My eleventh (11th!) prescription, Gabapentin, seems to be a bit of a miracle worker. Due to complications from diabetes I suffer from diabetic neuropathy, pain and damage along the nerve channels which can occur anywhere but is particularly troublesome in my feet and hands. I can’t feel the majority of my left foot and about 10% of my right is numb.

I don’t know if you’ve ever suffered from nerve pain but let me try to describe some of it. The worst feels like someone slowly pushing, not stabbing, but forcefully, glacially inserting ice picks into my feet. Usually in two or three places at once but sometimes just one and other times it can be more there was also often a sensation of extreme temperature both hot and cold with the ice pick type pain. There’s also a pins and needles sensation an order of magnitude worse than the worst time your leg ever fell asleep.
I also get, mostly in my fingers, a sensation not unlike the whole fingertip being slowly (slow seems to be a presiding factor in this type of pain) crushed in a bench vise or by a pair of slip-joint pliers.

I started taking Gabapentin three weeks ago and it’s amazing. Almost all of my nerve pain has been suppressed. Instead of fifty to a hundred events a day I only have two or three. There’s been a couple days where I haven’t had more than a few hazy twinges and I still haven’t worked up to the full dosage the doctor wanted me to get to.

Now if the doctor could find something equally as good for the arthritis, joint and back pain I’d be in heaven.

Being a long-haired hippie biker lunatic they didn’t want me touching food for this pot-luck luncheon, yes, that’s right, they charged us an arm and a freaking leg to go to this ’school’ and WE had to provide our own food for a Chris…excuse me, Holiday party. They probably figured I’d bring pot brownies or meth punch or just infect the dip with hippie germs. So I and my fellow classmate Chris who was also too freaky to be trusted with consumables (there’s a whole ‘nother story there!) were tasked with putting together some appropriate Chris… Holiday (damn it!) music for our listening and dining pleasure.

Chris and I sat down one chilly… who am I kidding, it’s Florida, it was probably in the mid-70’s, winter afternoon and using a program who’s name started with N(apster) (SHH!) began downloa… PURCHASING LEGALLY a collection of light, appropriate holiday (ahh, better) music.

We downloa… OBTAINED LEGALLY a dozen or so songs and since it was getting late and Chris didn’t like being anywhere that wasn’t his dining room table (seriously, there’s a whole story there) we decided to just sample the songs by listening to the first minute or so of each to see if the quality was good.

We came across this one song ‘Sainte Nuit’ with no band name and the guy who was singing had an AMAZING, )seriously amazing, this is no freaking joke this guy can SING) voice singing what appeared to be ‘Silent Night’ in French.

They would not and never would believe that it wasn’t done as a joke. Some people have no sense of humor anyhow. Seriously, we didn’t know!

But now? Now this is the coolest CHRISTMAS song I’ve got, even cooler than Bob Rivers doing his parody of Black Sabbath’s ‘Iron Man’, ‘I am Santa Claus’. Even my mom likes ‘Sainte Nuit’!

I have also learned one important rule of using ball-head mounts; “ALWAYS hold the camera when you loosen the ball-head locking mount.” I came close to smashing my new camera on the leg of the tripod. It was frightening.

Wait, what? More than half an ounce more for the same price? Can anyone explain this? It’s obvious they have a machine capable of consistently weighing bags of crackers at 6.6 ounces so why do you get more when you buy smaller yet otherwise identical Baby Goldfish.

It reminds me of a time, many years back, when I was working overnight shifts at 7-11 and noticed that Rold Gold had a new style of pretzels out, Rold Gold - Sport. It advertized “X% LESS Calories than our regular pretzels!” on the bag and had a cute little action sport graphic under their logo. They were also either .50 or .75 more expensive than the regular Rold Gold Pretzels which were right next to them. Being bored and working in a store that often didn’t see three customers after the bar crowd went home to pass out I investigated! For a while I was stumped. The ingredients were the same. All the percentages of this and that were the same… then I saw it. THE BAG WEIGHED LESS. There were less calories in the bag because there was less product in the bag! I thought it was absolutely brilliant scammery. Here’s the same product advertized as a ‘Sport’ version with less calories and they’re just selling you LESS for more! I guess there were enough gullible people out there because we only carried them that one time and I never saw them again. I can’t even find a reference to them on Google now.

Okay… so it isn’t really all THAT similar but the Goldfish pricing does boggle my brain a bit and it was a good excuse to dredge up an old and amusing memory. Ah well…

D&D: Can I help you?
Me: Large black coffee please.
D&D: How would you like it?
Me: In a cup, please.
D&D: But what do you want in it?
Me: Percocet, vicodin?
D&D: {D’hur}
Me: Coffee, coffee in cup, lid, lid on cup, give cup, take money.
D&D: But HOW do you want it!?
Me: Hot, thanks.
D&D: Cream? Sugar?
Me: Put the damn coffee in a cup and hand it to me!
D&D: Please, how do you take your coffee?
Me: Apparently with violence.
D&D Manager: Large Black Coffee, on the house sir!
Me: Ahh… coffee.