Roxaboxen

Neatnik's class has been studying communities and human features in social studies class this term. Yesterday, Neatnik used sidewalk chalk to draw a somewhat elaborate village on our driveway. She had lots of houses and all kinds of shops. The shops weren't simply generic businesses, either, each one had a name and a purpose: car dealership, horse breeder, grocery store, and clothing boutique were all represented.

Neatnik specified that the villagers were allowed to drive cars on Main Street and also allowed to ride horses on it. Cars had to obey the speed limit; the horses did not.

Number Guy waited with Neatnik for the school bus to arrive this morning. He sent me a text message from the driveway:

"Sadly, it appears the good town of Roxaboxen has suffered a grave cataclysm and has been completely eradicated by the great deluge of 2011..."

I note the following (a) it rained pretty hard last night; and (b) if he ever gets tired of engineering, he's got career possibilities as a reporter.

Film at eleven!

In which trek reviews Prescription for Trouble

Back in early December, I scored the Kindle edition of Code Blue,a medicolegal thriller, for free. I didn't start it right away. You know how it goes: something gets put into the TBR stack but the stack has morphed into an amorphous heap and you aren't quite sure what books arrived before other books...

Anyway, this week, Medical Errorwas listed free for Kindle, so I scooped it up. Then I noticed the author's name and thought, "Gee, haven't I previously read something of his?"

Well, no, no I hadn't. Code Blue jumped to the front of the TBR queue since I couldn't very well start book two of a series before I'd read book one.

Long time blog readers might remember that, in a previous career, I was a pharmacist. Yep, licensed and registered for over a decade. I really enjoyed the pharmacological aspects of my job back then. Figuring out the hows and whys of disorders and disease states and evaluating treatment modalities is a very cool thing. Based on my background, I was very interested to see what this author/physician had to say.

Code Blue is the story of how young Dr Cathy Sewell returns to her hometown in Texas to set up a general practice. She brings load of baggage with her, including mistrust of men due to two failed engagements and anger over her parents' deaths. She is also fearful that she will begin showing symptoms of schizophrenia, like her mother.

I became invested in the book from the very beginning. How can you not get hooked on a story where the protagonist is run off the road on the first page? The automotive near-miss is just the beginning of Cathy's troubles. Financial worries are constantly at the forefront for this student loan indebted young doctor. She also is carrying a bank note the size of a minor mortgage incurred from setting up her practice. Of course, if the hospital would hurry up granting her privileges, she might be able to better meet patient needs and attract more patients, which would aid in paying down some of that debt.

When one of Cathy's patients arrives in the emergency room in severe cardiac distress, her competency is questioned: why did she double then man's digitalis dosage? Cathy knows she didn't but a malpractice suit is brought against her.

Right about here is where I started to question the story. In the state where I was licensed and practiced, we were required to use tamper-resistant prescription pads. Was this not the case in Texas? Turns out, it is, at least for Medicaid patients.

Pursuant to federal law (H.R. 2206 / Public Law 110-28, U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans' Care, Katrina Recovery, and Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act, 2007), effective April 1, 2008, prescribing practitioners are required to use tamper-resistant prescription paper when writing a prescription for any drug for Medicaid recipients."
-- HSSC Vendor Drug Program

Given the risks and penalties involved in writing drug orders on invalid prescription blanks, I found it kind of difficult to believe that doctors and hospitals would go to the trouble of ordering separate pads for Medicaid patients only. Easier to order the tamper-resistant blanks only and use them for all patients as advises:

"HHSC encourages prescribers to adopt the use of tamper-resistant paper for all their patients. It will reduce their over-all risk and will avoid the confusion of determining which pad to use for which patient."
-- HSSC Vendor Drug Program

Overall, it was a pretty interesting read, even if I did have doubts regarding the likelihood that events would play out as described. The writing style was comfortable and the plot moved along nicely. I do have to say that I knew "whodunnit" and why fairly early on in the book but the protagonist was blind-sided, so I guess that was okay.

After finishing Code Blue, I started Medical Error. This second book in the series does not have the same cast of characters and yet it is also set in Texas and centers on another young female doctor who is mistrustful of men and who is accused of writing bogus narcotics scripts. In this volume, too, the doctor is also accused of malfeasance and is also threatened with a malpractice suit. Again, I figured out the culprit before the end of the book.

Very similar stories. I'm rather glad that both of these books were free. Either one of them as a standalone story is pretty good but as two consecutive books in a series? Well, I would have preferred a bit more variety.

In which it is all about the choir

Yesterday was Neatnik's grade's annual class mass. Fr EB was the celebrant. We like EB: he's intelligent, personable, and had an interesting career before entering the seminary.

So, EB announced at the beginning of the homily that we were celebrating mass for the third graders. Then he noted that most of the third graders were sitting up in the choir loft, singing. He next declared, "I am going to literally preach to the choir today."

Poor guy: he didn't get as many laughs for that one liner as the toddler who yelled, "Yeah!" after the choir finished singing the offertory hymn.

In which chez trek is transformed

It's kind of hard to believe that I am coming up on the end of my fourth week of walking at home. I've got a modest little collection of Leslie Sansone's DVDs, interlocking floor matsto cover the concrete in the basement, three neon green firm bands,two sets of neoprene hand weights (similar to these), and a pair of weightlifting gloves.

Who would have thought chez trek could have turned into a home gym in just four short weeks?

Despite the growing collection of DVDs downstairs, I am still in the market for more. I need variety. If I have to do the exact workout every day or every other day, I'll get bored.

Quickly.

I borrowed Leslie Sansone: Walk Your Belly Flatfrom the library this week. Yet another "try before you buy".

Why, yes, I do love my local library. Why do you ask?

I popped this one in yesterday morning and initially I thought to myself, "Oh, my, this is way too slow!" By the second mile, however, the pace had picked up considerably and it turned out to be a very good workout, especially when I followed it up with The Big Burn,which I picked up at the milk store of all places. They've got this little wheeled cart up near the front end with impulse videos on it. Two miles of intervals.

This DVD is a pretty good 2-mile interval workout but I have to admit that there are some camera issues that are a bit distracting. The project would have benefited from a bit more footage editing.

One of the best features of this workout regimen is that the laundry gets washed as I sweat. Another is that I'm still doing it.

By the way, I hear from the Walk At Home Club folks that Leslie has a brand-new 5 mile DVD in the works for fall 2011 release.

walk
Walk
WALK
WALK!!!

In which trek reviews The Righteous

Michael Wallace spins a fast-paced tale, set primarily in rural Utah with minor excursions into Las Vegas and other "worldly" cities. The Righteousfocuses on Jacob and Eliza Christianson, half-siblings who are being pressured to marry by their father and their "church". Said "church" is a polygamist cult in which the women are viewed pretty much as brood mares: their job is to be serviced by the local stallion and to bear as many children as possible.

Eliza is nearly eighteen years old and she has been presented with three possible situations: thirteenth wife to an octogenarian church elder, first wife to an attempted rapist, or third wife to yet another potential groom.

Suitor #3 refuses to marry Eliza on the grounds that she really does not want to marry him. Suitor #1 has a stroke and dies. Only would-be rapist suitor #2 remains in the running.

Are you ill yet? I was.

Concurrent with Eliza's marital morass is her brother Jacob's investigation into the murder of one of suitor #2's father's wives. The body was desecrated in a very particular manner, which lead Jacob to the conclusion that the woman was murdered by a church member. The murder investigation brings Jacob and Eliza into life-threatening conflict with a subset of the cult which is operating several black market scams, income tax and welfare fraud, and murder, to name just a few of their many crimes.

Thoroughly unsavory, misogynistic, male characters and subservient, oppressed female characters populate the pages. Each time a woman in the story accepted the will of her father or husband as "the will of God", I cringed. At times, I found myself wanting to argue with the women.

That or slap them upside the head to get them to wake up, shake off the brain-washing and indoctrination, and run!

Despite the grim and sometimes gory action, I was sucked into finishing the book. It was technically well-written, seemed to be well-researched, the action moved along quite handily. I awarded The Righteous three stars on Amazon due to the highly disturbing nature of the book.

TEBP - Sweet edition

Wow, this has been a crazy busy week. I realized today that I haven't posted since last Friday. When you've got a lengthy break like that, you really need a Thursday Evening Bullet Post...

• My interlocking floor matsarrived today!



• They are already set up in the basement.



• I need to order one more set, though.



• Yay for Free Super Saver Shipping!



• The daily workouts with Leslie continue and they aren't boring.



• I joined the Walk at Home Club.



• One of the DVDs came with a free six month trial, so why not?



• Now, I can access new videos online each month, too.



• Haven't tried one of the new ones yet. Let you know how it goes when I do.



• Just finished A Chance for Charity.



• Interesting read.



• Number Guy and I did something different last night: we went to the theater - on a school night, no less :O



• A new playhouse opened up a couple of towns over from us. They sent out a mailing for a pair of tickets to this month's play. Hadn't heard anything about the play but TazzMom agreed to babysit the Neatnik and the tickets were free so minimal investment if we didn't enjoy it.



• And you can always leave during the intermission if you are not enjoying yourselves.



• The playhouse is really small but the seating was both comfortable and stadium-style.



• And the play was enjoyable, if a little avant-garde.



• It is Girl Scout cookie season.



• Neatnik sold 150 boxes.



• Record for chez trek.



• I refused to buy more than three boxes.



• She hustled her little bustle to reach the 150 mark: she gets a t-shirt and a journal as incentive prizes.



• I am so glad that the ordering is done for this year.



• I can now look forward to March when they are delivered and we can hunt down everyone who will owe us money for their sugar fixes.



• Joy.

I think I need a lie down.