Posts Tagged ‘allergies’

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Behind the 8-ball

May 26, 2019

Just say no, kids.

I have been behind the 8-ball, and I have been in front of the 8-ball — more than once, too. And after a few too many taps on the glass I usually wound up looking about like this fellow here.

Our preposterous and apparently endless allergy season has me feeling as though someone stepped a little too hard on my Peruvian marching powder — say, with Drano, kitty litter or aluminum oxide — and so instead of riding the bikey bike I have been riding the couch, which is not nearly as fun because it never goes anywhere.

Dr. Mark Schuyler, chief of the Division of Allergy and Immunology for the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, said back in April that we could expect this season to run through mid- to late May, and he did not lie.

Or at least I hope he didn’t. If I watch much more TV, put on a few kilos, and shed a few I.Q. points, I’m liable to wind up president.

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Posted in allergies, Casual snark | 13 Comments »

April drool

April 2, 2019

Yesterday’s air-quality report from the City of Albuquerque.

I lay low for April Fool’s Day. It’s gotten to be kind of like the St. Patrick’s Day or New Year’s Eve of comedy — not for serious funnymen. Funnypersons? Persons of funny?

My favorite April Fool’s gag may be the time the Gazette caught the Greeley Tribune napping. It was in the late Seventies, and some wisenheimers on staff faked up a photo of an El Paso County pickle farmer inspecting a bumper crop (reporter Don Branning in a planter’s hat, examining a plump dill tied to a tree across the street from the newspaper).

We ran it on the Metro front, then put it on The Associated Press wire just for giggles. To our astonishment, the Tribune picked it up and ran the shot on its Farm page despite the photo credit, which read something like, “GT photo by Aprylle Foole.”

The desk jockey who made that call clearly was not a local boy with shitcaked bootheels. The Tribune is in Weld County, one of the richest agricultural counties east of the Rockies, the state’s top producer of grain, sugar beets and cattle.

Not pickles, though. El Paso County had all the pickle farms in Colorado.

Here in New Mexico the ash and juniper are providing all the comedy, if your idea of a good laugh involves watching some poor sod’s nose run like an irrigation ditch with a busted headgate.

I pretended to be a runner yesterday afternoon and came home with an enraged snotlocker, a condition that persists this morning. Snot funny, man.

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Posted in Albuquerque, allergies, Cheap gags, Comedy, Newspapers, Spring, Things that suck | 26 Comments »

Rohloff! Gesundheit!

March 21, 2019

The Co-Motion Divide Rohloff, off the hook and back on the trail.

I peeled my snout from the grindstone in order to take a short ride yesterday, and I’m glad I did, because the wind cranked up to 11 last night and it’s still there today.

Also, and too, rain. Which is nice. But that doesn’t mean I’m gonna go ride in it.

Unzip over to Voler to join the team! Use the Secret Code (OLDGUYS15) to get 15% off your purchase. And no, goddamnit, for the last time, it does not come with fries!

Especially since I finally succumbed to the siren song of Non-Drowsy Claritin-D 12 Hour. God damn. I think I lost five pounds blowing my nose this morning. Must be all that grindstone dust.

Anyway, I’d hauled the Co-Motion Divide down to Two Wheel Drive a while back over a leaky Rohloff hub and thought I’d give ’er a whirl now that alles ist besser. It’s far too nice a bike for me but I rode it anyway. You can’t stop me!

It needs some more love — better tires, and a little hammer time for the rear Avid BB7 caliper, which insists on dragging its fixed pad.

A smart fella would go to TRP Spyres. But as you know, I will never be smart.

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Posted in allergies, Bike stuff | 24 Comments »

Bricks and blankets

March 3, 2019

Miss Mia Sopaipilla performs her cover of “All Along the Watchtower.”

My supervisors noted in a recent performance review that I hadn’t posted any cat pix since January 31.

The Turk has blue eyes, but you hardly ever get to see ’em.

This obviously could not stand, man. So I got busy with the Sony RX100 III.

I think that pay raise I’d been counting on is right out, though.

However, the temps are coming up right smart, and if that continues, I’m out of here for a ride of some sort.

I know that this is a finger in the eye for those of you sentenced to the upper deck of the Benighted States, but at least all that cold and snow is probably tamping down the pollen.

Not so much here, especially with the wind stirring things up. Sunscreen on the outside, Claritin-D on the inside.

Phaw. Schtonk. Hyeeeenk. Snurk. Ptui.

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Posted in allergies, Bike stuff, Cats | 9 Comments »

Treed

April 25, 2018

The acequia just south of Interstate 40 and the Paseo del Bosque.

Chihuahua. I thought I was past the worst of the seasonal allergies until yesterday afternoon, when the ol’ snotlocker went haywire on me again, streaming like autoplay video.

I blame the mulberries, and perhaps the cottonwoods. Though it must be said that doing a three-hour ride down to the bosque and back was probably not exactly what the doctor ordered.

I enjoyed it, though. And it sure beat being reminded yet again that our government is a whorehouse without piano players in which a select few get laid while the rest of us get screwed.

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Posted in Albuquerque, Bike stuff | 11 Comments »

A sinus of the times

April 21, 2018

“Excuse me, you wouldn’t happen to have a Kleenex, would you?”

The local allergists must be making money hand over nose.

Between the wind and the drought my snout spent most of this week looking like an undercooked calzone. Or maybe it’s auditioning for the latest addition to the “Alien” canon in which the beast blasts out of its victims’ faces instead of their chests.

I have not sought medical attention for fear that the whitecoats would wish to keep me, to study. “Hm, maybe evolution is bullshit after all.” Instead I’ve been self-medicating with various pills and potions, irrigating the ol’ calzone with saline solution, and periodically steaming it like a pierogi.

Shit. Now I’m hungry for some reason. Maybe not.

Naturally, I’ve been trying to exercise through this, which is like drinking Sterno to quell that nasty ache in your liver. It’s not too bad while you’re barreling along, strafing buzzworms with snot rockets, getting the blood pumping, but back at the ranch it’s all Kleenex and Carmex, sniffling like a Trump capo getting done to a turn on Bob Mueller’s grill.

Night before last God decided He wanted to be John Bonham for a while and played the drum solo from “Moby Dick” on the neighborhood, all night long, using nothing but wind and whatever wasn’t solidly nailed down.

Cooler weather followed and thus I spent yesterday indoors, returning El Rancho Pendejo to a habitable state in anticipation of Herself’s triumphant return from a five-day confab in Virginia, because I know what’s good for me and an ass-whuppin’ isn’t it. God and John Bonham aren’t the only folks who know how to swing a stick.

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Posted in Just mumbling along | 19 Comments »

Nasal barrage

April 14, 2018

The backyard maple is greening up, along with pretty much everything else.

Here at El Rancho Pendejo we are spared the cruise missiles but not the snot rockets. Faugh, sneeeerk, hyeeeeenk, auuuughhhhh, hoccccccccck, ptui, etc.

The apple tree next to the garage.

The incoming includes mulberry, ash, juniper, cottonwood and sycamore, fueled by red-flag winds. I haven’t been on the bike since Wednesday. So, yeah. Not bombed, but bummed.

And taking drugs, which I used to enjoy. But these ones are boring. You don’t get to talk to God but at least you can breathe through your nose.

Maybe we should drop a shitload of mulberry bombs around old Bashar’s secure location. If he’s honking his beezer 24/7 he might not feel chipper enough to get medieval on folks.

The wisteria bracketing the front door.

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Posted in Albuquerque, Spring | 12 Comments »

Turning up the volume

March 10, 2018

The backyard maple is springing (har) to life.

With spring on the horizon seasonal allergies have me by the snotlocker with a downhill pull. So it’s probably not smart to spend a couple hours daily pedaling briskly among the junipers.

But as you know, I will never be smart.

The start of the descent from the wilderness boundary at Pino Trail.

The bikes of choice lately have been a pair of fat-tired 29ers, the Jones Steel Diamond and Co-Motion Divide Rohloff. And I’ll concede it’s been a pleasant change to have smaller gears and bigger rubber — 2.4 and 2.1, respectively — on the dry, sandy trails.

That said, both bikes also weigh around 30 pounds with pedals, seven more elbees than either a Steelman or Voodoo, and thus there is something of a trade-off involved here. Bigger cushion, harder pushin’.

And it’s not as though these more trail-friendly setups give me mad skillz. I still can’t clean the rock garden on Trail 341, just below the wilderness boundary at the Pino Trail. And if you think I’m gonna shoulder either of these beasts to run the sucker you’re not any smarter than I am.

Still, fat tires or thin, it’s all good fun. Especially if you don’t get skunked, as an off-leash dog did the other day a little further down the trail. Would’ve been nice if the owner had mentioned it before I reached down to scratch the little stinkbomb’s ears.

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Posted in Albuquerque, Bike stuff, Dogs | 12 Comments »

Acid test

March 26, 2017

The back yard is flowering up at light speed.

As I fought my own losing battle with seasonal allergies on Friday it was a pleasant distraction to see Darth Cheeto and Paul “Lyin'” Ryan sound “Retreat” and skedaddle off into the swamp, their shit-stained tails tucked between their legs.

The weather here has abruptly become more seasonable, which is to say less awesome, but Herself and I got out for a 40-minute trail run yesterday. Her pink “Bernie” shirt accessorized nicely with the blooming foliage while my wheezing was just another instrument in the symphony of shortcomings that is the U.S. health-care system (albuterol inhalers just plain cost too fucking much, even without additional tax cuts for the rich).

For a guy whose stash box once made Walgreens look like Baskin-Robbins I have developed a surprising reluctance to take drugs, for anything, even asthma and allergies. Non-Drowsy Claritin-D 12 Hour (pseudoephedrine sulfate) reminds me of decent speed for the first couple of hours, but after that it’s all like, “Dude, where’s my cognitive functions?”

That said, when I saw I was down to my last two tabs I was all like, “Whoa!” and toddled off to the Walgreens for another box.

That shit don’t be cheap, neither. And you can’t just pull it off a shelf. No, you must negotiate with the pharmacist to get it (thanks, meth-heads). But once you show the whitecoats that (a) you have all your teefers; (2) aren’t furiously scratching any open sores; and (III) aren’t twitching like you just got tased by the John Laws, why, all you have to do is fork over the $23.99 for 20 tabs.

Shit, that’s about what I used to pay for acid in the good old days (dealer’s discount). It was loads more fun than Claritin-D, and I don’t recall my nose running, either.

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Posted in Drugs, Home and hearth, Spring | 11 Comments »

A nose for news

March 1, 2017
Paper! Get your paper here!

Paper! Get your paper here!

Woke up around 3 a.m. feeling as though I had spent the night snorting chain degreaser, convinced my brain had liquified and was seeping out of my snout onto the pillow.

Further sleep proved elusive as Herself arose to shower and the bathroom iPad commenced making news noises. It seemed King Donald the Short-fingered had not actually ordered anyone executed during his performance before the Congress, and the media were as usual focused on packaging rather than content. A golden chest overflowing with excrement is still a box of shit, no matter how many air fresheners are working overtime in Pundit Glade.

Jesus. These people. They install a low bar in the Dark Alley of Presidential Address Expectations, and when Beelzebozo manages to clear it without twisting a cankle they all go rushing after him to see where such Statesmanlike Leadership and Gravitas will take us next and boom! Down they go in a heap, and what oozes out of their bandaged skulls and onto the Innertubes afterward looks worse than what was coming out of mine until I swallowed a Claritin-D 12 Hour and a couple-three-four mugs of hot caffeine in various flavors.

Wipe your noses, shitheads. Try not to use your sleeves.

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Posted in Agitprop, Journalism | 17 Comments »

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