.